Donald Trump and Katie Hopkins, advocate of a “final solution” for Muslims

Donald Trump channels a far-right UK activist for derogatory tweets about Muslims, “socialists”, and the Mayor of London — and for support of his racist attacks on four Democratic Congresswomen.

Tweeting from his golf resort in New Jersey on Saturday, Trump turned to Katie Hopkins, a reality TV star who was dismissed from her UK media job for Islamophobic remarks that invoked the Holocaust.

Trump had been forced into a temporary retreat on Thursday, after Republican legislators and his daughter Ivanka expressed concern about his whipping-up of a rally crowd into chants of “Send Her Back!”, referring to Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

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So he renewed his offensive yesterday by retweeting Hopkins’ effusive praise for his attacks, “How I wish we had such leadership in the U.K.”

Hopkins’ tweet quoted Trump’s reiteration of his “go back to your country” command to the Congresswomen: “Don’t like this country? Don’t like what it gives you? Then leave.”

A two-minute video of Hopkins, trying to deny Trump’s racism, was also featured. The polemic, echoing Trump’s re-election strategy for 2020, sets up his supporters v. supposed extremist enemies:

Are you going to choose socialists, choose ISIS, choose the Palestinian flag, choose CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations]? Or are you going to choose to Make America Great Again?

Then Trump tried both to embrace the “Send Her Back!” mantra — reassuring some of his supporters unsettled by his Thursday retreat — and maintain some distance from it.

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Trump also pushed one of Hopkins’ oft-repeated falsehoods that “officers say they have lost control of London streets” to snipe, “With the incompetent Mayor of London, you will never have safe streets!”

Trump has repeatedly criticized Sadiq Khan after the mayor challenged the Administration’s policies such as the Muslim Ban on entry into the US and opposition to gun control. Trump has echoed Hopkins’ polemic that London is full of “no-go areas” because of Muslims and that the capital is in crisis because of knife crime.

Khan, who became mayor in 2016 and is a Muslim of Pakistani origin, opposed Trump’s state visit to the UK this spring. That led Trump, as he landed in Britain, to sneer at Khan as a “stone cold loser”.

A “Final Solution” Hatred of Muslims

Hopkins came to public attention in 2007 when she was a contestant on The Apprentice, the UK version of the reality TV show that revived Trump’s US fortunes. She appeared on other reality shows, building a career as a celebrity commentator and then getting her own radio show on a London station.

Her anti-Islam remarks became more pronounced. In 2016, after a Tunisian man rammed his truck into a crowd in Nice, France, killing 86 people, she called for the mass deportation of Muslims.

“I am not Islamophobic,” she insisted. “Islam disgusts me. This is entirely rational.”

She lost her London radio show in 2017 when she tweeted, after an attack killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, “We need a final solution Manchester.”

After last year’s mass shooting that killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pennsylvania, Hopkins blamed Jewish leaders: “Look to the Chief Rabbi and his support for mass migration across the Med. There you will find your truths.”

Britain’s most senior rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, has advocated the welcoming of immigrants who cross the Mediterranean.

Using the attention from Trump’s retweets of her message, she stepped up her rhetoric on Saturday, “Call me what you wish. Islamophobe. Bigot. Racist. Vile. It matters not. What matters is the fight back for our Christian culture we desperately need to defend.”