Sadiq Khan lives rent-free in Donald Trump’s head

You can spend an estimated £29million on flattering Donald Trump with two state visits, you can pick up his papers when he drops them, you can grin inanely while he rants and raves about whatever fresh injustice he’s perceived that morning.

But one thing all the brown-nosing won’t stop is the US president raging on about Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London who refused to bend the knee when Trump made his flying visit to Windsor Castle and Chequers.

Days after leaving Britain, Trump used a typically lucid and bridge-building address to the United Nations – during which he told Europe’s leaders “your countries are going to hell” – to launch yet another attack on Khan. “I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor. A terrible, terrible mayor. It’s been so changed, so changed, now they want to go to Sharia Law,” he said, falsely. “It’s really a different country, you can’t do that.”

Trump’s obsession with Khan began in May 2016, when the newly-elected London mayor criticised the man who was then vying for the Republican nomination over his plan to ban Muslims from the US. Told that he had been called “ignorant”, Trump challenged Khan to an IQ test and added:“I will remember those statements. They are very nasty statements.”

In 2017, then-president Trump criticised Khan after the mayor told Londoners to not to be alarmed by increased police presence on the capital’s streets after the London Bridge terror attack. Misrepresenting Khan’s position, he wrote: “Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his “no reason to be alarmed” statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!”

After Khan allowed protesters to fly the “orange baby” Trump balloon during a working visit by Trump in 2018, Trump said the mayor “done a very bad job on terrorism… I think he has done a bad job on crime, if you look, all of the horrible things going on there, with all of the crime that is being brought in.”

Then, just before his previous state visit in 2019, Trump wrote on social media that Khan “who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Mayor of London, has been foolishly ‘nasty’ to the visiting President of the United States, by far the most important ally of the United Kingdom. He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me…Kahn (sic) reminds me very much of our very dumb and incompetent Mayor of NYC, de Blasio, who has also done a terrible job.”

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Shortly after returning to the US, Trump tweeted, “London needs a new mayor ASAP. Khan is a disaster – will only get worse!” and “He is a national disgrace who is destroying the City of London!”

In July 2025, Trump was asked whether he would visit London on his trip to the UK and said: “I’m not a fan of your mayor. I think he’s done a terrible job, the mayor of London… a nasty person.”

After Trump left the UK on September 17, he told reporters on Air Force One that he had insisted on Khan not being present at any of the events on his state visit. He said: “I think the mayor of London, Khan, is among the worst mayors in the world, and we have some bad ones. If you look at Chicago, but I think he’s the equivalent of the mayor of Chicago.

“I think he’s done a terrible job. Crime in London is through the roof. The mayor of London, Khan, mayor Khan has done a terrible job. And on immigration, he’s a disaster.”

Khan has nothing to do with immigration, and is said to have made it clear weeks ago that he did not want to be part of the state visit. Nevertheless, Trump claimed: “I asked that he not be there. He wanted to be there, as I understand, I didn’t want him.”

And now this latest outburst. But when will Trump tell us what he really thinks of Sadiq Khan, who clearly lives rent-free in the head of the most powerful man on the planet?