Source: Associated Press

THE MAYOR OF Philadelphia has become the latest prominent politician to savage Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump for his recent call to ban Muslims entering the United States.

Democrat Mayor Michael Nutter, however, went further than most, saying, “He’s an asshole,” and accusing the businessman of “taking a page from the playbook of Hitler”.

Nutter was speaking alongside a gathering of Philadelphia’s religious leaders, to show solidarity with the Muslim community, after a pig’s head was left outside a mosque in the city earlier this week.

The outgoing mayor, who will be succeeded by Irish-American Democrat Jim Kenney in January, apologised to the religious leaders on stage for his language, which was greeted with shock, gratification and laughter.

In response, Trump called Nutter a “crude dope,” and criticised him for name-calling, before then labelling the Philadelphia mayor a “low-life”.

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Back home, Taoiseach Enda Kenny joined other leaders in condemning Trump’s Muslim immigration policy, calling it “not acceptable.”

The Taoiseach was responding to remarks by the US Republican presidential candidate in recent days in which he called for “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the US “until our respresentatives can figure out what’s going on”.

The flamboyant businessman’s comments, which came in the wake of the shooting dead of 14 people by a US-born man and his Pakistani wife in California last week, have drawn widespread condemnation across the world.

In the Dáil today, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin noted that the government had laid out the red carpet for Trump when he visited Clare last year:

But Martin said he did not expect it to “lay out the red carpet for the disgraceful and inflammatory remarks”.

In a brief response, Kenny told Martin:

I referred yesterday to comments made in the United States that are not acceptable to me or to the people in this country. Free speech is one thing. The comments made are not acceptable.

Martin had also told Kenny that the government should formally make clear to the US Republican Party that Trump’s comments are viewed with “abhorrence” in Ireland and are “something we wouldn’t tolerate in our democracy”.

He said the comments were a new low and an incitement to hatred.

Read: UK Parliament could be set to consider a debate on banning Donald Trump