Nazareth mayor again insists he taught Trump ‘everything’

The mayor of Nazareth tells those criticizing him for taking credit for US President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory that he doesn’t see the problem.

Ali Salam, the Muslim mayor of the largely Arab-Israeli city of Nazareth in northern Israel, said on Thursday he had taught Donald Trump “everything” about how to win an election despite never having met him, prompting a wave of local criticism.

“What’s the problem? I don’t understand. He is the president of the largest country in the world and I’m the head of the most important city in the world,” Salam tells the Arab news outlet al Sonnara.

At one point in the interview on Monday, Salam calls Trump the “mayor of America.”

“What I did, Trump did. He is a businessman just like me. I just don’t see what the problem is,” Salam says.

“Enough with the hate. We need to work together,” Salam stresses.

The Israeli mayor’s claims on Thursday were reportedly partly based on the fact that, after his victory, Trump told supporters “I love you, I love you, I love you,” a phrase Salam says he used when he won the Nazareth election.

“That’s what I did when I won,” he says.

Salam did not claim to have ever met Trump, nor did he provide evidence that the president-elect knows he exists, but said that the 2014 battle for the Nazareth municipality had been ferocious like the US election.

— Dov Lieber