NEW YORK _ President Donald Trump slammed Bill de Blasio as a "communist" and "fool" on Monday, provoking a withering retort from the New York City mayor's press secretary.
"I'm so sick of Donald Trump spending time spouting off and trashing New York City instead of doing his damn job for once," de Blasio spokesman Bill Neidhardt said in a statement to the Daily News. "We got the curve down here; meanwhile, he can't figure out how to read a graph that shows he's completely failed at his job to save American lives."
Neidhardt didn't stop there, going on to call Trump "a racist fool and a pathological liar who thinks being president means holing up in his bathrobe and calling into his favorite sycophantic cable news show to spout off meaningless, nonsensical insults."
The fusillade came after Trump accused de Blasio of driving New York City into the ground in an interview on "Fox & Friends."
"He's a socialist, communist, maybe he's a fool," the president said. "He got rid of some of the most talented policemen that there are in the world. And that includes looking for very bad things beyond New York."
Neidhardt responded: "He is truly pathetic at this point, and this behavior is exactly why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to beat him like a drum."
The president also threatened to send federal agents to the city to squelch the summer spike in crime if de Blasio cannot bring calm back to the streets.
"Law and Order. If @NYCMayor can't do it, we will!" Trump tweeted, forwarding a tally of the violence in the city.
Trump has railed for weeks about spikes in crime in big cities, almost all of which are run by Democrats. He also wants a more forceful crackdown on racial justice protests in Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere.
After decades of steady and consistent declining crime rates, New York City has experienced a surge in some violent crimes this summer.
There were 40 shootings in the city this past weekend from Friday through Sunday, the NYPD said, including seven murders.
That's more than double the number of shooting incidents from the same period last year.
Conservatives and supporters of the police believe that criminals have been emboldened by the anti-law enforcement rhetoric of the #BlackLivesMatter protests.
But progressives blame poverty and hopelessness caused by the coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn.
