Liberal hypocrisy has a short memory. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as a case in point has come out swinging against President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration, calling an affront to religious liberty. Nut it was not that long ago that the same Bill de Blasio pushed for a city-wide boycott of Chick-fil-A because the company’s president came out in support of traditional marriage.
In an interview with CNN on Sunday, de Blasio slammed Trump’s executive order temporarily suspending travel from seven countries that are majority Muslim and said the order should be “chilling to anyone in America who cares about religious liberty.”
The fact that the executive order states that religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries may be exempted from the suspension renders it essentially a ban on Muslims, according to de Blasio.
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As it stands now, the order temporarily bans travel from seven countries to the United States for 90 days and also places an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. These countries are predominantly Muslim, but it’s also true that they’re generally wracked with violence and radical Islamic terror.
But as CNN’s Jake Tapper noted as a counterpoint to de Blasio, minority Muslims in those countries could also be eligible for exemptions.
Still, de Blasio’s appeal to the values of religious liberty are somewhat odd, given his past actions against the chicken franchise. In May 2016, de Blasio urged New Yorkers to boycott a branch of Chick-fil-A that opened restaurant in Queens Center Mall, citing as motivation the owners having donated to groups that promote heterosexual marriage.
“What the ownership of Chick-fil-A has said is wrong,” de Blasio said. “I’m certainly not going to patronize them and I wouldn’t urge any other New Yorker to patronize them.”
Despite de Blasio’s call for a boycott, Chick-fil-A has continued to succeed in the city and is working on expanding its operations.
This report, by Jonah Bennett, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
