New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has come out swinging against President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration as an affront to religious liberty, but in the past, 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.
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 that he has in the past tried his level best to drive the fast food joint Chick-fil-A out of New York City because its president has come out in support of traditional marriage, due to his religious beliefs. The family that owns the company has donated to groups that promote heterosexual marriage.
In My 2016, de Blasio told New Yorkers to boycott Chick-fil-A after it opened a new restaurant in Queens Center Mall.
“What the ownership of Chick-fil-A has said is wrong,” he said. “I’m certainly not going to patronize them and I wouldn’t urge any other New Yorker to patronize them. But they do have a legal right.”
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.