Members of “the Resistance” who cheered the debut of a giant “Baby Trump” balloon during a London protest were less than thrilled to see the technique repeated, this time to mock London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
A balloon version of Khan, reclining on his side and wearing an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini, flew over London on Saturday as part of a series of protests aimed at drawing attention to a wave of violence overtaking the British capital, though the balloon itself was apparently designed to test Khan’s commitment to “free speech.”
“Yanny Bruere, 28, the brain behind the Khan blimp … [said] that it was done ‘in retaliation’ for the London mayor approving the Trump balloon, which Bruere didn’t think was a ‘very fitting’ thing to do to the leader of a great ally of Britain,” The Washington Post reported. “He said he wanted to ‘test that free-speech angle’ and so filed an application to fly the Khan balloon — to ‘see if Sadiq Khan would be willing to submit himself to the same mockery as he’s willing to impose on the leader of the free world.'”
Bruere dressed Khan in skimpy swimwear to remind viewers of Khan’s crusade to rid the London subway system of suggestive and sexist advertising. He and other protesters wore shirts that said “Make London Safe Again,” an apparent reference to President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Balloon Khan flew, it seems, without incident. The protest went so well that organizers plan to take Balloon Khan on the road.
Bruere may not be as popular as his blimp, however. A series of media inquiries revealed that Bruere had recently taken a hatchet to his Twitter account, deleting a number of tweets that included anti-Semitic jokes and references to Internet conspiracy theories. Bruere told Sky News that he wrote the tweets but that they were taken “out of context.”