A handful of mayors in America have a message for blustery billionaire Donald Trump: Stay out of my city.
Following the Republican presidential front-runner's controversial comments Monday that he would bar Muslims from entering the United States, a growing list of city officials say they would like to enforce their own border ban on Trump.
In a statement, Trump said "large segments" of people who practice Islam have a "great hatred toward Americans" — and suggested a "complete shutdown" of Muslims coming stateside.
Related: Donald Trump's Muslim Bashing Aids Cause of Terror Networks: Experts
While the city officials acknowledged that they can't legally prevent Trump from traveling into their communities, they joined a backlash against him. Both Republican and Democrat leaders and presidential candidates have denounced his proposal as anti-American.
Here are cities where Trump wouldn't be allowed in if their mayors had their way:
St. Petersburg, Florida
Mayor Rick Kriseman first tweeted Monday night that he is "hereby barring Donald Trump" from his Tampa Bay community. The proclamation quickly went viral.
Kriseman told NBC News on Tuesday that it was a "satirical" suggestion on his part. "I felt for a presidential candidate to make a statement as ridiculous as he did, it deserved an equal response," said Kriseman, who is mayor of a nonpartisan city government but is a registered Democrat.
"It’s like in some ways watching a car accident," Kriseman said of Trump's campaign. "It’s hard to take your eyes off of it. But ultimately you don’t want to be a part of it."
At least one other mayor — Jim Griffith, of Sunnyvale, California — was keen on Kriseman's ban.
Philadelphia
Mayor Michael Nutter took a jab at Trump during a news conference Tuesday meant to condemn an earlier act in which someone threw a bloody pig's head at a city mosque.
"If I had the power to ban some people, (Trump) would be at the top of the list today," the mayor of the City of Brotherly Love told reporters.
Nutter, a Democrat, said Trump's rhetoric is trying to "radicalize" Americans against Muslims living in the U.S. and abroad, and that his "message of hate" is divisive.
Related: What Donald Trump Should Know About American Muslims
His comments "engenders ... fear-mongering that we have not seen since literally the 1920s and 40s. He’s taken a page from the playbook of Hitler," Nutter said, adding that he'd like for the businessman to be disinvited from a Pennsylvania GOP fund-raiser in New York City this weekend.
Nutter said he wouldn't want to be there if he was an attendee: "There's no way I'm going to sit in a room with that idiot."
At the end of his comments, the mayor went further — prompting him to apologize to city religious leaders who were in attendance at the news conference.
"He's an a--hole," Nutter said of Trump. "I apologize reverends, people of the religious community. I apologize."
New York City
Officials are planning a rally Wednesday outside City Hall against the Queens, N.Y.-born Trump, who owns some of the most expensive properties in the Big Apple.
Even before Trump's latest incendiary remarks, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has been trading barbs with the reality star-turned-politician.
"Donald Trump will go down as one of the worst demagogues in recent U.S. political history," de Blasio said in a statement Sunday, after Trump made jokes during an address to the Republican Jewish Coalition, prompting jeers from the crowd.
But the ever outspoken Trump took his own dig at de Blasio on Monday, calling him the "worst mayor" in America.
