Mayor Jim Kenney's impromptu song and dance routine over a recent court victory that upheld the city's status as a sanctuary city is getting panned by conservative critics.A White House spokesman described the mayor's soft-shoe number as "disgusting."
A Republican candidate for U.S. Senate said it was a "sad video to watch."
A co-host on Fox & Friends wondered what the parents of children slain by illegal aliens would make of it.
The critics were reacting to a four-second Twitter video of Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney celebrating a federal court judge's ruling that backed the city in an ongoing legal dispute with the U.S. Justice Department over treatment of illegal aliens.
"We are a sanctuary city yeah," the mayor sang as he danced and high-fived Jane Slusser, his chief of staff, in a video posted on Twitter by a mayoral aide.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Baylson ruled that the Trump administration can't withhold some $1.6 million in law enforcement grants to Philadelphia because of the city's status as a sanctuary city.
In his ruling, the judge said that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions's position that illegal aliens are more likely to commit crimes was not borne out by evidence.
"There is no evidence on the record whatsoever that non-citizens in Philadelphia commit any more crimes than the citizens," the judge wrote.
Kenney hailed the decision as a "total and complete victory" that "prevents a White House run by a bully from bullying Philadelphia into changing its policies."
"It is a ruling that should make clear to Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions that federal grant dollars cannot be used for a political shakedown," the mayor said. "It is, most of all, a ruling that reminds everyone of why this city and this county exist -- to give safe haven, and hope, to those who flee tyranny, oppression and poverty in other parts of the world."
The White House had a different reaction to the judge's decision.
"Many people in Philadelphia have been killed, raped or assaulted at the hands of criminal illegal aliens," White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told Fox News. Gidley went on to describe the mayor's singing and dancing act as disgusting.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice said that Judge Baylson's decision was nothing to celebrate, calling the ruling a "victory for criminal aliens in Philadelphia, who can continue to commit crimes in the city knowing that its leadership will protect them from federal immigration officers."
Philadelphia sued the attorney general after he threatened to withhold funds if the city did not cooperate fully with requirements on federal grants that provided Philadelphia last year with $1.6 million for items such as police overtime, training, equipment, as well as new courtroom technology.
In exchange for the funding, the U.S. attorney general wanted the city to provide the feds with a 48-hour notice of any scheduled release of any so-called prisoners of interest; the feds also wanted the right to interview inmates still in custody in Philadelphia.
The city's lawyers argued that the threatened ban was unconstitutional and that Philadelphia would only turn over immigrants to federal officials in cases where the feds had a warrant signed by a judge.
While The Philadelphia Inquirer ignored the mayor's song and dance routine, it was played in an endless loop on Fox News.
"Well, that's really a sad video to watch," U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta of Hazleton, a Republican congressman running for the U.S. Senate, told Fox News. "I don't think the families of the victims in Philadelphia who were victims of illegal aliens" are "dancing as well."
"How do you think angel parents are watching that dance, that celebration this morning," asked Abby Huntsman, a co-host on Fox & Friends, about parents whose children have been murdered by illegals. "Watching that mayor dance, you can imagine how upset that would make them."