New York City Mayor de Blasio should resign? Maybe not ...

Should Bill de Blasio go?

Long Island Congressman on NYPD officers turning their backs to Mayor de Blasio as he visited hospital where slain officers were taken. Should the mayor resign in light of perceptions he 'threw police under the bus' following Eric Garner decision.

This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," December 23, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, FOX NEWS HOST: New York Congressman Peter King joins us now.

Thanks for being with us tonight, Congressman. A lot of people very --

REP. PETER KING, R-NY: Thank you for having me.

GUILFOYLE: -- yeah, very upset about the rhetoric, the fact of the matter that Mayor de Blasio, instead of choosing to unite people in New York, was part of this problem of this anti-cop vitriol and hate and blasphemous rhetoric that he used with the police officers. Even going as far to say that his own son should be careful how he approached police officers, something bad might happen to him.

How do you operate from that point of view when you are the leader of this city and part of protecting and serving the people of New York is the police department?

KING: Kimberly, I have never seen a worse demonstration of leadership by any mayor or any elected official of New York that Mayor de Blasio has shown. This goes back over 18 months, before he was even mayor, when he was running his campaign for mayor, and he was the one who divided the communities, the police from the minority community. There were polls taken two years ago where the NYPD had 75 percent favorable ratings, in the minority communities, almost 60 percent, and yet this constant, constant talk by de Blasio about how blacks would be separated from cops. Cops were an occupying army. Going against blacks. Now, for the last four months or five months, ever since August, with the Garner and Brown cases, this incessant criticism of the police. Bringing in Al Sharpton, a known con man, putting him in a position where he is, in effect, trying to set policy for the NYPD. There is no doubt Mayor de Blasio has set this climate in motion.

GUILFOYLE: What should be done about it going forward certainly he could have played a pivotal role by showing some leadership and saying let's stop these presses, let's come together and talk about it instead of sort of fueling the fire and the flames here. What do we do now to get this city under control? What would you tell the mayor?

KING: Well, the mayor has made a small step forward, you know, calling for these demonstrations to be put off until after the funerals are over. Now, I don't see a need for the demonstrations in the first place. But, at least, to me, it's a positive step that he has called for moratorium on the demonstrations.

Also, what I'm hoping he does is he will sit down with the police and acknowledge he has made serious errors here and he wants to find a way to go forward. It's not going to work if he is suggesting a moral equivalency between these mobs in the street and the NYPD. If he continues to do that, the cops are still going to continue to have no faith in him.

I have never seen -- my father was a cop for 30 years. I have known cops all my life. I have never seen such a failure of leadership by a commander-in-chief of the police department.

GUILFOYLE: Should he resign?

KING: No. I think -- again, he was elected. I would say, no, certainly not at this point. Otherwise, we have more instability. And quite frankly, I don't know who is out there. You look at some of the cast and characters behind him --

GUILFOYLE: That's true.

KING: -- they're as bad as he is.

GUILFOYLE: Congressman, thanks for your time this evening.

KING: Thank you.