At a Sunday gathering of Mitt Romney partisans in West Palm Beach, Florida, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered a blistering attack on President Barack Obama for what he said was a “disgraceful” response to Hurricane Sandy.
“Maybe the first day or two of the storm, the president did a good job,” Giuliani said. “The last three or four days? It’s disgraceful.”
The Brooklyn-born firebrand excoriated the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for neglecting to bring bottled water to the Northeastern U.S. during the days before the superstorm hit.
“It’s disgraceful what he’s done. It’s disgraceful what his FEMA has done,” Giuliani said. “There are people in New York City who don’t have bottles of water like this. See this little bottle of water? They don’t have it in New York. You know why? Because Barack Obama’s FEMA didn’t think to pre-position it.”
“What — they didn’t learn anything from Katrina?”
Watch:
Giuliani was New York City’s mayor when terrorists flew commercial aircraft into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, bringing both skyscrapers crashing to the ground. He recalled on Sunday seeing the federal government, then helmed by President George W. Bush, rush resources to Manhattan — including equipment to keep electricity flowing.
“People in the lower East side, elderly people, had to sleep last night in the cold — some of them at great risk to their health. And his FEMA can’t get generators to Manhattan,” Giuliani said of Obama.
“How long did it take us … to get generators to Ground Zero on September 11? Do you know the power was out in lower Manhattan for four weeks? Now, you watched Ground Zero, didn’t you, on television? And you watched the lights on. You watched them working 24 hours a day. How do you think we did that? We brought generators in!”
“Where the hell are the generators now?” Giuliani shouted. “What good is his FEMA if they can’t get the generators to the people who don’t have electricity? What good is FEMA if they can’t get water to people? What good is FEMA if they can’t get food to people?”
The group Conservative New Media captured video of Giuliani’s speech.
“Go take a look at New York and New Jersey right now, six days later,” Giuliani said. “This man [Obama] has been a disaster on emergency response. … I’ve never seen one as bad as this. I’ve never seen a president walk out as much as this.”
“If George Bush had done this, they’d be impeaching him right now. If George Bush had done this, the media would have been all over him.”
