Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani let loose at a political gathering Wednesday night, saying he does not believe that President Obama “loves America.”
Giuliani made the statement at a dinner attended by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and 60 conservatives, Politico reported.
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani told the audience. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
“With all our flaws we’re the most exceptional country in the world,” Guiliani said. “I’m looking for a presidential candidate who can express that, do that and carry it out.”
“And if it’s you, Scott, I’ll endorse you,” Giuliani said to Walker, who was sitting nearby. “And if it’s somebody else, I’ll support somebody else.”
Giuliani expanded on his pointed remarks in an interview with Politico after the dinner.
He said that he believes Obama “sees our weaknesses as footnotes to the great things we’ve done.”
“What country has left so many young men and women dead abroad to save other countries without taking land?” Giuliani asked. “This is not the colonial empire that somehow he has in his hand. I’ve never felt that from him. I felt that from [George] W [Bush]. I felt that from [Bill] Clinton. I felt that from every American president, including ones I disagreed with, including [Jimmy] Carter. I don’t feel that from President Obama.”
Giuliani also slammed the way Obama has addressed the scourge of Islamic terrorism, comparing it negatively to how he responded to the 1991 Crown Heights riots.
“I thought the Crown Heights riots were a pogrom because you’re going out trying to kill Jews,” Giuliani said.
Violence erupted in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in Aug. 1991 after an Orthodox Jew accidentally ran over and killed a young black boy. During the riots, a group of black men attacked and killed an Australian Jew. A number of other Jews were attacked. Businesses were looted and burned.
During his successful 1993 mayoral bid, Giuliani used the term “pogrom” to describe the riots, much to the chagrin of his opponent, incumbent Democrat David Dinkins.
“Why is this man incapable of saying that?” Giuliani said of Obama in his interview with Politico.
“You’ve got to be able to criticize Islam for the parts of Islam that are wrong. You criticize Christianity for the part of Christianity that is wrong. I’m not sure how wrong the Crusades are. The Crusades were kind of an equal battle between two groups of barbarians. The Muslims and the crusading barbarians. What the hell? What’s wrong with this man that he can’t stand up and say there’s a part of Islam that’s sick?” (RELATED: Obama Uses Prayer Breakfast To Call For Curbs On Islam Criticism)
Guiliani was referencing Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month in which he said that the barbarity of ISIS and other Islamic terrorists is comparable to that of Christians during the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition.
That remark is part of a pattern of Obama downplaying the violence rising out of Islam and refusing to name terrorist acts “Islamic terrorism,” Obama’s critics maintain.
Another example of Obama’s soft-pedaling the issue, according to critics, was his statement in an interview last week that the Islamic terrorist who targeted a Jewish deli in Paris days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre did so “randomly.”