Thursday, February 19, 2015

Giuliani on Obama.

I have not been able to find a transcript of Mayor Giuliani's remarks, at a Scott Walker fundraiser. The most extensive excerpts I could find come from two articles in Politico.

Politico I:

“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America, 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.” In an interview after the dinner...Giuliani...elaborated on his criticism of Obama by arguing the president “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? 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 then recalled his own comments condemning several major episodes from the early 1990s when Jews were targeted in Argentina and the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. That hard-line approach, Giuliani said, stands in contrast to the way Obama touched off a storm earlier this month during the National Prayer Breakfast by citing the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition as Christian examples of the way many religions have perpetrated horrible acts throughout history.

“I thought the Crown Heights riots were a pogrom because you’re going out trying to kill Jews,” Giuliani said. “Why is this man incapable of saying that? 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?”

Politico II

“Well, first of all, I’m not questioning his patriotism. He’s a patriot, I’m sure,” the former mayor of New York said on “Fox and Friends” Thursday morning. “What I’m saying is, in his rhetoric, I very rarely hear the things that I used to hear Ronald Reagan say, the things that I used to hear Bill Clinton say about how much he loves America.”He also joined in criticism of the president’s characterization of extremism, calling Obama’s op-ed this week for the Los Angeles Times “a very, very damaging statement.”
“You see, if you don’t call it something, you can’t connect the dots,” Giuliani said. “If you can’t connect the dots, you can’t really combat it militarily.”