Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) on Thursday kept on with an attack he reportedly made on Barack Obama’s love for the country, calling the President a “patriot” who just doesn’t quite love his nation to the extent Giuliani thinks its chief executive should.
Politico reported that during a private dinner Wednesday night in Manhattan, Giuliani said Obama doesn’t “love America” and wasn’t “brought up” to love the country in same the way as the former mayor and his conservative audience.
Giuliani also told the dinner crowd that “When I hear the president speak, I don’t believe that he expresses the love of America as much as he does criticism of America,” according to Fox News. The former mayor was asked to explain that quote Thursday morning on “Fox & Friends.”
“I’m not questioning his patriotism. He’s a patriot, I’m sure,” Giuliani said “What I’m saying is that in his rhetoric, I very rarely hear him say the things that I used to hear Ronald Reagan say, the things I used to hear Bill Clinton say, about how much he loves America.”
Giuliani added that he’s heard Obama criticize the United States “much more often” than his predecessors.
“When it’s not in the context of an overwhelming number of statements about the exceptionalism of America, it sounds like he’s more of a critic than he is a supporter,” the former mayor said. “You can be a patriotic American and be a critic, but then you’re not expressing that kind of love that we’re used to from a President.”
Giuliani also hit Obama for stating in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that citizens of the Middle East have “legitimate grievances” that must be addressed in order to combat violent extremism. He branded that a “very, very damaging statement.”
“What he’s gotta do if he wants to create a battle of ideas, a battle for the hearts and minds of people — we got to call it something,” he argued. “You and I cannot have a discussion about which is a better idea, Islamic extremism or let’s say moderate Islam, if we don’t describe it as extreme.”
Watch below via Fox News:
