Former New York Mayor and Donald Trump ally Rudy Giuliani slammed the sanctions President Barack Obama placed against Russia Thursday, calling them “petty little actions” and saying that they should have been put in place much earlier.
During an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Friday, Giuliani said that if hacking did take place by the Russians, that the response by the U.S. should have been earlier and stronger.
“I find it extraordinary in what President Obama is doing,” he said. “I’ve never seen a President try to create more problems for a future president.”
“There’s a certain pettiness that I hadn’t seen before. I mean, to do this after 18 months, when you could have prevented it 10 months ago,” Giuliani continued. “Petty little actions like this don’t mean very much. It’s almost a mockery to say this is too little too late. It should have been done 10 months ago, 11 months ago, 12 months ago. If it is really true the response should be much stronger.”
Giuliani also criticized the closing of two Russian compounds that the White House classified as being used for “intelligence-related purposes” in its statement, saying that “if you are going to solve a murder, you arrest the murderer. Not the candy store the murderer went to before he committed the murder.”
The former mayor, who apparently took himself out of the running to be Trump’s Secretary of State, said that Trump should not immediately trust all intelligence that the Obama administration gives him because it is “incompetent.”
“There’s no question that the intelligence that President Obama has been getting has either been incompetent or politicized,” he said.
“I would urge President Trump, when he becomes President Trump, to have his own intelligence people do their own report, let’s find out who did it, and let’s bang them back really hard,” he continued.
