By Ali Elkin, Bloomberg News (TNS)
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker reportedly launched a tag-team attack on President Barack Obama and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney at a dinner in New York on Wednesday.
Speaking to about 60 people at the event, Giuliani questioned Obama’s love of country, according to Politico.
“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 said, according to Politico. “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.”
On Fox and Friends on Thursday, Giuliani tried to clarify, saying, “He’s a patriot, I’m sure.”
“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.”
After the event Wednesday, Giuliani also criticized the president’s reference to the Crusades during the recent National Prayer Breakfast and his refusal to associate terrorism with Islam.
“I thought the Crown Heights riots were a pogrom because you’re going out trying to kill Jews,” Giuliani said, according to Politico. “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. …What’s wrong with this man that he can’t stand up and say there’s a part of Islam that’s sick?”
Walker, a Republican who may mount a White House bid in 2016, reportedly criticized Romney’s campaign, saying he never made clear why he was the “better alternative.”
“The big thing I thought Mitt Romney’s campaign missed more than anything was we already knew the narrative that the economy was failing, and that there was a compelling case to get rid of the president,” Walker said, according to the New York Daily News.
Walker said Romney also erred in repeatedly citing the economy’s woes in states like his own, where Republican governors were in charge.”We said ‘No, the better argument in Republican-led states was to say, ‘Look how much better it got–imagine how much better it would be if you put a Republican in charge of the federal government. You could get the same thing happening there,'” Walker said, according to the newspaper.
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr
