NEW YORK DAILY NEWSDaily News covers Rudy Giuliani's bizarre comments about President Obama.Hey, Rudy.
I won’t ask how you are doing because we already know.
But just between us, I thought you’d like to know that one of your old friends called me the other day to lament, “What happened to the Rudy I used to love and admire?”
Damned if I know, I admitted, seeing how I never much loved or admired you in the first place.
That, of course, didn't stop me from venturing a guess: “Perhaps it’s megalomania-infused narcissism with an overlay of overt racism?”
Your old pal confessed that she was disgusted by the horrific statements you've made over the past few months, most especially the recent ones declaring that President Obama wasn't brought up like you or me and that he didn't even love America.
Well, Mr. Former Mayor, you’re right! President Obama wasn't brought up, well, like you anyway.
But then again neither was I nor most other Americans.
For starters, my father, like Barack Obama’s father — and 99% of other American fathers — never knocked over a milkman at gunpoint like your dad did, Rudy.
And while the President’s grandfather, uncle, my father, uncles, brother, cousins, husband and millions of other parents wore and still wear uniforms of the armed forces, your father wore a prison uniform.
OK, like you, I was born in Brooklyn of Italian stock, and moved with my family to Long Island when I was a kid. But that’s where our shared upbringing ends.
But, unlike you, I always knew that the kid at Sunday dinner was my cousin — therefore not someone I would want to marry.
See, my father, Anthony J. Stasi, worked his way through school and then broke his ass every day as a
sanitation man, working his way up to supervisor, while always holding down a part-time job in a drugstore at night.
Your father, Harold Giuliani, was a violent enforcer for a loan shark.
As for love, whether it’s of country or family — seriously, Rudy?
You can’t talk love when your divorce lawyer humiliated your wife and children by saying they should leave Gracie Mansion so your mistress could move in.
A man who loves his country doesn't appoint his former chauffeur, a thug, as police commissioner.
Nor would he misuse the NYPD to chauffeur around that same mistress nor walk her dog.
A man who loves even himself wouldn't appoint the sons of his backer, Ray Harding (a crook), to top jobs without qualifications; one of whom went on to use city monies for vacations and to surf child-porn sites.
Before 9/11, which made you a millionaire, Rudy, your approval rating was 50%. After 9/11 you became “America’s mayor.” Still, you crashed and burned as a presidential candidate.
Now? You sound like a guy desperate to become mayor again, or to even just be relevant once more. But the way you’re going? You aren't worthy of my father’s old entry-level sanitation job. That job requires humility and honor — qualities sorely missing from your résumé.
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Wayne Barrett: What Rudy Giuliani knows about love — a response to his 'doesn't love America' critique of Obama
SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Thursday, February 19, 2015, 9:29 PM
Updated: Friday, February 20, 2015, 10:49 AM
Rudy Giuliani knows a lot about love.Ask Regina Peruggi, the second cousin he grew up with and married, who was "offended" when Rudy later engineered an annulment from the priest who was his best man on the grounds, strangely enough, that she was his cousin. Or ask Donna Hanover, the mother of his two children, who found out he wanted a separation when he left Gracie Mansion one morning and announced it at a televised press conference.
Or ask Judi Nathan, his third wife, whom he started dating while still married to Hanover and New York mayor. In two SUVs, he and an entourage of six or seven cops traveled 11 times to Judi's Hamptons getaway at a taxpayer cost of $3,000 a trip. That's love.
Rudy knows so much about love that he declared the other day that President Obama "doesn't love you" and "doesn't love me" at a private party of GOP fat cats.
The onetime presidential candidate also revealed at the party that Obama "doesn't love America," an echo of a speech he'd delivered to delirious cheers in Arizona a week earlier when he declared: "I would go anywhere, any place, anytime, and I wouldn't give a damn what the President of the United States said, to defend my country. That's a patriot. That's a man who loves his people. That's a man who fights for his people. Unlike our President."
Rudy may have forgotten the half-dozen deferments he won ducking the Vietnam War, even getting the federal judge he was clerking for to write a letter creating a special exemption for him. And remember Bernie Kerik? He's the Giulaini police commissioner, business partner and sidekick whose nomination as homeland security secretary narrowly preceded indictments. He then did his national service in prison.
Giuliani went so far as to rebuke the President for not being "brought up the way you were and the way I was brought up through love of this country," a bow no doubt to the parenting prowess of Harold Giuliani, who did time in Sing Sing for holding up a Harlem milkman and was the bat-wielding enforcer for the loan-sharking operation run out of a Brooklyn bar owned by Rudy's uncle.
Though Rudy cited Harold throughout his public life as his model (without revealing any of his history), he and five Rudy uncles found ways to avoid service in World War II. Harold, whose robbery conviction was in the name of an alias, made sure the draft board knew he was a felon. On the other hand, Obama's grandfather and uncle served. His uncle helped liberate Buchenwald, which apparently affected him so deeply he stayed in the family attic for six months when he returned home.
A Department of Correction receiving blotter from Sing Sing prison shows the name of Harold Giuliani (aka Joseph Starrett), Rudy's father.
He was a consultant for the government of Qatar, the country his friend and FBI director Louis Freeh accused of hiding 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed before the attack. That's the ultimate triumph of money over memory, since he's still talking, as recently as a week ago, about the 10 friends and 343 firefighters he lost on 9/11.
While Giuliani finds Obama's rhetoric insufficiently pro-American, his 2012 RNC speech was filled with catchphrases like Obama's "a complete and absolute failure," and he just branded the President "a moron" in his Arizona invocation of Neville Chamberlain at Munich, all of it presumably a new form of nationalist celebration. In 2012, Rudy even blasted Obama, without a glance in the mirror, for "attempting to exploit" the killing of Osama Bin Laden, calling it "disgusting."
Rudy contends that his not-like-us Obama insights have nothing to do with race, adding in day-after doubling down that the President "was taught to be a critic of America," while pointing out that his mother and grandparents were white. There are few in New York now, after 12 years of Mike Bloomberg and a year of Bill de Blasio, who doubt that Rudy was a conscious, almost energetic, polarizer. He never acknowledged his dark side then and he's not about to now.
Barrett is author of "Rudy: An Investigative Biography."
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Washington (CNN)Rudy wouldn't be Rudy if he backed down.
But by amplifying his charge that President Barack Obama doesn't love America, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani appears ready to risk sullying the powerful mythology that grew around his leadership when he steadied and steeled the nation in the terrible, confusing time after 9/11.
Since those fleeting days when he was a unifying figure, Giuliani has more often dealt in waspish rhetoric and savage mockery -- especially of a president he says has "failed."
"America's Mayor" has gone rogue, lashing out at Democrats and liberal orthodoxy on the war on terror and saying, for example, during the Ferguson controversy last year that the biggest danger to a black child was not from a white police officer but from another African American.
The latest firestorm over Obama's patriotism may complete Giuliani's political journey from the center left of the Republican Party to the conservative jungles where Sarah Palin and Donald Trump roam.
"Rudy has devolved into this red meat Republican base ideologue who periodically seems to need self identification," said Douglas Muzzio, a political scientist at Baruch College and a New York City media commentator. "Maybe it is Rudy in his dotage, where he has lost whatever boundaries he once had. He sounds like a bitter old man."
Giuliani seems to be relishing his moment back in the spotlight.
But he's also causing awkward moments for Republican candidates limbering up for a crack at the presidency in 2016 -- a fact the White House was quick to exploit on Friday.
"It's sad to see when somebody who has attained a certain level of public stature, and even admiration, tarnishes that legacy so thoroughly," said Obama's spokesman, Josh Earnest. "And the truth is, I don't take any joy, or vindication, or satisfaction from that. I think, really, the only thing that I feel is I feel sorry for Rudy Giuliani today."
Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz also joined in, seeking to use Giuliani to frustrate the GOP's effort to short circuit controversies which could tarnish the party's image.
"Now is the time for its leaders to stop this kind of nonsense. Enough," she said.
Giuliani's blast, delivered in a closed door Republican dinner, and repeated in a media tour, centers on a claim that Obama was not brought up to "love" his country like most Americans.
It's a familiar charge from the conservative fringe, that Obama is somehow different and doesn't view America as an exceptional paragon but is obsessed with apologizing for its failings.
"I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe the president loves America," Giuliani was quoted as saying by Politico.
Asked by Fox News host Megyn Kelly Thursday whether he wanted to apologize, Giuliani replied: "Not at all. I want to repeat it."
"I don't feel this love of America," Giuliani said. "I believe his initial approach is to criticize the United States."
Giuliani dug in further in an interview with the New York Times, rejecting the idea that his remarks were born of racism.
"I thought that was a joke, since (Obama) was brought up by a white mother, a white grandfather, went to white schools, " said Giuliani. "This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism," said Giuliani.
Far from being chastened, Giuliani, who wore a conspiratorial grin on Fox News, seems gleeful in the firestorm. His behavior might be explained by a boxing maxim he was taught as a boy, which may also shed light on his calmness on 9/11.
"My father taught me ... when you get hit in the face for the first time, you're going to panic," Giuliani said in an interview with Forbes magazine in 2011. "Instead of panicking, just accept it. Stay calm. And any time anybody hits you, they always leave themselves open to be hit."
Giuliani's actions may be both a glimpse at his political philosophy and reflect a decision to wade into the political echo chamber to solidify his standing among a certain group of conservatives.
"He understands political posturing, he understands the effectiveness of rhetoric," said Errol Louis, a CNN political commentator from New York. "He clearly wants to play a role on the national stage. I guess he has chosen the role of bulldog -- go after the president, attack him, make wild accusations."
With a failed presidential campaign behind him, and having been out of office for a decade-and-a-half, it may be that Giuliani sees his future on the conservative talk circuit.
"To the extent that Giuliani will be involved in the game moving forward, it will be as a commentator or an analyst," said Costas Panagopoulos, a campaigns expert at Fordham University, New York. "In order to do that successfully these days, it helps to be controversial, sometimes inflammatory. I am not surprised that he has become increasingly forceful in his comments in the media. He is convinced that will help him."
Giuliani has rarely been known to back down. He was a Yankee fan growing up in Brooklyn, a ruthless prosecutor who took on unions and the Mob and a hard driving Republican who ran a liberal city.
When he awoke on September 11, 2001, Giuliani was a polarizing figure with a large ego and a sharp tongue. He might have purged New York street crime but was starting to grate on the city's nerves at the end of his second term.
Within hours, with a staggering display of calm, purpose and leadership, he had recast himself as a modern-era Winston Churchill, steadying and inspiring his people in their darkest hour. His heroics were such that he became one of those politicians who become known by a single name.
Marching up Broadway, he grabbed a mike and told people to evacuate southern Manhattan. He conjured up national resolve and resistance, as a country waited hours to see its president, out of sight on Air Force One.
"People tonight should say a prayer, for the people that we have lost, and be grateful that we are all here," he said in a late night press conference 12 hours after the Twin Towers came crashing down in a toxic cloud of fire and ash. "Tomorrow New York is going to be here and we are going to rebuild and we are going to be stronger from before."
Making Giuliani its Man of the Year, Time Magazine said: "When the day of infamy came, Giuliani seized it as if he had been waiting for it all his life."
But he struggled to meet huge expectations. His 2008 presidential campaign was a bust, plagued by poor organization and his liberal views on social issues that conflicted with the conservative base.
But there was also a sense that he was playing the September 11 card too much: Joe Biden's crack that there were "only three things he mentions in a sentence, a noun a verb and 9/11" was funny because it bore more than a ring of truth.
That was years ago now. But while his years of elective office are behind him, Giuliani still seems to pine for the political spotlight. So he has every incentive to keep this row going as long as he can.
Giuliani Comments Draw Tweets From Martina Navratilova, Judd Apatow and Others
In the rapid-response world of social media, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York caught fire this morning. By defending his assertion that President Obama does not love America — and by arguing that his criticism of Mr. Obama’s upbringing should not be considered racist because the president was raised by “a white mother” — he has attracted an array of commentary from prominent figures in the worlds of sports, media, movies and, of course, politics.The full story of what Mr. Giuliani said can be found on First Draft. But here’s a filtered view of the response pouring over the past few hours:
Larry King was saddened by the news:
Giuliani: Obama Had a White Mother, So I'm Not a Racist
Megyn Kelly, the Fox News host, noted that she had given Mr. Giuliani a chance to back down in her interview with him on Thursday night:
JOHN MINCHILLO/APSome people are wondering what happened to the Rudy Giuliani they used to admire.
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