A few weeks ago, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) made the unfortunate decision to attack President Obama’s patriotism, insisting that the president doesn’t love America or Americans. The Republican activist, somehow convinced himself he could make the ensuing controversy better by saying more dumb things, and proceeded to make matters much worse.
Giuliani has kept a slightly lower profile since, though the New York Daily News reports today that the former mayor is back, launching a new salvo against the president he holds in contempt.
Obama is ignoring “enormous amounts of crime” committed by African-Americans, Giuliani said Thursday. And he said President Obama is to blame for the brawl inside a McDonald’s in Brooklyn as well as the shooting of two cops in Ferguson because of the anti-police “tone” coming from the White House. […]Host John Gambling asked for Giuliani’s take on the vicious McDonald’s fight, the recent police shootings in Ferguson and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton getting booed Thursday at a City Council hearing by protesters. “It all starts at the top. It’s the tone that’s set by the president,” Giuliani said.
I’ll confess that this might be the first time I’ve heard anyone, anywhere, blame any president for a brawl at a fast food restaurant.
Giuliani did add, however, in all seriousness, “I hate to mention it because of what happened afterwards, but (he should be saying) the kinds of stuff Bill Cosby used to say.”
Hmm.
It’s hard to know where to start, exactly, but let’s go ahead and note that Bill Cosby has been accused of sexually assaulting dozens of women. Holding him out as a model in any comparison is probably a bad idea.
If Giuliani’s point is that we should overlook Cosby’s alleged crimes and focus on what the comedian has said about race and society, Jon Chait reminds us that President Obama “does, in fact, make Cosby-like remarks pretty often. Indeed, Obama has done this enough to receive sustained criticism from his admirers.”
It would seem Giuliani is once again chastising Obama for failing to say things the president has already said multiple times.
Chait added, “So, what is the best explanation for Giuliani’s strange fantasy that Obama has presided over some explosion of black crime caused by him failing to say things he has in fact said repeatedly? Combined with Giuliani’s accusations that Obama does not love America (despite all Obama’s eloquent speeches to the contrary), because Obama allegedly ‘wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country’ — what innocent explanation can be formulated for his string of delusions? What do you call holding Barack Obama responsible for every crime committed by a black person, anywhere?”
When Giuliani went after Obama last month, he prefaced his comments this way: “I know this is a horrible thing to say, but…” Today, urging Obama to be more like Cosby, Giuliani said, “I hate to mention it … but” as if there’s a part of him that realizes that he should bite his tongue and not continue.
But the guy just can’t seem to help himself.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."