Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani is enjoying a level of press attention he hasn’t had since 2001, with mainstream media, popular media and Giuliani himself all making the most of a furor over his remarks last week questioning President Obama’s patriotism.
The storied mayor’s skepticism about Obama’s love for America has so far generated more than 120 hours’ worth of discussion in the nation’s leading newsrooms.
Last Wednesday, during a private dinner at New York’s 21 Club that included Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., Giuliani answered a question from an attendee regarding what the former mayor looks for in a presidential candidate. Giuliani said that he first looks for someone who loves the country in the way Ronald Reagan loved the country. He then transitioned to questioning Obama’s view of the United States.
“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 to a room full of conservatives. “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.”
He added: “With all our flaws, we’re the most exceptional country in the world. I’m looking for a presidential candidate who can express that, do that and carry it out.”
Giuliani’s remarks prompted a variety of media and political figures to push back angrily. No fewer than five questions at Friday’s White House press conference concerned the comments, and Obama press secretary Josh Earnest expressed dismay at Giuliani’s statement.
Now the off-the-cuff comments, along with Giuliani’s continued attempts to clarify his meaning, are fueling a multi-week discussion. Newspapers and television shows alike discussed the story throughout the weekend and well into Monday.
“[Q]uite frankly, I question the patriotism of someone who questions the president’s patriotism without any policy that he’s talking about behind there or any decision that he’s made behind it, just genuinely questioning his patriotism,” MSNBC morning host Mika Brzezinski said Monday.
Brzezinski went on to take a swipe at the record of the former mayor, who won election in 1993 as a Republican on the Liberal line and oversaw a stunning turnaround in the Big Apple’s economy and international reputation, capping off his tenure by getting high marks across the political spectrum for his leadership during the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001.
Giuliani “doesn’t own [the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center]. He was great during 9/11 but, my God, his comments were off the hook. They were crazy,” she said.
Vox’s Ezra Klein attempted to explain “Obama Derangement Syndrome” Monday, writing: “It isn’t so much paranoia about President Obama’s policies as it is paranoia about the man himself — that he is, in some fundamental way, different, foreign, untrustworthy, even traitorous. … Rudy Giuliani’s now infamous remarks fit the pattern.”
The Huffington Post published an article, titled “Rudy! An Investigation into Hypocrisy,” wherein freelance writer Richard Zombeck dinged Giuliani for being an “irrelevant” sideshow in U.S. politics.
“Giuliani doesn’t realize that he’s become irrelevant. The height of his career happened shortly after 9/11 when he was seen as ‘America’s Mayor.’ He was respected, revered and admired. Shortly after that, when he couldn’t squeeze one more 9/11 story out of that orange he started opening his mouth about national politics,” Zombeck wrote. “Giuliani might have been remembered as a great leader and maybe even a great man when it comes to how he changed New York City and how he handled what some consider to be this country’s most devastating tragedy. Instead, he opened his mouth and he’ll be remembered for who he really is.”
And in a moment that perhaps reveals why the press is so interested in the Giuliani story, the New Yorker published an article Monday titled: “Rudy Giuliani Revealed Everything You Need to Know About Scott Walker.”
Echoing this theme, CBS News also addressed the fact that Walker, a likely Republican presidential candidate for 2016, is tied to the Giuliani story by virtue of his being in the audience Wednesday evening.
“[T]his morning, presidential hopeful Scott Walker faces new criticism for not rejecting Rudy Giuliani’s comments about President Obama,” CBS’ Norah O’Donnell said Monday.
CBS News Political Director John Dickerson added: “Scott Walker is being very safe. He’s on top of the world for the moment in the Republican primary process and he doesn’t want to make a mistake and we’ve seen that on several things. He’s very risk averse.”
Giuliani, for his part, is doing little to make the issue go away, and in fact seems to be nursing the hubbub. He addressed the matter at length Monday in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.
“My blunt language suggesting that the president doesn’t love America notwithstanding, I didn’t intend to question President Obama’s motives or the content of his heart. My intended focus really was the effect his words and his actions have on the morale of the country, and how that effect may damage his performance,” Giuliani wrote.
“Over my years as mayor of New York City and as a federal prosecutor, I earned a certain reputation for being blunt. The thoughts I express, whether clearly or ambiguously, are my own and they are my individual responsibility,” the op-ed, titled “My Bluntness Overshadowed My Message,” added. “I hope … that our president will start acting and speaking in a way that draws sharp, clear distinctions between us and those who threaten our way of life.”
But this clarification does not appear to have settled things.
“Rudy Giuliani Digs Himself Deeper Into The Hole With WSJ Op-Ed,” Forbes said in one headline.
Washington Post opinion writer Jonathan Capehart weighed in Monday with a column titled “Rudy Giuliani just can’t bring himself to apologize.”
Capehart wrote, “Only those seriously afflicted with ‘Obama Derangement Syndrome’ are deaf to the president’s persistent praise of America’s promise and how he is the direct beneficiary of it.”
That Giuliani’s political star has dimmed since the beginning of the 21st century is certainly true. His campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination quickly fizzled. But the combative former prosecutor appears to have gotten a second wind as a favorite target of the destination media.
CNN anchorwoman Gloria Borger hosted a panel Sunday featuring former Govs. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and George Pataki of New York, along with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. In an impassioned performance, Borger called Giuliani’s remarks “stunning” and “hateful,” pressing her guests to join the criticism.
“[T]his was a personal insult to the president of the United States,” Borger said, adding that it was an attempt “to demean the president.”
Issa declined to condemn Giuliani.
“The reality is that Rudy has taken our debate — and I think we should thank him for this part of it — back to national security, to the key element that the president should be focusing on,” the San Diego congressman told Borger. “Rudy Giuliani said he ‘didn’t believe’. He didn’t say the president ‘wasn’t,’ he said he ‘didn’t believe.’ Now the reality is that I do believe that the president believes strongly in America, I just think he views America differently.”
Issa also noted that Obama had impugned President George. W. Bush’s patriotism in 2008, adding, “If we wanted to get on top of the vice president every time he says something flip and foolish or vulgar, we could have this discussion every Sunday. … I think Marco Rubio said it very well when he said exactly that.”
Rubio is one of many Republicans who have been called on to denounce Giuliani. Like his Republican colleagues Walker and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Rubio declined, saying instead, “I don’t feel like I’m in a position to have to answer for every person in my party that makes a claim. Democrats aren’t asked to answer every time Joe Biden says something embarrassing, so I don’t know why I should answer every time a Republican does.”
Rubio added, “Suffice it to say that I believe the President loves America; I think his ideas are bad.”
The drumbeat from media goes on, however.
Daily Beast columnist and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle said Sunday that the failed presidential candidate is “irrelevant,” and took it a step further, accusing the former mayor of “doing a backstroke through the gutter of American politics.”
“The clock on Rudy Giuliani’s end of days began ticking as soon as he walked out of City Hall. He ran for president once, his candidacy going up in flames nearly the moment he first opened his mouth,” Barnicle said in an article titled “Rudy Giuliani’s Raging Bull.” “Now he’s opened it again and all that emerges is bitterness and a contempt that borders on hate. What a brutal end; a self-inflicted TKO.”
That same day, the Detroit Free Press proclaimed in a headline: “Giuliani destroys his legacy in attempt to destroy Obama.”
The far-left website Salon added in a headline Sunday: “Rudy Giuliani’s sad self-destruction: How ‘America’s mayor’ became just another GOP sidewalk lunatic.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times scoured the public record for evidence that Obama actually loves the country.
“[O]ver hundreds of speeches, Mr. Obama has paid tribute to the United States as ‘the greatest democratic, economic, and military force for freedom and human dignity the world has ever known,’ vowed that ‘we will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense,’ and declared that ‘I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,’ ” the Times reported Sunday in an article titled “President Obama Has, in Fact, Expressed Love for His Country.”
“[S]everal of Mr. Obama’s most emphatic expressions of patriotism appear in close proximity to his critiques of America, a review of his speeches shows,” the Times added.
Earlier that day, the New York Daily News, which has taken a particular interest in Giuliani’s remarks, published a column titled: “You’re right Rudy Giuliani … President Obama SURE wasn’t brought up like you!”
As the dustup drags on, however, some media outlets are moving from denunciations to woolgathering, searching for big-picture meaning in the controversy or assessing its dire import for other Republicans.
“How are GOP presidential hopefuls reacting to Giuliani?” CBS News wanted to know.
The Christian Science Monitor headlined an article “Why Giuliani’s comments about Obama resonate with some Americans.”
And at the very start of the weekend, CNN put an official stamp on Giuliani’s legacy in U.S. politics: “Rudy Giuliani’s fall from America’s Mayor.”
