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Giuliani: Hatred is not coming from the President

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Thursday rejected suggestions that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric was to blame for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. “To try to blame an act of anti-Semitism on [Trump] is insane,” Giuliani told Jewish Insider after visiting the Ohel of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Queens.The man has been the best friend of Israel we’ve ever had in the White House. The man who did the shootings [Robert Bowers] has on his website that he hates Donald Trump because Donald Trump has too many Jewish friends. You can’t win with these people who want to create political problems out of everything and the President has every right to defend himself and to point out this hatred. If you’re not honest about it you’ll never end it.”

“Hatred is not coming from the President. Hatred is coming from the people that are trying to victimize him. I mean, we had attacks in the United States under other presidents and we didn’t blame them. We had a shooting of an American Congressman and an attempt to kill numerous Republican Congressmen with a man who had a similar fanatical attraction to Bernie Sanders. Nobody asked Bernie Sanders, ‘Were you responsible?’ I certainly didn’t.”

Photo by John Kenny/ NY True

Speaking on Trump’s use of terms like ‘nationalist’ and ‘America First’, Guliani said, “I mean, anything can be interpreted horribly or wonderfully. People say they’re Muslims and they’re mostly very good people and there are some Muslims who are insane terrorists. So nationalism is a wonderful thing as long as it doesn’t become xenophobia, as long as it doesn’t become violent. To love your country… I love America. I consider myself, in that sense, a very patriotic American. I’d like everybody to share in it in the right way. Not come crashing in here and try to take things away from other people.”

The former mayor and current Trump attorney further addressed the issue during an event hosted by the National Council of Young Israel at the home of Dr. Joe Frager in Queens on Thursday evening. “There is nothing about Donald Trump that suggests he’s anti-Semitic. He has Jewish friends. I mean, he’s best friends with Richard LeFrak… He’s as strong of a supporter of Israel you can get in the White House.”

“From the time he ran for president, Trump has been very well-educated on the Jewish community. Notice that the people who opposed his coming to Pittsburgh also opposed Netanyahu’s representative coming. I bet every single one of those people that opposes him opposes Netanyahu. In fact, they may actually oppose Netanyahu more. So I have explained to him the Jewish community. He knows this, and he’s very comfortable with it. He knows that there’s deep divisions inside the Jewish community, including about how Israel conducts itself.” 

Guliani speaks at 

Giuliani on the midterms: “I think the President is ready for a big battle if the Democrats get the House. As you can imagine, it’ll just make him stronger. He doesn’t mind battle. He actually wonders if they hadn’t attacked him so much, if he would have been as effective as he was. I never heard him express that before, but I used to say, ‘They’re kidding me. You know, if you just leave him alone and don’t do anything to him, he kind of goes and plays golf. But when you attack him, he gets like a waking bear.'”

“I used to like it much, much better during the campaign when he was behind. A few times he got ahead a little, I could see a little bit of slacking off a little, relaxing. But he was always behind [Hillary Clinton] in the campaign except for about four or five days. And it drives him. And they don’t know what they’re taking on. He’ll destroy them. He’ll actually destroy them. They’ll destroy themselves because the President’s just one person and he’s got one White House that works for him. But they have probably about 100 lunatics in the House of Representatives. And they’re all going to want the microphone. And they’re all going to want to be crazier than the other, and there’s only a certain tolerance the American people have for this. And if we have the Senate, they can’t do permanent damage. They can only make trouble, but they can’t pass a law, they can’t impeach anybody.”

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