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Giuliani Defends Trump Over Obama Comments

Former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday defended controversial comments made by presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, which was interpreted as implying that President Obama is sympathetic to Islamic terrorism.

“I am very disturbed by the president’s failure to use the word Islamic terrorism,” Giuliani said in an interview on CNN’s “New Day” morning program. “And I do believe that the president’s rhetoric has something to do with the fact that some of the people in San Bernardino didn’t turn in the suspicious acts of terrorism that they saw in the days before the attack in San Bernardino. The words that the president uses are important. And he is creating a feeling, particularly among maybe more liberal members of society, you can’t say Islamic terrorism.”

On Monday, responding to the deadly Orlando nightclub shooting, Trump suggested Obama may be sympathetic to Islamic terrorism. “[Obama] doesn’t get it, or he gets it better than anybody understands,” Trump said on “Fox n’ Friends” program. “It’s one or the other. And either one is unacceptable. We are led by a man who is either not tough, not smart, or he has something else in mind. And the something else in mind, people can’t believe it.”

The comments drew fire from inside and outside his party. “Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando shooting,” a Washington Post headline read.

But Trump, in a statement to Bloomberg News, insisted that he “was referring to the fact that at times President Obama seems more in support of Muslims than Israel.”

“For example, the Iran deal, which was one of the worst deals in history, gave $150 billion dollars to a radical regime, which will allow them to fund terrorist activities as well as pursue their stated goal of ‘full annihilation and destruction’ of Israel,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee asserted. “It is great for Iran and bad for Israel and the United States.”

“We’re in a much more dangerous situation than we were before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took over,” Giuliani said on CNN. “And I have a strong belief, after 35 years of dealing with Islamic terrorism of an extremist nature, that the more you are on defense, the more they’re on defense. And the more you’re on offense, the less they come after you.”

The former New York Mayor, appearing on the “Fox n’ Friends” program, criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio for ending police surveillance of mosques. “There is no minister, there is no rabbi in this city nor are there some imams that object to having police officers in their congregation. In fact, they want them there,” Giuliani said. “They want them to learn the message. It’s enlightening for them.”
“So you’ve got — if you’ve got nothing going on there but a beautiful religious service, why in His name would you not want to have police officers there?” he asked.

Newt Gingrich, appearing on the same show Monday, said that the United States should deal with homegrown terrorism the same way with the threat of Nazis in the 1930’s. “We originally created the House Un-American Activities Committee to go after Nazis,” Gingrich said. “We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis. We’re going to presently have to go take the similar steps here.”

Forty-nine people were killed and 53 were wounded in the Orlando massacre late Saturday night.

President Obama called the criticism of his refusal to use the term ‘radical Islam’ a “political distraction” which “doesn’t make it go away.”

“There is not a moment where we have not able to pursue a strategy because we didn’t use the label ‘radical Islam.’ Not once has an adviser said, ‘Man, if we use that phrase, we are going to turn this whole thing around,’ not once,” Obama said following a meeting with his National Security Council at the Treasury Department on Tuesday. “So someone seriously thinks that we don’t know who we are fighting? If there is anyone out there who thinks we are confused about who our enemies are — that would come to a surprise of the thousands of terrorists we have taken out on our battlefield.”

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