Rudy Giuliani Loves America, Except When He’s Consulting for Qatar
After leading New York city through the trauma of Sept. 11, 2001, Rudy Giuliani has cashed in on his reputation as “America’s mayor” to launch a lucrative security consultancy and establish himself as a frequent television pundit on all things terror-related. He also ran for president in 2008, mounting a campaign that was perhaps most notable for Giuliani’s seeming inability to appear in public without mentioning the numerals “nine” and “eleven.”
Now, Giuliani is back in the news for a different reason: remarks critical of President Barack Obama that have been widely criticized as racist. For observers of Giuliani’s post-9/11 career, the former New York mayor’s most recent broadside against the president smacks of a certain oil-tinged hypocrisy.
“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 during remarks at a New York dinner last week. “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.” On Sunday, he walked back his remarks by writing in the Wall Street Journal that “I didn’t intend to question President Obama’s motives or the content of his heart.”
It’s hard to know exactly what Giuliani meant by this remark beyond his obvious, general distaste for the president, but in comparing himself to Obama, Giuliani makes an implicit distinction: That he holds in his heart an abiding love for the United States that the current occupant of the White House does not.
What Giuliani doesn’t mention is that the consulting company that has made him a very wealthy man since leaving public office has done work on behalf of a country that all but certainly does not love America in the vague, jingoistic way Giuliani would like you to believe that he does: Qatar, the tiny oil-rich kingdom has drawn criticism in the past for its cozy relationship with violent Islamist movements.
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