Rudy Giuliani, who served as mayor of New York City during 9/11, claimed Monday that there had not been “any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States” in the eight years before President Barack Obama took office.
But the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks took place less than eight years before Obama was sworn into office in January, 2009.
“Under those eight years before Obama came along, we didn’t have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States. They all started when (Hillary) Clinton and Obama got into office,” Giuliani said Monday in Ohio where Trump delivered a speech on radical Islamic terrorism.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller said Giuliani was referring to the period of time following the 9/11 terror attacks, and before Obama was sworn into office.
Giuliani had referred to the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York moments before making that remark.
In an interview with the New York Daily News on Tuesday, Giuliani tried to explain his remarks, saying he was using “abbreviated language.”
“You speak in somewhat abbreviated language,” he said. “All human beings speak in abbreviated language at times.”
Giuliani’s remarks drew swift criticism, including from 9/11 survivor Gabrielle Laine-Peters who took to Twitter to say she was “so angry right now” and sent a picture with an explicit word to describe Giuliani.
Giuliani also offered a heavy dose of criticism of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and called Trump “our only hope for change in the way in which we approach radical Islamic terrorism.”