Bobby Jindal Backs Giuliani’s Statement on Obama

While conceding that perhaps he “should have chosen different phraseology,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is standing by Rudy Giuliani over controversial comments about President Obama the former mayor made at a New York City dinner party featuring Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker.

Giuliani has since clarified his comments. As for Jindal, he spoke to Time for this report:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal stood by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s criticism of President Obama Wednesday.“The gist of what Mayor Giuliani said – that the President has shown himself to be completely unable to speak the truth about the nature of the threats from these ISIS terrorists — is true,” Jindal, a likely GOP presidential candidate, said in a statement to TIME. “If you are looking for someone to condemn the Mayor, look elsewhere.”

The controversy began when the former mayor took a great deal of heat for a recent comment regarding Barack Obama. As Politico initially reported:

Rudy Giuliani went straight for the jugular Wednesday night during a private group dinner here featuring Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker by openly questioning whether President Barack Obama “loves America.”

“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 the dinner at the 21 Club, a former Prohibition-era speakeasy in midtown Manhattan. “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.”

However, Giuliani quickly clarified the comments the next morning, as this report explains.

Rudy Giuliani is expanding upon his remarks last night at a private dinner in New York that President Barack Obama “does not love America,” adding that he hears the president criticize the country more than he praises it.

“Well, first of all, I’m not questioning his patriotism. He’s a patriot, I’m sure,” the former mayor of New York said on “Fox and Friends” Thursday morning. “What I’m saying is, in his rhetoric, I very rarely hear the things that I used to hear Ronald Reagan say, the things that I used to hear Bill Clinton say about how much he loves America.”