Rudy Giuliani To Obama: Stop Personally Murdering All The Cops, Right Now!

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani placed the blame for the murders of two New York City policemen Saturday squarely where it belonged: on President Barack Obama, who had personally whispered "Go kill some cops" into the ear of Ismaaiyl Brinsley, a Baltimore man who killed himself after shooting the two officers, plus his girlfriend. (A lot of people keep forgetting about the girlfriend.) In an interview on Fox & Friends Sunday, Giuliani explained that the President and others had pretty much been calling for the killing of police ever since the August shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri:

We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president that everybody should hate the police. I don't care how you want to describe it, that's what those protests are all about. The protests are being embraced, the protests are being encouraged. The protests, even the ones that don’t lead to violence, a lot of them lead to violence, all of them lead to a conclusion. The police are bad, the police are racist. That is completely wrong. Actually the people who do the most for the Black community in America are the police.

Yr Wonkette has carefully searched for instances of Barack Obama encouraging people to hate police and kill them; perhaps Giuliani was thinking of Obama's inflammatory August 14 statement in response to protests in Ferguson and the subsequent police crackdown:

"There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting," Obama said in a statement from where he is vacationing in Massachusetts. "There's also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights."

See, right there, he said "violence against police," which is about the smokingest gun you could ever hope to find. Suggesting that police shouldn't use excessive force is also, as we all know, a subtly coded message meaning, "Please go ahead and shoot two policemen to death as they sit in their patrol car."

Or perhaps Giuliani was thinking of Obama's November 24 incitement to violence following the announcement that Darren Wilson would not be indicted. Just look at Obama's fiery calls for hatred of police here:

I also appeal to the law enforcement officials in Ferguson and the region to show care and restraint in managing peaceful protests that may occur. Understand, our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day. They've got a tough job to do to maintain public safety and hold accountable those who break the law. As they do their jobs in the coming days, they need to work with the community, not against the community, to distinguish the handful of people who may use the grand jury's decision as an excuse for violence

[...]

Those of you who are watching tonight understand that there's never an excuse for violence, particularly when there are a lot of people in goodwill out there who are willing to work on these issues

Disgusting, isn't it?

Giuliani did at least give a pass to current NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was accused by New York police union leader Pat Lynch of having "blood on his hands" for his own incitements to murder. De Blasio stirred murderous rage against police by suggesting to his mixed-race son that sometimes police officers may not always be friendly to young black men, and more recently endorsed violence against police by condemning violence against police, saying on December 17 that "You cannot talk about social change and then commit an act of violence against a police officer. It makes no sense."

Giuliani was just as gracious as possible toward de Blasio, at least as far as the suggestion that he had caused the murders:

“I think it goes too far to blame the mayor for the murder or to ask for the mayor’s resignation,” Giuliani said.

“I feel bad [for] the mayor,” Giuliani continued. “He must be heartbroken over the loss of two police officers. I can’t believe this is what he wanted. I don’t [think] he’s a bad man in any way.”

Even so, Giuliani believes de Blasio allowed that whole "right of the people to peaceably assemble" nonsense to get completely out of hand following the non-indictment of the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death:

“I don’t think it goes too far to say the mayor did not properly police the protests,” Giuliani said. “He allowed the protesters to take over the streets. He allowed them to hurt police officers, to commit crimes, and he didn’t arrest them. And when you do that, similar to what happened in Crown Heights, you create a great riot. He should have known better. For that he has to take accountability.”

It's a pretty apt comparison: in Crown Heights in 1991, there were three days of deadly rioting between blacks and Hasidic Jews (and, yes, a protest march -- on the third day of the riot that was already in progress), while in 2014, following the grand jury decision in Eric Garner's death, there have been massive protests, no riots, and one disturbed person with a gun who murdered two policemen after hekilledwounded his girlfriend. The parallels truly are astonishing.

Following the murders of the NYPD officers, both President Obama and Mayor de Blasio issued statements condemning the killings of officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos; these statements will in coming days be examined for subtly coded messages encouraging further murders of police.

On the other hand, when Bill O'Reilly called Dr. George Tiller "Tiller the Baby Killer" and compared him to Josef Mengele, that was absolutely unconnected to Tiller's subsequent murder by Scott Roeder. And of course, there's never been any connection between rightwing calls for a new American revolution and attacks on law enforcement or courthouses or other government buildings. Tim McVeigh was just an outlier. Why do you liberals hate freedom of speech?

[ Media Matters / The Hill / HuffPo / Mother Jones ]