Rudy Giuliani: ‘I saved a lot more black lives than Black Lives Matter’

Rudy Giuliani continued to blast Black Lives Matter on Monday, saying he saved more African-Americans as New York City mayor than the activist movement is saving today.

“Don’t tell me I don’t care about black lives,” Giuliani said on “Fox & Friends.” “I believe I saved a lot more black lives than Black Lives Matter. … I saved more black lives than anyone in the history of the city.”

“I took over the city with 1,924 murders,” said Giuliani, who served as the city’s mayor from 1994 to 2001. “I gave it to Mayor [Mike] Bloomberg with 500-plus murders. Seventy-five percent of the people saved during that time were African-American.”

The former mayor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate criticized Black Lives Matter for focusing on police killings of African-Americans while ignoring black-on-black violence.

“I don’t see what Black Lives Matter is doing for blacks other than isolating them,” Giuliani said. “All it cares about is the police shooting of blacks. It doesn’t care about the 90 percent of blacks that are killed by other blacks. That is a simple fact.”

According to the FBI’s 2014 homicide data, 90 percent of black homicide victims are killed by other African-Americans, while 82 percent of white homicide victims are killed by other white people.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said he agreed with part of Giuliani’s assessment.

“The reality of the Black Lives Matter movement is it is significantly focused, primarily focused on police and their efforts to portray police and the police profession in a very negative way, which is unfortunate,” Bratton said. “There are no denying within the police profession, 800,000 of us, that we have racists. We have brutal people. We have criminals, cops who shouldn’t be here. But they do not represent the vast majority of American police.”

But Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson advised Giuliani to “dial back the overheated rhetoric.”

“[Let’s] come together and work on building and rebuilding our community and public safety,” Johnson said on “Meet the Press.”

In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, Giuliani called the idea behind Black Lives Matter “inherently racist.” He reiterated that assertion on “Fox & Friends” Monday.

“It is inherently racist because, number one, it divides us,” Giuliani said. “All lives matter. All lives matter — black lives, white lives, all lives.”

“If I had an organization called White Lives Matter, you would say that it is a racist organization,” Giuliani further explained on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Of course, black lives matter, and they matter greatly,” he said on “Face the Nation.” “But when you focus in on 1 percent of less than 1 percent of the murder that’s going on in America and you make it a national thing, and all of you in the media make it much bigger than the black kid that’s getting killed in Chicago every 14 hours, you create a disproportion.”

Giuliani also blamed hip-hop music for exacerbating the tension between the African-American community and police.

“They sing rap songs about killing police officers, and they talk about killing police officers, and they yell it out at their rallies,” he said.

The former mayor said if he were a black father concerned about the safety of his children, he would tell them to “be very respectful to the police, most of them are good, some can be very bad and just be very careful.”

“I’d also say, ‘Be very careful of those kids in the neighborhood. Don’t get involved with them because, son, there’s a 99 percent chance they’re going to kill you, not the police,‘” Giuliani said.

Giuliani’s comments come amid broiling racial tensions following a pair of fatal police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, La., and Falcon Heights, Minn., and the killings of five Dallas police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest about the Louisiana and Minnesota shootings.

President Obama condemned the attacks on the officers.

“Whenever those of us who are concerned about fairness in the criminal justice system attack police officers, you are doing a disservice to the cause,” Obama said while speaking to reporters in Madrid on Sunday. “First of all, any violence directed at police officers is a reprehensible crime and needs to be prosecuted. But even rhetorically, if we paint police in broad brush without recognizing that the vast majority of police officers are doing a really good job and are trying to protect people and do so fairly … then we’re going to lose allies in the reform cause.”

The president also said it would be wrong to paint Black Lives Matter activists with a similarly broad brush.

“I don’t think that you can hold well-meaning activists who are doing the right thing and peacefully protesting responsible for everything that is uttered at a protest site,” Obama said. “The overwhelming majority of people who are involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, what they really want to see is a better relationship between the police and the community so that they can feel that it’s serving them. And the best way to do that is to bring allies forward.”