Jindal: Obama ‘loves America’

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) on Monday split with Republican Rudy Giuliani over the former New York City mayor’s remark that President Obama doesn’t love America.

“I think the mayor should have used different words to express what he wanted to say,” Jindal said at a press conference with other Republican governors outside the White House on Monday. “I did not want to throw [Giuliani] under the bus…The president loves America. He loves our country. There is no doubt about that.”

{mosads}Jindal’s defense of Obama comes a few days after his office released a statement with the headline, “Gov. Jindal refuses to condemn Mayor Giuliani.”

In that statement, Jindal also said that Giuliani “should have chosen different phraseology for his remarks,” but he declined to say whether he shared the former New York City mayor’s views on Obama’s love of the country.

“The level of the President’s love for our country is immaterial at this juncture,” Jindal said at the time. “What President Obama has obviously demonstrated for everyone is that he is incapable of successfully executing his duties as our Commander in Chief.”

“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 [Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] terrorists – is true,” he continued in the statement. “If you are looking for someone to condemn the Mayor, look elsewhere.”

Giuliani sparked a media firestorm last Wednesday when he told a gathering of conservatives at a Manhattan dinner that he doesn’t believe that Obama loves America. In a Sunday night Wall Street Journal op-ed, however, Giuliani began to backtrack from the comments after doubling down on theim earlier. 

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a potential Republican presidential candidate, also attended the event and has been under fire for not rebuking the remarks.

On Monday, Jindal again argued that while Giuliani’s rhetoric was wrong, that his underlying point — that Obama is projecting weakness in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for refusing to call it “radical Islamic terrorism” — remains salient.

“I think the substance, the point that the mayor was trying to make is an important one ,” Jindal said Monday. “There are many of us concerned about the president’s unwillingness to call out radical Islamic terrorism and the threat that we face as a country.”

“I think the mayor can speak for himself,” Jindal continued. “I would not have used those words. I think the president loves our country, but I think the point was right – there are many of us that are concerned about the president’s unwillingness to take on the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.”

Obama has said he doesn’t describe the U.S. as being at war with radical Islam because he doesn’t want to give ISIS undue standing.

“They’re not religious leaders, they’re terrorists,” Obama said last week.