Al Sharpton rips Giuliani over Obama comments, says 'Rudy needs a hug'

http://www.nydailynews.com/

BY CHAUNCEY ALCORN , LARRY MCSHANE The Rev. Al Sharpton delivered a surprise response Saturday to Rudy Giuliani’s attacks on President Obama: Keep ‘em coming.

“The best thing that can happen to the Democrat that succeeds President Obama is for Rudy Giuliani to keep running his mouth,” Sharpton said at his Harlem headquarters.

“Give him all the air time you can give him, because he doesn’t know but one song to sing. He don’t realize it’s 2015. He thinks it’s ‘93.”

Sharpton did rip Giuliani as “a fading Republican who will say and do anything for attention” before offering a cure for the ex-mayor’s vitriol.

“First of all,” Sharpton said, “Rudy needs a hug.”

Giuliani, after declaring that Obama did not “love America,” doubled down on his comments by telling the Daily News that the president was influenced by communism since childhood.

“The ideas that are troubling me and are leading to this come from Communists with whom he associated since he was 9 years old,” said Giuliani, who mounted an unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential run.

Sharpton, a Giuliani nemesis during his two terms as mayor, charged the Republican politician with playing the race card.

“He has built a lot of his career on playing with race codes,” said Sharpton. “That is what he did to David Dinkins. That is what he did to activists when he was mad.”

Giuliani — who lost to Dinkins in the 1989 mayoral race — triumphed over the incumbent four years later. Giuliani attended an NYPD police union rally at City Hall that turned ugly, with Dinkins recalling that cops were using racial epithets toward him.

“Rudy Giuliani was out there all but inciting the police to riot,” Dinkins wrote in his memoir.