Critics of Mayor de Blasio are trying to draft Rudy Giuliani to reclaim City Hall.
But Giuliani, who earned the nickname “America’s Mayor” while presiding over the city’s historic drop in crime from 1994 to 2001, said he doesn’t want the job – even though de Blasio’s “policies are really, very destructive.”
“A lot of people come up to me and tell me to run again. I’m not running again. Don’t want to run again,” he said on John Catsimatidis’ AM 970 radio show Sunday. “But they’ll come up to me and say ‘You’ve got to run again for mayor … You’ve got to find somebody … Save us.’”
Giuliani even hinted that the show’s host, who ran as a Republican in 2013, would have made a better leader.
“John, how many people come up to you and say you should have been mayor?” Giuliani asked Catsimatidis.
Giuliani said the pleas to come out of retirement – or at least recruit someone else — have come often since 2014 when de Blasio took office.
“Some guy yelled at me coming off a plane the other day, ‘It’s your duty to find somebody that can replace this guy,’” he said. “This is not a personal comment about Bill de Blasio. In fact, when I talk to him I kind of like him personally. But his policies are very destructive.”
Giuliani also blasted President Obama for his recent nuclear deal with Iran, describing its head, Ayatollah Khamenei, as “a homicidal maniac” intent on the destruction of Israel and the US.
“They’re the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. They support Hamas, Hezbollah,” he said. “The Ayatollah is a mass murderer.”