Rudy Giuliani rips ‘intellectually challenged’ Bill de Blasio amid riots

Rudy Giuliani blasted Mayor de Blasio’s handling of the rioting and looting that has gripped the city this week, saying the current occupant of Gracie Mansion is unfit for office and “intellectually challenged.”

“The mayor’s performance is dreadful. He’s doing everything you can do that’s wrong, just like he did during the pandemic,” the former mayor said. “I have already urged the governor to remove him. I know it’s an extraordinary thing but … He is acting in such an irresponsible way.”

Giuliani, 76, served in City Hall from 1994 to 2001, taking over in the midst of a historic crime wave presided over by his predecessor David Dinkins. During Dinkins’ tenure, the city endured more than 2,000 murders per year and deadly race riots in Crown Heights and Washington Heights.

Giuliani insisted de Blasio has performed worse.

“Dinkins never lost the complete respect of the police department. He didn’t do things where he went on the warpath against them,” Giuliani said, adding that if he were still in charge he would have pre-empted the riots.

“It would have been solved about two weeks ago. They never would have gotten beyond the first car they burned, rock they threw, person they beat up,” he said. “If you throw a rock you get arrested, if you spit at a cop you get arrested … Call me a Nazi or Hitler. I don’t care.”

Giuliani, who still maintains close ties to city law enforcement, said the force has become demoralized under current leadership and that the mayor is more concerned about optics than protecting New Yorkers.

“I have been told by as reliable a source as you can get that he interferes with the police chiefs,” Giuliani said. “He goes around and calls up individual chiefs and tells them what he wants — and that is largely that he doesn’t want any bad incidents.”

Police restraint has not been reciprocated by protesters and looters, who have hurled bricks, rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers night after night as they attempt to keep the peace in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis cop.  During a Wednesday night melee in Brooklyn, two officers were shot and another slashed with a knife.

“That was very painful to watch,” Giuliani said. “It reminded me of the days before I straightened things out. It reminded me that we were back where we used to be.”

Reps for de Blasio did not immediately respond to request for comment from The Post.

During his eight years in office, the former federal prosecutor departed from his predecessors with an unapologetic pro-police agenda which saw violent crime drop dramatically.

Giuliani did face his share of racial unrest. On his watch, two high-profile cases involving police violence erupted. In August 1997, NYPD cops sexually assaulted Brooklyn man Abner Louima in the bathroom of the 70th Precinct stationhouse. Two years later, four officers unloaded 41 rounds at Amadou Diallo near his home in the Bronx. Diallo had been unarmed, but the cops mistook his wallet for a gun.

Both cases sparked massive protests across the city, which, in the case of Diallo, lasted for weeks. Al Sharpton, along with 30 others, was arrested during a Wall Street rally which drew 2,000 one month after the killing.

Giuliani noted with pride however, that neither event devolved into race riots or looting.

“I went to the Malcolm X Mosque. I spoke there. I went to his funeral. Every day I met with people in the community that were willing to work constructively,” he said. “I refused to meet with Al Sharpton because he was not willing to work constructively and I knew he was a racial arsonist,” Giuliani said.

“One of Dinkins’ mistakes was to empower Al Sharpton.”

Sharpton spoke at George Floyd’s memorial in Minneapolis on Thursday.

The former mayor is adamant that the current NYPD can handle the unrest and said he is against calling in the National Guard or US troops.

“The New York Police Department is more than capable of containing a demonstration of this number,” Giuliani told The Post. “But they’re not being used properly.”