Rudy Giuliani On FEMA’s Sandy Response: Obama’s Result Was ‘Worse Than Katrina’

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani has attacked President Obama on FEMA’s Sandy response, comparing the post-Sandy state of New York to the Bush administration’s failures during Hurricane Katrina and suggesting Obama has handled Sandy relief even less adeptly than his predecessor handled the epic hurricane that destroyed the Big Easy.

Giuliani’s comments about FEMA, Sandy and Obama are certainly a contrast to those of fellow Republican and Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie, who has had nothing but praise and bipartisan goodwill for the President as his state struggles to recover from the devastation in the week heading up to the election.

FEMA’s Sandy response under Obama has been widely praised aside from Giuliani, and contrasted with Katrina due to the relatively low loss of life during Sandy’s floods versus those of Katrina. In that storm more than 1,800 residents were killed in New Orleans and federal assistance to the city was notoriously slow to arrive.

Giuliani was speaking at a campaign event in Florida when he made the comments, saying:

“[President Obama] right now is doing a terrible job of disaster relief in my city, but no one is talking about it … People don’t have water, they don’t have food, electricity and his FEMA is no where to be found. This is a worse response than Katrina.”

Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City on September 11, repeated his criticism of Obama’s FEMA response to Sandy on a subsequent Fox News appearance with Neil Cavuto — leveling the critique that the election was discouraging criticism of Obama on Sandy:

“I think maybe because there’s an election going on, people don’t want to say that, but I think FEMA has dropped the ball, certainly as big they did with Katrina, maybe bigger because they had more warning here and the situation isn’t as big as Katrina.”

Christie has gone on record saying exactly the opposite after Sandy, praising Obama’s FEMA response:

“The federal government’s response has been great … The President has been outstanding in this and so have the folks at FEMA.”

Do you agree with Rudy Giuliani that FEMA’s Sandy response was “worse than Katrina?”