In trying to praise GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani may have done more harm than good, saying that his own record on jobs was "far superior" to the presumptive nominee's.
Speaking with Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union," Giuliani, a former GOP presidential candidate himself, was invited to walk back critical statements he made about Romney going back to 2008. Instead, Giuliani ended up reaffirming some of them, as he unfavorably compared Romney's stint as governor of Massachusetts to his own years as New York City's mayor.
"Maybe it was circumstances or whatever, but I had massive reduction in unemployment," Giuliani said. "He had a reduction in unemployment of about 8 percent, 10 percent -- I think it was 15 percent. I had a reduction in unemployment of 50 percent. They had a growth of jobs of 40,000. We had a growth of jobs of 500,000. So I was comparing what I thought was my far superior record to his otherwise decent record, but the numbers weren't as great."
Giuliani said much of his past criticism of Romney stemmed from his "personal ego."
He nonetheless offered some more straightforward praise for Romney, saying he was the clear choice over President Barack Obama, in part because of the management experience he gained heading the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
"The simple fact is that Mitt Romney has been far more successful in the things that he's done than Barack Obama," Giuliani said. "I mean, going way back, this is a man who ran a significant business, made it into a tremendous success which used to be, used to count for a lot in America. He created dozens of businesses. I worked with him when he took the Olympics out of chaos. Remember, we had to do the Olympics in Utah just a few months after Sept. 11th. They were going to cancel the Olympics."
CORRECTION: This piece has been updated to correctly attribute a quote about Mitt Romney's business and Olympics efforts to Rudy Giuliani not Romney.