Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani ripped into President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for being weak on terrorism. | Getty Giuliani accuses Obama and Clinton of 'dereliction of duty' in terror threat

Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday ripped into President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for a "dereliction of duty" in their efforts to combat terrorism, while calling the Bush administration's failure to come to grips with the threat before the Sept. 11 attacks "excusable."

Writing in USA Today , the former New York City mayor and current Donald Trump surrogate accused Obama and Clinton of investing “too much time and energy into the narrative that there is no ongoing War on Terror.”


He argued that Obama and his former secretary of state had responded inadequately to the recent violence — including the planted bombs in New York and New Jersey — and underestimated the threat of terrorism to the country generally.

“Obama and Clinton continue to ignore the reality that a worldwide terror campaign is being deliberately executed by the very people they refuse to define: radical Islamic terrorists,” Giuliani wrote. “Obama and Clinton's gut reaction is to tell the American people that we’re defeating the Islamic State terrorist group abroad while systematically downplaying connections between radical Islam and attackers in the United States and Europe.”

While Clinton first urged officials to “let this investigation unfold” after hearing reports of an explosion in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York on Saturday, Trump emphatically declared it a bomb and then boasted when authorities later confirmed the planted explosive devices. (Clinton, however, also made reference to "bombings" in her initial statements.)

Republicans have also repeatedly criticized Obama for arguing against using the term "radical Islamic terrorism" for the Islamic State and its sympathizers. Clinton previously refrained from repeating the term, but has since used the words "radical Islamism" to describe the threat in the wake of the mass shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in June.

Also faulting its withdrawal of troops from Iraq and blaming the move for the rise of the Islamic State, Giuliani argued that the Obama administration fails to “comprehend the threats before us today,” which he charged is a “clear dereliction of duty.”

Giuliani had warmer words for Obama’s predecessor, however, suggesting that the Bush administration’s "failure to fully comprehend the threat before Sept. 11 is excusable."