Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax on Saturday that American national security "deteriorated terribly" during the Obama administration, a decline he traced directly to a deliberate decision to stop calling Islamic terrorism by its name. Giuliani tied that shift to a broader erosion in counterterrorism posture that, he argued, only reversed when Donald Trump entered the White House.
The remarks came during an appearance on Newsmax's "Saturday Report" in which Giuliani also discussed the recent arrest of an alleged Hezbollah and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operative accused of plotting attacks in Europe, Canada, and New York. For Giuliani, that arrest illustrated both the scale of the threat and the renewed capability of U.S. intelligence under the current administration.
The former mayor, who led New York City through the September 11 attacks and their aftermath, drew a sharp line between the post-9/11 security apparatus he helped oversee and what he described as its systematic weakening under President Obama.
Giuliani framed the issue as a matter of political will. In his telling, the years immediately following 9/11 represented a high-water mark for American counterterrorism, one that was deliberately abandoned when the Obama administration chose to avoid direct language about the ideological roots of the threat.
"Starting with Obama where we decided we're not going to say Islamic terrorism and we literally put it in the back drawer, we've been deteriorating terribly."
He contrasted that period with what he described as an earlier era of aggressive, successful interdiction. Giuliani said that in the years after 9/11, U.S. security forces were intercepting plots the public never heard about.
"There was a period after 9/11 where our security was the best in the world. People were always asking me, 'Are we safer now since 9/11?' I said, 'You have no idea how safe we are,' because they wouldn't hear about all the attacks. We were sending them off left and right."
That claim, that the U.S. was quietly stopping attacks at a pace the public never fully appreciated, is Giuliani's own characterization. He did not cite specific operations or classified briefings during the interview. But the broader point he pressed was that naming the enemy mattered, and that refusing to do so had operational consequences.
The debate over terminology was a genuine flashpoint during the Obama years. Critics on the right argued that the administration's reluctance to use phrases like "radical Islamic terrorism" reflected a broader softening of counterterrorism priorities. Concerns about political bias inside federal intelligence agencies have persisted well beyond that era, fueling ongoing questions about whether ideological preferences shaped national security decisions.
Giuliani reserved his sharpest praise for President Trump, crediting him with reversing the slide.
"Trump bolstered it for four years."
He went further, saying the current state of U.S. counterterrorism capability is approaching the level it reached in the years right after 9/11. "We've improved immensely and I don't know if we're back, we're almost back to where we were in the post-9/11 [era]," Giuliani said.
That assessment frames the Trump presidency as a restoration project, rebuilding institutional focus and operational muscle that, in Giuliani's view, atrophied under Obama. It is a familiar argument on the right, but Giuliani grounded it in a specific recent development: the arrest of an alleged operative tied to both Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Giuliani pointed to the arrest as evidence that U.S. intelligence is once again operating at a high level. The accused operative was allegedly plotting attacks spanning three continents, Europe, Canada, and New York.
"This was not a small-time shadow. This is a big-time Iran network."
He described the alleged plot as one that "was planning massive attacks" and called the arrest "a good thing." Giuliani also noted that the case demonstrated improved capability: "It does show how good we are at catching."
Key details about the arrest remain unclear. The name of the accused, the arresting agency, the specific charges, and the date and location of the arrest were not disclosed during the Newsmax segment. Nor was it clear what evidence underpins the allegation of a multi-country attack plot. Those gaps leave the full picture incomplete, though Giuliani treated the arrest as a vindication of the current security posture.
The alleged operative's ties to both Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, if confirmed, would represent a significant Iranian-linked threat on American soil. That fits a broader pattern of concern about border and immigration policy failures during the Biden era that critics say left the country more vulnerable to exactly this kind of infiltration.
Giuliani's argument rests on a premise that many mainstream media figures have long dismissed: that the words officials use to describe a threat shape how aggressively they pursue it. But the former mayor was not making a semantic point. He was arguing that the Obama administration's rhetorical shift reflected, and reinforced, a substantive downgrading of counterterrorism priorities.
Whether that characterization is fair depends on which metrics you choose. What is harder to dispute is that the debate itself exposed a real fault line. One side believed that careful language about Islam was essential to maintaining alliances and avoiding domestic backlash. The other believed that euphemism bred complacency, and that complacency got people killed.
Giuliani clearly sits on the latter side. And he is not alone. Barack Obama's continued public clashes with the Trump White House have kept the former president squarely in the political crosshairs, ensuring that debates about his record, on security, on immigration, on institutional culture, remain live ammunition in the current cycle.
The broader institutional questions raised by Giuliani's remarks extend beyond counterterrorism. Critics of the Obama era have pointed to judicial appointments, regulatory overreach, and enforcement decisions that they say weakened the rule of law across multiple domains. An Obama-appointed judge's order to release an MS-13 member with a prior rape record from ICE detention became one of the more vivid recent examples of how those appointment-era decisions continue to produce consequences years later.
The former mayor also addressed his own well-being during the interview. Giuliani said he is "100% recovered" and in "really, really good shape." He did not specify what health issue he was referencing, but the comment suggested he was responding to public questions or speculation about his condition.
Giuliani's public profile has shifted dramatically in recent years, from America's Mayor to a figure at the center of fierce partisan battles. His willingness to make pointed claims about Obama-era security failures, and to credit Trump with reversing them, places him firmly in the role of political combatant rather than elder statesman. Whether that helps or hurts the argument depends on the listener.
But the underlying question he raised is not a partisan one. It is a factual one: Did the United States become less safe when its leaders stopped naming the ideological motivation behind the attacks they were trying to prevent? And did the recent arrest of an alleged Hezbollah and IRGC operative validate the approach of those who insisted on clarity?
Those are questions worth pressing, regardless of who is asking them. Democrats have shown little interest in accountability for their own era's failures, preferring instead to focus on political leverage for the next cycle. That pattern leaves the hard questions about security, language, and institutional will unanswered, which is exactly how some people prefer it.
You cannot fix a threat you refuse to name. Giuliani has been saying that for years. The arrest of an alleged Iranian-backed operative plotting attacks on three continents suggests the point still holds.