Rudy Giuliani Blasts Beyonce’s VMAs Performance: “I Saved More Black Lives”

While fans worldwide applauded Beyonce’s powerful Lemonade medley on Sunday night at the MTV Video Music Awards, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was not pleased.

On Monday’s taping of Fox & Friends, Giuliani slammed what he saw as the performance’s anti-police theme, calling the singer’s choice of imagery a “shame.” Beyonce’s 15-minute set featured a segment in which her backup dancers, one by one, fell to the ground under a pool of glaring red light, a symbolization of black men and women losing their lives at the hands of police.

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“I had five uncles who were police officers, two cousins who were, and one who died in the line of duty. I ran the largest and best police department in the world, the New York City Police Department,” said Giuliani. “I saved more black lives than any of those people you saw on stage by reducing crime, and particularly homicide, by 75 percent — of which maybe 4,000 or 5,000 were African-American young people, who are all alive today because of the policies I put in effect that weren’t in effect for 35 years.”

He continued: “If you’re going to do that, then you also should symbolize why the police officers are in those neighborhoods, and what are you going to do about that? What are you doing about it?”

This isn’t the first time Giuliani has blasted the singer for taking a stand against police brutality. After Beyonce saluted “Black Power” during her Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show back in February, he told Fox & Friends, “I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive.”

Beyonce’s performance was the most talked-about and most-tweeted moment of the 2016 VMAs. Prior to taking the stage, she supported the Black Lives Matter movement on the red carpet when she brought the mothers of men killed by police — Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Oscar Grant — to accompany her.