Rudy Giuliani: 'Democrats should apologize' for calling Trump's birtherism racist

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, an adviser for Donald Trump's campaign, on Sunday called on Democrats to apologize for calling the GOP nominee racist over his claim that President Barack Obama was born in Africa.

Following Trump's visit to an African-American church in Detroit over the weekend, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Giuliani if Trump should apologize to the black community for spreading the false birther notion that Obama was not an American citizen.

Giuliani countered that Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign had started the birther movement "and finally it was resolved after Donald Trump raised it."

"They maybe have a faulty memory there," the former New York mayor said of the black community.

"It was resolved in 2011 when he released his birth certificate," Tapper pointed out. "Donald Trump talking about this as recently as February of last year at [the Conservative Political Action Conference], saying that he thinks the birth certificate is false. Should he just apologize for this if he really wants to reach out to minority voters?"

"If everybody apologized for all the things they said in politics, all we would be doing on television shows is apologizing," Giuliani scoffed. "Maybe all the Democrats should apologize for calling Donald Trump a racist and calling him all kinds of terrible names and it gets a little silly."

"Food stamps have gone up two and a half times under Barack Obama," he added. "He should be ashamed of himself. Jobs should have gone up two and a half times."

"My only point is that many African-Americans are still mad about Donald Trump having tried to invalidate Barack Obama by claiming he was born in Africa," Tapper noted, moving on to the next topic. "We're obviously not going to get anywhere with that."

Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast Sept. 4, 2016.