Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, already under a storm of criticism for saying that President Obama does not love America, tried to justify those claims today, saying that the president’s attitude is attributable to meeting Communist Party members as a 9-year-old. Giuliani said that the source of his ideas about Obama are directly related to communists who the president associated with since an early age.

In an interview with The New York Post, Giuliani said that Obama was educated by “people who were critics of the U.S., and that he has been unable to “overcome those influences.”

Giuliani said that from the time Obama a child, “he was influenced by Frank Marshall Davis, who was a communist.” He said that another bad influence on the president-to-be was Saul Alinsky, who was a community organizer whom Giuliani called a socialist.

When Obama was 9 years old he was introduced to American communist organizer, Frank Marshall Davis, by his grandfather. He was living with his grandfather and mother in Indonesia at the time.

The former mayor implied that he was the only one willing to call Obama on these issues, which he said somebody has to raise with the president. “Somebody has to have the courage to stand up.”

The White House, after originally condemning the remarks, has now countered by trying to make Giuliani sound like an oddball that no one should listen to. Press secretary Josh Earnest said on Friday that what most people around the White House are feeling is “sorry for Rudy Giuliano.”

When pressed about the claim he made that Obama does not love America, Giuliani said “I don’t back off of that one bit.”