I watch Giuliani interviews, so you don’t have to

December 10, 2007

When Rudy Giuliani sat down with Tim Russert yesterday on Meet the Press, there was more interest than usual, in large part because the interview was unexpected. The former mayor rarely sits down for lengthy on-air interviews, and when he does, it’s exclusively for partisan journalists at Fox News. With that in mind, for Giuliani to enter what some call the “Russert Primary” was a little risky (though the risk of being labeled a coward for skipping MTP may have been nearly as great).

Having watched the entire hour-long interview more than once, I can’t say there was much in the way of actual news, and I wouldn’t suggest we actually learned anything, but it was nevertheless a sight to behold. It’s unusual to see a presidential hopeful be so consistently deceptive, non-stop, for a national audience. Watching the show, it was tempting to keep a bottle of Maalox in one hand, and a shovel to trudge through the nonsense in the other.

One could probably write a short book highlighting all of the mendacity, but instead, I thought I’d just summarize the interview for readers, boiling it down to what you need to know.

* Process — Russert started with a series of questions about polls and electoral strategy, which was clearly a waste of valuable time. Giuliani, obviously behind in the early contests, explained, “The idea is you want to win the first one. If you lose the first one, you want to win the second one. If you lose the second one, you want to win the third one.” Brilliant.

* Iran — Russert noted the new NIE on Iran, and highlighted the fact that Tehran acts rationally and responds to international diplomacy. He then asked Giuliani if this shouldn’t remove the option of a pre-emptive military strike against Iran? “No, I don’t think it does,” Giuliani said. “Of course we don’t want to use the military option. It’d be dangerous; it’d be risky; but I think it would be more dangerous and more risky if Iran did become a nuclear power.” In other words, nothing’s changed.

* Iraq — Asked for his “best estimate” as to how long will U.S. troops be in Iraq, Giuliani said, “For as long as necessarily to get the strategic objective achieved.” In other words, if Giuliani’s elected, we’ll stay in Iraq indefinitely, no matter the costs.

* Terrorist expertise — Giuliani has bragged that he’s studied Islamic terrorism for “30 years,” and understood the al Qaeda threat before most U.S. officials. Yesterday, he walked that back a bit, and blamed Bill Clinton for not giving him better briefings on the terrorist threat. (Remember, everything, everywhere, is always Clinton’s fault.)

* Iraq Study Group — Russert asked why Giuliani passed on an opportunity to learn about Iraq and help shape a new foreign policy. The former mayor said he didn’t want to politicize the process. It’s the same excuse he used over the summer — and it was wrong then, too.

* Sheik Abdullah Bin Khalid al-Thani — Giuliani’s secretive consulting firm had a business relationship with a Qataran emir accused of sheltering dangerous terrorists, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Yesterday, Giuliani dissembled on the relationship, and praised Qatar’s government.

* Questionable associations — Russert pointed out that his business contracts extend to Hugo Chavez and associates of Kim Jung Il. Giuliani thought this was absolutely, hysterically funny. He added that he wouldn’t release his confidential client list for public scrutiny.

* Tax returns — Asked if he’d release his tax returns, as he did when he ran for mayor, Giuliani said he’d “consider” it, “at the right time.” How about now? “The right time is not now,” Giuliani said. Asked when the right time might be, he added, “When we get to financial disclosure.” That doesn’t make any sense — to hear Giuliani tell it, there’s such a thing as “Financial Disclosure Time.”

* Bernie Kerik — Giuliani conceded he screwed up in a major way with Kerik, but defended him anyway, saying he did a great job and was a 9/11 “hero.” Praising an obvious felon you recommended to head the Department of Homeland Security is probably not a wise political strategy.

* Shag Fund — Giuliani said he had nothing to do with providing a security detail to his then-mistress (which seems pretty unlikely), and wouldn’t rule out the possibility that presidents might want to extend Secret Service protection to other mistresses in the future. He also couldn’t explain why his mistress received alleged “threats” before becoming a public figure.

* Huckabee’s homophobia — Russert noted Huckabee’s anti-gay comments, which sparked headlines over the weekend, and asked for Giuliani’s response. He said sins come by way of actions, suggesting gays aren’t sinful unless they have sex.

* Balanced budgets — Giuliani vowed to try to balance the federal budget, and pointed to his “record of eight balanced budgets” in New York City. That’s true, just so long as you overlook all the deficits he ran, and the massive deficit he passed on to Bloomberg.

All in all, Russert tried to cover a lot of ground, which left Giuliani to lie with impunity — Russert didn’t press any of the obvious falsehoods, because he wanted to move on to other subjects.

The result was, well, an hour-long lie fest. I’ve seen some comments from conservatives that Giuliani “survived” Russert’s grilling. Of course he did — anyone can “survive” a tough interview if they’re willing to abandon the pretense of honesty.

Good Lord. I am actually rendered speechless by the sheer awfulness of the Ghooli. I especially gotta love his “Sins come of actions,” from a guy who had to camp out on some gay friends’ sofa because of his actions.

And this:

Giuliani said he had nothing to do with providing a security detail to his then-mistress (which seems pretty unlikely)

Sure. She never mentioned the cops were driving her around and walking her dog, or he knew but didn’t think anything of the matter.

I do hope Bloomberg launches an investigation to clear old Rudi’s name. [snerk]

  • Have seen a few clips of the interview, and have to say that Giuliani may have dug himself into an even deeper hole than he was already in. As many times as he insisted that he was not the one who ordered the security on Judi, you know someone is going to dig into those claims. I’d like to know how many private citizens who have been threatened the NYPD has protected to the point of providing them chauffeur service and dog-walkers. My other question is, how do these threats come to the attention of the NYPD in the first place?

    Questions, questions. Really bad answers from Rudy. More insults to the intelligence of the electorate.

    Can hardly wait for someone at the NYPD to expose the truth on threat assessments and the ordering of security. And no one can convince me that Judi really didn’t want to have to be chauffeured around town, either. Can’t wait to hear from some of the security detail, either.

  • Reminds me of a line of thought in the first of Asimov’s (original) Foundation series, something to the effect of ‘once all was said was parsed of peripheral platitudes, nothing was said’, and the epiphany to those of The Foundation – ostensibly citizens of The Empire – that out there on the periphery, they were on their own.

  • Pingback: Parsing peripheral platitudes… « Homeless on the High Desert

  • And to think Russert never had time to ask about Vitter, Ravenel, Placa, last week’s PA fundraiser, or any campaign issues.

  • I thought he imploded on the Judy topic. It seems ridiculous to assert that someone else insisted on the security detail before her identity was publicly known. I can’t say how many times I screamed to Russert: “Ask who that was!”

  • After typing a thoughtful reply and having my comments lost to null space because the answer is “Orange” instead of “orange”, I’m too p.o.’d to care anymore.

  • It was another bad day for Il Douche.

    As an above commenter noted, the mere accumulated weight of all Rudy’s “bad judgment calls,” sleazy contacts, moral failures and demonstrable lies makes it astonishing that he’s still in this race. It’s not really that there’s no “there” there; it’s that the “there” is corrupt, vicious, ill-considered and profoundly at odds with both how our public life is supposed to work in the abstract, and with what the country needs at this particular moment.

    And yet I still think he has a shot, just because he hates in such a profligate way.

  • Thanks for watching the full hour. My tolerance for anything Giuliani gave out after 15 minutes or so. From what I saw I didn’t think RooDee did a bad job of presenting himself – but my standard was, Would he reveal the beast within? and he didn’t. To me, the giggling could be seen as nervousness or just good nature. Maybe the nervous giggling stuff became more obvious later – after I turned him off.

    More optimistically, I thought his self-serving answers to Russert’s gotcha questions gave more ammunition to the fact-checkers on the internet. I could’t wait for Carpetbagger and TPM and other sites to get to work. Which of his claims would go down first? The NY police department provided all that “security” without anybody asking? Judee didn’t want “security”? The Giuliani firm had no direct dealings with Qatar’s favorite Al Qaida supporter? Inquiring minds want to know.

    So, don’t quit with “obvious falsehoods.” Keep publishing the witness statements and documents and other good stuff. Giuliani is still the first choice of the Republican establishment, from what I can tell, including the Bush gang and the major media it controls – like Fox. Their best hope is that the “Shag Fund” or “Sex on the City” news will peter out, with no new disclosures. Don’t you want to disappoint such a deserving bunch of people?

  • Wow, I always thought the best strategy was to lose as many primaries as you can and hope for sympathy votes during the party convention to pull you through to victory. No wonder I’m not president yet. Next thing you know, I’ll have to rethink my general election strategy of remaining entirely unknown, except to the few people who I truly piss-off. Politics are hard work.

  • What’s the point of asking questions that have already been asked if you’re entirely willing to accept the same answers that have already been given? It seems as if Russert should have already known Rudy’s answers and gone ahead and just asked the follow-up question instead. Perhaps Russert just imagines that a question hasn’t been asked until he asks it.

    Why do I keep feeling as if these guys are just in dress rehearsal and don’t realize the cameras are actually recording?

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