Newsflash: Giuliani exploiting 9/11 for political gain

November 19, 2007

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it appears that Rudy Giuliani plans to use the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as some kind of selling point for his presidential campaign. Shocking, I know.

Apparently, this surprising revelation has just reached the New York Post, which reported this morning that Giuliani is apparently starting to use 9/11 to — get this — appeal to Republican voters.

Rudy Giuliani is trumpeting his leadership in the wake of 9/11 in campaign mailings to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

In one piece, Giuliani is hailed as “America’s Mayor” who displayed “Strength through Leadership.”

While Giuliani’s supporters have long boasted about his performance after the attacks, he himself had not, until now, mentioned it as prominently.

I suppose it’s possible that the New York Post’s reporters and editors don’t pay close attention to the news, so they really believe that Giuliani has not “prominently” emphasized 9/11 as a campaign selling point.

Perhaps the Post might consider taking a moment to watch this clip collection, from TPMtv producer/editor Ben Craw.

There’s a very good reason Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) got big laughs a few weeks when he said, “[T]here’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11.”

Of course, given the subject, I’d be remiss if I neglected to mention that Giuliani’s 9/11 record should actually be humiliating to the former mayor, and most of his claims about heroism are completely bogus.

And there are some FDNY members and their families who aren’t going to let this go.

A group of 9/11 firefighters and victims’ family members with eyes on derailing Republican Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign is close to a decision on forming an entity that would run issue ads in key early nominating states.

“TV made him a hero, and we’ll use TV to take him down,” New York Fire Chief Jim Riches told ABC News. […]

This Monday, the firefighters and family members are holding a meeting at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire hoping to spread the word about what they say is Giuliani’s “egregious” use of 9/11 for political gain.

The group also is considering additional trips to early presidential primary states Iowa, Florida and South Carolina.

Riches, who lost his firefighter son Jimmy in the World Trade Center’s north tower, said, “We don’t want him running on 9/11 or the bodies of all these dead people or my dead son saying that he did a great job that day.”

Stay tuned.

I like the “Strength through Leadership” line… Reminds me very much of 1984 (and, considering what has happened in this country since 9/11, Orwell was only a couple of decades off…)

  • As luck would have it, I heard Jim Riches on XM Radio’s POTUS ’08 channel the other night, and he gave a very compelling account of why Rudy Giuliani does not deserve the accolades he’s mostly heaped on himself. Riches was followed by a spokesperson from another organization, for “balance,” I guess, who was less-than-convincing in his defense of Giuliani.

    I would be surprised if Giuliani has gotten through one campaign appearance, one interview, without invoking 9/11.

    I truly hope the media is not going to wait until Rudy’s the nominee before they do some actual work, start asking real questions, and stop just transcribing whatever he says as though it were true.

  • Q. What’s the difference between 911 and a cow?

    A. Rudy Giuliani doesn’t know how to milk a cow.

  • ***op99***lol! Great joke. Which is what Guiliani is…a joke. The NYPost must be way behind the news. Guiliani has been milking 9/11 for all its worth since it happened. Always lying and exaggerating to make himself the hero his huge ego likes to believe he is.

    The ‘knowing’ public is aghast waiting for the press to do their jobs instead of allowing Rudy’s lies and exaggerations to stand unchallenged by the truth. Rudy’s campaign would be in the trash already if the press were taking their responsibilities seriously. He’s such an embarrassment to the country that wouldn’t be allowed to continue if the truth were told.

    It’s scary because it’s so widespread to give Rudy a pass in the media that it makes me think there’s a fix in place. I remember years ago after 9/11 a CIA spokesman boasting about Operation Mockingbird, a program operating since 1940 to buy influence in the major media outlets. This is the payoff today: William Colby, former Director of the CIA was quoted as saying, “ The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” Perhaps this explains why Guiliani keeps getting a pass from media scrutiny

  • The NY Post is just another Fox outlet for Rupie Murdoch. It’s a rag, ask any NY’er. It’s a quarter- you get what you pay for.

    Page 6 is the only thing interesting in that cat- liner.

    9-11 9-11, 9-11 9-11 oooh rock me 9-11 ( to the tune of Rock Me Amadeus by Falco)

  • And there are some any FDNY members and their families who aren’t going to let this go.

    This line of attack just isn’t working — I don’t know why. I don’t think it’s ever going to work. I think people crave heroes so much that once they’ve decided someone is a hero, they don’t want to hear anything that disabuses them of the notion, or they just want to explain away what they hear.

    I think this a really tough problem with Giuliani. I’m not sure anyone is going to solve it.

    I know I’ve been the voice of doom on this for a long time, but, well, the Rudy campaign still isn’t imploding, is it?

  • Ghouliani’s “Strength through Leadership”—if measured by one’s olfactory sense—would drive people away rather than cause them to follow this particular Reskunklican.

    Because I’ve yet to meet the person who would follow even a common polecat, as opposed to fleeing in mortal terror—and RooDee isn’t just your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill, garden-variety polecat. RooDee is “speh-shull….”

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