{"id":10171,"date":"2007-03-10T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2007-03-10T17:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10171.html"},"modified":"2007-03-10T12:00:08","modified_gmt":"2007-03-10T17:00:08","slug":"giulianis-firefighter-front-flap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/giulianis-firefighter-front-flap\/","title":{"rendered":"Giuliani’s firefighter front flap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Considering his 9\/11 platform, Rudy Giuliani needs a fight with firefighters like he needs another sex scandal. And yet, his latest tussle<\/a> with the International Association of Fire Fighters — and his campaign’s comically dishonest response — may prove to be quite embarrassing for the former NYC mayor’s campaign. At least, it should be.<\/p>\n

First, the background. In November 2001, six weeks after the 9\/11 attacks, Giuliani decided<\/a> to limit the number of FDNY searchers who could recover the remains of their fallen colleagues. The fight between the mayor’s office and the fire department grew rather intense. Ultimately, as Mark Kleiman described it<\/a>, “[O]nce the Bank of Nova Scotia’s gold bars had been recovered, Giuliani ordered that the remaining rubble — including whatever bodies were still there — scooped up and taken to a landfill. When firefighters held a protest, he ordered them arrested.”<\/p>\n

FDNY still resents Giuliani’s decisions and, a few days ago, leaked a letter suggesting that Giuliani should be excluded from a planned presidential forum in DC this upcoming week. On Monday, Giuliani agreed to participate. On Thursday, Giuliani backed out.<\/p>\n

For a candidate who believes firehouses are the ideal props for campaign events, a fight with the nation’s largest union of firefighters seems like a spectacularly bad idea. Worse, the Giuliani campaign has decided to respond to the controversy by inventing a front-group — called “Firefighters for Rudy” — that apparently doesn’t exist<\/a> outside campaign headquarters.<\/p>\n

[T]he Giuliani campaign sent out a release in response to stories this morning in which the firefighters union faulted his performance on 9\/11. The release offered the following as a contact: Contact: Tim Brown, 646-943-xxxx; Executive Director of Firefighters for Rudy<\/p>\n

The idea, obviously, was that this “group” of firefighters is countering the fire union’s claims. So all we want to know is the following: When was this group formed? And how many members does it have? A Google search turned up nothing at all illuminating.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it turns out, that’s because Giuliani’s campaign was trying to deceive the public.
\n
\nGreg Sargent did the heavy-lifting yesterday and found the answers<\/a>. Tim Brown is identified as the “executive director” of “Firefighters for Rudy,” but he’s actually an aide for the Giuliani campaign. The “group” Brown heads appears to only exist on paper. The whole endeavor is a fraud. Asked how many members “Firefighters for Rudy” has, Brown said he’d have “other folks” answer that question at some point in the future. (As a rule, executive directors of organizations have some sense of their own group’s membership.)<\/p>\n

It’s a fairly transparent scam. When reporters talk to the International Association of Fire Fighters, they’ll hear plenty of criticism of Giuliani. When they call the campaign for a response, Giuliani’s team wants to, pardon the expression, fight firefighter with firefighter, to create the illusion of support.<\/p>\n

This is particularly annoying when reporters fall for the lie<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Associated Press got completely snookered today in its coverage of the flap between Rudy Giuliani and the firefighters — the news org actually quoted someone and identified them as the head of an independent group called “Firefighters for Rudy,” without mentioning that he is actually a Rudy aide….<\/p>\n

[T]he AP treated Brown and his group as if they comprise a genuinely independent organization.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for the AP, however, a cursory bit of checking reveals that Tim Brown is actually an aide to Rudy, and it’s unclear whether the group even has a membership larger than just Tim Brown. The phone number the campaign offered for the group is actually the same as that of the Rudy campaign’s press office.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It would have been helpful had the AP done a little work before quoting a group that doesn’t exist, but I’m inclined to be sympathetic. Giuliani’s team perpetrated a fraud; the AP happened to fall for it.<\/p>\n

The question, at least to me, is what the media is going to do about it. One of the leading GOP candidates just tried to pull a scam on the political press. The campaign thought reporters covering the presidential campaign wouldn’t know the difference, so Team Giuliani intentionally misled them.<\/p>\n

I’m not an editor, but isn’t this a story? Giuliani is so desperate to appear to be a friend to firefighters that he manufactures a lie about a group that doesn’t exist?<\/p>\n

Note to political reporters: this is controversial<\/strong><\/i>. Forget about John Edwards’ house sale, Barack Obama’s stock broker, and Hillary Clinton’s charitable donations, and report on the candidate that tried to play you for fools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Considering his 9\/11 platform, Rudy Giuliani needs a fight with firefighters like he needs another sex scandal. And yet, his latest tussle with the International Association of Fire Fighters — and his campaign’s comically dishonest response — may prove to be quite embarrassing for the former NYC mayor’s campaign. At least, it should be. First, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}