January 8, 2010

Rudy Giuliani went on ABC's Good Morning America and had the balls to say that America never had a domestic terrorist attack under George Bush. 9/11 was the most heinous attack on US soil since pearl Harbor and to think that Giuliani was the mayor of the city that was attacked only illustrates how despicable the conservative movement is. New Yorkers should be outraged by his behavior on ABC. Almost as lame: George Stephanopoulos didn't even correct him on the air.

I spoke to the former mayor of New York City this morning on GMA, who assailed the Obama administration’s decisions on national security.

“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did -- one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said. “Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.” Giuliani seems to have forgotten about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and shoe bomber Richard Reid.

We also had the anthrax attacks as well. Watching the video you can see Stephanapoulos either was asleep at the wheel or didn't want to confront Rudy on his outrageous lie. What good is writing a post correcting him when he was right in front of his face. Bloggers are fact checking him as usual.

Rudy's persona since the attacks has been about terrorism and 9/11. His whole presidential campaign was built on 9/11. And his speech to the RNC before the 2004 election was littered with references to 9/11.

And remember this part:

Thank God George Bush is our President."

It's Jay Rosen time. How should the media handle Rudy going forward? Does he need to be banned from TV for 90 days?

UPDATE: Giuliani tried to clarify his remarks after he got criticized, but he's still wrong of course.

Giuliani this afternoon:

The Mayor’s spokesman says that the remark “didn't come across as it was intended” and that Giuliani was “clearly talking post-9/11 with regards to Islamic terrorist attacks on our soil.”

No, the shoe bomber, which took place three months after September 11, was Al Qaeda. So if you count that attempted Al Qaeda plane bombing, then you also count the one attempted Al Qaeda plane bombing under Obama. So it's one to one, not zero to one. Of course, the underwear bomber attack did not occur on our soil, so even that's wrong. Stephanopoulos, who reported Giuliani's correction, apologized for not catching Giuliani on this this morning. But he shouldn't just repeat the spokesman's new lie, unchallenged.

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