Giuliani Talks Presidential Politics; Hillary's Acceptance Speech
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: You just got a big dose of the case for Hillary Clinton. The case is, though, what about the other guy. What about Donald Trump? What about how a lot of voters see Hillary Clinton that is not favorable? Here to make the case is former New York City mayor and Donald Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani. Always a pleasure to have you on the show.</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Mayor, nice to see you.</s>RUDY GIULIANI (R), FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Nice to see you. How are you?</s>CAMEROTA: Fine, thank you.</s>CUOMO: So we just had two friends of Hillary on to say the following -</s>GIULIANI: Right. Right.</s>CUOMO: Here's who she is. She is a workhorse. She is somebody who has always done for others. She is someone who has made mistakes, but ultimately is fighting the good fight. Donald Trump cannot compete with her pedigree or her passion. What is your case?</s>GIULIANI: Well, my case against her is, she was found by the FBI to be extremely careless in handling national security information. Seems to be a pattern. The DNC was extremely careless in handling national security information. She was secretary of state. You can't point to a single accomplishment. You can point to over throwing Gadhafi in Libya. Now we have ISIS in Libya and chaos. You can point to her re- setting the relationship with Russia and now Putin is pushing us all around the world. You can point to her agreeing to take the troops out of Iraq, hence we get ISIS. You can point to the fact that she agrees with the agreement with Iran, which is disapproved by 60 percent of the American people. And you can find a 65 percent disapproval rating in the latest poll. Plus, she's never accomplished anything as secretary of state. There's no treaty. There's no agreement. There's just - I can honestly make the case that from the day she walked into office until the day she walked out, the world was more dangerous in every key area of the world under the jurisdiction of the secretary of state than before. Oh, by the way, I left out the South China Sea. China has challenged us in the South China Sea and she is sitting by and watching Obama reduce our military to pre-World war II levels.</s>CAMEROTA: You say that Putin is pushing us around. That's not how Donald Trump frames it. He seems to have been somewhat complimentary towards Putin's leadership. And as you know, yesterday, he seemed to invite Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's e-mails. What did you think when you heard him say that?</s>GIULIANI: Well, first of all, I know what he meant when he said it, because I got a call from his campaign manager.</s>CUOMO: Was it your idea that he say that?</s>GIULIANI: No. He was telling a joke. When he got off the plane, he tweeted out, the e-mails should be sent to the FBI. He was joking around. Now, let's analyze this for a minute. According to Hillary Clinton, if she's telling the truth, which 65 percent of the American people believe she's incapable of, but if she's telling the truth, there's nothing on those e-mails that has anything do with national security. This is the stuff she destroyed.</s>CUOMO: Right.</s>GIULIANI: It's all about Chelsea's dress, her recipes.</s>CUOMO: Right. So what's the point there?</s>GIULIANI: The point there is, there's no national security implication to any of it. Second, it doesn't exist.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>GIULIANI: Third, I will - I will be willing to give you a 98 percent guarantee the Russians already have it.</s>CAMEROTA: But isn't the point that Americans don't know when Donald Trump is joking. When do we believe his words and when do we think he's joking?</s>GIULIANI: Oh, I don't know. If he tells me, I'm joking, I take him at his word he's joking.</s>CUOMO: But when you're running for president of the United States, I'll submit it this way, I do not think Rudy Giuliani makes that joke to the Russians when they are the number one inimical state to the United States.</s>GIULIANI: OK. So here's what you've done. You've flip it to an offhand comment by Donald Trump -</s>CAMEROTA: At a press conference.</s>GIULIANI: As opposed to - as opposed to Hillary Clinton, for years and years, putting a private server at her home, in clear violation of federal law, exposing thousands and thousands of secrets, and destroying - destroying 35,000 e-mails.</s>CUOMO: Can't both be wrong?</s>GIULIANI: What?</s>CUOMO: Both are wrong. You can say both are wrong.</s>GIULIANI: Yes, except one -</s>CUOMO: You don't stand up as a potential president -</s>GIULIANI: Except - except - except -</s>CUOMO: And make that kind of crack and you don't do what she did.</s>GIULIANI: Except one made a flippant comment for 30 seconds, and the other for four years as attorney general acted with extreme carelessness, which is gross negligence as secretary of state. We're going to put somebody in the White House who acted with extreme carelessness? Did you hear anyone last night defend her on that?</s>CUOMO: No.</s>GIULIANI: No. Did you hear anyone defend her on advocating for the removal of Gaddafi? No. Did you - did you find anyone up there defending her on the removal of the troops from Iraq? No. Did you find anyone up there defending her on re-setting the relationship with Russia? No. Last night was fantasy land in Philadelphia. They didn't touch a single, substantive issue. Because on the substantive issues, Hillary goes down. Plus -</s>CUOMO: Well, but a convention is -</s>GIULIANI: Seventy -</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>CUOMO: Mr. Giuliani, you know that you don't spend your time pointing out the bad spots of your candidate.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes, the RNC didn't do that either with Donald Trump.</s>GIULIANI: No. I did - I said -</s>CUOMO: Well, Ted Cruz did.</s>CAMEROTA: That's right.</s>GIULIANI: I'm sorry, I sure did. I said I've known Ted - I've known - I didn't say Ted Cruz.</s>CUOMO: No, you didn't.</s>GIULIANI: You don't want to know what I think (ph) about Ted Cruz. I said, I know Donald Trump for 29 years, and here are the good things about him and this is what he's for. And he's for being a lot tougher on ISIS. And he's for -</s>CUOMO: You didn't say here are the bad things about him. That's not what you do in a convention.</s>GIULIANI: No, but I defended him.</s>CUOMO: Absolutely. You stood -</s>GIULIANI: But they didn't defend her.</s>CUOMO: Well, they defended her -</s>GIULIANI: What I'm saying -</s>CUOMO: They just didn't address her negatives. They're different things.</s>GIULIANI: Yes, well, I defended Donald against his negatives. I took them on. By the way, she hasn't had a press conference since December 4th 2015.</s>CUOMO: That's fair criticism.</s>GIULIANI: Now wait a second.</s>CUOMO: That's fair criticism.</s>GIULIANI: Wait a second. Excuse me.</s>CUOMO: She doesn't address the media the way Trump does.</s>GIULIANI: Excuse me. Excuse me. I don't want to be - I don't want to be confrontational.</s>CUOMO: Yes, you do.</s>GIULIANI: You should be ashamed of yourself.</s>CUOMO: Why?</s>GIULIANI: As the press.</s>CUOMO: Well, how do we control whether she has a press conference?</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>GIULIANI: You should every day be saying, where's the press? Look, if I were the mayor of New York and I didn't have a press conference for four days, big old press -</s>CAMEROTA: We do interview her. I mean we do have one-on-one interviews with her. We have had access to her.</s>GIULIANI: Oh, don't - that is a lot -</s>CAMEROTA: We have interviewed Secretary Clinton.</s>GIULIANI: That's a lot easier than it -</s>CUOMO: And let me tell you, her people come at us about Trump -</s>GIULIANI: I did a press conference -</s>CUOMO: And his taxes and interviewing him about things and giving him too much time. Everybody complains.</s>GIULIANI: She should not be allowed to get away, running for president of the United States and not having a press conference for over half a year.</s>CUOMO: And people say he shouldn't be able to get away with saying this kind of stuff when he might be president of the United States.</s>GIULIANI: Well, OK.</s>CUOMO: There are criticisms on both sides.</s>GIULIANI: Yes, but at least he's open and transparent and he's not afraid - he's not afraid to answer any questions head on.</s>CAMEROTA: Taxes? How about taxes?</s>CUOMO: He hasn't released his taxes.</s>GIULIANI: She is - she is -</s>CUOMO: She always beats me to that question.</s>GIULIANI: She is the buttoned up candidate. She is the teleprompter candidate.</s>CAMEROTA: Should he release his taxes?</s>GIULIANI: Rudy Giuliani would.</s>GIULIANI: Up to him. That's a personal question as to whether you would release your taxes.</s>CUOMO: Is it? How is it a personal question, not a transparency one?</s>GIULIANI: It's up to people. There's no legal - there's no legal requirement to do it.</s>CUOMO: And there's legal restriction against it just because he's being audited, if he is.</s>GIULIANI: That's what I'm saying. I mean, it's a personal question as to whether you release your taxes or not. Taxes are generally private. If he wants to release them -</s>CUOMO: Not when you're running for president.</s>GIULIANI: Yes, they are, as a matter of law.</s>CUOMO: No, but I'm saying, everybody releases them in the modern era.</s>GIULIANI: That doesn't make it a matter of law.</s>CUOMO: Right. I'm not saying it's, you have to. I'm saying, should you?</s>GIULIANI: It's up to him. Let him decide whether he wants to.</s>CUOMO: You see no downside to that?</s>GIULIANI: I don't see any downside to it. I think what she did with e- mails is so much worse. People say - someone asked me the other day, would you rather have a politically incorrect president or Hillary Clinton? I said, I'd rather have a politically incorrect president than someone who was extremely careless in the handling of my national security information.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>GIULIANI: Do you know that no police officers, uniformed police officers, were allowed on the floor of that convention, and nobody in the media covered it?</s>CUOMO: I don't even know if that's true. Is that true, that they weren't allowed?</s>CAMEROTA: We'll - hand to God.</s>GIULIANI: I'll take an oath.</s>CAMEROTA: All right.</s>GIULIANI: Comes from a high official in the police department on the way in here.</s>CUOMO: I'll check it.</s>CAMEROTA: And we will look into that.</s>GIULIANI: In the way in here I asked the police officer -</s>CUOMO: I'll check it.</s>GIULIANI: And I said, were you allowed into the convention? I said no. He said how did you feel about it? He said, I don't want to be there anywhere.</s>CUOMO: I'll check it.</s>CAMEROTA: All right.</s>GIULIANI: They don't like cops.</s>CAMEROTA: Mr. Mayor -</s>GIULIANI: What - did you cover what happened in Baltimore yesterday?</s>CUOMO: Yes.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>GIULIANI: Yes. Did you - did you cover Hillary -</s>CUOMO: We had Elijah Cummings on.</s>GIULIANI: Yes, but did you cover Elijah Cummings apologizing for finding them guilty before they were found innocent? Did you cover Hillary finding them guilty before they were found innocent? Has she apologized to those cops yet?</s>CUOMO: She has not.</s>GIULIANI: Where do they go to get their reputation back now that a black judge has found them innocent?</s>CUOMO: But that's the - that's the process of justice, right, you try the case, you see what happens to the charges.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>CUOMO: We'll discuss this more.</s>GIULIANI: Yes, but then you apologize -</s>CAMEROTA: Rudy Giuliani -</s>GIULIANI: Well, you don't find somebody guilty before they go to trial. You know that.</s>CAMEROTA: Thank you, Mr. Mayor.</s>CUOMO: This is a longer - this is a longer discussion.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>CUOMO: We don't have the time for it right now.</s>CAMEROTA: You made the case. Thank you.</s>GIULIANI: This may - this may be why she failed the bar exam the first time.</s>CUOMO: Oh -</s>CAMEROTA: Thank you, Mr. Mayor.</s>CUOMO: I was telling you how he went out on this.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes, I know. It all comes down to tonight for Hillary Clinton. Can she sway voters with her convention speech and what kind of bump could she see coming out of Philly. We'll discuss all of that with our political all-star panel, next.