Reporters have noted on Twitter that the former mayor was talking about 9/11 just moments before the freakish utterance, and based on his verbiage, it’s possible that he meant that there were no attacks between the enactment of the Patriot Act, one month after 9/11, and Obama’s inauguration in 2008. “Remember: We didn’t start this war; they did”. He has fashioned himself as a sharp critic of Obama as well as Hillary Clinton, whom Giuliani was to run against for the U.S. Senate in 2000 before bowing out after a cancer diagnosis.
Advertisement
There was a time in his political career when Rudy Giuliani talked about 9/11 so much that Joe Biden famously said of him that there were “only three things he mentions in a sentence: A noun, a verb and 9/11”.
One sort of major problem with that statement: the September 11, 2001 attacks on United States, which mainly happened in New York City, while Giuliani was in fact the mayor of New York City, happened under George W. Bush. But he was basically making the case that every other Republican would about Bush’s record vs. Obama’s – that Bush got it right after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The Trump campaign will likely release a statement at some point today in an effort to explain Giuliani’s gaffe, though it’s hardly the first such gaffe coming from the Trump campaign relating to action in the Middle East.
It was not immediately clear if Giuliani was referring to a lack of major attacks during the remainder of Bush’s term. Some of these include blaming Obama and Clinton for Captain Humayun Khan’s death in Iraq in 2004 (when Bush was President); arguing Obama initially took the United States into Afghanistan (Again, Bush); claiming Obama founded ISIS (and later claiming it was sarcasm after specifically clarifying he was being serious); and more.
Advertisement
Also: “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign”. He kept us safe? “And George Bush – by the way, George Bush had the chance, also, and he didn’t listen to the advice of his Central Intelligence Agency”.
