Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, while campaigning in Iowa with GOP Sen. Charles Grassley and Gov. Terry Branstad, told Breitbart News the momentum is with Donald J. Trump in Iowa.
Giuliani said he loved traveling with Trump and spent 110 days with the GOP nominee for president, opening up his rallies, but now they split up to cover more ground in the last two weeks of the election.
This is the former mayor’s fifth presidential campaign as a leading surrogate and he thinks the crowds and the enthusiasm are greater than anything he has seen in Iowa or any of his other stops. “The enthusiasm level is way-way-way above what it was in 2012 or 2008, or even in 2004, when President George Bush won.”
The New Yorker said while the mood on the campaign is positive, he is deeply disturbed by the uptick in violence against law enforcement, especially after finding out Wednesday morning that two Des Moines police officers were shot dead two miles from his hotel. “I want to send my condolences and sympathies to the police officers and their families.”
The mayor said his group was sleeping during the 1 a.m., ambush, so no one heard the sirens or commotion.
Still, for a man who attended so many funerals of police officers and firefighters, it always hits him when he learns an officer has fallen, he said.
“I feel a special connection to them,” he said.
Police officers also feel a connection to Giuliani and many times, while traveling, officers pull him aside to share their anxiety about the hostility towards them in the media and from politicians, he said.
“There isn’t a place I go where a police officer does not come up to me and say they feel like there is a target on their back,” he said.
“They thank me for supporting Donald Trump,” he said. “One group told me they think that 95 percent of the police officers in America are going to vote for him.”
Giuliani said he did not want to comment on the situation in Des Moines, which is still under investigation, but he did want to say that Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary R. Clinton and President Barack Obama have been irresponsible in their feeding of the hostility towards law enforcement.
“This year–before this shooting–police shooting deaths by criminals were up 45 percent–45 percent? That’s an astounding increase in the number of police officers shot and killed in one year,” he said.
“That 45 percent increase is no doubt in my mind generated by the anti-police hatred that is promulgated by these racial arsonist groups–and not sufficiently disciplined by people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the people who jump on top of these situations before the facts are in and say: ‘The police are wrong. The police are racist.'”
The former federal prosecutor said Clinton has been particularly irresponsible in her statements about law enforcement.
“Hillary Clinton described the police as being implicitly prejudiced,” he said. “Then, she went on to say that we are all implicitly prejudiced–well, you know? I’m not. I don’t know about her. Maybe she should look in the mirror and figure out she is saying things like that.”
Four of Giuliani’s uncles were police officers and he said he was raised to have a special respect for law enforcement. “I was brought up that the police because they were doing something special. They were putting their lives at risk to protect us. I think that’s the message we should be teaching our young people.”
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