On Monday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Hannity,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani decried the attacks on police, in particular regarding the Ferguson, MO Michael Brown case, because it is tied to what he called a false narrative.
Partial transcript as follows:
HANNITY: It came from the president on down. Look, you were very clear in speaking out in both the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. I don’t see any evidence in either case that they were race-related. I don’t see it. I’ve asked people to bring it to me, show it to me, and I’d be glad to look at it. But the grand juries made their decision.
Do you — who do you — by naming names, who do you blame most for creating this atmosphere that has now existed for months that you talked about earlier, that is…
GIULIANI: Well, I think…
HANNITY: … you know — go ahead.
GIULIANI: I think — I mean, I think the reality is you’ve got to — you’ve got to put the blame first with the president because he makes it nationwide. To have Al Sharpton sit next to you is telling every police officer in America that you’re willing to have as a close adviser somebody who has hated the police for decades, who has helped to cause riots in New York City, who is anti-police before he even knows the facts.
And the reality is, in the Brown case, you couldn’t possibly have a clearer case. All this stuff about his hands up — I mean, that was disproved by seven independent witnesses who are African-American. And they go around perpetuating this. I mean, so I have to put the responsibility at the feet first of the president, and then for the situation in New York at certainly the mayor. I mean, why did this…
HANNITY: So in other words — but I want to be clear here — so basically, they set a narrative in the country that was a false narrative…
GIULIANI: Propaganda!
HANNITY: … that those cases were about race…
GIULIANI: It’s propaganda!
HANNITY: … and that…
GIULIANI: It’s no different than the propaganda they used to have in the Soviet Union! It’s absolute propaganda. Neither — neither — both of those situations were crimes. What we’re talking here — all of this, all of this — we’re talking about crime, about reacting to crime. Where does it occur? Where do you send the police?
Those police officers that were assassinated were moved to that particular precinct from another precinct because there was more crime in the precinct they were in. They’re the ones who were protecting the minority community.
HANNITY: How does a mayor with 40,000 police officers possibly govern a city like New York — and I remember when you were mayor, if a cop got hurt, 3:00 in the morning, you were at the hospital. If a fireman got hurt, 3:00 in the morning, you were at the hospital. I don’t think you missed one time when you were mayor — correct me if I’m wrong…
GIULIANI: No, you’re right.
HANNITY: How do you govern one of the largest cities if you don’t have the support of the police department? How is that possible? What does the mayor need to do?
GIULIANI: Well, the mayor needs to apologize. The mayor — the mayor needs to apologize to the police for having defamed them. If you take the sum total of the mayor’s comments and the president’s comments, they have defamed the police. They’ve created the impression that there is — and I think the president even used these words — I think he did — a systemic problem.
There isn’t a systemic problem of racism! In certain communities, there’s a systemic problem of crime. And then you deal with it. I mean, it used to be a systemic problem of crime with Italians, with the Mafia, and I dealt with that and took plenty of heat for dealing with it. But you deal with it as crime, not as race. You don’t make a racial situation out of it.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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