Rudy Giuliani

I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. 'Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.'

Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani III (born 28 May 1944) is an American lawyer, politician, and businessman. He served as mayor of New York City between 1993 and 2001, and presided over the city's response to the September 11 attacks. Giuliani was briefly a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2008 United States presidential election. In April 2018, Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team. He became a prominent figure in Trump's first impeachment and his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 United States presidential election.

Quotes

• It's about time law enforcement got as organized as organized crime.
  • Quoted in TIME Magazine, October 15, 1984. [1]

• We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for thirty or forty or fifty years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
  • Speech at a forum on crime in the cities, as quoted in The New York Times (March 20, 1994)

• I think the president has to be treated like everyone else. 'Cause I think under the criminal law everybody should be treated the same. I know there are people who would say that the president should be treated stricter. We used to have an era in which the president was treated much more leniently. But I think the right answer is: the president should be treated the same; as far as the criminal law is concerned the president is a citizen.
  • when interviewed by Charlie Rose, July 1998 video of the entire interview

• Most of Clinton's policies are very similar to most of mine.
  • 1996 statement to Jack Newfield, as quoted by Newfield in the New York Post (8 June 1999)

• I’m pro-choice. I’m pro-gay rights.
  • As quoted on CNN's Inside Politics (2 December 1999)

• No, I have not supported that, and I don’t see my position on that changing.
  • When asked if he supported a ban on partial-birth abortion, as quoted on CNN's Inside Politics (2 December 1999)

• The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear ultimately. And I don't think we want to speculate on the number of casualties. The effort now has to be to save as many people as possible.
  • When asked to estimate the number of casualties terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, at a news conference (11 September 2001); this is often misquoted as "More than we can bear."

• The attacks of September 11 were intended to break our spirit, instead we have emerged stronger and more unified. We feel renewed devotion to the principles of political, economic and religious freedom, the rule of law and respect for human life. We are more determined than ever to live our lives in freedom
  • Dedication for the exhibit "After September 11 : Images from Ground Zero." (31 December 2001)

• I don’t need Michael Moore to tell me about September 11.
  • Press conference (29 July 2004), as quoted in "Searching for Spin" in The Nation" (29 July 2004)
  • Variant : You know I can’t tell you — I haven’t seen it. I don’t really need Michael Moore to tell me about September 11th.

• Leaders must be optimists. Their vision was beyond the present and set on a future of real peace and true freedom.
  • Speech before the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. August 30, 2004. [2]

• In choosing a president, we really don't choose a Republican or Democrat, a conservative or liberal. We choose a leader.
  • Speech before the Republican Party convention in New York. August 30, 2004. [3]

• There are many qualities that make a great leader but having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader.
  • Speech before the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. August 30, 2004. [4]

• No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough?
  • In response to the lost explosives in the Al Qa'qaa high explosives controversy, as quoted in NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (29 October 2004)

• When you confront a problem, you begin to solve it.
  • As quoted in RFID Journal, February 28, 2005. [5]

• The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think he deserves it.
  • On responsibility for failure to prevent the September 11 attacks (27 September 2006) "Giuliani Defends Clinton on 9/11 Efforts" CBS News (28 September 2006)

• It would be very dangerous to use the military option [against Iran]. It would not be a good thing. But it would be much more dangerous and much worse if they had nuclear weapons.
  • Hannity and Colmes, Fox News, April 4, 2007.

• Iraq may get better; Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people. But what we do know for sure is the terrorists are going to be at war with us a year, a year and a half from now.
  • News conference (12 June 2007); as quoted in "Giuliani Sets Forth a Dozen Priorities for His Presidency" in The New York Times (13 June 2007)

• After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist incidents, "The United States government, then President Clinton, did not respond. Bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it.
  • As quoted in "Giuliani Faults Bill Clinton for Terror Response in 1990s" (26 June 2007)

• I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. I was there working with them. I was there guiding things. I was there bringing people there. But I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them.
  • While campaigning in Cincinnati, as quoted in The New York Times (11 August 2007)

• Aspiring dictators sometimes win elections, and elected leaders sometimes govern badly and threaten their neighbors. … History demonstrates that democracy usually follows good governance, not the reverse.
  • As quoted in ""Giuliani: Too much stress on two-state plan" at Jewish Telegraph Agency (15 August 2007)

• ...the sky's the limit for all Americans if we have the right kind of leadership.
  • Republican Univision Debate, December 9, 2007 [6]

• We can determine America's future. After all, that's what an election is all about. So let's decide for optimism, not pessimism; for hope, not despair; for strength, not weakness; for victory, not defeat.
  • December 15, 2007. [7]

• Change is not a destination as hope is not a strategy.
  • Republican National Convention, 2008

• We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama.
  • January 8, 2009, on ABC's Good Morning America. [8].

• I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.
  • 2015-02-18, quoted in Darren Samuelsohn (2015-02-18). "Rudy Giuliani: President Obama doesn’t love America". Politico.
• Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her e-mails.
  • October 2, 2016, on ABC's This Week

• Truth isn't truth.
  • August 19, 2018, on NBC's Meet the Press

• Shut up, moron, shut up, shut up.
  • September 25, 2019, on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle

• China manufactured the virus and let it out, and they deliberately spread it around the world.
  • Claimed, without evidence, as quoted by Kevin Polowy (21 October 2020), "Caught in shocking 'Borat 2' bedroom scene with young woman, Rudy Giuliani claims he's the victim: 'Everybody in Hollywood hates me'", Yahoo News 

• The Borat video is a complete fabrication. I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment. At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate.
  • Quoted by BBC (22 October 2020), "Trump's lawyer Giuliani dismisses 'compromising' clip from new Borat film", BBC 

• Republican Legislature let down America. I’m ashamed of them. They completely misled the President and me.
  • Referring to Republican-led state legislature in Pennsylvania, as quoted by Dan Mangan (22 October 2020), "Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani says Pennsylvania GOP ‘let down America’ on challenge to Biden win", CNBC 

• To all those patriots challenging the fraudulent election ...You are on the right side of the law and history.
  • via a Twitter tweet posted when rioters stormed the halls of Congress on January 6, 2021

• Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent. If we're wrong, we will be made fools of, but if we're right a lot of them will go to jail. Let's have trial by combat.
  • Quoted by Alexandra Garrett (6 January 2021), "Rudy Giuliani Loses Honorary Degree From Middlebury College in Capitol Riot's Aftermath", Newsweek 

Quotes about Giuliani

B

• Rudy Giuliani — there's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11.
  • Joe Biden, October 30, 2007 MSNBC Democratic Debate

• He is a small man in search of a balcony.
  • Jimmy Breslin, quoted by Paul Slansky in "'Giuliani Time!': The Rudy Quiz", The New Yorker, December 17, 2007

D

• Rudy Giuliani is a problem solver with common sense leadership who made a tremendous and positive difference as Mayor of New York, impacting peoples’ lives for the better.
  • Bo Derek, July 19, 2007. [9]

G

• This is the accumulation of sixty years of hard work. Many of these watches hold great sentimental value, and he’s being forced to turn all these over under court order
  • Giuliani’s spokesman Ted Goodman wearing a Trump Palm Beach polo shirt, according to Rudy Giuliani turns over his 1980 Mercedes-Benz convertible, luxury watch collection and a diamond ring to women he defamed (November 15, 2024)

L

• Frankly, you have to understand the fact that Rudy Giuliani was a McGovern Democrat, he was endorsed by the Liberal Party when he ran for Mayor. In his heart, he's a Democrat. He's paraded all over this country with Bill Clinton and, in fact, he's very comfortable with Mario Cuomo. But what Rudy Giuliani wants is to be bailed out in the city, in the mess he's in, and everybody understands very clearly in politics that they struck a deal, that Mario's going to continue to be the big spender, save Rudy the options of raising taxes by pouring money statewide into the City of New York and bailing it out.
  • Michael Long, Chairman N.Y.S. Conservative Party, interviewed on CNN, Crossfire, (1994-10-25)

• And I just want to say one other thing about Mayor Giuliani: As this began, and if you were like me, and in many respects, God, I hope you're not. But in this one small measure, if you're like me, and you're watching and you're confused and depressed and irritated and angry and full of grief, and you don't know how to behave and you're not sure what to do and you don't really... because we've never been through this before... all you had to do at any moment was watch the Mayor. Watch how this guy behaved. Watch how this guy conducted himself. Watch what this guy did. Listen to what this guy said. Rudolph Giuliani is the personification of courage.
  • David Letterman, September 17, 2001. [10]

M

• He's basically Goro in a suit.
  • Michael Moore in response to Giuliani's treatment of the homeless

• And I wanted to say to the mayor of New York all our concern, our admiration for what has been done after this drama, with such an efficiency, very full of clever and heart. I told him that in the French press, when they mention the mayor of New York, they say "mayor hero" (ph), which is a French expression equivalent to "Rudy the Rock".
  • Jacques Chirac, September 19, 2001. [11]

• He's the man of the hour, a man whose extraordinary grace under pressure in the days since this devastating attack has led him to be called America's mayor. He's the mayor of New York City, ladies and gentlemen, Rudy Giuliani.
  • Oprah Winfrey, September 23, 2001. [12]

• Giuliani's performance ensures that he will be remembered as the greatest mayor in the city's history.
  • Eric Fooley, TIME Magazine, 2001. [13]

• The eight years he spent terrorizing the poor, the homeless, the artistic community, the queer community, the minority communities in New York City should not be forgotten.
  • Cynthia Hernandez in Giuliani Speaks at College After Controversy May 22, 2005

• Giuliani symbolizes the civic contributions that led to New York becoming one of the safest cities in the world, a city where people need no longer fear violence. [...] I believe that he has, through his political efforts, saved more human lives than most people alive today.
  • Olle Wästberg in a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, June 1, 2005. [14] [15]

• As Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani showed how exercising fiscal discipline, including tax cuts, lowers deficits, spurs economic growth, and increases revenue. It is time the rest of the country benefit from a true fiscal conservative leader who gets real results.
  • Steve Forbes, May 27, 2007. [16]

• Rudy Giuliani is a true American hero, and we know this because he does all the things we expect of heroes these days -- like make $16 million a year, and lobby for Hugo Chávez and Rupert Murdoch, and promote wars without ever having served in the military, and hire a lawyer to call his second wife a "stuck pig," and organize absurd, grandstanding pogroms against minor foreign artists, and generally drift through life being a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn't even bother to conceal the fact that he's had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers. In the media age, we can't have a hero humble enough to actually be one; what is needed is a tireless scoundrel, a cad willing to pose all day long for photos, who'll accept $100,000 to talk about heroism for an hour, who has the balls to take a $2.7 million advance to write a book about himself called Leadership. That's Rudy Giuliani. Our hero. And a perfect choice to uphold the legacy of George W. Bush.
  • Matt Taibbi, May 31, 2007. [17]

• Rudy Giuliani has shown that he is a true leader. He can and will win the nomination and the presidency. He is America's mayor, and during a period of time of great stress for this country he showed tremendous leadership.
  • Tommy Thompson, October 12, 2007. [18]

• Well, among other things, it seems Rudy's a bit of a fibber. Says one thing one, then denies it a few hours later, apparently not familiar with the concept of audio and video recordings.
  • Josh Marshall, November 2, 2007. in [19]

• [He] didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together... We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor.
  • Al Sharpton, quoted by Paul Slansky in "'Giuliani Time!': The Rudy Quiz", The New Yorker, December 17, 2007

• Middlebury College has made the decision to revoke the honorary degree it presented to the presidential attorney Rudolph Giuliani in 2005, and has communicated this to Mr. Giuliani's office
  • Middlebury College according to Rudy Giuliani Loses Honorary Degree From Middlebury College in Capitol Riot's Aftermath January 13, 2020

• Lay down with dogs. Wake up with fleas and without $20,000 a day
  • Ken Frydman, Giuliani’s 1990s press secretary, according to Dominion Voting Systems sues Giuliani for $1.3bn over baseless election claims by Oliver Laughland (January 25, 2021)
• In 1990, a Boston police expert, Bill Bratton, was appointed head of New York's subway police and introduced the 'zero tolerance' policy of arresting and prosecuting even in minor cases. This worked so well that in 1993, when the federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani was elected mayor of New York, he gave Bratton the opportunity to apply the energy to the city as a whole, and the results were impressive. In 1993-95, violent and property crimes dropped 26 percent in New York, murders by teenagers dropped 28 percent, car theft 46 percent, robbery 41 percent, and murder 49 percent. New York, with 3 percent of the population, accounted for one-third of the fall in reported crimes in three years. In 1996 the city reported fewer murders than at any time since 1968. But, though more effective policing helped, abetted by the underlying demographic factors, such as a rise in the average age of the population, most studies agreed that a radical improvement in the level of crime in America would depend on the return to a more religious or moralistic culture. Historians have always noted that organized religion had proved the best form of social control in Western societies.
  • Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (1999), ISBN 978-0-06-093034-9

• I hope people who should have known better then, understand now that Giuliani succeeding Dinkins was an outcome of similar forces that led to Trump succeeding Obama.
  • Adam Serwer, 11/24/2020 on Twitter

• I'm afraid it will be on my gravestone: 'Rudy Giuliani. He lied for Trump.' Somehow, I don't think that will be it. But, if it is, so what do I care? I’ll be dead.
  • https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/rudy-giuliani-says-he-s-afraid-his-epitaph-will-say-n961166, January 22, 2019