At long last! Somebody finally got Rudy Giuliani pinned to the wall. It happened on Chris Matthews show, Hardball. He spent most of the interview letting Rudy blather away about Trumps performance last night in the CiC forum, but interrupted him more often than most other people do (save Chris Cuomo on CNN).
But then Chris sucker punched Rudy, and out of left field. And for once he sounded like an actual journalist, and not just another opinionated talking head. He brought up Trump’s birtherism. He did it without warning, and it immediately got under Rudy’s skin. He started yelling about it being the Clinton campaign that first brought up that question, and Matthews talked right over him, telling Rudy that he had had the feeling that Rudy was going to try that, and two members of his staff had checked with Politifacts, there is no verifiable history of either Clinton, or anyone connected with her campaign in 2008 making that assertion, it was a lie. Giuliani railed against that, insisting that it was true. But then he stepped into the deep shit.
Rudy Giuliani stated that he had conceded that Obama was a US born citizen, Ben Carson had admitted the same, and that Trump now believed that Obama was US born! Matthews was flabbergasted, he pushed this on Rudy, asking him when Trump had ever said that, and Giuliani said “years ago”. Matthews kept pushing him and got Giuliani to say it twice more, although he pulled back at the last second from saying that he was “speaking for Trump. The interview is below;
*** You can skip to about the 5:29 mark to pick up the exchange ***
In the follow up, ex RNC Chair Michael Steele laughed at the exchange, but then very seriously stated that the rest of the media will pick up on this tomorrow. I agree with him 100%. It will be very interesting to see how Trump deals with this new, unnecessary gaffe, and what if any blowback there is to Giuliani. We shall see, starting tomorrow morning I’m sure.
Thanks as always for reading!