RUSH: Rudy Giuliani has called, ladies and gentlemen, and has asked to respond to Senator Biden promising calamity in the first six months of an Obama administration. Mr. Mayor, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Nice to have you here with us.
GIULIANI: It’s nice to be with you, Rush. I’m campaigning today with Cindy McCain in Pennsylvania. We’re in Bucks County.
RUSH: Bucks County.
GIULIANI: Yes, we’re on our way to a rally there. We just left a hospital and we’re going to a rally and I left the campaign bus. I noted Joe Biden’s comment that, I think he said, ‘Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.’
RUSH: That’s exactly right. What was your reaction?
GIULIANI: My reaction is, maybe we could elect a president that will not tempt the world to test them because of their inexperience. If Joe Biden is suggesting this, it seems to me that we could elect someone more like Ronald Reagan, who has experience, who the rest of the world has a pretty good idea how he would react and what he would do in the way he would defend America. I can’t imagine why Joe Biden would want to raise this, but since he’s raised it, it seems to me we should answer.
RUSH: Well, I think it’s possible, you know, with the transition process being stepped up, both campaigns were given foreign policy briefings last week. It might well be that Biden was part of it and, you know, just can’t keep anything to himself, and this is his way of going out and trying to tell people what he knows, and what was interesting about it was you can take this one of two ways, he guaranteed it and then he begs supporters in Seattle to whom he was speaking, (paraphrasing) ‘Our poll numbers are going to go down, we’re going to be very low, you’re going to be asking what happened. We’re begging you to you stand with us because our response might not be apparently the correct one to you at first but this guy’s got a spine of steel, we know what we’re doing, you gotta hang with us.’
GIULIANI: I find the remark very puzzling. And exactly why he did it and what motivated it only Joe Biden can explain. I do know that if he’s predicting that the president he’s supporting is going to somehow motivate an attack on the United States, it would seem to me he’s doing it for a reason. I guess the reason is, the lack of experience that Senator Obama has. I think he went on to say, ‘Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis to test the mettle of this guy.’
RUSH: Right.
GIULIANI: Well, I think it would be far better off to have a president that wouldn’t tempt people to want to test his mettle the way Joe Biden is talking about, and it is true that at least history records that that’s what happened with John Kennedy, that Khrushchev tested him and believed that he was flaunting and then went ahead and Cuban missile crisis, other things happened. But that didn’t happen with Ronald Reagan. No one tested John Kerry’s mettle. In fact, they released the hostages as he was being sworn in as president of the United States, if I recall correctly.
RUSH: Mr. Giuliani, do you realize how many times Bill Clinton was tested by Al-Qaeda, starting in 1993 through Mogadishu to the USS Cole, and every time Clinton was tested, he failed, and that’s why they tested Bush on 9/11.
GIULIANI: Yeah.
RUSH: And we haven’t been hit since.
GIULIANI: I think if we had raised this, there would be all kinds of criticisms that we were trying to frighten people. But it seems to me that Joe Biden has raised it, and it is a very good point to just ask, well, is there a way to avoid this testing, and maybe if we elect someone with the kind of experience and background that John McCain has, no one knows exactly what’s going to happen, but don’t we give ourselves a better chance as we did with Ronald Reagan, we can avoid this?
RUSH: Well, look, I agree. I think by definition he was saying there would not be an attack if McCain was elected.
GIULIANI: I am not sure. I think we’re going to have to ask Joe Biden this. But, you know, typical of when Joe does something like this, makes one of these comments, they then hide him for about a week and nobody can get to him to find out what he means.
RUSH: (laughing) Remember, though, he’s the guy that’s supposed to be the experienced backbone for Obama. That’s why he was chosen.
GIULIANI: I know. I know. And one of the annoyances, of course — you get used to it as a Republican — is that he is not examined in the same way Sarah Palin is. I think recently he said that the campaign is going to be about that three-letter word: ‘jobs.’
RUSH: Yeah, he did. He did, after telling the guy in the wheelchair to stand up.
GIULIANI: Yeah. But this one, this one now is raising a serious issue. The others are kind of funny and everybody is used to Joe kind of making big mistakes like that, but I don’t know if he’s being serious about this or this is some kind of campaign ploy, but I mean the reality is that it raises the issue that he talked about when he was running in the primaries, and maybe that he still has doubts about whether Barack Obama is ready to be commander-in-chief.
RUSH: Well, now, there is one other possibility, and I will admit that it’s remote — and, by the way, he was dead serious. I’ve got one audio sound bite from his appearance. He was being dead serious about this. But when he made the plea, the appeal to the people in the audience to hang with them because their poll numbers might drop, it could well mean that he was implying that if there is some sort of international incident, that Obama’s going to reply with huge force and that the base of the Democrat Party is not going to like that. I mean it’s a stretch, but the point is, it’s confusing. We don’t know what he was talking about.
GIULIANI: Well, whatever he was talking about, he was suggesting that Barack would do something that will be very unpopular, and I guess you could read that either way.
RUSH: Yeah, and he also guaranteed, Mr. Mayor, he guaranteed within six months it’s going to happen if Obama is elected.
GIULIANI: Yeah, extraordinary. I mean only he can explain why he’s saying that, but I do believe that he is squarely raising the issue as to whether or not he believes that Obama is prepared, or at least that others will perceive that Barack Obama is not prepared and want to test him.
RUSH: Well, he said that Obama’s got a spine of steel, not to worry about Obama. He said that.
GIULIANI: Well, obviously he believes that others in the world don’t see it that way.
RUSH: Now, quickly, before you have to go, you’re campaigning with Sarah Palin you say in Bucks County?
GIULIANI: No, I’m campaigning with Mrs. McCain —
RUSH: Mrs. McCain, that’s right.
GIULIANI: We’ve been in the Philadelphia area, and now we’re going up to Bucks County for a rally, and then I’ll be campaigning in Pennsylvania and Ohio tomorrow, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that people understand just how important this election is. And maybe in a way Joe Biden explained one of the things that’s been left out of this campaign for a few weeks now as we’ve focused on the economy which may be the real test that we have, which is, you know, terrorism and foreign policy and who’s ready to defend this country in the appropriate way.
RUSH: Which is all about maintaining economic productivity and peace as well. Peace and a good economy go hand in hand. What’s your perception of things out there as you’re running around campaigning with these various figures?
GIULIANI: My perception is that this is a very close election. That the American people are very deeply divided, this election is not by any means over. I think that a lot of people are just really focusing on it right now. And as they saw some of these polls with Obama ahead by seven, eight, nine percent, I think they’re taking a second look at Obama. And I think Joe Biden just gave us another opportunity to have a second look at Obama.
RUSH: Well, we’re not going to forget that. Let me ask you one question. You’ve been in politics all your life. Have you ever seen a political party as confident of a major landslide as the Democrats are this time around and the media? You got Pelosi promising, guaranteeing minimum 250 seats in the Senate. Harry Reid saying we’re going to have to a filibuster-proof Senate. You’ve got network executives saying that the landslide is going to be so large that the election results are going to be known and the election over before most people on election night have dinner and they’re worried about programming to keep people interested all night. Have you ever seen this kind of overconfidence?
GIULIANI: The only time I ever saw it was on Election Day four years ago when I appeared on a network, and I overheard a conversation between some of the anchors on the network and about who John Kerry was going to put in the cabinet. And they were very convinced and very confident and almost kind of dismissed my comments that the election wasn’t over. But that happened only on the last day when those exit polls came out —
RUSH: Right.
GIULIANI: — that showed Kerry ahead by six or eight percent, they had him winning Ohio and they had him winning Florida. But up until then there was a feeling that it was a close election. But on that day they were very confident. And let’s hope that that’s a misplaced confidence. Sometimes overconfidence, you know, in a football game hurt the Giants last week. We kinda caught up yesterday. But overconfidence can hurt.
RUSH: It can also cause a backlash among voters. Voters might resent being told by these Democrats that it’s all over, it’s just a fait accompli now and start to measure drapes in the White House and this kind of thing.
GIULIANI: Oh, I think it is exciting, the other side of it. As I said, I think it’s having people take a much closer look at Barack Obama, which, after all, I think those of us on our side have been trying to do for a long time now, and every time we do we are frustrated by the media protecting him and not wanting — I mean it was extraordinary, the article about Mrs. McCain on the front page of the Times two days ago going into all kinds of personal things, 20 and 30 years ago. And if you raised the slightest issue about Obama, whether it’s Ayers or Wright or Rezko, you’re being unfair, it’s negative campaigning. I mean it’s very hard to get to the issue of is Obama prepared to be president.
RUSH: Well, no, they’re clearly covering for him. They’ll look into all that stuff a little bit after the fact, but they’re not going to do anything to derail his candidacy. As far as the media is concerned, his campaign’s historic, and they want to be the reason history happens, they want to be able to say they pushed him over the finish line on their own and that’s what we face. I
GIULIANI: Rush, I was at dinner with Yogi Berra at the Italian-American dinner, I sat next to him. He was my hero when I was a child, and Yogi didn’t endorse anybody, but he did tell me, ‘It ain’t over until it’s over.’
RUSH: (laughing) Good. All right, well, have a good time at the rally with Mrs. McCain.
GIULIANI: And that’s the feeling I have in Pennsylvania, and the feeling I’ve had as I’ve been campaigning for the last couple of days.
RUSH: Well, good luck to you, and we appreciate the call. It’s great to have your input here on Senator Biden. This one has to be kept alive and he needs to be asked what he meant.
GIULIANI: I think so. I think this requires some kind of press conference. I know they don’t usually do that with him. But, I think, if I had said this, they’d require that I’d have to explain what I was talking about.
RUSH: Mr. Mayor, thanks much for the call. Appreciate it. Always a pleasure to talk to you.
GIULIANI: Thanks, Rush.
RUSH: You bet. Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the campaign bus with Mrs. McCain on the way to Bucks County, Pennsylvania.