September 26, 2016 | No Comments
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Donald Trump is going to be clearer and more precise when he steps up to the debate podium Monday night, but beyond that “he’s basically going to be Donald Trump.”
“My advice to him, I think Donald Trump has done best since Donald Trump has been just let loose to be Donald Trump,” the frequent Trump surrogate said on “Fox and Friends” Monday morning. “There’s a lot of discussion of, you know, how things should be scripted and I think what we’ve all found that are working with him now is you let him be himself, this man is an extraordinary political thinker himself and a great communicator.”
But like other Republicans making the rounds on TV news Monday morning, Giuliani was quick to set a higher bar for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who the former mayor said has a decided advantage over Trump. Giuliani said the Manhattan billionaire will have to work to counter the former secretary of state’s experience in government and policy expertise on the debate stage.
“She has, obviously, policy knowledge I don’t have. She’s been in government since I was a child. I don’t remember a time she hasn’t been in government in one way or another,” Giuliani said of Clinton. “So she’s going to have obviously more specific knowledge than he has, but I think he’s going to comport himself very, very well, and he’s going to be — he’s just going to be like you see him on, when he comes here, and when you talk to him on the phone. He’s going to be Donald Trump.”
Giuliani dismissed concerns about Trump’s non-traditional approach to debate preparation, which has eschewed the mock debates that Clinton has used to ready herself. Giuliani said Trump has studied tapes of Clinton’s past debate performances as well as his own and likened the preparation to that of a boxer, suggesting that “you get the person ready the way they want to get ready.”
One issue that Giuliani said Trump is not worried about coming up at the debate is the issue of his often inaccuracy-laden campaign rhetoric. Multiple media outlets, including POLITICO, have discovered numerous lies and half-truths in fact-checking Trump’s remarks, but the former New York mayor said the GOP nominee stacks up well against Clinton when it comes to truthfulness.
“I can’t imagine that probably the biggest liar that ever ran for president of the United States is going to bring up lies,” he said. “I mean, this is the woman who’s lied maybe 15 different times about Benghazi and told three different stories. So I think if she wants to get to the area of lying, she’s lied about things related to national security. That’s a topic we would love.”