Giuliani Fights Back: 'It Would Be Impossible For Me To Forget' About 9/11
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is fighting back after claiming a remark that made it appear he had forgotten about 9/11 was taken out of context.
Rudy Giuliani on Pence, 9/11 and no successful radical Islamic terrorist attacks in the U.S. before President Obama.https://t.co/mCT15iRsq9
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Giuliani told CBS2's Marcia Kramer he was very angry after he was accused of forgetting the terrorist attacks as he was criticizing the foreign policy of Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama before Donald Trump gave his foreign policy address in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday.
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"It would be impossible for me to forget about Sept. 11, 2001," Giuliani said. "I think about it every day."
Giuliani, who had to hide in a bunker when the planes hit the World Trade Center on 9/11, was criticized and mocked on social media for his comment that there were no successful terrorist attacks in the United States in the eight years before Obama came into office.
"By the way, under those eight years before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States. They all started when Clinton and Obama got into office," Giuliani said Monday.
Critics charged that the eight years Giuliani was talking about – the years George W. Bush was president – were exactly when the 9/11 attacks happened when more than 3,000 people died.
"Extremely insensitive to one of the people most heavily affected by Sept. 11," Giuliani said.
Before the remark, Giuliani was talking about the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
"Remember, we didn't start this war, they did. We don't want this war, they do. And they didn't start it even in 2001, they attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 and they attacked it under the ideology of radical Islamic extremism to create a caliphate, to destroy the infidels – Christians, Jews, non-believing Muslims from their point of view and other people," the former mayor said.
Giuliani explained he had shortened and abbreviated his usual stump speech, but everybody in the audience understood he wasn't glossing over the attacks.
"In the context in which I said it, where I explained the two prior attacks, including the attack during the Bush administration, of course I do," Giuliani said. "You can't repeat yourself constantly."
Giuliani attributed attacks on his statement to those in the media who have a sworn agenda to defeat Trump.
"They have been conducting this sort of vendetta campaign against Trump and they are going to do anything they can to parse sentences, take things out of context," the former mayor said.
Giuliani pointed out that he lost many friends that day, that he also nearly died and that 9/11 is part of the fabric of his life.