Rudy Giuliani: I’d skip future debates if I were Trump## ~ Rae Boxer

Tuesday, 27 September 2016

Rudy Giuliani: I’d skip future debates if I were Trump##

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he would not participate in the next two presidential debates if he were in Donald Trump’s position — that is, unless the moderators agreed to certain conditions.

The outspoken Trump adviser expressed dismay over NBC journalist Lester Holt’s performance moderating the debate Monday night at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., Politico reported.

Giuliani was apparently aggrieved by Holt’s attempts to fact-check the Republican candidate on the legality of stop-and-frisk and whether he initially supported the Iraq War.

“If I were Donald Trump I wouldn’t participate in another debate unless I was promised that the journalist would act like a journalist and not an incorrect, ignorant fact-checker,” Giuliani said, according to Politico. “The moderator would have to promise that there would be a moderator and not a fact-checker and in two particular cases an enormously ignorant, completely misinformed fact-checker.”

During the debate, in presenting himself as a “law and order” candidate, Trump suggested that the epidemic of gun violence in Chicago might be assuaged if the city’s police department adopted the controversial stop-and-frisk method from New York.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump listens as Hillary Clinton answers a question during their first presidential debate at Hofstra University Monday night. (Photo: David Goldman/AP)

“Stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York because it largely singled out black and Hispanic young men,” Holt said.

“No. You’re wrong,” Trump replied. “It went before a judge who was a very ‘against-police’ judge. It was taken away from her, and our mayor — our new mayor — refused to go forward with the case. They would have won on appeal.”

On Aug. 12, 2013, a federal court ruled that the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program violated the Fourth Amendment’s right to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Clinton said during the debate that stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional and ineffective.

“There are the right ways of doing it, and then there are ways that are ineffective,” she said. “Stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional and, in part, because it was ineffective. It did not do what it needed to do.”

Rudy Giuliani arrives with his wife, Judith, for the presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., on Monday. (Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)

Giuliani said this ruling had nothing to do with the police department’s activities while he was mayor.

“What she’s talking about being unconstitutional was not my program,” Giuliani later told Yahoo News’ Hunter Walker. “That was 12 years later. That was Michael Bloomberg’s program. And it wasn’t found unconstitutional. It was found unconstitutional as applied. And the Court of Appeals removed the judge who made that decision.”