Say what you will of Rudy Giuliani (and if you live in New York, you probably have a lot to say), the former GOP presidential hopeful is one of the few in his party to vocally support gay marriage and women’s reproductive rights.
And that’s why he doesn’t think he could ever pass the right-wing looney test required of candidates during presidential primary season.
During an interview on FOX News about violence in Baltimore (during which Giuliani essentially blames the crime rate on not enough racial profiling a la his beloved NYC “stop and frisk” policies — we won’t even go there), host Neil Cavuto asks why Giuliani doesn’t throw his hat into the 2016 race.
Here’s Giuliani’s response:
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Because I believe I can’t get nominated because of my views on gay marriage, I’m in favor gay rights, I’m in favor of gay marriage. I see it as an issue of equality. I’m pro-choice. I’m anti-abortion personally but I’m pro choice. I’m pro-immigrant and I haven’t backed down from it.
Watch the clip below. The quoted section begins at the 8:05 mark:
Clark35
Rudy Giuliani also married his cousin which is sick.
tricky ricky
yeah rudy, blame the gays. it has nothing to do with you being a complete jerk.
AtticusBennett
well, the GOP nominees will be anti-LGBT. they will be. thats’ the only way the GOP can continue to trick the poor and middle class MIDDLE-AMERICAN idiots to continue to vote against their own best fiscal interests.
and it’ll be the GOP’s downfall.
Kangol
And a r@cist and white suprem@cist, but that would make you very appealing to the GOP base.
Oh well, Rudia’s six pounds of crap in one sh!thole, half a dozen in another.
Bob LaBlah
The most memorable thing I MUST commend Giuliani for was his expert handling of a horrific “friendly fire” incident where a black police officer was shot five times in the BACK during a mistaken identity incident in the NYC subway system. A black plain clothes officer had a suspect down on the ground and was about to handcuff him when two white officer appeared. One of the officers simply opened fire on the officer, not knowing he was a police officer, and hit him FIVE times in the back. He even smirked at doing it but nearly shitted on himself once he found out what and who he had hit.
Some how the officer not only lived but the very next day Giuliani takes Officer Hitler to the hospital bedside of the officer with him, gets a picture of all three of them together smiling and even shaking hands (believe it or not but the non-photo shopped picture made the cover of all the useless little tabloids of NYC that still TRY to pass themselves off as newspapers) and as soon as they walk out he tells the officer (who was already on customary paid administrative leave) out in the hallway that if he hasn’t figure out yet to “consider your ass fired” and walked off and left him standing there. The officer actually cried as he left out of the the hospital. There was so much racial tension on the force at that time and in the city itself I seriously was waiting for race riots to erupt any minute. Yes kids, once about a time NYC was nothing else BUT a racial powder keg waiting to explode and everyone who lived there knew it. At least those who knew how to read, watch the news and their surroundings.
That notwithstanding this old community dividing fart never did a damn thing else that makes him presidential material and he knows it. Walking around in the dust with a handkerchief over his mouth sure as hell didn’t stop those towers from falling, did it? And how DARE he close ALL of those old dilapidated, unheated, rat infested theaters featuring poor, THREE-LEGGED latin boys danc…..well, anyway, back to my rant…er, comment. That police buildup started under mayor DAVID DINKINS’ old one-foot-already-in-the-grave acting ass, not him. Had Dinkins showed SOME sort of proof he was alive he would have won reelection because he really wasn’t all that bad of a person but hey, that is NYC and you must keep yourself “out there” if you plan to have any importance as a politician.
Why he and ol’ Taco Bell of Queerty can’t just die already is beyond me.
ingyaom
“Blah” is right. Relevance?
MarionPaige
Step one foot outside of New York City and Giuliani is a joke.
I loved how a political commenter looked at Giuliani and wondered how the f Giuliani thought he could be elected president. The commenter theorized that Giuliani must have thought all of his negatives would cancel each other out.
Giuliani negatives:
1. His first wife was his cousin and she had a city job while Giuliani was mayor
2. His Father was a mob loan shark enforcer and went to prison for such. How Giuliani was let into the federal prosecutor’s office when his family had mob ties is something to think about
3. He openly cheated on his wife while Mayor including bringing his girlfriend back to the Mayor’s mansion while he wife and children were in the house. Giuliani wife went to court to get an injunction against Giuliani bringing his girlfriend to the mayor’s mansion.
4. Brand Dead Gay Blogs like to pimp the fact that Giuliani moved in with a gay man and his partner. Whoever, the reason Giuliani stooped to living with two Queers is probably because, at the time, he couldn’t afford his own apartment.
New York City is the biggest media city in the world and, for the longest times, no reporter wrote about how Giuliani’s girlfriend was trailing behind him (just out of camera range) when Giuliani was appearing in public around NYC.
MarionPaige
@Bob LaBlah: “but hey, that is NYC and you must keep yourself “out there” if you plan to have any importance as a politician.”
@AtticusBennett: “thats’ the only way the GOP can continue to trick the poor and middle class MIDDLE-AMERICAN idiots to continue to vote against their own best fiscal interests.”
New York City, sadly, is the template for The Republican Party in America. The “fact” is that there were so many immigrants in NYC that there really was no one large demographic of like minded people that could elect anyone to political office. AS A RESULT, the way to political stardom in NYC devolved into WHO COULD ASSEMBLE THE LARGEST HATE GROUP.
cflekken
Well, it would be nice to actually see a member of the GOP who chooses to go against the grain. Maybe Caitlyn Jenner should run?
Bob LaBlah
@ingyaom: “Relevance?”
As in regards to the last sentence or the comment overall?
Kieran
And the GOP can’t win the presidency because they’re Pro-War and Anti-Gay.
Cam
And yet when he ran for president suddenly he was anti-gay.
lauraspencer
As someone who has lived in NYC under Dinkins, Giuliani, Bloomberg and now DeBlasio I will say that at the time I wasn’t a Giuliani fan, but now looking at his legacy and how he cleaned up 42nd St, had the crime rate drop on his watch and got more tourists coming to NYC I’m happy with what he accomplished.
I wouldn’t be a fan for him as President, but I do applaud him for speaking up as a Republican who supports gays and is pro-choice.
As for the comments above about his wife being his cousin the same can be said about Roosevelt. Kennedy’s dad was a bootlegger with mob ties just like Giuliani’s. Bill Clinton, Kennedy, Roosevelt also cheated on their wives. Negatives know no party lines. Politicians act the same regardless of Dems or Republican.
Bob LaBlah
@lauraspencer: Hi honey. Keep in mind that in the NYC area there are quite a few VERY wealthy gay men with considerable influence whom, if they got pissed off, could have rallied the girls and made life an absolutely HELL for him and he knew it. It is sad the late closeted queen of them all, Ed Koch, didn’t realize that and had a lot to do with why no one missed his ass once he was voted out of office. Koch was the only mayor who walked in the Pride parade and got booed and heckled the entire route. He also walked alone. No other politician or anyone that really mattered outside of politics would walk with him either.
MarionPaige
@Bob LaBlah: “but now looking at his legacy and how he cleaned up 42nd St, had the crime rate drop on his watch and got more tourists coming to NYC.”
and isn’t it “interesting” that Giuliani happened to end up with an office in one of those buildings on 42nd Street? I mean, seriously,
Imagine that you and a group of real estate developers have these big plans for 42nd street in fucking MANHATTAN. Can you imagine what it would have cost you to fairly buy up all of the land that was on 42nd? A real state developer near where I live in Manhattan spent almost decades trying to drive a little hotel out of business so that he could buy up the land for his big real estate project. IT IS SAID, that the only people Giuliani and that Real Estate Gang could NOT strong arm into turning over her property were THE CHURCHes.
And, it HAS BEEN WRITTEN that the crime rates dropped all over across America when Giuliani was in office and that the drops in crime could be tied directly to the availability of CHEAP COCAINE – aka crack.
Giancarlo85
@lauraspencer: Wrong. All Giuliani did was slap a band-aid on something and used inappropriate police tactics. And Giuliani wasn’t really the one that started to reduce crime. His relations with certain racial minorities was also shit (as is the case with almost all republicans).
“I do applaud him for speaking up as a Republican who supports gays and is pro-choice.”
He needs to leave the party like Charlie Crist did. The republican party is vehemently and rabidly anti-gay and anti-progress.
“Negatives know no party lines. Politicians act the same regardless of Dems or Republican.”
Here we go again with this… deflecting the topic in order to criticize democrats who are obviously far superior caliber. You’re not honestly comparing a one time Presidential candidate who failed in conveying a message with Bill Clinton, are you?
Saint Law
To think, New York was once the intellectual and artistic capital of the World. Of course, its creative decay was already well under way by the time Ghouliani took over, but he completed it.
Bob LaBlah
For eight years Giuliani held a “secret” that only he and a few others involved knew about a certain loud mouth who went around America (more in less in rivalry to the other equally useless, self serving one) because had he revealed it and the loud mouth got killed on his (Giuliani’s) watch it WOULD have led to the most vicious race riots America would have seen to date. Only the civil war death toll would have probably been higher in comparison had he not chosen to shut up about what he had on this guy but kept secret. It turns out he had good reason for ignoring him all of the years he was in office.
Do NOT get the impression that I have ANY love of Fox News (or should I saw Fox Noise because thats all they were and still are in my opinion) because I don’t. However I do remember when this was reported on and looked HIGH and LOW for another, some what credible station that carried the video of it and they were the only one who carried it completely. Others had excerpts and, to be honest, looked more of a joke than Fox always does. I am not surprised that it disappeared from the station that I saw it on first, CBS News with Dan Rather. The only thing he apologized for was the hat that he was wearing during the taping, more or less and even joked about it (the hat). As the saying goes “only in New York could this have happened.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1JH7Eczueo
Saint Law
@Giancarlo85: “Politicians act the same regardless of Dems or Republicans.
I get that Republicans are worse than Democrats – in the way Hitler was worse than Churchill. But for America’s poor there has been effectively no representation from either party for forty years now. So in that respect Laura’s statement has validity.
Saint Law
@Bob LaBlah: Christ. Could you get anymore batshit?
Bob LaBlah
@Saint Law: To respond to that in the manner that I would love to WOULD be child abuse and, regrettably, I am already clandestinely guilty of it on this article. Please don’t temp me any further. Good evening.
Xzamilio
@Cam: You remember that too?
Xzamilio
We are the true Americans, we are in the right
God loves the Republicans, especially those of us rich and white
We don’t approve of homosexuals, or a woman’s right to choose
We tell you what a family is. We don’t want truth. WE WANT FOX NEWS!!!
Kangol
@Bob LaBlah:
Bob LaBlah, Dinkins lost because the 1991 Crown Heights Riots raged and he didn’t act quickly enough.
He still barely lost to Giuliani, because he lost portions of the Jewish votes. Dinkins was a die-hard supporter of Israel and Jewish causes, but that wasn’t enough because he moved too slowly on those riots.
The whole situation, of the two black children who run over by the white Jewish rabbi’s motorcade, and the white Jewish rabbinical student who was stabbed to death, was such a tragedy.
Kangol
Let’s try again:
@Bob LaBlah:
Bob LaBlah, Dinkins lost because the 1991 Crown Heights Riots raged and he didn’t act quickly enough.
He still barely lost to Giuliani, because he lost portions of the Jewish vote. Dinkins was a die-hard supporter of Israel and Jewish causes, but that wasn’t enough because he moved too slowly on those riots.
The whole situation, of the two black children who were run over by the white Jewish rabbi’s motorcade, and the white Jewish rabbinical student who was stabbed to death by the black teenager, was such a tragedy.
darian
He can’t win the nomination because like gay Republicans he a twig in a river of shit.
aliengod
Stop and frisk was a good policy. The crime rate was far lower in NYC. And Rudy would be an ideal candidate if the far left could wrap their head around a Republican candidate that was Republican AND pro-LGB/abortion rights.
Giancarlo85
@aliengod: Stop bullshitting. It wasn’t a good policy and was racially profiling. What far left? I am pretty sure anyone with a brain don’t want a Republican president. Republicans are fucking disasters for the entire country, including LGBTQQI people.
darian
@aliengod: You know stop and frisk didn’t actually work and has been denounced as successful time and time again right”
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/2136810
darian
@aliengod: So he’s got your support because he’s lgbt/abortion…. But wait a minute those seem like single issues and no Republican would ever vote for someone because of individual issues right? Get all the way the fuck out of here with that bullshit.
Bob LaBlah
@Kangol: Translation of your comment: had he showed signs of “life” a bit sooner (as in reacting) he may have won. Am I correct?
Bob LaBlah
@Kangol: Hit the post comment button too soon, but hey, it seems so did you. Do you know if the guy who ran over the two kids ever got extradited from Israel back to the U.S. after he fled there immediately after the accident?
Bob LaBlah
@aliengod: Your wish may be granted. George Pataki, a moderate, a northerner whom the religious right can’t stand, and who also had a very adversarial relationship with ol’ Rudy (the two can’t stand each other), has not only entered the race but stands a pretty good chance as being their best bet (republican) at giving that ol’ unelectable hillbilly from the south a run for a her money. I bet he will win because she really hasn’t been in a tough election. Her senate seat was handed to her by Moynihan when he was too sick to go on and she knew, after losing the nomination to Obama, she would not be reelected if the rethuglicans got Pataki to run against her. That fact had a helluva lot to do with why she got out of dodge with that Secretary of State position. I liked her till the ol’ whore stabbed Obama in the back with that useless no-one-read-it-anyway book she wrote saying mean things about him (Obama).
I can’t wait till the republican primary debates begin. I was really hoping to see Chris Christy’s big fat ass have Marco “the pendejito” Rubio and Rafael “Ted the Queen” Cruz’s asses for lunch during the debate but he (Christy) hung himself being vindictive in that Bridgegate shit which he is obviously guilty. I don’t if he will be at the debates. Too bad.
Giancarlo85
@Bob LaBlah: You speak so much bullshit I don’t even know where to begin. Pataki is yesterdays news and is a face of corruption. Get a fucking reality check. You speak so much bullshit. Bring someone up viable… Not some yesterdays news guy like Pataki. Nobody even talks about him anymore… The man is devoid of substance.
BJ McFrisky
@Xzamilio: Bravo for the witty rhyme, but consider this: Without rich white people, we wouldn’t be blessed with the likes of Andy Cohen, Neil Patrick Harris, Lance Bass, Suze Orman, Ellen DeGeneres, Tom Ford, Rosie O’Donnell, Anderson Cooper, Elton John, and David Geffen, and where-oh-where would we be without them?
Realitycheck
Giuliani past a side, he is not the first republican to try to wake up his party,
times and people mentality have changed and republicans are stucked
in the super conservative past.
And the more they are out of touch with today social sensibilities the less,
people will vote for them.
Kangol
@BJ McFrisky: Welp! I’ll give you that. Those are some rich–very rich–liberal white people.
A first for me: I agree for once with BJ McFrisky!
As for Pataki, that one’s a walking joke, just like Lindsay Graham, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump, Huckabilly, and all the other narcissists masquerading as candidates.
The person LGBTIQ people should worry about is Republican John Kasich. He does NOT have a good record on gay issues, but he is just moderate-seeming enough, and pretty successful as a governor of a blue state, Ohio, to gain traction. So pay attention, people–fringers like Rudia are a distraction. For a reason. And when we don’t pay attention, we end up with the likes of George W. Bush.
Remember, his “compassionate conservatism” included a constant push against LGBTIQ people, at the federal and state levels!
Kangol
@Bob LaBlah: I’m not sure what happened to the white rabbi’s driver who caused the accident that led to the black child’s death.
What a lot of people forget is that Al Sharpton and other black activists criticized David Dinkins for not demanding, against standard legal procedure, that Yosef Lifsh, the white Jewish driver, be arrested, and then publicly denounced him when they marched in Crown Heights. At the time Dinkins was visiting a Jewish school, I think, trying to show support and calm tensions. A sad situation all around.
Bob LaBlah
@Kangol: “I’m not sure what happened to the white rabbi’s driver who caused the accident that led to the black child’s death.”
If you go back and reread my question you would see what happened to the driver. He FLED to Israel within an hour after hitting the child. That’s what ticked off the crowd and once again, whether I liked it or not, I actually had to agree with the majority of the crowd who were there protesting, not with the rioters and looters. There are MANY other Jews in Crown Heights who are of other sects who simply, to this day, believe the Lubavitcher sect were not only wrong but still get away with too much. It only made them look bad, guilty more or less by religion than acts. To hell with “the law applies to everyone” in that case.
I didn’t include this in my video post with Sharpton but during the protest in regards to Yousef Hawkins being killed in Brighton Beach Sharpton was stabbed in the chest by a white drunken protester. Had that story in the video been leaked and he ended up being killed during Giuliani’s watch all out hell would have broken out across the country. A lot of people were more or less waiting for their chance to literally “do him in” and that leak would have given a twisted minded person such as his stabber the perfect excuse to do so.
NYC is a place where it more or less takes a strong man to run it. The country of Iraq, believe it or not, seemed to be a lot more quieter than it presently is under the strongman Sadaam than it is now, wasn’t it (but thats another story).
In the case of De Blasio I honestly do feel sorry for the man BUT I stand TOTALLY behind him with his decision to right a horrific WRONG in the case of the Central Park Five (the boys who were wrongly set up and convicted in the Central Park jogger case). To this day I can’t stand Bloomburg, who had all of the details of the case but was so HELL BENT to run guns and blacks he obviously didn’t like (such as poor ones) out of NYC he refused to settle WITH those kids (who are now close to forty and middle age). Seriously, not only is Harlem is now HALF WHITE but he had set his sites on Brooklyn and parts of Queens as well. He was being cheered on by the realtors (I won’t go no further with that but yes, it is true that……..use your imagination for a minute and I say no more).
Yes, I am back home in the south now and it is starting to show so I now get down off of my soapbox. Adios, NYC. I still love you to.
Giancarlo85
@BJ McFrisky: Except I don’t recall those guys actively trying to fuck over the entire country like how Republicans do so.