THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT FOR 'THIS WEEK' ON September 11, 2016 and it will be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: We do not want these cowardly terrorists to have us in any way alter our American way of life. This may go on for some time. We have to end terrorism. I believe the United States government is committed to that and it’s going to require us here in America to go about our way of life and not have them imperil it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: And Mayor Giuliani joins us right now.
Fifteen years later, what’s top of mind?
GIULIANI: Well, you know, those words are just as true now as they were then. I’ve been to San Bernardino and I’ve been to the other places that have been attacked, you know, after that event I happened to have been in London half a block away from the first bomb that went off at a Liverpool station. So I fought through (ph) a number of these since then, and it’s still -- I come away with the following lesson: Resiliency is one of the three or four best defenses against terrorism.
And here’s the best example of that, something I never believed would happen: twice as many people live in Lower Manhattan today than before September 11. In the days after September 11, I was working really hard to get businesses back, maybe even threatening a little. And American Express decided to come back, Merrrill Lynch decided to come back. I will always appreciate that because it was like a -- it was like a stepping stone to rebuilding.
STEPHANOPOULOS: By most measures, Americans are safer today. Do you agree with that?
GIULIANI: I’ve always thought it was a mixed bag. Not necessarily even today but form the beginning. We’re safer in certain ways; we’re not as safe in other ways. And here’s the problem that we have, and it’s almost two (ph) wars. We’re always fighting the last war, and then they figure a new one for us. Terrorists are even more cunning at that. We’re always fighting the last battle, the attack of the airplane. So yes, is our airplane safety much greater today? Absolutely. Is our cargo safety much safer today? Can’t tell you that.
And are we dealing with a different paradigm, meaning there we were dealing with one major group, al Qaeda. Having gone after the mafia and the Colombia drug cartels, I can tell you it’s easier to go after a single organization than it is what we’re facing today, which is this Islamic nation which we think of just as ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but it has spread its tentacles all over the world. They’re in 28 different countries. Al Qaeda never had the capacity to do that.
These are -- I’m not going to say they’re smarter people; they’re better educated people. And they’re people who know us better. They come from France and Germany and England and the United States. The al Qaeda people were Afghan warriors. Great warriors -- horrible people but great warriors. They didn’t have the ability to use the Internet; they didn’t have the ability to infiltrate.
So in some ways we’re safer; in some ways we’re in a much more dangerous situation.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Of course this is coming right in the middle of the presidential campaign, and Donald Trump and his team have jumped on those comments from Hillary Clinton the other night, where she labeled half of his supporters into a basket of deplorable, she said. She went on to say this: she regretted saying the word half, but then said, "What’s really deplorable is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called alt-right movement to run his campaign, that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values. It’s deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia, giving a national platform to hateful views and voices."
Your response?
GIULIANI: Well, today I’m not going to respond to that. I’ve never done politics on September 11 even when I was running for president. I actually think the nicest thing, the best thing to say about this campaign is I know Hillary Clinton, I know Donald Trump much better. Neither one of them is a racist. And for either one to say that means they’re getting a little too excited in their campaigning, but both of them are good people.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the issues of national security, though, coming out this week? We’ve seen that Mr. Trump take some heat for praising Vladimir Putin. Is it appropriate to praise a dictator who oppresses his own people and (INAUDIBLE).
GIULIANI: No, see, I don’t think he did. And then I think he clarified it the next day. And he should’ve clarified during the debate. What he said was -- and I really don’t want to talk politics, but let me just explain this. What he said was just because he flatters me doesn’t mean he can get a better deal. You’ve got to know Donald Trump.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But he also said if he says nice things about me, I’m going to say nice thing about him.
GIULIANI: Well, the same thing Reagan did with Gorbachev. I mean, Reagan and Gorbachev dealt with each other, and it was the Soviet Union then. And Gorbachev was a killer just like Putin is a killer. But that ended the Cold War without firing a shot because Reagan was capable of walking out of Reykjavík. As Trump made clear the other night in Pensacola, he’s perfectly of walking out of a deal if it’s not in the best interests of the United States. Wouldn’t be the first time he walked out of a deal, and generally when -- you know, I’ve known Donald for 28 years -- when he walks out of a deal, they come back on his terms, just like they did with Reagan and Reykjavík.
So I think you have to see that in the context in which it’s made. He has the negotiating ability. And then this is all prefaced by a day in which he talked about major increases in our armed forces, going up to 6,000 -- 600,000 troops instead of going down to 420,000. Going up to 350 battleships instead of the lowest since the First World War. Increasing our Air Force, modernizing our nuclear fleet. So he’ll be negotiating with Putin the way Reagan did, from a position of strength, rather than the president, who’s negotiating with him -- to the extent that he does, they did (INAUDIBLE) -- from a position of weakness. You know, running away from 12 red lines that he drew in the sand. Giving up the defense of Poland the Czech Republic. Resetting the relationship with --
STEPHANOPOULOS: So to those intelligence officiants (ph) who say that Putin is playing Donald Trump, your response?
GIULIANI: I say he’s played Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all over the world. I mean, before they came into office, Putin was sitting there in Russia. Now he’s -- now he’s in Ukraine under Obama and Clinton. Now he’s Syria, brought in by Obama. Obama’s the one who empowered him, not -- not Donald Trump. Donald Trump wants to negotiate with him and push him back into a position in which we can deal with him effectively.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You also mentioned the strength of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
GIULIANI: I really don’t want to do this today. You’re making me do it!
(LAUGHTER)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Just one more question on this because it is -- it is critical and these are critical issues.
GIULIANI: They are, and they emerged from September 11.
STEPHANOPOULOS: They do emerge from September 11. And one of the things that Donald Trump also said on Thursday night, again, is that we should’ve taken the oil of Iraq. Even if you could do that practically, and most experts say you couldn’t, wouldn’t that just be theft?
GIULIANI: Well, no. I -- he -- he said take it so that the Islamic State then would not have had it available --
STEPHANOPOULOS: But he said leave a force back there and take it, though.
GIULIANI: Leave a force back there and take it and make sure it’s distributed in a proper way. And --
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s not legal, is it?
GIULIANI: Of course it’s legal. It’s a war.
(LAUGHTER)
GIULIANI: Until the war is over, anything’s legal.
That oil becomes a very critical issue. First of all, if that oil wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have the Islamic State. So when he says things like Obama and Hillary were the founder of the Islamic State, he doesn’t mean -- he doesn’t mean literally. He follows it by saying they would get the MVP award. That oil is what makes the Islamic State so rich. Had we held that oil, made sure that it was equitably distributed within Iraq, we would’ve been able to --
STEPHANOPOULOS: He says we should’ve taken it.
GIULIANI: He should we take it for ourselves necessarily, that we should secure it so it doesn’t get taken by terrorist forces, and then we can have some say, some control over the distribution of it. One of the major problems is between the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites is the oil. And the distribution of it.
Now if we’re going to have lost that many people in Iraq, we should have something to say about how that oil is distributed. That would’ve been the reason I would’ve done it. Maybe I wouldn’t have anticipated, but it certainly would’ve been good if this had been done. If we had secured that oil, we would not be dealing with ISIS today. They wouldn’t exist!
STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, before we go, I just want to ask you about a front page story in "The New York Times" yesterday. They quoted several of your former advisors saying they’re worried about your legacy. Because of your support for Donald Trump. What’s your response?
GIULIANI: So, you know what I tell them? I’m going to see them all tonight; I get together with all the people that almost died with me on September 11. We were in a building together, we were missing for 20 minutes, and Governor Pataki was really shocked when I called him. He said we thought you were missing. The governor and I formed a great bond over that, by the way. So we all get together tonight. I’m sure some of them will be there who anonymously leaked the story, as you remember anonymous leaks from your days back in the White House. They always happen. And I’ll just say to them worry about my legacy after I’m dead. Right now I’m fighting for my point of view and what I believe. And everybody has the right to that (ph). I’m fighting for my country.
I believe there’d be a major difference between the two of them in terms of our economy and most importantly, how we deal with terrorism. I don’t like the way this administration has dealt with terrorism. I think they’ve put us too much on defense and there have been too many terrorist attacks in the last year. San Bernardino happened less than a year ago. You just start counting them from San Bernardino on in December of last year, and we’re talking about a major escalation in terrorist attacks, and a major proliferation in terrorist attacks, that this administration I believe has encouraged by going on defense.
We’re -- we’re sitting back waiting for the next attack. We should be offense.
When Hillary said I’m not going to put any troops in, you might as well stop trying to deal with them. I mean, now they know -- now they know you’re a patsy.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Mr. Mayor, thanks for joining us this morning.
GIULIANI: Thank you. Bye-bye.
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