This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” April 6, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: We need a senator who understands how to stand up for the free market for the individual, for low taxes, for less government spending. And Marco is the only candidate in this race who has a record of doing that. And that’s why you should vote for him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Alright. That was former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaking at a Marco Rubio rally yesterday. Now Rubio is in the middle of the Senate race that everybody is talking about. He’s challenging Florida Governor Charlie Crist in the Republican primary.
And joining me now to talk about why he is backing Rubio and how the Republicans can do in the midterms is the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani.
How are you?
GIULIANI: How are you?
HANNITY: Well, I like Rubio, too. As a matter of fact, Rubio is going to be with us a week from today.
GIULIANI: At The Villages.
HANNITY: At The Village, in Florida, yes.
GIULIANI: Best rally I had was at The Villages. I love The Villages. Great time.
HANNITY: Well, he’s going to be there, Lou Holtz is going to be there.
GIULIANI: Oh. Lou will get them — get them all worked up.
HANNITY: Tomorrow we’re with Governor Palin. We’ve got Michele Bachmann. We’ve got some fun events. It’s on my Web site, Hannity.com.
All right. Rubio, I find him a rock star. I’ve interviewed him now a number of times. I interviewed him when he was 19 down.
GIULIANI: Right.
HANNITY: And he’s got such strong Reagan conservative roots and appeal. He’s a great politician.
GIULIANI: I — I met Marco in 2007, when I was running. Then this summer I had spent half a day with him, my wife and I did, mutual friends put us together. I was extremely impressed with him. He was way behind then. But I thought he’s got the right ideas. He’s got the right background. He’s got a really good sense of how we have to keep government under control.
And what I said yesterday is what I really believe. He’s the right kind of senator that we need right now to stand up to this inexorable march toward social democracy.
HANNITY: A lot of reports, Charlie Crist told you twice, that he was — you — shook your hand and said, “You have my endorsement.”
GIULIANI: Right.
HANNITY: And it’s going to be on a certain date.
GIULIANI: Correct.
HANNITY: He lied to you?
GIULIANI: That’s right. I mean, he broke — he broke his word, which to me in politics is worth everything. I mean, I’ve dealt with people in politics for years as the mayor and had to get bills through and things through. You gave your word, you had to stick with it, even if it — even if it hurt.
But that isn’t the reason I’m — I’m endorsing Marco. I’d stay out of the race if it were Charlie and maybe somebody else, and they weren’t very different. There’s a big different here.
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: We can rely on Rubio to be there when we’re going to have to fight cap-and-trade. Charlie, as far as I can tell, is in favor of cap and trade. He embraced the stimulus. You should have been able to figure out very, very early that the stimulus was a payoff to Democratic constituencies. It was — of course, it had nothing to do with creating jobs. And when you look at all these phony statistics about the jobs that were preserved, take a look at how many government jobs allegedly were preserved.
HANNITY: They’re all government jobs — most of them the IRS.
GIULIANI: Yes. This is the same thing as they were doing with health care when they paid off the unions.
HANNITY: I got into this with Newt Gingrich a little bit. Everybody — I’ve been out on this book tour. I released a book last week, “Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda.” We’re going to be with Governor Palin and Michele Bachmann tomorrow night. Alright.
And every — I’ve done four cities now, and every person that I meet has never been this concerned about the future of the country. Now, things were bad when Jimmy Carter was president. Things were bad when you took over and became mayor in New York. Welfare, you had 1.1 million people on welfare out of a 7 million population?
GIULIANI: Right.
HANNITY: That’s one out of seven.
GIULIANI: It was — and we had a 10 1/2 percent unemployment rate. We had a $2.3 billion deficit, and we had just lost 450,000 jobs. But I never really doubted that I could turn it around.
HANNITY: Can we turn this around?
GIULIANI: Yes. Yes, we can. But I agree with you, I have never been more concerned for the country. And I think we have to win this year, because…
HANNITY: Have to win this year.
GIULIANI: I think we have to win one of the houses, because I think we have to stop what will be a real attempt to push through, as much of this…
HANNITY: Socialist.
GIULIANI: I call it social democracy. What I say is that the image, it seems to me, this administration has in mind to make us like a European economy. An economy which is — and maybe even more controlled by the government than some of the European economies.
HANNITY: But look at Greece; look at Europe. Why would you follow a model that has failed so miserably?
GIULIANI: I mean, you’re going to have to ask them that. I don’t know. The argument for government control of economies, I think — I thought that argument was lost in the 1980s.
HANNITY: Let me press you on this. So if we don’t — if conservatives don’t win back the government, irreparable damage to America? Debt that…
GIULIANI: Yes. Debt that your children and my children and grandchildren are going to have to — are going to have to pay for well into the future, no matter how much you reverse by the time you get to 2012.
HANNITY: America loses its AAA bond rating?
GIULIANI: It could be. It has national security implications. An America that isn’t strong enough to defend itself and to defend the rest of the — who — who is going to take care of the rest of the world if it isn’t America?
HANNITY: Good question.
GIULIANI: Nobody else cares the way we do about the rest of the world.
HANNITY: So the president wants to close Gitmo. He tells our enemies, our enhanced interrogation techniques, said he stops them. Doesn’t admit a war on terror; these are man-caused disasters.
Now he tells the world today that, by the way, you can — if you attack us with biological, chemical weapons or a cyber attack of some kind, crippling…
GIULIANI: I don’t know if they have any idea of how catastrophic a chemical or biological attack on the United States can be.
HANNITY: Right. What if it happened in New York?
GIULIANI: I remember three — three days — four days after September 11, very late on a Friday night, I bought all of these experts together to discuss with me, doctors and experts I had on a panel and people I brought in to discuss, how do we deal with biological warfare, how do we deal with chemical warfare if we get hit with that?
HANNITY: Anthrax right after.
GIULIANI: Because a few weeks later — a few weeks later we were hit with anthrax. The meeting lasted about two-and-a-half, three hours. I left there, and I couldn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t sleep many nights then. Couldn’t sleep that night because there were a couple of things they could have done to us that our best answer would have been to put people on Randall’s Island and just let them die.
I mean, the biological agents and chemical agents that are available can do incredible, catastrophic — kill thousands and thousands of people. To take off the table or even to announce how we might respond, seems to me entirely irresponsible and really naive.
HANNITY: All right. You’re — are you saying, based on this conversation that caused sleepless nights for you, that the materials are available that we could knock out a town, knock out a small city? This could happen in America?
GIULIANI: Of course it could, yes. Yes, I mean, you know, smallpox, sure we have agents that can deal with it. We have injections we can now give and vaccinations. We’re not sure how they’re going to work. I don’t even want to mention all the things that are available.
Security is now — is now my business. I can’t imagine why a president of the United States would want to tie our hands and how, first of all, we deter and, number two, how we respond to catastrophic attack the way…
HANNITY: Last question, do you see Republicans winning in November? Do you think they’re there yet? Do you…
GIULIANI: I think we are — we’re getting there. I think — yes, I do think — I can see how we could win the House of Representatives back at this point. I think the Senate is still difficult, haven’t given up yet, but I think we could.
HANNITY: OK, Mr. Mayor, thanks very much. Appreciate it.
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