Rudy Giuliani stammered his way through a defense of the taxpayer dollars spent on a security detail for his girlfriend after they began having an affair when he was still New York’s mayor.
“There were threats; they had to be responded to,” Giuliani said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday of the protection for his now-wife, Judith Nathan. “Judith didn’t particularly want it, but it was done because they took the view that it was serious and it had to be done this way.”
Giuliani has been dogged recently by questions about how much his extramarital affair cost the city.
Later, during a debate in Miami, Giuliani said if he’s elected, he’ll tell rabidly anti-American Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez to shut up, just as the king of Spain did.
“I agree with the way King Juan Carlos talked to Chavez,” Giuliani said to rousing applause during the Spanish-language debate sponsored by Univision and the University of Miami.
A miffed Juan Carlos told Chavez, “Por que no te callas?” (Why don’t you shut up?) during a summit of Latin American and Spanish-speaking countries in Chile last month.
GOP presidential candidates were asked whether their tough rhetoric vowing to crack down on illegal immigration would cost them Hispanic votes.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) agreed that Republicans could face a backlash over the issue.
“Some of the rhetoric that many Hispanics hear about illegal immigration makes some of them believe that we are not in favor or [don’t] seek the support of Hispanic citizens in this country,” McCain said.