Rudy Giuliani speaks to the Organization of Iranian American Communities during their march to urge “recognition of the Iranian people’s right for regime change,” outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York on September 24, 2019.
ANGELA WEISS/Getty Images
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is calling on news executives to stop booking President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on their shows. In a letter sent to every major TV news network and top news anchors, two of Biden’s campaign advisers say that Giuliani has proven that he has a loose relationship with the truth and should not be given air time to spread his lies. “While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough,” the letter says. “By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”
Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield point out in the letter that “Giuliani is not a public official, and holds no public office that would entitle him to opine on the nation’s airwaves.” The advisers to the former vice president’s campaign appear to take pains to emphasize that Giuliani’s falsehoods are often corrected on the air but say that still does not change the fact that he gets the air time to put the lies out there. “While you have been aggressive in pushing back on him in real time, it is well known that the dedicated liar always has the advantage, pushing out outlandish falsehoods and disinformation in the knowledge that it is hard for the corrections to catch up,” notes the letter. “Giving Rudy Giuliani valuable time on your air to push these lies in the first place is a disservice to your audience and a disservice to journalism.”
At the end of the day though, if the networks continue to decide to give “legitimacy to someone who has publicly said he is concerned his tombstone will say he ‘lied for Donald Trump’” then “you need to give an equivalent amount of time to a surrogate for the Biden campaign,” notes the letter. “Saying simply that you will put a Democrat on” when there are so many candidates “is neither fair treatment nor equal treatment.” CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out on Twitter that Both ABC’s This Week and CBS’ Face the Nation were offered surrogates for the Biden campaign to respond to Giuliani. “Seems like both shows declined,” he wrote.
Giuliani told the Daily Beast, which was first to report on the letter, that it “sounds like the usual left wing censorship. Everything I say is supported by such as today, affidavits and statements. They are the ones who have covered up pay for play for at least 5 years.”
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