Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor and Trump super-surrogate, has apologized for saying that Hillary Clinton wasn’t in the city after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — even though she was right next to him the next day.
“I made a mistake. I’m wrong and I apologize,” Giuliani told the Associated Press on Wednesday night, later adding that he “probably deserve[s]” all the heat he’s getting.
The kerfuffle started when Giuliani accused Clinton of lying about going to Ground Zero on the day of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling a Florida rally, “I heard her say she was there that day. I was there that day, I don’t remember seeing Hillary Clinton.”
The Democratic presidential nominee, who was a U.S. senator at the time, was in Washington that day, and Twitter users were quick to point to an iconic photograph of Giuliani and Clinton walking side-by-side, wearing surgical masks, the day after the attacks.
Rudy Giuliani just now: “I was there that day [on 9/11], I don’t remember seeing Hillary Clinton.”
— Gabe Ortíz (@TUSK81) Oct. 12, 2016
Earlier this year, Giuliani praised former senator Clinton (along with her Senate colleague Chuck Schumer and the rest of Congress at the time) for being “enormously helpful” in the wake of that event.
The timing couldn’t be worse for Giuliani, who has stuck by his support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign even as much of the Republican Party establishment has fled from it. He has also recently taken flak for characterizing Trump’s recorded bragging about committing sexual assault as “exaggerated,” adding more controversy to the legacy of a man once widely regarded as “America’s mayor.”
