Mr. A-Noun-a-Verb-and-9-11 who put the counter terrorism command center in the basement of the World Trade Center, even though he was told that might not be such a good idea, and ran around like a chicken with his head cut off because he had nowhere to work from on 9-11, is Sean Hannity's idea of a great leader. The man has done nothing but profit from his "expertise" since he left office. I guess if not being prepared to respond to a terrorist attack makes you an expert, then Giuliani is highly qualified. We've also got a major case of projection going on during this interview.
HANNITY: All right. All right. You're known for your leadership in 9/11. I mean you walked out there. You were with the people of New York on a daily basis.
How would you rate the president's handling of the gulf crisis?
GIULIANI: It couldn't be worse. This would be an example, if you are taught leadership 101 of exactly what not to do. Minimize it at first. Two days after or three days after it happened, go on vacation. He's been on vacation more often than he has by far been to Louisiana or Mississippi or any of the places affected.
HANNITY: Or playing golf or shooting hoops.
GIULIANI: He gives the sense that he's very nonchalant and very lackadaisical about it, which I think are the words of Jim Carville, lackadaisical.
Now what that does is, that sends a whole signal right into the entire bureaucracy that they're also very lackadaisical about it. But one of the things you understand as a leader is your actions are going to energize your bureaucracy to do the best it can or to kind of make it — they did the same thing on Christmas Day — Christmas Day bombing — stays on vacation for 11 days. So the other guys go on vacation.
The reality is that the administration has made every mistake it could make right down to this criminal investigation of BP.
HANNITY: All right.
GIULIANI: How can — why are you criminally investigating them until this is over? Are you going to distract them from the job of what they are supposed to be doing? And if they are being criminally investigated, then why are we allowing them to do it?
HANNITY: Listen —
GIULIANI: If you've got a bunch of criminals doing it, then why don't we —
HANNITY: We knew at a minimum 5,000 gallons a day. We knew at a minimum it was going to be huge. We knew 5,000 feet in the ground this was going to be difficult to plug. So here's the question: What should we have done?
GIULIANI: What we should have done is president of the United States should immediately taken control; should have gone there; should have been there a lot more than twice; should have been leading the charge from the front, not this "oh you know I'm not going to touch it."
And BP — for the longest time Gibbs was saying BP was in charge. The president announced a week ago that he was actually in charge.
HANNITY: He's in charges, but he's not responsible.
GIULIANI: If he was in charge, he was in charge while he was on vacation. And the reality is, he should have brought in the best experts. And he should have set up a team of independent advisers; could be advising him directly. So he wouldn't be just in the hands of BP.
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: And he wouldn't put the entire responsibility just on them. And now if he's telling us through his attorney general that they have real suspicions that BP committed crimes then why the heck have they allowed BP that they believe might have committed crimes to be doing this?
HANNITY: It's a great point. What do you think — I was asking in the last segment the environmental question. We can't use chemical dispersements. We can't build barriers. They didn't deliver the booms that they were supposed to deliver and it's 44 days in. We couldn't have a burn because that's environmentally not safe.
So it seems that they left very little options. Now the Gulf Coast of Florida, the panhandle, is going to get hit with this oil. We expect —
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: Back in — I think it was May 23rd.
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: They asked for permission to be able to do their own —
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: — work in — and they can't seem to make a decision about it.
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: So, I mean, the reality is, this has been handled — you know, it's been handled like a political problem which is — which is what I think — it's not handled like a real crisis.
HANNITY: Does he pay a political price at the end?
GIULIANI: Oh my gosh, yes.
HANNITY: Huge.
GIULIANI: Of course. I mean listen: This is Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, like Obama, not like him — you can't possibly argue that this has been handled any way close to competently.
It was incompetently handed from day one and it gets worse. As I said before, to start criminal investigations right now on a company that you want to be focused just on doing that, they're going to have to divert an enormous amount of attention to dealing with these criminal investigations which I think is all about scapegoating.
HANNITY: Mr. Mayor, good to see you. Thank you. Appreciate you being with us.
