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April 22, 2020 - Rudy Giuliani
56:27
2020 Campaign Strategy with David Bossie and Congressman Peter King | Ep. 30
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It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
There was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought us to the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776, one of the first American bestsellers in which Thomas Paine explained by rational principles the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate from the powerful Kingdom of England and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and he explained it in ways that were understandable to the people, to all of the people.
A great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we are able to reason, we're able to talk to each other, we're able to listen to each other, and we're able to analyze.
We are able to apply our God-given common sense.
So let's do it.
This is Rudy Giuliani and welcome to Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Today we have with us Dave Bossie.
Dave was the deputy campaign manager for the winning Trump campaign in 2016.
Dave has a long background in politics and in law.
Probably the thing you'll remember him most for is the Citizens United case.
That was won by the organization he started, I think it was in 2001 or 2002, which has done a lot of good work for Republican and conservative causes, but that Citizens United case probably has made him one of the great evil demons to the left wing in the history of the world.
And one of the great heroes to all of us who think more conservatively and more sensibly.
Dave has done many things, many documentaries, many movies.
He's done some with Bannon and some on his own.
What I think you probably know, what I surely know, and I can say, it gives me a chance to say it, is he's one of the principal reasons that Donald Trump got elected, because he was—he was the political decider, advisor.
Everyone knows, I think, that that election was won based on choices made.
About where Donald Trump went in the last three weeks of the campaign, because he was able to flip states that Republicans hadn't held, sometimes in two cycles, three, four, five.
Those choices were very, very intricate, very difficult choices.
You know, do you go to Minnesota or Michigan?
And you can't go to both.
So if you take Brad Pascal's really terrific statistics and Dave Bossie's political judgment, that's how those decisions were made.
And I saw them made, and I said at the time, if we win, he's going to have a big part of it, and if we lose, he's going to have a big part of it.
And since he won, he's a hero.
But he's also very knowledgeable on politics and substance, so first I want to ask him—let me ask him the political question.
This is one of the worst things that's ever happened to America.
I mean, this—historically, 1917, Spanish flu, world wars—this is on that par, right?
The whole country's shut down now for 30 days.
How is this going to play out politically in an election that's virtually around the corner?
Yeah, I think that President Trump's going to get judged.
This campaign is going to come down to a couple of key questions, Rudy, next November or this coming November.
And one of them is going to be the president's resolve and leadership of the country through this pandemic and how he is perceived then.
Not today, but then.
How are people looking back at what he did and how he did it?
Number one.
Number two is the economy.
Whether or not the economy, which he built all on his own, and whether or not the president is able to restart that economy.
And if he's able to restart that economy, and people see our economy getting back to where it was come September and October, those two main issues are going to be the big ones that will drive voters in November.
Well, I think that the reality is we don't even know how it's going to be conducted.
Number one, he's not going to have rallies for a while or at all.
Number two, personal appearances.
And will there be a convention?
As we know it—I mean, Biden has already, about four weeks ago, said he wants a virtual convention.
Yeah, he needs a virtual convention.
These are totally different things, though.
I mean, I guess the Biden team has figured out the best thing that could happen is he runs from the basement, he sits there with his wife, and every day he says, hello, everything is fine, my name is Joe Biden.
Nothing more.
Right?
He's got some problems, Rudy.
You and I both see that, right?
We see that Joe Biden has incredible problems.
And if you think about The debate stage.
You think about what Donald Trump, then candidate Trump, did to Hillary Clinton.
One of the finest debaters in modern American politics.
Hillary Clinton, incredibly experienced, really wicked smart debater.
We didn't take her seriously.
And for him to literally drub her, Well, you know, of course, because the media gives him credit for nothing, they wouldn't give him credit for that.
But I remember the conclusion of the first debate, and you and I had been involved a lot in the preparation of him for the debate.
First of all, he was much better in the debate than he was in the preparation.
That's a fact.
Which is not unusual.
I was always much better in court than I was in preparing for court.
Probably you too.
I mean, that's what happens.
Game time is a big deal.
I realized after that first debate that he was going to totally whip her in the second two.
Because that first debate, he was still learning.
And he was a little tentative, but he still won.
And I said, oh my God.
And she was intimidated by him.
I think that's exactly right.
And you think about what Donald Trump will do to mangle Joe Biden in three presidential debates in October when Joe Biden has to be six months older than he currently is and in his frail condition.
I just don't know how it will come down.
I don't know how it will look because President Trump is not going to be easy on him.
It's going to be a sight.
I'll be honest with you.
I hope I'm part of it.
I'm going to be looking forward to helping him get ready once again.
These are big issues.
These are big issues that will come down to what happens in November.
The way his mind works, and you know this, is he doesn't just want to be seen as doing the right thing.
He wants to do the right thing.
Those are different things.
People don't understand.
You have to actually, underneath it all, be doing the right things.
And if you look at the ventilators, if you look at the PPE, if you look at all of the decisions shutting down travel from China, The numbers are staggering, right?
Britain and other places.
And all of those decisions, those are the undercurrents.
Those are the things that he's doing.
But underneath that, there's 100 decisions that go along with each one of those that
you don't see.
And that's what I think is going to be, he's going to be judged on that.
And look, we're doing pretty well as a country.
The numbers are staggering, right?
I mean, we see that we've had, you know, 40,000 deaths or so, so far from this.
We're about two thirds of the way through, potentially.
The American people aren't used to losing 60,000 people.
It's a big number.
It's a big number.
And the president is doing everything he can.
And if you would have said to me, That Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom and my god, de Blasio, are saying positive things about the president.
I would say the president's not doing the right thing.
In the normal world.
But in this case, it just proves that he is president of all of the people.
He's not just president of some, you know, and the politics of division, which are being By Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden and the rest of them.
They can't stand it.
They can't stand up to him because he is, he's just running this thing and running it very well.
Well, you know, actually what's happened is it's divided the Democrats, right, in this sense.
The governors, most of them, except for the ones that have gone way out, like the governor of Michigan, who basically has closed down the entire state, the governors have had to say, He's doing a good job, because he is doing a good job, and he is giving them the things that they need.
However, the congressional leadership is still in impeachment mode.
They think they're still back where they were a year ago, trying to figure out, did he collude with China?
Can we take an innocent conversation with the Ukrainian president and turn it into a crime?
And now they want to blame him for what China did.
I mean, under no set of circumstances can Trump be blamed for this.
Nor can Cuomo, or Newsom, or anybody else, or de Blasio.
You could say they did the right things, the wrong things, they could have improved here a little bit, could have improved there a little bit.
This was a total surprise.
It was a wholly new virus that no one ever heard of before.
They get hit with it, and they got a month to prepare for it.
And actually, as a country, we've done pretty darn well.
I mean, we've got several treatments for it, two, three treatments for it.
Some work, some don't work.
We've got a possibility now of having a way of getting people back to work with these tests.
And now maybe with prophylactic medicines, we have a vaccine on the way.
That's pretty good.
And the testing that's coming, as we all know, is going to show that a lot of us have already had it.
And we were asymptomatic.
We didn't know we had it.
So we're going to find that some of us have the antibodies because we've already had it and never knew.
So there's going to be the herd mentality aspect as well of that immunity to it.
And that's very important for the future of our country.
So look, we have a lot to do to get this economy back up and running.
But we can't go so fast.
We have to be, which is what I think the president's doing perfectly.
He is holding out hope.
He is saying we must get the country reopened, but he's not racing to it in an irresponsible way.
He is saying we're going to let the science, the doctors, and the data guide us in this.
And we have to get the economy going again.
And really, one of the things I like to tell people, and make sure they're focused on this, because America is the most generous country in the world.
And it has been for the last 40 or 50 years.
And I talk to people and I say, think about what's going on.
What's going to happen on the continent of Africa?
What's going to happen in Southeast Asia?
What's going to happen in Central and South America?
Six months from now, a year from now, the trickle-down aspect of our economy getting shut down, we keep those nations, most of the continent of Africa, through the generosity of our charities, through the U.S.
tax dollars, through government NGOs, through religious and non-religious charities, help Stave off poverty every year there in Africa.
Think about those poor people who six months from now, when nobody's talking about coronavirus, are going to be on the downhill of an economy, of a recession, of a depression that we have to take very seriously.
So it's going to cost lives down the road if we don't get this economy moving again as well.
So that's what the president talks about, the cure being worse than the disease.
And we've all heard that through loved ones having cancer and all.
It's true.
Now, do you detect a political motivation in extending this and imposing some of these truly draconian conditions on people?
I mean, how can you possibly come up with some of these things that these Democratic governors have come up with?
Right.
Well, look, the governor of Michigan had stores Uh, not able to sell car safety seats.
How is that not, you know, a, it's something that is required, right?
I mean, it's on one end required by law, but how is it not, you know, does it meet the standard of a necessity?
You have to be, and you know, in California, they're, they've closed golf courses almost across the country, but they, they, they bulldozed sand into a skateboard park where kids could go out and get exercise outdoors.
And so they've kind of lost their minds in the sense, on one hand, and on the other hand, their true authoritarian side comes out.
You give people a little bit of power, and you see what ill it goes towards.
It's very shocking, and I think it's shocking to the American people.
That's why you see these rallies out there right now saying, reopen, reopen, reopen, You know, in states after states, because people are getting fed up with the government telling them what to do and when they can do it.
Because the media blames the rallies on the president and says that he's provoking these states from doing it.
But the rallies began before he even said anything.
And if I were in a state in which I was being told I couldn't use a car seat for my child, I would first thing I would say to myself is suppose my
child has 104 temperature and I have to rush my child to the hospital. Right. I mean what kind
of idiot is going to deprive me of a car seat to take my child out? And what is wrong with being
out?
I've looked at every piece of literature on this.
It's actually a good idea if you're out.
As long as you don't get within six feet of someone, as long as you don't go to a dangerous place, fresh air is the best thing for you.
So, this is not transmitted through the air.
You have to be in close proximity to each other.
Closing all these things down, Rudy, there is a There's a time and a place for everything, but I think we're getting past that and we have to reopen our society.
Yeah, and actually it takes away from the things that are really important.
When you overdo it the way the governor of Michigan did, and you close down all these things and you make distinctions between car seats or what you can do and what you can't do, then the big things tend to get ignored too.
The main ones are staying six feet away, isolating yourself as much as possible, wearing a mask where it's necessary, and most importantly, washing your hands all the time.
If you shake hands with a person with COVID-19 and you wash your hands, you're not going to have a problem.
And I know that's hard to get, but that's really, really important.
And then I think people have to see, on the other side of it, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
And when you close down the largest economy in the history of the world, it has a dramatic impact, including on the health and safety of people.
There are people that are starving.
There are people that are emotionally disturbed.
There are more people considering suicide.
There are probably more people committing suicide.
There's a lot more domestic violence.
You can bet on that.
I mean, I know in New York, the worst day of the year was Super Bowl Day.
Super Bowl Day, we had the most domestic violence cases.
Why?
Yeah, because the woman was shut up with the guy, the guy was drinking like heck.
Probably, I never checked it, but probably the team that lost was the guys from those teams that were beating up the women the most.
And we got our most domestic violence cases on Super Bowl Sunday.
We used to do a program for about three weeks before with football players, basically telling these animals, don't beat up your wife or your woman.
So this kind of stuff happens.
We're a big country.
We're not all reasonable people.
So there's got to be a balance.
But the thing I want to get you to, because I think it's so important, is you know this for a long time, and you've been studying this for a long time, and the whole relationship with China and the way in which China was treated during the Obama-Biden administration.
And, I mean, there are articles about how soft Biden and Kerry were in particular.
So China is going to be a major issue in this campaign.
How did the Democrats get around the fact that they left us with a China policy in which—China wasn't checked on anything.
He had to reestablish a real trade relationship with them.
He had to set standards.
And now, at this point, He's going to have to redo completely how we do business with them because we can't depend on them.
Well, Donald Trump, long before he was president, was talking about the dangers of China owning the United States and how the United States taxpayer basically built the Chinese economy on our backs.
He was over there making deals and doing deals in China long before anybody was talking about China.
This president in 2015, 2014, 15 and 16 talked about the need for decoupling our economy from theirs.
And I think the one thing that's going to come out of this after the after action report shows where this virus came from, that China was responsible or not.
But I think it's we all think it's coming from that lab.
You know, Fox News is, you know, provided a lot of information on that in the last couple of days that Really make it not look like the wet market, but actually the lab, so we're going to find that out.
But this this the Chinese with the trade deal.
This president has done an incredible job in trying to get our economy decoupled from China on one hand and trying to make the trade deals better on the other.
The one thing that this episode has done for this country is make sure that the American people are educated to the fact that we must bring manufacturing back home from China.
Because when we're on a hook for PPE, we're on a hook For the personal protective equipment, we're on the hook for the masks over the barrel to China.
So not only did they give us the virus, wherever it emanated from, it emanated from China.
They give us the virus, then they have us over a barrel for all the personal protective equipment, and then they're running up the rates.
So they're charging us exorbitant fees to pay for the masks, to pay for the gowns that we need to fight a virus they gave us.
I think this is showing the American people, right?
This is teaching the American people why we have to bring those jobs back here.
One of the things I would like to do Look, the Garment District, that Garment District in New York City used to be the center of our economy back in the day, right?
I mean, a long time ago, but that Garment District in New York was phenomenal.
Not so long ago.
Why can't we, why can't we bring those factories, get those places back working, making to replenish our national stockpile, to make sure the states have it, not just during this pandemic, But for years to come, we could get those places up and running and create new, vibrant economies that we haven't thought of in a long time.
And that's what this president's done.
Having a do-it-all, do-it-now approach, that private-public partnership that has really gotten everybody to the table.
And I think that's one of the reasons that we are where we are in trying to get ahead of this.
I think it'll be a very exciting opportunity because we've had to do this.
It had to come at some point.
Also, China had to Hit this wall at some point.
The whole idea that China was just going to grow and grow and grow and become a stronger economy than ours, and it was just a linear progression, is ridiculous when you consider that half of China is a third world country.
Half of China is 700 million people that are in third world poverty.
That has to be counted in.
We don't have 700 million people in third world poverty.
We also don't have people In jail because of what they wrote in newspapers, and lots of them.
And we don't have a whole history of killing female babies.
And we don't imprison our people without any charges.
I mean, they have a whole history of things they have to overcome to make themselves a modern country.
And what they did, the mistake they made here is they exported a lot of that problems to other countries.
China has killed a lot of people in Western Europe.
And unless the Western Europe countries are even weaker than I think they are, they're going to have to have some reaction to that.
We're certainly going to have a reaction to it.
Now, think about it as a political issue, though.
It brings back to me the Joe Biden trip to China with Hunter Biden when Hunter Biden came back and became a partner of the Bank of China.
So we're going to elect for president a guy whose son was a partner of the Bank of China and got $1.5 billion into a private equity fund that wouldn't be given to Goldman Sachs and was given to him, and they want us to believe that China didn't know why they did that?
That China is stupid?
China did it to buy Joe Biden!
Of course!
We all know that.
And they did!
It's just like Hunter Biden getting $50,000 or $70,000 a month into Ukraine, right?
He had no experience doing it.
He didn't know what he was doing.
It was a pay-for-play job.
And that's what the Chinese did.
The Chinese said, we're going to put some money We're gonna find out why Joe Biden is the only one last year that thought China wasn't a threat.
Right.
And so do we know all the answers today?
No, but will we know them all by the time election day?
I certainly hope so.
Yeah, we're going to find out why Joe Biden is the only one last year that thought China wasn't a threat.
Right.
Joe Biden was the only one in America that thought China wasn't a threat.
Yeah, Joe Biden is also the one that said when President Trump was shutting down travel from China,
that that was a racist thing to have done.
It was xenophobic.
And that we shouldn't be shutting travel from China.
These people are out of touch, and Joe Biden is still carrying the water for China, even after the pandemic started.
So I think there's a long way to go.
We have seven months, and I think we're gonna learn a lot about Joe Biden's detailed relationship with China.
Yeah, I think it has to come out.
I mean, China becomes too important an issue.
And then finally, will the press ever cover his cognitive impairment?
I mean, Dave, it's obvious.
It really is.
I mean, it's silly.
It's silly to ignore it.
I mean, there's something wrong with the man.
And look, we all see it through our own relatives, friends, Right?
We've all seen it, and it is sad.
This is not like you and I want this to happen.
It is happening.
You see it before your very eyes.
And the media, they aren't doing it yet, but I think they're going to have to start doing it, because if you're going to replace this person, if you're going to replace Joe Biden on the ticket with someone else, because remember, they couldn't do this when Bernie Sanders was still in the race, because you can't get Bernie Sanders.
The establishment needed Joe Biden and still need Joe Biden to get to kill off Bernie Sanders permanently.
Once that is done, then they can replace him if they want to.
Now that's a little conspiratorial.
But when you look at when you look at Joe Biden's cognitive problems, you look at his slowing down his inability to make a look, he's doing a live TV interview.
And he can hardly speak And he has to look down and read from notecard.
It is embarrassing to keep putting him out there.
And look, Donald Trump is not going to go easy on him come October.
You want to be president of the United States, you're going to have to go through Donald Trump, and that's not going to be a simple task.
No one is focused on the fact that if it is the illness that it appears to be, it's a progressive illness.
It only gets worse.
If Joe Biden is like this today, what's he going to be like two years from now?
If he's like that today, what's he going to be like in six months?
Six months is a long time.
I mean, there is a very, very good possibility that at some point in a four-year presidency, you're going to get a vice president.
That that mix-up of sentences and not being able to remember things gets worse and worse and worse.
There's absolutely no possibility it'll get better.
They like to talk about science.
Science?
Science?
The science on that is a lot more solid than global warming.
Believe me.
Think about what they tried to do to Ronald Reagan in his last year or so, of his eight years.
His last year or so, they tried to make those insinuations.
He would nod off, he would get tired, and he might go to sleep.
But nobody was saying that he was having these types of problems Even before he got elected.
It was in his seventh year that they were talking about these types of things.
The American people are very smart and they're not going to let Joe Biden get elected if in fact he has these problems,
which is why you see the Andrew Cuomo trial balloon
Which is why you'll see some other trial balloons to see if they can find somebody who can fit the bill
To carry the Democrat mantle and it's and his name is not Bernie Sanders. And do you think that's possible?
That we're gonna see somebody else other than Joe Biden Look, I think it is.
I think it's not highly likely.
I do think they have to be thinking about it because they're watching the same clips you and I are.
Look, they can try to say publicly, oh, he doesn't have a problem.
We all know he has a problem.
Those are the facts of the case.
We all know he has a problem because we're watching it every day.
Yeah, they have to be sitting there.
Like that, right?
I mean, I would if I were on their side.
I watched an interview with Joe Biden the other day.
I had to turn it off because I felt so bad for him.
I turned it off because I couldn't watch him just ramble.
And he had his wife sitting next to him, and he's trying to read from a notecard.
It is, it's six months from now is a long time in that progression.
You go through two emotions with it.
You feel sorry for him, but then you say he wants to be president of the United States and he wants to decide on war and peace.
And he wants to decide on the intricate questions that Donald Trump is now deciding on and how you open America and when you don't open America.
So it is not, it is not, it's not something that, it's not something that we can take lightly.
It's something that we have to completely take a look at.
It's going to have to be looked at very carefully.
It has to be aired out, vetted, discussed.
The American people have to make an...
An informed decision.
That's what we do as an electorate.
Every four years, make an informed decision.
Whether you like it or not, all the issues, you like both people, you don't like both, you make an informed decision.
This is part of that process.
And the American people deserve to know the truth and they need to deserve to get the answers.
And that's why whoever he picks as the VP nominee is going to be much more important.
Oh my gosh.
Do you think that's why some of them are volunteering for it?
I got a good chance on this one.
I got a good chance on this one.
Exactly.
It's a long one.
It's been great talking to you.
I miss you.
Yeah, me too.
I miss you too.
But maybe we'll be back together soon, right?
Absolutely.
Stay healthy, my friend.
Okay, we'll be talking.
Thank you.
That was Dave Bossie, and as you can see, this is a man with great political knowledge and wisdom, and God willing, it's going to be utilized for the right purpose.
And now we should take a short break.
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This is Rudy Giuliani and I'm back with you with Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
And today we have a very distinguished long term member of Congress and
very, very long term friend of mine, Peter King.
Peter, I believe, is the longest-serving Republican in the House of Representatives.
He's been there for his 14th term now.
He's been very, very active in many areas, but I think he's probably distinguished himself most in the area of homeland security, terrorism, crisis management, all of the big, horrible things that have happened to us.
Peter has been involved in trying to find out the answers to and trying to make improvements, so there's no better person to talk to about what's going on now than Peter King.
And also, his district and area is unfortunately one of the worst hit in America, which is the Long Island area of New York, right outside of New York City.
So, Peter, it's a pleasure to talk to you, and I see you're at home, and you've probably been at home for quite some time dealing with this, huh?
Yeah, Rudy.
I left Washington on March 13th, I guess it was, and I left my district office on March 18th.
And so I've been at home really since the afternoon of March 18th.
The only respite I get is I walk around the block a few times at night.
And that's basically it.
I did a few times go to some of the local merchants to see how they were doing.
I would stand out in the street and I'd yell into them.
Torello's Pizza is doing fine.
But again, it's a whole different environment.
From what I can tell, people are really complying, though, with the social distancing.
If I go for a walk at all, if I see anyone, they're usually walking 10, 15 feet apart from each other on the other side of the street.
So, but again, it's been rough in that the district that I represent has had a, in some
communities especially, have been very hard hit like Central Island, Brentwood, which
are basically low income, many Central Americans living there.
Many of them don't speak English.
There's a certain, again, you know, low income level.
And so, there have been testing sites set up in Brentwood and also on Wyandanche, which
is an African American community, which we know has been unduly hit.
And so we're trying to make it work.
But there's no doubt there are areas that are really suffering more than others.
And we have an obligation to reach out to them and help them.
I can understand an immigrant community not being as socially connected as it might be.
And I'm just thinking of where our ancestors would have been 50, 60 years ago, 70 years ago.
80 years ago, if something like this had happened, especially with the language problem.
So, again, everyone is working together.
There's been very little partisanship out here.
I know you see some of it at the national level.
Fortunately, I'm working closely with Laura Curran, who is the Democratic County Executive in Nassau County.
I work with Rishi Shafer, who is the Babylon supervisor in the town of Babylon out in Suffolk County.
Angie Coffin, who's a Republican in the town of Iceland.
and also Senator Monica Martinez, who represents the most heavily impacted areas.
There's been no politics there at all, and we're working very closely together.
That's wonderful to hear.
And therefore, you're probably getting a pretty good response.
But the numbers are pretty high compared to the national average.
Your numbers per capita are roughly the same as New York City.
Pretty close.
I think they are like in Nassau County.
At Nassau and Suffolk County, we're over 50,000 when it comes to people who tested positive.
We're up well over 2,000, actually over 3,000 as far as people who have died.
But the good news is really for the last four or five days, the number of fatalities is going down.
The number of hospital admissions is lower than the number being admitted, being released.
So, more people are being discharged than are being admitted.
And also, of those who are being tested, just a few weeks ago, it was like 50% of those tested were coming back positive.
Now, it's about 30%.
So, again, it's still an awful lot.
I mean, you know, like statewide or citywide, statewide, we consider it a victory now when only 500 people are dying.
At any other time, that would have been horrendous.
It still is for each of those families.
And those people, but compare where we were a week or two ago, and it seems to definitely be going in the right direction.
Do you see us now starting to move toward coming back into more normal society and more normal economy?
Schools opening, whatever, you know, think society opening up somewhat.
Yeah, and certainly I know in Nassau County, these are small steps, but they're important.
The golf courses are going to be reopened.
The marinas are going to be reopened.
And I know they're looking at small businesses to see which ones could be open.
Maybe this is my own preference because I need a haircut.
Me too.
Like my local barber, Eddie.
I mean, to me, if you had something where only one person was allowed in the barbershop at a time, or maybe two, and have them sitting far apart, and if you wore a mask when you're getting your hair cut, if the barber wore a mask, I think that could work.
Things like that, to get it started.
Because we're reaching a stage where you could end up having more people dying from the lockdown I mean, the number of suicides is going up.
Opioid abuse is going up.
Unfortunately, domestic violence is going up.
Child abuse is going up.
And you think of all the people who, because it's not an emergency, can't get their annual exam.
I mean, think of all the people, including you and others, who are diagnosed with prostate cancer through an exam, breast cancer, diabetes, blood pressure.
Most of these diseases don't have any signs early on, and they're picked up during an examination.
And so all these people now are not being examined, not being tested.
And so when everything does open up, we have to be really ready
to really get on slow to medical care or people would say you have ongoing
conditions, people who have to get a cancer checkup every three or four or five months.
Well, they can't do it now the way it is.
So we have to find a way to open up.
And it's not like an either or when people say, you just want to open up to bring business back.
No, I want to bring the whole country back.
And also realizing that it can be more of a health issue to stay closed.
And it's open up.
So we have to do it gradually. But that has to be our goal.
To open up as soon as we can without causing undue harm.
Yeah, I think that I mean, there's no question that there for every.
Action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, and one of the things we somewhat ignored in doing all this is the damage we were going to do to the very people you're talking about, the people that are locked in, people with emotional problems, people with health problems.
Every hospital is backed up with what is called elective surgery, but some of that elective surgery ends up, if it's not done, people die.
So we've got to get back on some kind of a normal Normal basis.
How do you think it's been handled at the national and at the state level generally?
Yeah, I think naturally, I mean, to be honest, the problem early on was the testing, and that wasn't the president's fault.
The CDC, the tests they come up with didn't work.
I just wish the president had said that earlier on.
But really, once this got started, once we hit March, the fact is, I think the president's done everything that he has to do.
We're trying to play catch up.
I mean, every state, every city, every county in the country, including the federal government, did not have enough inventory.
stockpiled, whether it's ventilators, masks, gowns, all of that.
And I think we are, again, moving as quickly as we can.
And the criticism people are making of President Trump, when you look at the numbers and they
say we are the highest country in the world for deaths, well, per capita, if you take
all of England and France and Italy and Spain and put them together, they have a lesser
population than we do and far more deaths than we have.
So, per capita, we are doing a good job.
And you can never say that it's very good when people are dying.
The fact is, I think it's as good as can be expected right now.
And what we have to do, though, planning toward the future is we have to bring our industrial base back from China.
I mean, I don't think any of us really took the time to realize that
such anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of pharmaceuticals in China,
medical gowns, masks, so much of the medical supplies.
So we're really at their mercy.
I got to talk to new hospitals last week.
We're trying to get more gallons in.
And the reason at that time for the shortfall was the gallons
of an order from China.
But China had decided to slow down on gallons and speed up on masks.
Well, we were at the mercy of what China was planning on doing.
And that's that's wrong.
There's no question that's where the virus comes from.
on Queens, depending on what China is going to do.
So we have to bring that back.
So let's go into the future.
That should be a real lesson learned.
Well, I think that the question that's going to remain is the role of China in this.
There's no question that's where the virus comes from.
There's no question now, it seems, that it escaped from a laboratory.
But now the questions are, was it deliberate or accidental?
Why did they not notify people of it?
And then why, once they found out about it, did they keep people kind of locked in in China, but allow a million five to travel the world and bring it to us?
Somebody has to answer those questions.
I mean, that's a very, very provocative group of questions that shows at a minimum China was negligent about our lives and safety.
Or maybe even worse than negligent.
Hard for people to believe, but China's a very, very different kind of country than ours.
It really is.
And you know, they want to play their role in the community of nations.
They are expanding economic power all over the world.
They're expanding into Europe, Latin America, militarily.
They're constructing artificial islands in The Pacific and Asia, they're moving on Taiwan, Japan, others, constantly with pressure.
Well, if they want to be part of the Community of Nations, they have to start acting like it.
Obviously, if this was unintentionally, they should be severed forever.
But even if it was an accident, to me, it's like criminal negligence.
If they didn't disclose that immediately, Then to me, they are responsible.
The blood is on their hands for every one of these deaths.
Because if they had told the world, and whether it's the WHO, which also has a lot to answer for, but other countries who wanted to send in doctors and scientists early on, and that was even after China didn't tell us right away.
But if they had told us back in November or December that this was happening, the whole world could have come together.
And you have the great minds, the great scientists and doctors who wouldn't be looking for a cover-up.
They'd be looking for a way to stop it. And that's where China is.
So even assuming it was done unintentionally, it came out of a lab, accidentally, that's terrible.
Even if it came out of the wet markets, that's so wrong if they didn't tell everyone right away.
And also, here's where the WHO, Taiwan, who is a neighbor of China, trying to consider as a part of
China, but Taiwan acting on its own, even though it's so close to mainland China,
They verbatim stopped it.
Whatever they did in Taiwan kept the virus from spreading into Taiwan.
And yet, China would not allow Taiwan to deal with the WHO to tell them what they had done.
And the WHO caved into that.
So to me, that is indefensible what they did there.
And even now, the fact that they suddenly find out that the death count in China has been understated by 50%, I would say it's probably 10 times more than that for what we know.
I mean, considering where it started, considering the density of population, So, the answer with China has to be a number of them, right?
Number one, we have to be more independent of China in the future.
For our critical needs, we can't be dependent on them the way we are.
I think probably we slid into that without realizing it.
And second, it kind of makes sense that Trump's wanting to redo these trade agreements, starting, you know, when he was running for president, seems like a very, very good idea.
They've been taking advantage of us for a very, very long time.
Yeah, and I think too many Americans were willing the fact that they thought we were getting certain products for a cheaper price, that, you know, it's better to let them get the best of us overall, because this will be cheaper, that will be cheap.
I think we have to realize that to me, it's going to be very difficult to deal with China.
I think the President's entirely right in trying to structure much Toughen trade agreements.
And we have to consider, after this, how much trade we're going to carry on at all.
I mean, I don't want to be in any way dependent on China for anything that we could need.
Anything that's even remotely important to us, we shouldn't be depending on China.
And so many other countries in the world we can deal with.
And I would hope that the free market countries and the democratic countries would find ways to work more closely together and not find themselves bound to China, you know, to make the quick buck.
It would be very surprising if it didn't change, since almost every nation on Earth has some dead people as a result of it.
Some of them a few, some of them a lot.
I mean, it's been quite a world attack.
Yeah, I mean, when you look at it, I don't know, it's 185 countries, whatever the number is, it keeps showing up every day.
And, you know, what they've suffered is just, you know, it's horrendous.
And again, when you look at England and Italy, and especially countries like Italy, which was caught really almost unawares, they were like the first European country to really get hit by it.
And whether or not it was because of the resorts up in Northern Italy, where Chinese travellers had been there, whether that caused it to spread, the fact is Italy was Hit hard early, and they're trying to open up now and come back.
They were the first ones really hit, and it's spread through Europe, it's over here, it's in Canada.
And also we have to look into Rudy, and I'm no scientist, I'm no doctor at all, but why it appears that what hit us on the East Coast is much worse than it hit California.
It hit Washington before us, it hit California before us, And our lockdown procedures were not that different from theirs.
And yet, again, Nestle County alone has more deaths than the entire state of California.
So we have to look into why it had such an impact.
I know we have subways here and obviously more density of housing, but still, that's a big number to account for.
Yeah, I mean, it really is a very, very big number.
It raises a lot of questions about, are there any differences in the virus that affected us?
Or are there any differences in the procedures?
And they started a little earlier than us, but not that much earlier.
So, I mean, that's going to be a very, very interesting question.
So one thing, you know, you and I had discussed before is most of our cases in New York and the Northeast seem to come from Europe.
The ones in the West Coast seem to come from Asia.
I'm wondering if there have been a mutation which caused the Eastern version to be more deadly than what hit the West Coast.
I don't know.
All of these things I think are really going to have to be looked at.
The main one that I think we have to get an answer on is, how involved was China in knowing just exactly what they were doing?
Seems hard to believe that they didn't know something about it, because they were deliberately working— they've been deliberately working on this virus for about 10 years.
They know it better than anyone.
It seems to me that that factory was a factory that had problems before.
There were complaints about that factory with material escaping from it.
So, there's a lot here for China to answer for, which makes it difficult to deal with them in the future.
It's certainly harder for the government to claim lack of knowledge.
You know, that's a police state.
They know what everyone is doing in China.
I can see in a country like the United States or Britain or whatever, that a mistake could happen early on and not be detected immediately.
But China, I mean, they know what every person is doing almost every minute of the day.
So it makes it to me less and less likely that the government could have been without knowledge.
So, no, they have a lot to explain.
This is not a conspiracy theory.
To me, any of the alternatives are bad.
There's no good alternative here for China.
So now, Pete, from your perspective as a senior member of Congress, why hasn't this turned into the same complete bipartisanship that you and I know we had after 9-11?
I mean, there is bipartisanship.
You are working very closely, as you pointed out.
I think Cuomo and Trump and Cuomo and the governor of California, they've all worked out pretty good relationships.
But what's happening in Washington?
It seems so bitter.
Pelosi seems as bitter at Trump as she's always been, even though we're in a national crisis.
Yeah.
First of all, I agree with you with Andrew Cuomo, President Trump.
In some ways, it's like professional wrestling.
They argue and they fight publicly, but then everything that Andrews asked for, President Trump has given him, and given him more than he asked for.
So that is cooperation, bipartisan cooperation.
I think part of it is the Democrats want to strengthen their hold in Congress.
And their base, their base, which is the one that they count on, hates President Trump.
So any indication that you're cooperating with him at all, any credit you give to him at all, I think Nancy Pelosi's afraid it's going to work against their candidates because their base will, again, will turn against them.
You know, if you ever take the time to look at some of the comments on Facebook, and I only do it to get some idea of what's out there in the wild part of the society, and the anger, the hostility on everything, I mean, no matter what the president does, That base hates him.
I think Nancy Pelosi feels, I think it's wrong, but she has to append it to that base.
So she has to cater to that base and then it works its way out.
But again, I think at the local level, it's working fine.
Not fine, but it's working good.
It really is.
I shouldn't say it's working fine.
Certainly on Long Island it is.
I haven't detected any partisanship.
But if Nancy Pelosi goes on a national TV show and says anything a goody about President Trump, her base will rebel.
They will turn on her and I think that she's making a mistake of allowing them.
And they turn on her and also turn on the Democratic Party.
They'll stay home.
They'll actually maybe, God knows what they'll do.
But no, they are petrified of their base.
I've seen it in Washington over the last two years, last year and a half, how that base has really a disproportionate impact on the party and what they can vote for, what they can't vote for.
And now it's really coming out on this.
And I think one of the reasons too why there's less Bipartisanship now, at a certain level, is everyone saw the horror of 9-11.
You saw the towers come down.
You saw the horror of it.
With this, you don't see it.
Unless you're in a hospital or unless you are a neighbor of someone who died, even though many more have died now than in 9-11, the horror of it is not there.
There's not the visual sights of burning towers and people running from the site and people being killed. This is like a silent death.
And all you see basically is these brave hospital workers in their gowns and masks
and everything else. But it doesn't have the same visual impact as it did, I think, of those
towers coming down and the fact that they came out of nowhere and you had almost 3,000 people
killed in a matter of hours.
Yeah, I could see that that was a more shocking event.
It's a foreign attack.
It's easily figured out who did it and why they did it.
Although now that we get the facts, it's pretty clear that this was a foreign attack, one way or the other, accidental or negligent.
Whatever mistakes were made domestically by anyone here, whether it's a Republican or a Democrat, it was just in reaction to what China did.
I have great sympathy for them because, you know, you and I have lived through this, and in a million years they never expected a virus like this.
That's why it's called the novel virus.
And the scientists who have described it to me tell me it's a very, very complex virus.
One of two, one of two of the most complex in the world.
So, all of a sudden we get hit with it, we got one month to respond.
You're just going to make mistakes if that's the case.
China is the one we should be angry at, and we should all be working together,
trying to help ourselves. And it just pains me that we're not getting complete cooperation in
Washington that we should be getting. But I guess that's the reason. The reason is
the political base becomes more important than what is good for the country, which is a shame.
And ironically, you see when the emphasis does turn toward China, your people in the media or
certain people in the Democratic Party saying this is all an attempt to divert attention away
from President Trump.
The one was willing to take the side in China in this.
Meanwhile, they went for two and a half, three years saying there was a conspiracy between the president and Russia when there's no evidence for that.
They said there was a Russian conspiracy.
Now, when there's obvious evidence of either criminal conduct or criminal negligence by China, Again, the people on the left are willing to blame President Trump rather than China for it.
So it's really, again, it's sad.
And hopefully, thankfully, there are enough common sense people.
And that starts to get us through.
But I really wish there was more of a unity at the national level with the national leaders.
Yeah, I wish there was, too.
And I think his defense of China is really quite deliberate, because I think the Obama-Biden administration was very, very soft on China.
You talk about the islands that China took over.
Biden was sent to negotiate and stop them from doing it and instead they went further.
Biden's son got a billion and a half dollars.
A lot of them have made money in China.
It could be really interesting to see, did Pelosi's family make money in China?
Biden's family made 1.5 billion.
That's a lot of money to make in a place.
Makes you a little bit sympathetic to them.
And you know I'm a former prosecutor, so maybe I just kind of think that way, Peter.
Well, again, you know, with less evidence than that, in fact, no evidence at all, For three years, they said that Donald Trump is a Russian agent.
I mean, that's horrific.
You were right in the middle of that, you know, being a lawyer for the President.
But I mean, to actually say the President of the United States is part of a Russian conspiracy when there's no evidence, and now when you do have, not evidence, not any reason to believe it, when you have clear evidence of China's conduct being either criminal or criminal negligence, the fact is that they're looking the other way does certainly raise issues.
Well, it's going to be very interesting, Peter.
And if you don't mind, I'm going to call on you for your wisdom.
People have great confidence in you because you're one of the few people that can see things from both sides.
And that's an art that's almost missing.
Congratulations, Peter.
Because I didn't know how you and Peter Ballone worked so closely together when you were married.
We grew up different, I guess, right?
I guess.
You take care of your beautiful family, too, all right?
You too.
Thank you, Rudy.
Bye now.
This has been great.
Terrifically great member of Congress, Peter King.
One of the very best.
One of the greatest, I think, records in Congress that anyone will ever have.
It was a great honor to talk to him.
Thank you very much.
It was fascinating being able to listen to both Pete King and Dave Bossie in the same set of interviews.
These are people that have years of experience in politics, and I think their judgments are judgments that have to be taken into very serious consideration.
Thank you very much.
This is Rudy Giuliani, and we'll be back with you very shortly with Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
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