Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Sunday that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump could have just been “exaggerating” when he said in 2005 he could “grab” women “by the pussy” and get away with it because he’s famous.
Voters shouldn’t trust what Trump says, at least when it comes to bragging about committing sexual assault, Giuliani implied.
“Talk and actions are two different things,” Giuliani said in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” “I don’t know how much he was exaggerating, I don’t know how much is true.”
“It was 10 or 12 years ago. He wasn’t at that time, you know, running for office, he wasn’t thinking of office. He’s gone through a very, very intensive process, as you know it is, in running for president,” Giuliani said. “He understands the responsibility is on his shoulders now, which wasn’t there back then.”
On CNN, Giuliani said that he didn’t know if Trump “did it to anyone.” (”It” here, remember, is committing sexual assault.)
“This is talk,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani said that a lot of men talk the way Trump did, and that neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton should “throw stones” because they have “both sinned.” Giuliani said Trump “feels terrible about it,” but perhaps not terrible enough to stop him from lashing out at Clinton over her husband’s infidelities.
“I believe he will not bring up Bill Clinton’s personal life,” Giuliani said, but added that Trump might talk about how Hillary Clinton had responded to her husband’s infidelities in the 1990s.
Giuliani admitted on ABC’s “This Week” that what Trump was talking about in 2005 would have been sexual assault.
“Whether it happened or not, I don’t know,” he said. “I do know there’s a tendency on the part of some men at different times to exaggerate things like this, and I’m not in any way trying to excuse it or condone it.”
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