As Donald Trump is already busy blaming the refs before he’s even lost the game, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani is joining him in his side-line rant, re-opening the history books and claiming that he lost the 1989 mayoral race because of voter fraud.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union”, Giuliani raised the specter of stolen votes in next month’s presidential election by referring to his own experience.
“When I ran for mayor of New York City the first time, some people voted eight and 10 times. And the second time, I had -- I had firefighters and police officers outside checking on the buses, so we take down the number of the bus. The bus had voted 10 times. And then we wouldn't let the bus vote again,’’ Giuliani told host Jake Tapper.
This isn’t the first time Giuliani blamed his 47,000-vote loss to David Dinkins on cheating but it’s bubbled back up to the top of the news because of Trump’s persistent attacks on the integrity of the nation’s voting system.
Giuliani is all but endorsing Trump’s call on his volunteers to watch polls at voting sites in Democratic areas, claiming that because of his own campaign’s vigilance in 1993, he was able to reduce the cheating to just 25,000 votes that year, helping him defeat the incumbent mayor.
“Dead people generally vote for Democrats, rather than Republicans,’’ Giuliani added.
But ask the experts and you’ll find that Giuliani’s claims are about a valid as Trump talking about seeing “thousands and thousands of people” celebrating in New Jersey after the 9/11 attacks.
While there have certainly been cases of voting fraud throughout the country’s past, there’s just no evidence to support Giuliani’s claim that he lost the 1989 election because of more than 47,000 fake votes.
Trump’s attempts to attack America’s system by saying it’s rigged against him would be laughable except that people who should know better – like Giuliani – are just cheering him along.
Bob Hardt