“We’ve already explained it”
Friday, November 30th, 2007That was Rudy Giuliani’s response to question concerning the $400,000 spent in taxpayer dollars to maintain his extramarital affair with Judith Nathan while married to Donna Hanover. We told Rudy was going to have a bad day in South Carolina earlier. We didn’t know it was going to be this ugly.
MSNBC Reports:
Giuliani refused to take questions here today about allegations that travel expenses were picked up obscure city offices when he was mayor of New York City.
“We’ve already explained it,” he said, walking past reporters after a town hall meeting.
Giuliani, who is normally friendly to reporters, bristled past them, and campaign staffers were unusually physical in keeping the press away. Several campaign aides told campaign reporters to return to the press area, and some of his security detail manhandled reporters. On other occasions, reporters have been free to video Giuliani as he is shaking hands and signing autographs after events, and he often informally takes questions from reporters.
Jonathan Martin at the Politico examines how the Giuliani campaign is handling this situation poorly. He says:
[Rudy] responds by attacking the messenger — saying on CBS that Ben Smith’s story amounted to a “dirty trick” — and ignoring the fact that his campaign could have explained why they billed the charges the way they did before the story was written.
… [In] a statement, Politico editor-in-chief John Harris said: “We gave the Giuliani campaign ample opportunity to dispute the story or comment on our reporting before publishing and they did not do so. Since the story ran, we have not heard from the campaign disputing any substantive aspect of the story.”
While there are many that questions that remain unanswered, the one I would like to know is how pissed is the pool of reporters in S.C. looking for the first stab at asking Rudy about this issue.
