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First Read is an analysis of the day's political news, from the NBC News political unit. First Read is updated throughout the day, so check back often.

Chuck Todd, NBC Political Director

Mark Murray, NBC Deputy Political Director

Domenico Montanaro, NBC Political Researcher



Another dent in Rudy's 9/11 image?

Posted: Friday, August 17, 2007 11:41 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: ,

From NBC's Mark Murray
Busted? A front-page New York Times story notes that on at least three occasions, Giuliani -- responding to accusations that New York City failed to protect the health of Ground Zero workers -- has boasted that he faced similar risks himself.

VIDEO: NBC's Political Director Chuck Todd offers his first Read on Giuliani's Ground Zero claims.

But: "A complete record of Mr. Giuliani’s exposure to the site is not available for the chaotic six days after the attack, when he was a frequent visitor. But an exhaustively detailed account from his mayoral archive, revised after the events to account for last-minute changes on scheduled stops, does exist for the period of Sept. 17 to Dec. 16, 2001. It shows he was there for a total of 29 hours in those three months, often for short periods or to visit locations adjacent to the rubble. In that same period, many rescue and recovery workers put in daily 12-hour shifts."

"Asked to reconcile what the records show with Mr. Giuliani’s public comments about the extent of his exposure to the site, his campaign provided a written statement from Joseph J. Lhota, a former deputy mayor. 'Hundreds of thousands of people around the country and the world saw Rudy Giuliani’s steadfast and determined leadership firsthand at a time when we needed it most,' the statement said. 'In the days surrounding September 11th, the safety and health of all those involved in the search and recovery efforts was Mayor Giuliani’s No. 1 one priority. Make no mistake, it is the very same concern Mayor Giuliani continues to express today when it comes to all those who have made tremendous sacrifices at ground zero.'"

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Anybody who works for a living and isn't a CEO or stockholder:  this guy is NOT in your corner.  He is a one trick pony - he stood around for photo ops at ground zero, that's all he has to run on.  If he can't convince New Yorkers to vote for him, why would you let this coroporate tool fool you?
Does anyone have Karl Rove's phone number ?
Rudy's "steadfast and determined leadership"? That was what he was elected to do - to be a leader - so what's the point? And he sure as hell as should have done his job more effectivelyafter 9/11  than he did, according to the firefighters there.
Rudy is another lying george bush!
lier, lier pants on fire!
What, another liar?  Sounds like a good, solid Republican values kind of guy to me!
Politicians and Photo Opportunities: When will these guys learn that shaking hands and kissing babies does not make a good leader? I have even read where some politicians have towels and sanitizer so they can clean their hands after every handshake. To bad they can not sanitize their public records with a wash cloth.
Is anyone surprised that rudy is a liar?
I still do not know why Guliani is called a 'hero' for doing his job as a Mayor.

Does it mean that other Mayors do not do what they are supposed to do?

Provides Leadership - this story pokes more than a few holes in that theory

Provides Experience - he was a mayor for goodness sakes.

Is this the guy the GOP is counting on to defeat a United States Senator next year?

Give me a break.
Give Hope a second chance!!!
Time for the Republicans to run Rumsfeld.
Actually, he spent all that time with his new girlfriend, Amy Fisher !!

NEWSFLASH !!
Joey Buttoafuocco endorses Fred Thompson !!
'I like his style' says Joey
I really wish he sticks around so we can see all those pictures of him dressed in drag over and over. Nothing like a man dressing in drag to turn off a huge percentage of the voting males in this country. However, the 30% voting for him will be republican males who can relate to crossdressing.
Remember that this is the guy who opted NOT to be part of the 9/11 commission so that he could go out and get rich giving speeches about leadership.

30 hours in 3 months IS NOT THE SAME as 30 hours in 3 days.  By the time primary season is over he'll be claiming to have pulled people out of the WTC himself as the towers were coming down.
Oh man. Steadfast leadership my ass. So much has been said and written about the heroics of Bush, Pataki, and Giuliani during this period. I worked in NYC at the time, and vividly remember everything about 9/11 and the days thereafter. I remember Bush's motorcade roaring down 42nd Street a few days after the event. Dozens of police cars and cycles ahead of him, he himself barely sticking two fingers out of a tinted window to make a vistory sign, and then a stripped down van carrying numerous sharpshooters pointing their weapons in different directions following closely behind. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.

Pataki was relegated to the role of validating Giuliani's actions.

And Giuliani did strike a chord with a terrified city. But any mayor could have done so with a minimum of verbal skill and a good PR staff. Within weeks, however, his true concern for New York was revealed - getting folks to come back into NYC for shopping, dinner, and theater. All this before anyone was publicly speaking about Manhattan's air quality or lack thereof, all this despite incidents, real and imagined, that occurred after 9/11, be they anthrax letters in the mail system, bombing plots, or more insidious assaults on the people of NYC. We were told the terrorists should not be allowed to change our way of life. We were also told that the danger was real. Come spend your money, we will keep you afraid because it serves our purposes. How both messages worked at the same time is beyond me.

Bush is toast, Pataki is history. Giulini was a mayor with an oratorical gift who milked the situation for his political advantage. And for this he should be rewarded with the presidency?
BUSTED!
Rudy, hero my a$$
When a politician brags about serving his country,city or state you can be sure that he was the one being served. I believe the last politician who left Washington with less money than he went there with was Harry Truman.
Bush and Rudy have about worn out that pile of rubble campaigning on it.
......first thing you must learn to be an active GOPer is to lie with a straight face.....rotten Rudy has it down pat!!
Giuliani not only slept with his own family member but married his own cousin as his first wife. He is now calling himself a hero by exploiting 911 victims, while he did nothing to prevent 911 and did nothing to make us safe afterward except making blood money. Giuliani is being forced on us because he has so much friends in the media. He is a fraud.
If we want a bad cop as president, Rudy is our boy.  Read up on his pre-mayoral career.  Brave, courageous and bold (Wyatt Earp).
I have always thought it would be justice for the anally-challenged republican party to have a president in the white house who slept on the floor of his gay friends' apartment as mayor while he was openly having and affair with someone other than his wife while his wife slept in Gracie Mansion with the kids who hated Rudy... think of what he could do in the white house!  I say, let Rudy run against any democrat and watch the republican Titanic slip under the water.
That goes to show the kind of stock the GOP are providing. They have raised a generation of out of touch ideologs on the myths of Reagan and now they are looking toward hypocritical egocentrists (ex Democrats/Nixon era politicians) as leaders. Romney will certainly grab the nomination and be defeated by his own rhetoric as well.
Wow. Twenty-five responses and all scathingly negative. Who would have thought? I love the smell of Giulianiphobics. It smells like...victory.

When one encounters such collective rampant amygdala-driven angst it's almost a certainty that such fears will bring about the very thing the fear attempts to assuage.

Have fun storming the castle.
I'm not sure which would be worse about Giuliani; his incompetance or his borderline fascist views on personal rights and police powers.
The mainstream media is giving Giuliani a pass on his rotten record on family value while making other candidates family issues a fair game. Can somebody scream the words "Double Standard". Giuliani was too busy cheating on his second wife to care about 911 victims.
Another false Republican idol made of clay.
As I have traveled around the country this summer, I have found a strange new unity among Americans to displace the anger and division of the past several years.  
Bush is written off, Cheney is perceived as an embarrassment, at best, and Of course, now Rasputin himself has relocated to an undisclosed location due to having soiled the Oval office carpet once too often. The war is as popular as Lyme disease.
Everyone seems ready for this gruesome chapter of American history to be over.
The Democratic party has never had such an opportunity to control the whole deal for a while.
Republicans ain't got nobody.  Rudy will be as strong a national candidate as McGovern in'72.  Mitt is the Bob Dole of the early 21st century. McCain already has a down payment on a unit in a retirement community in Arizona with a move-in date of January 2009.
If Democrats can just hold together during an election without committing hari-chiri for the umpteenth time, it is already all over.  Nobody, except died in the wool Democrats, really likes Democrats, but they are not republicans and not the party of the foul Bush--so they have a free kick in 2008.
In the election of 1980 the politically brilliant (tongue lodged in cheek) NOW ran a campaign called ABC, Anybody But Carter. Talk about stupid.  Enough said on that historical chestnut.
Now we have the Sierras of the political arena who share a passionate distaste for Bushco with the rest of the sane world, nonetheless opening the door wide for a Crazy Rudy or Mental Midget Mitt as they rant about Clinton.
Clinton is just about what everybody thinks she is, one way or another.  Complex and wily personality.  Yet, my dear Democratic brothers and sisters, if she gets the nomination, even if she steals it, vote for her.  Vote for her.  
Most of us would prefer someone else on the basis of purity or whatever, but she is one tough politician who can kick major ass.  It is our best chance to see Bush, Cheney, Rove, et al, in the docket, maybe even in a low security vacation venue.
An old monk friend of mine told me this summer: "The best abbots are not the holy ones, not the pious ones, but the smart ones.  Give me a smart one anytime."
Maybe there is something to it.

David, thank you for the Youtube clips.  As a New York City resident I am no fan of Rudy's, but it is refreshing to hear the thoughtful, sensible view of immigration that he held back in 1996.  What a pity that to run for office Republicans have to morph into narrow-minded blowhards.
Giuliani has a new ghoul friend?
Wow, so much hatred.. NYC probably would have done  much better if they would have had New Orleans mayor Nagin(not sure of spelling)during 9/11. Although New Orleans had about a week to prepare. Im from the center of the country Oklahoma. I know the people of New York were a great help to us when the Fed building was blown up. Not anyone could have delt w/911. Read Atlas Shrugged!!!!
A good leader knows where to lead those who choose to follow.  I don't choose to follow someone who thinks another tax cut will solve the nation's health care crisis or who thinks the best way to take on Al-Quida is by building more submarines!
Where would Rudy be if it was not for 9-11.  Do really want more fear tactics like we had the past 6 yrs - Like Michelle Obama said I am just so tired of everything wrapped in fear.
I am not a big Rudy fan, but in his defense, I really HATE when people scream he did nothing to prepare for 9/11.
Could anyone have imagined such a tragedy before it happened?
Our federal government wasn't prepared either , NO ONE was , this was an unimaginable tragedy and its easy to be a Monday morning quarterback,
he deserve a lot of credit for claming the city AFTER it happened, and managing it AFTER it happened , he took the situation in his hands immediately and helped calm a nation,
Even the angry 9-11 relatives are ONLY angry because of a few mistakes he made months after the tragedy, whilst it in process they were not angry , they admired him at the time for his strength, when reality set in that a loved one has perished you started looking who to blame, most blame the Killer some found others to blame!


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