GLENN BECK PROGRAM
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

BECK: Welcome to the program, Mayor Rudy Giuliani. How are you, sir?

GIULIANI: How are you, Glenn? Nice to talk to you again.

BECK: Last night in the debate, did you see the debate? Did you watch it?

GIULIANI: I did. I watched it live and then my wife and I watched it afterward. We got it in reverse order but we saw the whole thing.

BECK: Did you watch with your mouth open thinking, I don't even know what that driver's license even means from Hillary Clinton.

GIULIANI: You know, she was being attacked all night for taking different positions from different audiences and then by the end of the night she took different positions in front of the same audience. It was pretty amazing. In politics I had never quite seen that before. I know there are some politicians like Hillary, they say different things to different people, they use different accents if they are in different parts of the country. I'm used to that about her now.

GOP Candidate Rudy Giuliani

BECK: Isn't that -- 

GIULIANI: I had never seen it happen all in one place in one minute. And Glenn, this is not a tough issue.

BECK: Okay, tell me the answer to this issue.

GIULIANI: The answer is no. All -- if you believe the opposite, the answer is yes. Obama gave the answer yes. Okay, I disagree with that, think it's a big mistake. I respect the man for having a position. My answer to it is no, of course you don't give out driver's license to illegals. Among other things it will make it even more difficult to deal with all the fraud, all the forgery that's going on.

BECK: I've talked to several county clerks and they say they won't issue them in New York. So we'll have the locals going against the state, which I don't even know if it agrees or disagrees with the Fed. I mean, how do you -- 

GIULIANI: Well, I'm going to be campaigning for Republican candidates today in New York and then I'm headed off to New Hampshire and this is a big issue here. It's really hurt governor Spitzer because of what you're say. I mean, people see this as inherently irresponsible. But again it's not one of those difficult issues of war and peace and diplomacy that you often hide behind to have two or three different positions. This one, you either know the answer to this, it's yes or no and then we can debate it.

BECK: So if you were standing -- let me rephrase this. If you were laying there in bed with your wife and you were watching the debate, what were you screaming out at your television last night when she -- 

GIULIANI: I was actually screaming out, you know, mention me some more. I mean, I thought I actually had won the debate when it was over until she knocked herself out. I thought I got mentioned more often than anyone. I didn't make any mistakes last night during the debate.

BECK: Very good.

GIULIANI: All they did was mention me. And I didn't say that I saw a UFO, right?

BECK: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Did you hear when she said about, I want to reduce the budget and the spending of this defense department? I'm thinking, well, that's not a good idea. That's not what we should be doing right now.

GIULIANI: There's been a pattern here, and it may be that her opponent jumping on her rattled her. It could be that Russert rattles her. I can't tell.

BECK: Did you see what she said about Russert, her campaign?

GIULIANI: I don't get it. Look, I've been through some tough debates with Chris Matthews who can ask really difficult questions and Chris Wallace who asks difficult questions and Brit Hume and I mean, these people all ask difficult questions. That's what they're supposed to do.

BECK: Yeah, Tim Russert is a fair individual.

GIULIANI: And he gave her the chance to explain. In reality she has no one here to blame but herself. The most damaging answer she gave last night was unprovoked and she gave it by taking two different positions on the same thing within one minute of each other.

BECK: I keep hearing from, you know, reading in paper after paper after paper, you are the only guy that could beat Hillary Clinton. I think the only guy that maybe Hillary Clinton before that is Hillary Clinton, but Obama seemed to come on strong last night. How would you evaluate Barrack Obama and his chance of being the Democratic, you know, -- 

GIULIANI: He had announced a day or so earlier that he was going to come after Hillary more. After the results that he got last night, it's the right strategy. Gee, they didn't go after her really all that hard and there was -- there's a lot -- Hillary displayed a tremendous amount of confusion even before that. I mean, she was asked the question about the documents that she and Bill were trying to conceal, about her being first lady, right?

BECK: Yeah.

GIULIANI: She runs on that experience all the time. During that debate last night, she used the word "We" over and over again. And when she's talking about we, she's talking about her and Bill Clinton and what they supposedly did together at the White House.

BECK: Yeah.

GIULIANI: And now they are trying to conceal all her papers in the White House. He's written a specific letter trying to conceal it until 2012. She couldn't answer that question, either.

BECK: I couldn't believe that Barrack Obama said this is the most secret presidency we have ever had, referring to Bush, and I thought to myself, well, hang on just a second. I mean, we've got Sandy Berger sneaking documents out in his underpants.

GIULIANI: And he's an advisor, as far as I know, to Hillary Clinton.

BECK: Why didn't anybody address that?

GIULIANI: Well, you know, I honestly thought that they went easier on her certainly than we do at a Republican debate. I think there are certain options to attack her too frontally. Even the moderators who asked her difficult questions, they wanted a different answer and her answer would wander off to two or three ambiguities. I think it might have been the pressure that Obama and Edwards put a lot of pressure on her, too.

BECK: Well, Mr. Giuliani, it's always great to have you on the program. You know, the one thing that my audience relentlessly is all over you on is guns, and I would love to have an opportunity sometime in the future to actually have a -- 

GIULIANI: Guns, there's not much room for disagreement. I mean, I uphold the Second Amendment, I agree with it. You have an individual right to bear arms.

BECK: You know what I think it is? I think it's the pivot point. It's the point where you said you changed since 9/11. I'd like to hear, you know, some -- 

GIULIANI: It's not just since 9/11. I mean, things about me changed since September 11th, but the reality is my view is that the federal government should leave it to the state and local government and decide on these gun issues. There's to one policy that fits the whole country. States should decide. The emphasis should be on criminal enforcement like big mandatory minimum sentences for people who commit crimes with guns. And then the states should have some leeway. In New York you might want to do one thing, in Texas you might want to do another. But every state has to respect ultimately the Second Amendment. If they go too far like the District of Columbia did in the Parker decision, it's unconstitutional.

BECK: I have to tell you, you know, the thing that came out of the debates last night is you couldn't even understand the stance of Hillary Clinton. You don't even know what she's talking about half the time because -- 

GIULIANI: You look at this license issue. I'm against licenses for illegals. Obama is for licenses for illegals. Hillary is on both sides of it. That's as simple as that. And how about two debates ago Russert asked her about her position on Iran which in many ways, you better have a position on Iran. And all she did was attack my position.

BECK: You said that the Democrats are going to change their position on Iran.

GIULIANI: I think, I think the Democrats are going to have to change their position on Iraq on the following statement.

BECK: Oh, on Iraq.

GIULIANI: Yeah, on the following statement. If you were asked this during the debate, long term was it the right decision to take out Saddam Hussein or not. Now, all these Democrats thought it was the right decision back when President Bush made it. They have now said all of them admit it's a mistake to have taken out Saddam Hussein. I think as conditions in Iran, and Iran moves more toward being a nuclear power, I think it's going to be pretty obvious that it was very, very sensible to take out Saddam because he would be doing exactly that right now and it would compound our problems. We would be dealing now with two countries, both of which possess wealth that were moving toward becoming nuclear powers and they would be in competition with each other and it would ignite an arms race in the Middle East that would be very significant.

BECK: Rudy Giuliani, thank you very much. We'll talk to you again, sir. 

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