PHILADELPHIA – Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that President Obama should face criticism for interfering in foreign elections, as long as Democrats are criticizing Donald Trump for asking Russia to play a role in the U.S. election by helping to find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.
Giuliani reminded reporters outside the Democratic convention in Philadelphia that Obama worked to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the key U.S. ally conducted its election last spring.
“His aides were over there. His pollsters were over there. His fundraisers were giving money to the opposition. He was doing everything he could to defeat Bibi Netanyahu,” Giuliani said. “So it’s a little bit disingenuous for us to get all upset that a foreign power is interfering in our election when President Obama interfered directly in the election regarding Bibi Netanyahu.”
Despite noting that “foreign powers should not be intervening in U.S. elections,” Giuliani said “the reality of politics” is that they do, and “sometimes we intervene in their elections.”
“In an idealistic world, the reality is that foreign powers should stay the heck out of our election. We should stay out of their elections,” he said.
Giuliani’s comments come as FBI officials are investigating whether the Russian government played a role in the hacking and subsequent leak of email exchanges between officials at the Democratic National Committee.
Asked about Russia’s possible involvement on Wednesday, Trump said that if the country was in fact behind the email hack, they should give the thousands of Clinton emails back to the U.S., since Clinton never turned them over to the government herself.
“Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.
The Clinton campaign has since accused the Republican presidential nominee of encouraging “a foreign power to conduct espionage” and endorsing their possible interference in the current election.
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate slammed Democrats for “singularly focusing on who might be behind [the DNC email hack]” instead of addressing the controversial content of the emails themselves.
