What Can We Expect From the RNC? Rudy Giuliani Weighs in

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity & Colmes," September 2, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: And welcome back to "Hannity & Colmes", coming to you live from the Republican National Convention. A busy night on tap tonight as we're going to be hearing from President Bush, Fred Thompson, and Senator Joe Lieberman.

McCain's running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, will be speaking tomorrow night. And make sure you tune into the FOX News Channel for that coverage.

And with us is former presidential candidate, former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who will be a keynote speaker at this convention later in the week.

You — you were going to speak tonight? What happened? Why did you get.

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NEW YORK MAYOR: Moved it to tomorrow night. I think with all the backup and — so I'll be on tomorrow night at 9:00.

• Video: Watch Sean and Alan's interview with Rudy Giuliani

COLMES: You're still a key note, right?

GIULIANI: Right.

COLMES: Is that — OK.

GIULIANI: Yes, yes, yes. I got it all done.

COLMES: Do you want give a little preview of.

GIULIANI: Sure, let me get started right now.

COLMES: Start now, you can finish up right behind us on the stage tomorrow.

GIULIANI: No, it's all prepared, it's been changed a few times. We may have to change it one or two times for tomorrow.

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COLMES: This is a McCain tie, I see you're wearing.

GIULIANI: Yes, I actually — I was actually in a restaurant, and I saw someone with it, and I admired it, and they gave it to me. And I gave them my tie.

COLMES: OK. The question that I — is being asked, I don't think it's so much about Sarah Palin. I think it's about the vetting process that John McCain went to, that he apparently chose her at the last minute, didn't have a team in Alaska, didn't go to the FBI.

The FBI says they never vetted her even though it was claimed by the McCain team that they did. They never sent a team to Alaska until the day before. They never looked at the public — they never looked at the newspaper. Never talked to people.

GIULIANI: OK. Do you got a question there some place?

COLMES: Yes, yes.

GIULIANI: What is the question?

COLMES: What — I mean, he's got to answer for the vetting process, is he not?

GIULIANI: Sure, he does. He's got to answer for it and he's going to answer it really well. He selected one of the most successful governors in the United States of America, the single most popular governor in the United States, one who's reduced taxed, reduced government spending, actually brought about energy independence, stood up to the oil companies, stood up to Republican corrupt politicians.

You Democrats should be ecstatic with her. This is a Republican who stood up to other Republicans and said, I'm not going to take any corruption in my state. This is a very independent woman.

COLMES: She was a supporter of Ted Stevens until recently. And she actually was part of her earlier committee. She supported the bridge to nowhere.

GIULIANI: She didn't know.

COLMES: . would get the funding for it. And she flip-flopped on that.

GIULIANI: Well, then she found. I mean she found out what was going on.

COLMES: (INAUDIBLE)

GIULIANI: She found out what was going on, and she found out what was at stake and she stood up to Republicans. It's exactly what you don't have on your side.

Barack Obama was in Chicago for how many years? When did he ever expose any corruption? Ever?

COLMES: First of all, he passed one of the strongest ethics bills in the Senate.

GIULIANI: What did he ever.

COLMES: And he — wait a minute. He was acknowledged.

GIULIANI: Alan, Alan.

COLMES: . in one of his big accomplishments as a legislator is — was one of the ethics legislation.

GIULIANI: He never exposed any corruption in the Democratic Party in Chicago which, I imagine, is because he's just not observing.

COLMES: Oh he's not, I'm sure of it.

GIULIANI: Or there is none.

COLMES: He did a number of things on health care. He keeps getting diminished, called a community organizer. He's getting — diminished his record.

GIULIANI: Exactly. Exactly.

COLMES: He'd had 12 years as legislator and all the other things he's done.

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: All right, Mr. Mayor, let me ask you a question.

GIULIANI: Exactly what does a community organizer do? I mean I'm trying to figure that out.

COLMES: That was one of his many accomplishments.

GIULIANI: Ah, being a community organizer.

HANNITY: Mr. Mayor.

COLMES: Many people who vote involved in the political process.

HANNITY: If there was — excuse me, Alan. If there was any vetting that should have gone on, here's Barack Obama, has zero — his claim to fame is he was a community organizer. He's never made an executive decision.

GIULIANI: She begins — she begins with more executive experience than the entire ticket combined. She had that experience the first day she was mayor. The second day she had twice as much experience as they've ever had.

They've never run a city, never run a state, never administered a budget, never had responsibility for making decision, and any time Barack Obama has to make a decision, it takes about three days to get it right.

HANNITY: It's — well, and he went for somebody to shore up his very weak foreign policy credentials in Joe Biden. Supposedly, Joe Biden agreed with John McCain on the issue of Iraq.

GIULIANI: Right.

HANNITY: But it seems that Barack Obama — the one decision he claims to fame as a community organizer, those housing projects they built went bankrupt, they're boarded up, and nobody can live in them.

GIULIANI: Did he do that as a community organizer? I don't remember.

HANNITY: By the way, what is a community organizer?

GIULIANI: I'm working on that. I'm trying to figure out what that is. I know what a governor is.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: I know what a mayor is.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: I know what a city council member is. I don't know what a community organizer is.

HANNITY: But the job of a president is to make decisions.

GIULIANI: Right.

HANNITY: And I — has he ever made a million-dollar decision? Has he ever made a life or death decision?

GIULIANI: When he makes decisions, it takes a long time.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: On Georgia, he first set up a moral equivalency between Russia and Georgia. He then said let's give it to the United Nations until they figured out they have — Russia has veto power. It took him three days to get to the right decision.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: So I think that there's a difference here in judgment, a difference in experience, and I think that he got away with no experience. And all of the sudden we have a woman on the ticket, and her whole record is being attacked in a way that his never was.

HANNITY: Well — if we're going to have this debate about experience, I'll put the number two, Sarah Palin's experience as an executive against Barack Obama, the community organizer, who voted present and never accomplished a single thing of significance in the Senate, against her.

I mean this is laughable to me.

GIULIANI: The reality is that we have our ticket in the right order.

HANNITY: That's right.

GIULIANI: The person with experience — most experience, is number one.

HANNITY: Right.

GIULIANI: The younger person, who's the next generation, is number two. They have a person with no experience, number one, and they have a person number two that has got a lot of experience, but on foreign policy.

Tell me how often has Joe Biden been right? He opposed Ronald Reagan in the struggles Ronald Reagan had against the Soviet Union.

HANNITY: Soviet Union.

GIULIANI: He was hanging on to (INAUDIBLE) when everybody else had rejected it.

HANNITY: Against Kuwait.

GIULIANI: He voted against the Persian Gulf War and he voted against the surge.

HANNITY: Right.

GIULIANI: The surge which has proven to be successful. So Joe has a record, but he's got a record of being consistently wrong on these major issues.

HANNITY: Let me talk about what I have declared — I think we'll look back in 2008 as the year journalism died. I was asking this to Dick Morris.

Sarah Palin has been now in the national spotlight for five days.

GIULIANI: Right. Right.

HANNITY: She has had more questions. Her 17-year-old daughter — there have been more questions raised about her.

GIULIANI: Outrageous.

HANNITY: . than about Barack Obama's relationship, his speech — the speeches that he gives, his Woods Foundation that he sat on with an unrepentant terrorist that bombed the Pentagon and the Capitol.

What has happened to the media in this country?

GIULIANI: Yes, well — there really — there really should be a sense of decency.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: . about leaving children out.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: I mean what the — what Sarah Palin's family has gone through.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: . is something a lot of American families go through, except they want to go through it, you know, quietly and handling it decently, and handling it as well as you can handle it. And they should be left alone.

HANNITY: What do you make of the fact that for 19 months he's not been asked, why did you give speeches with, why did you speak political support from, why did you sit on a board with an unrepentant terrorist?

GIULIANI: Well, I don't know — I don't know why he wasn't asked that. I know that Sarah Palin is being taken over the coals over issues that should not be part of the public debate.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: And I don't know what it's about. I don't know why. It may be that Republicans are treated differently than Democrats. I'm not sure.

HANNITY: Tomorrow night, quick preview? Is it going to be a hard- hitting speech?

COLMES: He wouldn't tell me. Maybe he'll tell you.

GIULIANI: What do you think?

HANNITY: It's going to — I think it's going to be hard-hitting. I've been friends with you for too long.

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