Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared on three news talk shows on Sunday to defend President Donald Trump in light of unflattering revelations from special counsel Robert Mueller's report on the Trump-Russia scandal.
During an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Giuliani argued that "there's nothing wrong with taking information from Russians," according to CNN. When host Jake Tapper asked Giuliani if he would have taken information from a foreign country, Giuliani admitted "I probably wouldn't" but added "I wasn't asked. I would have advised, just out of excess of caution, don't do it."
The lawyer also defended the president during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace, according to Fox News. The former New York City mayor argued that Trump had had "very good reasons to fire" Mueller only one week into the special counsel's investigation and asked the audience, "When did Mueller become God?" Giuliani insisted that, when it came to the possibility of Trump firing Mueller, "if he had fired him, there wouldn’t have been an obstruction. So as long as he was replaced by somebody, which he would have been, and there were good reasons — arguable reasons."
At the same time, Giuliani told Wallace said that the Trump administration felt no need to issue a counter-report because "we think the public debate is playing out about as well as it can -- why confuse it?"
Giuliani also defended the president during an appearance NBC's "Meet the Press."
“That entire report, and the way you just presented it, is all from the point of, 'Let's see if we can hang Donald Trump,'” Giuliani said on "Meet the Press," according to Politico.
"Go to Page 2 of the obstruction thing. The president's got to prove he's innocent. They have to be convinced that he didn't do it. When is that the standard ever in America? How can you prove a negative?"
Giuliani actually hinted at the idea that there would be conclusions in Mueller's report which hinted at obstruction during an appearance on CNN last month. When speaking with host Wolf Blitzer, Giuliani argued that "what you’re going to find out with obstruction is — this is a matter of interpretation. You know all the facts about obstruction. You can interpret them several different ways, which is why it was a difficult question. A legal question."
The former New York City mayor has also been on the receiving end of some unflattering rumors of his own. After a number of public appearances in which he was perceived as hurting the president's image, there were reports that the president was privately unhappy with Giuliani.
"We’ve known each other for 30 years. And I haven’t heard him complain," Giuliani told Politico when asked about those reports in January. "And nobody in the White House would complain to me. They just do it behind my back." Giuliani also defended his understanding of the details of the case and claimed that "people don’t understand, or people don’t want to understand, alternative arguing, which is what you do in court all the time. People who want to understand it, do."
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