Donald Trump should drop out of the next two presidential debates – unless he gets a promise that the moderator will stick to the sidelines, top Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani says.
Monday night moderator Lester Holt overstepped his bounds and got his own facts wrong when he called out Trump on five occasions, the former New York mayor said.
Speaking to reporters in the spin room post-debate, Giuliani says he was particularly irked that Holt had questioned Trump on his support for the controversial "stop and frisk" police policy that Giuliani had championed as mayor. (Holt said it had been ruled “unconstitutional; Giuliani disputes that. In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that New York’s stop and frisk policy was unconstitutional because it of its “indirect racial profiling” of blacks and Latinos.)
"If I were Donald Trump I wouldn’t participate in another debate unless I was promised that the journalist would act like a journalist and not an incorrect, ignorant fact checker," Giuliani said.
He accused Holt of interfering "worse than Candy Crowley," – the former CNN debate moderator who was assailed by conservatives for correcting Mitt Romney during a 2012 debate. Giuliani’s complaints come as the role of the moderator has been hotly debated, with Clinton’s campaign pushing for a moderator who calls the candidates on falsehoods.
But Giuliani insisted that Holt only checked Trump’s statements: "He should be ashamed of himself," he said. "What’s he doing interfering?"
As for the second and third already-scheduled presidential debates, Giuliani said he’d recommend no more unless the moderators "promise they would be a moderator not a fact checker."