Joe Biden’s campaign sent a letter to major cable news outlets and anchors on Sunday demanding that they stop inviting Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to their programs.
In a copy of the letter sent to TPM by a campaign source, Biden campaign aides Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield told the news organizations that fact checking Giuliani’s false claims about Biden in real time “is no longer enough.”
“By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation,” they wrote. “We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative.”
Dunn and Bedingfield argue that allowing Giuliani to sound off on air “is a disservice to your audience and a disservice to journalism.”
The campaign source told TPM the letter had been sent to network presidents, major anchors, and Sunday morning show executives from ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News.
Over the past week, Giuliani’s been hitting the airwaves on multiple news channels to defend himself against a whistleblower’s explosive details of his involvement in President Donald Trump’s push to get the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on Biden and his son, Hunter.
During these appearances, Giuliani often peddles evidence-free conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s alleged attempt to shield his son from investigations into those dealings.
Read the letter below:
I feel silly now because of this:
I originally thought Biden’s overture to news outlets was an act of mercy to curb Giuliani’s further self-implication in a raft of federal crimes.
Fat lot of good that’ll do. Now you know some Fox talking head show is going to book ruddy gobbles to ask him what he thinks about the Biden attempt to censor* him.
*Yes, I know this is not censorship but the rhetoric still works.
Nah, feeding the G-troll attention will make him double his TV appearances. Sly one, that Biden.
Booking Ghouliani on TV at this point is categorically not much different from having Richard Speck or Ted Bundy on to spin the narrative about their crimes. The Ghoul is implicated in indictable behavior and consequently can not be counted as a credible, disinterested commenter on that behavior.
Would they keep inviting a Holocaust denier?
I hope they don’t pay him.