Giuliani: I'd skip next debates if I were Trump

Donald Trump should skip the next two debates unless he gets special guarantees from the moderators, former New York mayor and top Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani told reporters after the debate.

Lester Holt, the NBC News anchor who moderated the debate, should be “ashamed of himself,” Giuliani said after the debate. He said Holt was wrong to attempt to fact-check Trump on the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk and his claimed opposition to the Iraq War.


“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. “The moderator would have to promise that there would be a moderator and not a fact checker and in two particular cases an enormously ignorant, completely misinformed fact checker.”

“If you wonder why Donald Trump thinks that the press is a left-wing basically oriented group, Lester Holt proved it tonight," he added.

He later clarified about future debates: “I didn’t say what I’m advising him, I said what I would do.”

Trump himself had no problem with Holt's performance. The moderator did a "fine" job, Trump said.

But Giuliani was especially piqued by Holt’s claim that “stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York.”

“No, you're wrong. It went before a judge who was a very-against-police judge,” Trump responded. “It was taken away from her and our mayor, our new mayor, refused to go forward with the case. They would have won an appeal.”

“Stop and frisk is completely constitutional and the American people have been given the false impression that it isn’t,” Giuliani said.

A federal district court judge ruled in 2013 that New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy violated the Constitution. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who ran on a platform opposing stop-and-frisk, ended the policy soon after taking office.