Giuliani calls campus protesters 'spoiled crybabies'

Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that protesters who flooded college campuses across the country over the election of Donald Trump as the country’s next president “are a bunch of spoiled crybabies.”

The former New York mayor and senior adviser to Trump’s victorious presidential campaign scoffed on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” at the notion that some colleges and universities are offering comfort foods and therapeutic activities to students distraught over the election’s results. He joked that the Catholic priests who taught him during him during his time at Manhattan College “would give me something else.”


But most students, Giuliani said, are not as upset as the nationwide protests might suggest.

“The reality is they are a bunch of spoiled crybabies. And someone said, I think I heard somebody said, we're bringing up a generation of crybabies. Most kids aren't crying. Most of the kids are going to class,” Giuliani said. “I speak at a lot of college campuses. And what I find is, this might be a somewhat heartening fact, we are growing up a slightly higher percentage of conservative students now than we used to. Because they’re rebelling against the professors. And if you’re looking at the real left-wing loonies on the campus, it's the professors, not the students.”

Campus protests began almost immediately after Trump’s election was announced. The Los Angeles Times reported that an estimated 2,000 people gathered at UCLA early Wednesday morning as it became clear that the former reality TV star had won the White House and dozens of students attended a “cry-in” on the campus of Cornell University later that same day, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The University of Texas’ student newspaper said more than 300 students marched from campus into downtown Austin, where the state capitol is located. At George Washington University, the campus newspaper reported at least 70 students have put their tickets for the school’s inaugural ball, one of its most high-profile events, up for sale.

But Giuliani said Trump’s message “got through to a lot of them, a lot more than you think” on college campuses, especially with students concerned about finding a job once they graduate. The former mayor’s response to the protesters prompted “Fox & Friends” anchor Brian Kilmeade to ask, “Mr. Mayor, I know how you feel, but if you’re Donald Trump and you want to be president of the entire country, can you afford just to say ‘crybabies’ or should you find a way to listen?”

“You should find a way to listen and talk about it and say to them, 'look, you are overdoing it. Take a while and evaluate my presidency a year from now.' My advice to Donald would be to say that,” Giuliani said. “And say, 'look, calm down, things are not as bad as you think. Give me a year and I think you are going to find you are living in a much better country than you are living in right now. If not, I don't know, you can go cry then.'”

Michael Cohen, Trump Organization Executive Vice President and Trump’s special counsel, offered a similar sentiment later Thursday morning in an interview on CNN’s “New Day.”

“There will be a fresh start. And that's what I would say to the protesters,” he told anchor Chris Cuomo. “Please, give him a chance. Wait to see before you make your decision. The American people have decided, that's our democracy. What are you protesting? It just doesn't make sense. Let him be the man that I know that he can be and he'll prove himself.”