Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) on Sunday defended Donald Trump Donald John TrumpBubba Wallace to be driver of Michael Jordan, Denny Hamlin NASCAR team Graham: GOP will confirm Trump's Supreme Court nominee before the election Southwest Airlines, unions call for six-month extension of government aid MORE's suggestion that the U.S. should "take the oil" from Iraq, saying anything is fair game until the war is over.

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"Until the war is over, anything's legal," said Giuliani, an adviser to Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, on ABC's "This Week."

Host George Stephanopoulos pushed back, questioning the legality of that strategy.

"Wouldn't that just be theft? ... That's not legal, is it?" he asked.

"Of course it's legal. It's a war," Giuliani said.

"He [didn't say] we should take it for ourselves necessarily — that we should secure it so it doesn’t get taken by terrorist forces, and then we can have some say, some control over the distribution of it," Giuliani said.

He added that it "certainly would've been good" if the U.S. had done that in the past.

"If we had secured that oil, we would not be dealing with ISIS today. They wouldn’t exist," he said, referring to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Trump said, during NBC News's "Commander-in-Chief Forum" last week that the U.S. should "take the oil" in Iraq as part of the "spoils of war" to keep it from ISIS.

“I’ve always said, shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil,” he said.

“If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil.”