Giuliani defended Trump when asked about the Republican nominee's praise for Putin, comparing Trump to Reagan. | AP Photo Giuliani compares Trump and Putin to Reagan and Gorbachev

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani compared Donald Trump's friendly relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to Ronald Reagan's ability to work with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who helped to end the Cold War.

Giuliani, a top Trump surrogate, initially declined to talk politics during an appearance on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, focusing instead on national security.


"Well, today I’m not going to respond to that," Giuliani said when asked about Hillary Clinton's comments that many of Trump's supporters could be put in a "basket of deplorables." "I’ve never done politics on Sept. 11 even when I was running for president."

Giuliani called both Clinton and Trump "good people" and said that "neither one of them is a racist."

But Giuliani defended Trump when asked about the Republican nominee's praise for Putin, comparing Trump to Reagan, who negotiated a deal with Gorbachev in Iceland in 1986 to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons.

"Gorbachev was a killer, just like Putin is a killer," Giuliani said. "But that ended the Cold War without firing a shot because Reagan was capable of walking out of Reykjavík. As Trump made clear the other night in Pensacola, he’s perfectly of walking out of a deal if it’s not in the best interests of the United States. Wouldn’t be the first time he walked out of a deal, and generally when — you know, I’ve known Donald for 28 years — when he walks out of a deal, they come back on his terms, just like they did with Reagan and Reykjavík."

The questions seemed to make Giuliani uncomfortable, though.

"I really don’t want to do this today," he told Stephanopoulos. "You’re making me do it!"

Still, Giuliani defended Trump's comments that the U.S. should have taken Iraq's oil, saying that Trump meant that the U.S. should have taken a more active role in distributing the oil wealth "so it doesn’t get taken by terrorist forces."

"That's not legal, is it?" Stephanopoulous said.

"Of course it’s legal," Giuliani replied. "It’s a war. Until the war is over, anything’s legal."

He added that Clinton's comments that she doesn't want American ground troops in Iraq makes the U.S. look like "a patsy."