Trump's Claim of $916 Million Loss Shows He's a 'Genius': Rudy Giuliani “He would have been a fool not to take advantage” of tax laws, Giuliani said.

 -- In the wake of a New York Times report revealing that Donald Trump claimed a $916 million dollar loss in 1995 according to leaked tax forms, surrogate for the GOP presidential nominee Rudy Giuliani said, “he's a genius.”

Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, said Trump took advantage of tax laws as, he said, a good businessman should.

“He would have been a fool not to take advantage” of the laws, he ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on "This Week"

Giuliani also emphasized that what Trump did was “perfectly legal."

As to the size of the business loss that Trump claimed, Giuliani cited the Republican presidential candidate's 1987 bestselling book “The Art of The Deal,” that “every great man has had failures.”

Giuliani said the U.S. needs a “a man who knows how to fail and then come back.”

"[Trump] went down and went all the way back up," the former mayor said. "American needs a turnaround artist,”