'You’ve got to stop putting words in my mouth, sir,' O’Brien said to Giuliani. | REUTERS O'Brien to Giuliani: 'Let me finish'

CNN host Soledad O’Brien and Rudy Giuliani clashed on Monday, with the the former New York City mayor accusing O’Brien of trying to blame George W. Bush for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

While interviewing Giuliani, O’Brien played a clip of former Bush adviser Matthew Dowd comparing Benghazi to the invasion of Iraq, arguing it was possible for the intelligence to be initially wrong on Benghazi, just as intelligence indicating Iraq had weapons of mass destruction turned out to be false.


“We’re going to blame this on Bush, too?” Giuliani said.

“You’ve got to stop putting words in my mouth, sir,” O’Brien retorted. “Let me finish, because every time I ask you a question, let me finish my point — every time I ask you a question, you like to push back like the question I’m asking you is unfair. It’s not. I’m a journalist, you said some things. I’m trying to get accurate responses from you. You are welcome to answer.”

“OK, here’s the answer: It sounds like we’re trying to blame Benghazi on Bush,” Giuliani responded. “It’s absurd to blame Benghazi on Bush. All [President Barack Obama] needs to do is answer a simple question: Did he know about the consulate attacks that took place before Sept. 11, 2012? There were two of them, one of which blew a hole in the embassy wall. Also, did he know the British consulate, which was basically next door, that they moved out because of the tremendous amount of risk to that consulate?”

The attack on the consulate in Benghazi killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. Republicans have criticized Obama for an initially muddled response and Giuliani has suggested the administration was trying to cover up the attacks.

O’Brien pressed Giuliani to directly respond to Dowd’s point about the murkiness of intelligence.

“He has a point about some parts of this incident,” Giuliani said. “He does not have a point about the part of the incident that refers to what was the president’s knowledge, did the president take steps to protect our ambassador and the other people there.”

O’Brien has made a habit of clashing with surrogates for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in recent weeks, having earlier argued with Giuliani, and battling John Sununu, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, Bay Buchannan and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell since mid-September.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter linked the release of documents outing American informants in Libya to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, arguing the former Massachusetts governor gave other Republicans license to politicize the Benghazi attacks.

“Dumping that out the Friday before a foreign policy debate was really all about politics,” Cutter said. “And the politics were set by Mitt Romney on the day of that tragedy when he came out, and shot from the hip and before he had any facts, blamed the United States and blamed the president. And you know, he set the tone for his party, he said: ‘OK, go ahead and play politics with this.’ As a result, those documents that were released had important information, revealed names of Libyans on the ground that are helping us, that are helping us stay secure. So we’re putting lives at risk because we’re playing politics, and we’re making the country less secure.”

On Friday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released documents showing diplomats in Libya requesting additional security, but Democrats said the document dump also endangered the lives of Libyan informants. Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) disputed that, and argued the informants were already publicly linked to the United States.