Biden campaign heavies TV networks to blackball Giuliani

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has urged major US TV-news outlets to cease booking Rudy Giuliani.

‘In service to the facts’: Rudy Giuliani. Picture: AP

Former US vice-president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has urged major US TV news outlets to cease booking Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, as a guest, citing his penchant for spreading “false, debunked conspiracy theories” on behalf of the White House.

The letter, signed by top Biden aides Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield, was sent to top executives at several major news outlets, as well as a handful of anchors, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative,” the aides wrote.

Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has been a popular guest on news outlets, in part because his prior life as a New York politician, security consultant and former presidential candidate gives him an air of credibility. But he has also demonstrated a predilection for dropping incriminating details about actions he says he has taken on behalf of Mr Trump that tend to spur their own news cycles.

Brad Parscale, Mr Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, pushed back on the report on Twitter on Monday. “Can we request the removal of Democrats on TV that push hoaxes? Wait, but then who would do the interviews?”

Mr Giuliani has been among those pushing theories about Mr Biden’s son Hunter and some business he previously had in Ukraine. News outlets have shown these theories are false.

The Biden campaign told TV news executives that “Giuliani is not a public official, and holds no public office that would entitle him to opine on the nation’s airwaves.

“The decision to legitimise his increasingly outlandish and unhinged charges and behaviour — calling it “news” — rests solely with you,” the letter says.

“And let us be clear: we do not believe you should be giving legitimacy to someone who has publicly said he is concerned his tombstone will say he ‘lied for Don­ald Trump’, — but if you do, you need to give an equivalent amount of time to a surrogate for the Biden campaign.”

News outlets will usually make the point the choice of whom to interview and how much time to allocate to individuals is theirs alone.

Reuters