Wolf Blitzer: Elizabeth,tell us what Giuliani claimed and what you've learned. Did he get the numbers right?
Elizabeth Cohen: Well, according to a lot of the folks we talked to, in fact, all of the folks we talked to, they said he did not get his numbers right.
It's nice to see CNN finally getting around to calling Giuliani out for this. One might be able to believe that the Giuliani campaign was simply misled by the right-wing think-tank article it had relied on for their figures except for the fact that even after they were made aware that the source for that article had contested his misuse of them, Rudy blatantly chose to continue repeating the false statistics anyway. That's not a mistake. It's a complete disregard for the truth and an outright attempt to mislead. And this is hardly the first time Rudy's been caught stretching the truth on the campaign trail so far. WaPo's fact checker gave him four Pinocchios for just this latest tall tale and went on to say:
"The mayor seems to be making a habit of making sweeping statements with little or no factual support. See our recent posts on his claims about Mikhail Gorbachev and the end of the Soviet Union, the cost of health care premiums, and his own record as mayor of New York."
That's earned him a cumulative 13 Pinocchios so far, which after some digging I believe puts him way out in front of the other campaigns, and WaPo's Fact Checker hasn't even gotten around to his more recent fibbing. Greg Sargent caught Rudy telling "three whoppers in one sentence" on Monday. That's got to be some sort of record! It's past time we quit referring to Rudy Giuliani as a "serial exaggerator" (I mean, just look at that list will you?) and get on to calling him out for what he really is, which is a serial liar.