Giuliani Doesn't Understand Arizona Immigration Law Complaints

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," June 17, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And tonight in "Your America," it appears the Obama administration's plans to move forward with a lawsuit against the state of Arizona over its controversial new immigration law. But interestingly enough, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer probably would not even be aware of the lawsuit unless she was watching Ecuadorian television recently.

Well, that's the venue that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose to announce this huge bombshell:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: President Obama has spoken out against the law because he thinks that the federal government should be determining immigration policy. And the Justice Department under his direction will be bringing a lawsuit against the act.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: All right, questions remain tonight about whether or not Hillary Clinton simply misspoke or if she unknowingly let the cat out of this bag anyway. Either way, it's still amateur hour at the White House.

Here with reaction to this and more on the action-packed BP hearings on Capitol Hill is former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Mr. Mayor, how are you?

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Sean, good to see you.

HANNITY: There's no way that she did that with permission. That is not how they want to announce that.

GIULIANI: Yes, I would agree with that. But I think they probably are going to bring a lawsuit.

HANNITY: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: I wonder if she read the bill.

GIULIANI: Just to satisfy their base. I read the bill.

HANNITY: I read it, the 16 pages.

GIULIANI: I went ahead. I got it. I printed it out online. I read it and I can't figure out what anybody is complaining about. It just reiterates federal law. And the reality is, the preemption doctrine that says that the federal government preempts in areas of immigration is if the state wanted to do something to lighten the laws or give more benefits.

It doesn't say that the states can't do things that reinforce the federal law. And the reality is, that's all this does. And states have an interest here. It's not just the federal interests.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: I mean, the — you end up with more people going into hospitals that have to be treated. You end up with great costs. You end up with a large number of kids in your schools. There are costs that are attached to it that gives the states an interest as long as it's not contradicting the federal government.

HANNITY: It was amazing. Eric Holder commenting on it, hadn't read it. Janet Napolitano commenting on it, hadn't read it. Crowley commenting on it, hadn't read it.

GIULIANI: Well, the whole idea of profiling — the only way you can stop somebody is if they commit —

HANNITY: Another crime.

GIULIANI: — a crime or a violation.

HANNITY: Right.

GIULIANI: In other words, you can stop them any way. When you stop them you can ask them for identification. What the heck is wrong with somebody who committed a violation or a law having to identify themselves?

HANNITY: Listen, every time —

GIULIANI: We do it anyway.

HANNITY: When I used to speed — I'm better now. When I used to speed, Mr. Mayor — you know, first they do is they get your license, registration.

GIULIANI: Right.

HANNITY: Then they go back to the car, any warrants out for my arrest, they do a background check.

GIULIANI: Right.

HANNITY: What's the difference here?

GIULIANI: Here's a good reason if you stop somebody for speeding for wanting to know if they're legal: Maybe there's a better chance they'll pay their fine if they are legal. The state has an interest in that. The state has an interest. Somebody not being a scofflaw. I mean I don't — I don't see this —

HANNITY: You were tough on tickets when you were mayor. You were tough on —

GIULIANI: I needed the revenue.

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY: Well, you break the law, you pay the price. All right. The broader picture, though, here and we've been talking a lot about the BP's oil spill. You were telling me you watched that speech the other night. You were not impressed.

GIULIANI: I was not impressed at all. I just think the president, you know, 58, 59 days later doesn't seem to know where he's going. And he actually told us. He doesn't know precisely where — I've never heard a president say at the end of his speech, I don't know precisely where we're going.

I think that's pretty much a verbatim quote.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: I mean can you imagine at a time of crisis if I stood up after September 11th and said I don't know precisely where we're going?

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: Or if President Bush had said that about Katrina? The reaction there would be? Nobody paid attention to it. And then he misrepresented.

HANNITY: Did you say that if this were President Bush he would have been impeached by now?

GIULIANI: No, I said they would be moving for it.

(CROSSTALK)

GIULIANI: Katrina. They tried to impeach him over Katrina. They were talking about — I mean this is worse than Katrina. He has taken much longer to responD. His response has been considerably less significant. And he's also misrepresented.

At beginning of his talk he said the federal has been in charge from the beginning. Gibbs — you have all the tapes of Gibbs four times on television saying BP is in charge.

HANNITY: He also said there's no oil closer to shore which is not true. We can go to ANWR which was specifically designated for more oil drilling, the Pacific, the Atlantic. There's plenty of oil closer to shore.

GIULIANI: That was the "blaming it on the American people" part of the speech. The reason for this oil spill is we want too much oil and they have to go out in the middle of the ocean basically and get the oil.

The reason they can't go closer to shore is because of the environmental rules and ANWR is cut off. There are plenty of sources of oil if they would let up some of these regulations and allow it happen.

HANNITY: And liberals got angry with me because I used the term he's acting like a petulant child in the White House. And what I meant by that is: "what do you expect? I can't dive down there and plug the damn hole myself. What do you want me to suck it up with a straw, I'm going to kick somebody's blah, blah. "

GIULIANI: I'm not Superman.

HANNITY: I'm not — I mean, I'm listening. You're the president. If you would have just accepted the help of the 13 countries three days after the explosion — the Dutch offered the skimmers that would have taken 20,000 tons of sludge out of the Gulf a day.

GIULIANI: Right.

HANNITY: If we would have just reacted. It would have been a lot —

GIULIANI: Well, there's a basic — there's a basic mistake that he made that I recognize having managed, you know, a city and a lot of other operations. From the very beginning the first thing that should have been done, that I would have done or I think anybody else who had the slightest experience managing a crisis or an emergency , I would have brought in other people from Exxon, from Shell, from TransCanada.

I'd have asked, "Get me the best experts. Get me people who have actually done this, not a bunch of professors who dream about it, but people who've actually done it." And I want to sit down with them and then I'm going to — I'm going to pick the ones I like best and I'm going to have them go down there and watch BP every step of the way.

Now he's pointing the finger at BP, right?

HANNITY: Mm-hmm.

GIULIANI: BP is bad, BP is terrible, awful, awful BP. He put us in the hands of BP and left us in the hands of BP.

HANNITY: And they —

GIULIANI: Solely.

HANNITY: And then probably — all right, one last question.

GIULIANI: As the commander in chief, he's responsible of that. If BP is so bad what the heck did they let them do this remediation without anybody checking on them for 59 days?

HANNITY: Unbelievable. Mr. Mayor —

GIULIANI: Thank you.

HANNITY: I wish they'd hire you to go work on it. But then I guess —

GIULIANI: I don't think he's going to hire me.

HANNITY: I guess you need to be president. I don't think he's going to hire you. Seriously, we need somebody in charge, please. Give us some confidence.

GIULIANI: We haven't anybody in charge.

HANNITY: No.

GIULIANI: And Gibbs and the president have had totally different views on who's been in charge. Gibbs says it was BP, the president now says the federal government was in charge from the beginning.

HANNITY: Yes. So they're to blame.

GIULIANI: But then they're actually to blame.

HANNITY: If they would have built the barriers, used the skimmers, put out the booms, all these things, we'd be in a lot better shape.

GIULIANI: There are many, many steps that could have been taken that weren't taken. This is a terrible, terrible case of mismanagement. This will be a case study at Harvard on how not to deal with a crisis.

HANNITY: All right. Good luck in — the Yankees playing the Mets at Yankee Stadium so you won't be booing tomorrow night?

GIULIANI: No, I'll be — I won't have to have that extra safety detail about it.

HANNITY: All right. Mr. Mayor, good to see.

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