UPDATE
Here’s the video of the alleged attack on Rudy Giuliani today and it does not fit with what Rudy described in his account to the media:
WATCH Former New York City Mayor @RudyGiuliani, now 78, claimed he was assaulted by a 39-year-old Staten Island supermarket employee who exchanged words with him. pic.twitter.com/jCC01RcG7Y
— BNN Newsroom (@BNNBreaking) June 26, 2022
ORIGINAL POST
Rudy Giuliani was allegedly attacked while campaigning for his son, Andrew, by an on-duty worker at a Staten Island ShopRite supermarket on Sunday:
Rudy Giuliani attacked inside Staten Island ShopRite https://t.co/fuLcXYjzje
— paul schwartzman (@paulschwartzman) June 26, 2022
The suspect was arrested by the NYPD. From the New York Post:
“I was shoulder-to-shoulder with Rudy inside ShopRite,” Rugova-Johnson said. “We’re talking, and all of a sudden an employee came out of nowhere and open-handedly slapped him in the back and said, ‘Hey, what’s up scumbag?’
“[The attacker] was on duty at the time,” the witness said. “The cops arrested him.”
Sources said police took the assailant into custody at the store.
The suspect, a 39-year-old from Staten Island, will be charged with second-degree assault involving a person over age 65, law-enforcement sources said. The man has no prior arrests, sources said.
But this story has blue-check Daniel Drezner, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, questioning if this qualifies as an actual “attack or not”:
Serious question: does this really qualify as an “attack”? https://t.co/qpFt6t940L pic.twitter.com/ySBK7dVJMH
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 26, 2022
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Well, how would he feel if someone did this to one of his elderly relatives?
I dunno Daniel, care to be the recipient to gauge your own reaction? https://t.co/gF7CYiSzcw
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) June 26, 2022
Rudy is 78, by the way. How hard do you have to hit a 78-year-old to do some damage?
I dunno Stephen, does simply touching a guy’s back and calling him a scumbag qualify as assault? How hard does the slap have to be? https://t.co/HGhtpEDtwe
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 26, 2022
And if this happened to any Dem politician, we’d be hearing about the threat to democracy:
Serious question: if I encouraged people to do to Daniel what the suspect (who was arrested for assault) did to Rudy, would he claim I’m sending people to assault him? He would.
But Daniel doesn’t like Rudy, so hitting him so hard he almost fell over plus cursing at him is ok. https://t.co/wQjL6E4I9I
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) June 26, 2022
We’re sure the Secret Service would have just shrugged it off, right?
Does committing a battery count as an attack? Yeah I believe it does.
Just like if a MAGA nut went up and slapped Hillary Clinton, you'd be in full-blown nuclear meltdown mode. https://t.co/Kkhx84batv
— Sunny McSunnyface (@sunnyright) June 26, 2022
And how would Tufts University handle such a case?
Pretty wild to see a @FletcherSchool prof openly dismissive of something that is pretty clearly a physical assault. Wonder if this is the sort of behavior @TuftsUniversity encourages its students to engage in? https://t.co/3qfwaK7iWI
— Will Upton (@wupton) June 26, 2022
Editor’s note: This post has been updated.
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Related:
BREAKING: New York has suspended Rudy Giuliani’s law license
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