On Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily, former New York mayor, and onetime Republican presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani said he was “not really concerned” about Donald Trump’s expression of conditional support for NATO to the New York Times.

“I know that Donald Trump is committed to the defense of Europe, certainly to the defense of Eastern Europe. My goodness, his wife comes from there,” said Giuliani. “I think what he’s trying to do – you have to understand Donald the negotiator, having known him for as many years as I do. Donald’s trying to get more money out of all those countries, and he should.”

“We should defend them, we should live up to our NATO obligation, but they should contribute more as well, because they’ve been getting kind of a bit of a free ride for quite some time. I don’t see any reason why you don’t push a little, and create a little tension there, so you can get a little bit more of a contribution from some of the bigger countries, and more cooperation from some of the smaller countries,” Giuliani said.

He saluted Trump as a “supreme negotiator” who “doesn’t tell you what he really wants, until four o’clock in the morning when you’re going to sign the document.”

Giuliani said he was “disappointed” in Ted Cruz’s speech to the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night.

“I know Ted. I have great respect for him. I agree with many of the things he agrees with, I disagree with some. But I certainly profoundly disagree with his not endorsing Donald Trump,” he said. “Because it’s going to be a close election, and I think if we don’t beat Hillary Clinton, I don’t think Ted Cruz can play the game, ‘I’m gonna run four years from now, after being a disloyal Republican.’”

“And if we don’t beat Hillary Clinton, I don’t know what’s going to happen to my country,” he added.

When Bannon noted the full-throated defense of police officers in Giuliani’s own speech brought condemnation from the Left, the former mayor said, “I would have felt I gave a very poor speech if the New York Times didn’t criticize it.”

“They criticized all my initiatives to reduce crime, when I was mayor,” he recalled. “They criticized my welfare-to-work program, where I made people on welfare work. I reduced the welfare population by 600,000 people, and rather than increasing food stamps like Obama did, I put people to work. I reduced crime by 65 percent. But they criticized everything I did – stop and frisk, putting policemen in mosques.”

“So I was trained by Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan basically used to read the New York Times, and then do the opposite,” Giuliani said with a laugh. “By the way, that is not a joke, that is absolutely true.”

Giuliani said comparisons between Ted Cruz’s speech, and the one that elevated Ronald Reagan into presidential territory, were invalid because “Ronald Reagan did one thing he didn’t do, and it’s crucial: Ronald Reagan endorsed Gerald Ford, and that made it possible for him to be nominated four years later.”

“Nelson Rockefeller would not endorse Goldwater. Nelson Rockefeller couldn’t get nominated in ‘68. Probably would have beaten Nixon for the nomination in ‘68, if he had endorsed Goldwater,” he mused. “And then, when Ford put him on the ticket as Vice President, he had to take him off, because the party was so angry at Nelson Rockefeller for not having endorsed Goldwater.”

“So I think Ted Cruz, although he is one of the most intelligent men I know, I think this is a little piece of history he never read,” Giuliani concluded.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

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