On Thursday, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell, responding to Rudy Guiliani’s criticism of Barack Obama’s national security policies on Wednesday, repeated his charge from October 2011 that Giuliani was responsible for the firefighter deaths from 9/11. O’Donnell said Guiliani was an “unwitting accomplice of al-Qaeda’s” because the firefighters were using defective radios.
O’Donnell preceded his criticism on the show with a tweet reading, “Giuliani attacked POTUS last night for Benghazi so I am forced to remind Giuliani how many firefighters were killed on 9/11 because of him.”
In 2011, O’Donnell called Guiliani an “ego-driven” “fraud” and said that his actions made 9/11 worse than it could have been. He criticized Guiliani for placing the emergency command center for New York City in the World Trade Center as well as the defective radios, saying, “Despite the painful truth of these details, which show Rudy Giuliani to have been an ego-driven incompetent in dealing with the threat of terrorism in New York City … most of the media will continue to portray him as one of the heroes of 9/11. Know this: there is no more fraudulent public image in our politics.” O’Donnell’s criticism is mostly drawn from Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend.