According to Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump was threatening to blow up Russia one-and-a-half years ago.
In a discussion with Newsmax, where Giuliani hasn't been banned from appearing, the former New York City mayor falsely claimed that the United States was "energy independent" and that the U.S. didn't need oil or gas from Russia. The lowest point in 2020 when the U.S. was importing the least amount of Russian oil, there was still 10,850 barrels being brought in by Russia. That was in May 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
As several fact-checks revealed, America was never independent of foreign oil during the Trump administration. The idea of "energy independence," is an industry term meaning the U.S. exported more oil than it imported. That happened in 2020, but it also happened several times under President Joe Biden in 2021.
"The term has various non-literal definitions. And the US did satisfy some of these definitions under Trump in 2020 — as it did again in the 11 months of 2021, mostly under Biden, for which we have complete data," said one fact-check from Daniel Dale. "In fact, contrary to prominent Republicans' suggestions over the last month that the US had just recently started consuming Russian energy under Biden, US energy imports from Russia spiked during the Trump presidency."
Giuliani went on to say that Trump was speaking to Putin about Ukraine before leaving office and saying that he shouldn't attack Ukraine.
"He authorized me to say this, that's why I'm saying it, because I'm his lawyer," said Giuliani. "So, he has a meeting with Putin and he tells him, they're talking about Ukraine and he says, 'Vladimir, you shouldn't, like, attack Ukrain, cause then I'm gonna — well I never liked those — what are those things you've got in Moscow? Those big bubbles. Those big gold bubbles. I never liked those things. So, I'm going to have to blow them up."
The group of Newsmax hosts laughed.
"So, Putin says, 'They're churches.' And he said, 'Oh, Vladimir. Don't tell me that about churches. Oh, come on. Churches?'" Guiliani continued.
In fact, they are churches. The large gold domes are the tops of the Cathedral of the Annunciation, a Russian Orthodox church. It was built in the 15th century, 200 years before the English came to America. The Encyclopedia Britannica has photos and an entry about it. There are even TripAdvisor ratings for it.
See the video below:
Trump threatened to blow up Russian churches www.youtube.com
