A hoarse and furious Rudy Giuliani decried the downgrading of charges to misdemeanors in the Staten Island slapping incident, saying he felt as if “a boulder hit me” at the supermarket, and called the video showing the suspect backslapping him “a little deceptive.”
The incident took place at the ShopRite store as the former mayor stumped for his son’s gubernatorial campaign.
Before footage of the incident surfaced, the 78-year-old former Trump lawyer said, at his age, he could’ve easily died from the slap if he wasn’t “in good shape.”
“I’m in pretty good shape, I didn’t fall down, but I could have,” Giuliani said. “If I fell down, who knows…Elderly people die most often from falling down.”
Giuliani claimed the slap felt like “a boulder hit me,” saying in a Facebook video that the man, 38-year-old Daniel Gill, knocked him forward “a step or two.”
“All of a sudden, I feel this, ‘Bam!’ on my back,” Giuliani initially told the New York Post of the incident, adding that the alleged smack caused him “tremendous pain.”
Speaking on The Curtis Sliwa Show, he also said it felt like he had been shot in the back.
“All of a sudden, I feel a shot on my back, like somebody shot me,” Giuliani told The Washington Post.
In reality, the footage showed Giuliani standing straight up after the pat.
Watch:
Video of the “assault” on Rudy at ShopRite, where Rudy had the person arrested, and said if he wasn’t in better shape he would’ve fallen, cracked his skull, and died. pic.twitter.com/EpgSpPu2fk
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 26, 2022
