Rudy Giuliani’s smackdown of Ron Paul at last Tuesday’s debate continues to make waves in the race for president. On the Republican side, anyway. Both Rudy and John McCain spoke at a Republican fundraiser here in New York last night, and they each acknowledged the incident, albeit in different ways. For Rudy, it was time for a victory lap. Why did those Fort Dix jihadists want to kill American soldiers? he asked the crowd. Not because we dropped some bombs on Iraq in the ’90s, unlike some candidates seem to think.

Then, when it was McCain’s turn to speak, he thanked Rudy for smacking Paul around and said he was proud of him. If you watch the video below, you can almost see McCain slapping himself in the forehead for not thinking of it first.

Apologies for the shaky video. You can read the rest of my take on last night here.