As you’ve unpacked the current impeachable scandal, have you noticed that Rudy Giuliani pops up everywhere, like toxic algae in a fetid pond?
Rudy is featured on page one of the whistleblower’s complaint, named as a “central figure…pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s domestic political rivals.” Rudy is on page two, referenced by Donald Trump as his personal envoy in the bid for (fake) dirt on Joe Biden. Rudy is on page four, which describes his August meeting with Ukraine officials nine days after Trump’s phone call with the Ukraine president; Rudy was following up on Trump’s pitch for dirt. Rudy is on page six – he basically owns page 6 – which details his desire to dig that dirt. Rudy is on page 7, which reports that “multiple U.S. officials…were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani’s circumvention of the national security decision-making process,” especially given the fact that Rudy was not a national security official or diplomat or an accredited anything.
And, of course, Rudy pops up in the summary of the fateful phone call, when Trump tells Volodymyr Zerensky that he should be talking to Rudy. Trump said: “Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man.”
Yup, that’s what he said. Lies are Trump’s oxygen, and that particular gem should be Exhibit A.
At this point, you may well be wondering how Rudy became so disreputable, so widely mocked. (A senior House Republican aide told a reporter yesterday that Rudy is a “moron.”) How did the so-called “America’s mayor,” who walked the terrorized streets of New York City coated with 9/11 dust, become reduced to the role of errand boy for a malevolent man-child? How did he plummet to the role of addled propaganda minister, denying on TV that he was seeking dirt on Biden, then confirming it seconds later? How did he unravel so badly last year that he declared on TV, in a spasm of Orwellian blather, that “truth isn’t truth”?
The answer is simpler than you think. He’s basically the same as he ever was, just more so.
Start with the fact that even in the wake of 9/11, at the apogee of his purported popularity, Rudy was a washout presidential candidate who spent $60 million on an ’08 Republican bid and won a total of one delegate. People intuited that there was clearly something…off…about the guy. But to fully grasp what it was, we need to go back to 9/11, when he supposedly became iconic.
He walked the streets on that horrific day because he didn’t have an emergency headquarters to commandeer. He didn’t have an emergency headquarters to commandeer because the $13-million site was blown away in the attack. It was blown away because it had been located at 7 World Trade Center. It had been located at 7 World Trade Center because Rudy had wanted it there – defying the advice from people in his administration, including the police commissioner, who said it was nuts to put the HQ in a place that had already been targeted by terrorists back in 1993. But Rudy had rejected that advice – he had a habit of stiffing his advisers, which should remind you of someone – and he insisted that the new HQ belonged at 7 World Trade Center, that it was impregnable.
But when the HQ was destroyed on 9/11, longstanding communication problems between the cops and firefighters were exacerbated. When the 9/11 Commission released its report a few years later, senior counsel John Farmer told journalists that if Rudy had located his HQ elsewhere, as he’d been advised to do, “I think the number of responder deaths could have been greatly reduced.”
Rudy did a lot of bad stuff back in his supposed heyday. He was named to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which was tasked with figuring out how to manage George W. Bush’s disaster, but he was AWOL so often (out making speeches for $200,000 apiece) that fellow members persuaded him to quit. But his basic response, as the years wore on, was to cocoon himself in the American flag. And there he was, at a private dinner in February 2015, sliming Barack Obama: “I do not believe that the president loves America…He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up, and I was brought up through love of this country.”
Rudy wasn’t auditioning for Trump – the birther liar wasn’t on the radar screen in early ’15 – but, as demagogic narcissists, their stars would soon align. And here’s Rudy now, ranting to the Atlantic reporter: “It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m not. And I will be the hero! These morons – when this is over, I will be the hero…Anything I did should be praised.”
Anything I did should be praised...Sound like anyone else we know? He and Trump have apparently forged a Vulcan mind-meld. They were made each other, and they may well go down together.