Has Anyone Seen Ghouliani Sober?

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Rudy Giuliani is the fool for our time"

Spoiler

Rudy Giuliani started Tuesday in the manner Americans have come to expect of the president’s lawyer: He attacked former FBI director James Comey by tweeting a cartoon image of Bashful from Disney’s “Snow White.”

Giuliani deleted the tweet, and anyway, it’s not clear why he chose Bashful. Considering Giuliani’s recent antics, the character that comes to mind is Dopey.

In fact, hours after the aborted Bashful missive, Giuliani was dopey once again. He had told CNN on Sunday that “no one signed” a letter of intent for Donald Trump to build a Moscow project. On Tuesday, CNN obtained the letter — signed by Trump.

Giuliani, asked by the New York Daily News to explain himself, said, “I don’t think I said nobody signed it.” Completing the reversal, he said “of course” Trump signed it: “How could you send it but nobody signed it?”

The “fool” has been a dramatic fixture at least since Shakespeare scribbled, and Giuliani is the fool for our time. Occasionally he speaks accidental truths, but mostly he plays the clown. He’s America’s crazy uncle at a time when, according to a Wired tally, seven sets of prosecutors and investigators are pursuing at least 17 court cases involving Trump.

“Twitter allowed someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-President message,” an alarmed Giuliani tweeted a few weeks ago, calling Twitter “card-carrying anti-Trumpers.” In fact, Giuliani had accidentally sabotaged his own tweet with a punctuation error — “G-20.In” — that automatically created a hyperlink to an Indian Web address. A clever observer quickly bought the domain and created a page that said “Donald Trump is a traitor.” Giuliani’s errant accusation was all the funnier because he’s also Trump’s “cybersecurity adviser.”

Right after the hyperlink high jinks, Giuliani tweeted a string of gibberish: “Kimim ° has f.” A previous Giuliani tweet saying only the word “You” prompted a fill-in-the-blank festival.

The former New York mayor, 74, has long been a loose cannon, asserting that there had not been any “successful Islamic terrorist attacks” during the George W. Bush administration, saying Trump’s travel ban was a legal way to do a “Muslim ban,” and predicting a “pretty big surprise” right before Comey reopened the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Alternately ill-informed and indiscrete, he’s just the guy you’d want as your lawyer.

Giuliani began as Trump’s lawyer in the spring by comparing FBI agents to “stormtroopers” and later claiming a law-enforcement informant was a “spy.”

He pivoted from describing Michael Cohen as “an honest, honorable lawyer” who is “not going to lie” to a “proven liar” who has “lied all his life.”

He said he would charge special counsel Robert Mueller’s office “with a lance” to defend Ivanka Trump, but Jared Kushner is “disposable.”

He said Trump couldn’t be indicted as president even if he “shot” Comey.

He undermined months of Trump’s “no collusion” claims by proclaiming instead that “collusion is not a crime.”

He defended Trump on NBC’s “Meet the Press” by saying “truth isn’t truth.”

He admitted publicly that the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was held “for the purpose of getting information about Clinton,” upending the official line that it was about adoption.

He suggested guilt when he told the Daily Beast “this was not a big crime” because “nobody got killed, nobody got robbed.”

And, days ago, he raised the possibility that associate Roger Stone gave Trump advance notice that WikiLeaks would release emails about Clinton stolen by Russia, saying “if” Stone had, “it’s not a crime.”

Clearly, some Giuliani dopiness is an effort to divulge damaging information gently. But he often makes matters worse.

Giuliani announced that Trump reimbursed Cohen for hush money to a porn actress. But he seemed baffled when told Cohen had claimed it was his own money: “He did?” Retreating, Giuliani said Trump wasn’t told about the payments, “but even if he was told, he wouldn’t have remembered it.” Further backpedaling, Giuliani said, “I’m not an expert on the facts” and issued a written statement “to clarify the views I expressed over the past few days.”

A similar mop-up came after Giuliani volunteered on TV that there had been a second meeting between Trump associates and Russians. Hours later, he said the just-referenced meeting “never happened.”

On Sunday, Giuliani was back to truth-isn’t-truth, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that “unless you’re God . . . you will never know what the truth is” from Cohen. And Giuliani told Fox News’s Chris Wallace that Mueller would interview Trump “over my dead body — but you know, I could be dead.”

Perish the thought! We need Giuliani’s entertainment. But when he dies, there should be a memorable scene when he goes before the One Who Knows Truth.

“I didn’t lie,” Giuliani will say, “but even if I did, it wasn’t a crime to be Dopey.”

 

[Howl]

I'd put Trumps TV Lawyer™ in the court jester category for sure. 

[AmazonGrace]

Rudes is something else. 

I double dog dare you to arrest my client. 

Anyway hasn't Mueller been shutting up the whole time.

[onekidanddone]

19 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Rudes is something else. 

I double dog dare you to arrest my client. 

Anyway hasn't Mueller been shutting up the whole time.

I triple dog dare Rudy to lick the flagpole. 

[Howl]

I think he licked the flagpole and has been stuck to it for a long time. 

[AmazonGrace]

Redacted redacted redacted NO COLLUSION! Redacted redacted redacted VERY LEGAL AND VERY COOL redacted redacted redacted ACTUALLY BREAKING THE LAW IS NOT A CRIME

[fraurosena]

Rudy Colludy has ties to oligarchs. What a surprise! Not.

 

[AmazonGrace]

What, are you saying that Rudy Fuchs up?

[Howl]

Rudy the G is the worst fluffer ever.   

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

An analysis of Rudy's trip to CNN: "Rudy Giuliani just contradicted nearly all the Trump team’s past collusion denials"

Spoiler

President Trump’s legal spokesman Rudolph W. Giuliani on Wednesday night appeared to grant the possibility that members of Trump’s campaign did, in fact, collude with the Russians during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

And in the process, he contradicted dozens of previous denials that both the Trump team (and Trump himself) have offered.

“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign,” Giuliani told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, before getting cut off.

“Yes, you have,” Cuomo said.

Giuliani shot back: “I have not. I said ‘the president of the United States.’”

But while Giuliani himself might not have assured that nobody on the campaign colluded, others including Trump sure have. In fact, the Trump team has moved the goal posts on this question no fewer than 10 times after initially denying any contact at all with “foreign entities.” Trump has said dozens of times that there was “no collusion,” full stop. This appears to be the first time anyone has acknowledged the possibility that someone colluded without Trump’s knowledge.

The most likely explanation for that is the unfolding case against Paul Manafort. We learned recently that he shared polling data with an associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, who special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team has said had ties to Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign. They also discussed a pro-Russia Ukraine peace plan, which is conspicuous because the Republican National Committee’s platform was amended on that issue.

Giuliani suggested that it was possible Manafort did something wrong but that he was on the campaign for too short a time for anyone to know what he was up to.

“He was only there for six months or four months,” Giuliani said.

Let’s walk through the de-evolution of the Trump team’s collusion denials — a list we’ve updated below.

1. November 2016: No communications, period

Hope Hicks: “It never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”

2. February 2017: There were no communications, “to the best of our knowledge”

Sarah Sanders: “This is a non-story because, to the best of our knowledge, no contacts took place.”

3. March 2017: There were communications, but no planned meetings with Russians

Donald Trump Jr.: “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did. . . . But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.”

4. July 8, 2017: There was a planned meeting at Trump Tower, but it was “primarily” about adoption and not the campaign

Trump Jr.: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow-up.”

5. July 9, 2017: The meeting was planned to discuss the campaign, but the information exchanged wasn't “meaningful”

Trump Jr.: “No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

6. December 2017: Collusion isn't even a crime

President Trump: “There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime.”

Jay Sekulow: “For something to be a crime, there has to be a statute that you claim is being violated. There is not a statute that refers to criminal collusion. There is no crime of collusion.”

(Technically speaking, the criminal code doesn't use the word “collusion,” but it's generally understood as a broad term that could encompass more specific, codified crimes. And even special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's team has used it in court filings.)

7. May 16, 2018: Even if meaningful information were obtained, it wasn't used

Giuliani: “And even if it comes from a Russian, or a German, or an American, it doesn’t matter. And they never used it, is the main thing. They never used it. They rejected it. If there was collusion with the Russians, they would have used it.”

8. May 19, 2018: There was a *second* planned meeting about foreign help in the election, but nothing came of it either

The New York Times reported Sunday on yet another meeting about getting foreign help with the 2016 election. This one came three months before the election and featured Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary, George Nader, who said the princes who lead Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates wanted to assist Trump.

Alan Futerfas, Trump Jr.'s attorney: "They pitched Mr. Trump Jr. on a social media platform or marketing strategy. He was not interested, and that was the end of it.”

9. July 16, 2018: Trump couldn't collude, because Trump didn't even know Putin

Trump: "There was no collusion. I didn't know the president. There was nobody to collude with."

10. July 30, 2018: Collusion isn't a crime, and Trump wasn't physically at the Trump Tower meeting

With Michael Cohen alleging that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting in real time — despite many previous denials — Giuliani told both CNN and Fox News that Trump wasn't physically at the meeting.

"I’m happy to tell Mueller that Trump wasn’t at the Trump Tower meeting,” Giuliani told CNN, adding that "Don Jr. says he wasn’t there.”

He added on Fox: “He did not participate in any meeting about the Russia transaction. . . . And the other people at the meeting that he claims he had without the president about it say he was never there.”

Giuliani also argued that collusion isn't even a crime.

“I don’t even know if that’s a crime — colluding with Russians,” Giuliani said on CNN. “Hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay for the hacking.”

And on Fox: “I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. Collusion is not a crime.”

11. January 16, 2019: Trump didn’t collude, but no guarantees on others in the campaign

The exchange with Cuomo:

GIULIANI: I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign -- 

CUOMO: Yes, you have.  

GIULIANI: I have no idea -- I have not. I said the president of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here -- conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC.  

CUOMO: First of all, crime is not the bar of accountability for a president. It’s about what you knew -- 

GIULIANI: Well, he didn’t collude with Russia either!  

CUOMO: -- what was right, and what was wrong, and what did you deceive about? Those are going to be major considerations.

GIULIANI: The president did not collude with the Russians.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: He said nobody had any contact, tons of people had contact.  Nobody colluded, the guy running his campaign --  

GIULIANI: He didn’t say nobody --  

CUOMO: -- was working on an issue at the same time as the convention.  

GIULIANI: He said he didn’t. He didn’t say nobody. How would you know that nobody in your campaign --

CUOMO: He actually did say that, Rudy. He said, nobody, and then he said, as far as I know.  

(CROSSTALK)

GIULIANI:  Well, as far as he knows, it’s true.

Rudes' doctors need to change up his meds.

[GreyhoundFan]

The delightfully snarky Alexandra Petri's take on Rudes: "What I meant when I said there was no collusion"

Spoiler

"I never said there was no collusion between the campaign! Or between the people in the campaign. … I said the president of the United States — there is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here: conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC.”

— Rudy Giuliani to CNN anchor Chris Cuomo

“I represent only President Trump not the Trump campaign. There was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form. Likewise, I have no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign."

— Rudy Giuliani, in a clarifying statement

When I said there had been no collusion, I obviously did not mean that no one in the campaign was colluding.

When I said there was no collusion by the president, I meant the president AT THE TIME.

When I said nobody was colluding, I meant literally nobody was colluding at the moment you were asking.

When I said there was no collusion, I became temporarily confused and thought you were asking if I wanted hot water, and I didn’t, so I said no.

I thought you were asking if there was NOW collusion. There is NOW collusion, is what I said.

When I said there was no collusion, I meant there definitely wasn’t not not no collusion never!

When I said there was no collusion, I meant we did not collude in our hearts.

When I said there was no collusion, I meant we did not inhale any collusion.

When I said there was no collusion, I was actually thinking of collation, an old-fashioned word for snacks! I hate old-fashioned snacks!

When I said there was no collusion, what I actually said was there was no collision; my phone autocorrected it and then I said it out loud. Yes.

When I said there was no collusion, I meant there was no call, oooo, Sean. I think that’s clear.

I meant there was no Calloo Shun. In the campaign, they frequently said things like “Calloo!” and "Callay!,” especially in response to frabjous news — like, if a foreign power had volunteered to help, that might have occasioned a “Calloo!” Shun the frumious Bandersnatch? Sure. Calloo shun? No!

I meant there is snow! Collusion! I was just saying the word “collusion” randomly, but we can all agree that there is snow. Collusion! See, I just love to shout the word for no reason! Collusion!

When I said no collusion, I meant no ablution (We were not pure ritually or otherwise.), allusion (We are very poorly read and as such made no references to anything.) or Lilliputian (That word doesn’t even sound alike, but I wanted to be clear we had none of them!).

When I said there is no collusion, I was just being polite, you know sometimes you just want to be polite to get out of an unpleasant conversation.

I meant specifically that no one ever came up to the campaign and said, “Would you like to collude?,” although, to be fair, if that had happened, folks might have said yes, that was just the sort of campaign it was, in fact maybe that did happen and maybe they did say yes, but, uh, the point is, I forget the question.

When I said that there was no collusion, I meant there was some collusion.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Rudy: The more statements change the more they stay the same 

 

[onekidanddone]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Rudy: The more statements change the more they stay the same 

 

So he admitts he keeps changing his misrepresentation. 

[AmazonGrace]

A rare Rudy sighting 

 

 

 

[mamallama]

I'm so sick of the spin that Mueller's statement clears dumpy in anyway.  Cohen admitted to lying to Congress about the negotions.  Trump no doubt heard his testimony and didn't correct it.  Cohen didn't lie for no reason.  He lied because he knew that dumpy would not want him to admit the extent of his ties to Russia.  

[onekidanddone]

Giuliani: ‘So what’ if Trump and Cohen discussed testimony

Quote

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani left open Sunday the possibility that Trump and former personal attorney Michael Cohen might have discussed Cohen’s congressional testimony.

But, he added, “so what” if he did?

Giuliani told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he did not know if Trump had discussed with Cohen a 2017 congressional interview at which Cohen has admitted lying about a Trump Tower real estate project in Moscow. He also acknowledged in a separate interview with NBC News that conversations about that project stretched throughout 2016, including possibly up until October or November of that year.

The question arose in light of a BuzzFeed News report from last week that said Trump had instructed Cohen to lie to Congress and that Cohen relayed that to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators. Mueller’s office took the unusual step of issuing a statement disputing the story. BuzzFeed said it stands by its reporting.

Giuliani said in interviews with CNN and NBC that Trump never directed Cohen to lie to lawmakers. But on CNN he acknowledged the possibility that Trump and Cohen might have discussed Cohen’s testimony, saying that while he had no knowledge of such a conversation, he wasn’t ruling it out and that it’d be “perfectly normal” anyway.

“I don’t know if it happened or didn’t happen,” Giuliani said, later adding, “And so what if he talked to him about it?”

Giuliani’s suggestion that dialogue about the Trump Tower project could have stretched into the fall of 2016 extends the timeline for negotiations well beyond what the president has publicly acknowledged. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress by saying that he had abandoned the project in January 2016 even though prosecutors say he actually continued pursuing it into that June.

Giuliani said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that Trump recalled having conversations with Cohen about the project throughout 2016, though there “weren’t a lot of them.”

“The president also remembers — yeah, probably up — could be up to as far as October, November,” Giuliani said. “Our answers cover until the election. So anytime during that period they could’ve talked about it. But the president’s recollection of it is that the, the thing had petered out quite a bit.”

Giuliani made a similar comment last month on ABC News when he suggested that the president knew that Cohen was pursuing the project into 2016.

“According to the answer that he gave, it would have covered all the way up to — covered up to November, 2016. Said he had conversations with him but the president didn’t hide this,” Giuliani said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and chairman of the House intelligence committee, said the panel planned to investigate why Cohen made false statements to Congress and determine what exactly Cohen and Trump might have discussed about his testimony.

“Congress has a has a fundamental interest in two things first in getting to the bottom of why a witness came before us and lied and who else was knowledgeable that this was a lie,” Schiff said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Awww pshaw! What is a little prejury between friends? 

[AmazonGrace]

So they said deny this or else? 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Giuliani did a Hagrid. "I should not have said that..."

“Even If He Did Do It, It Wouldn’t Be a Crime”: Rudy Giuliani on President Trump

Quote

On Sunday, Rudy Giuliani, one of President Trump’s lawyers, made a startling admission to the Times and NBC’s “Meet the Press”: that Trump had been involved in discussions to build a Trump Tower Moscow throughout the 2016 campaign, contradicting Trump’s public statements and raising ever more serious questions about the President’s ties to Vladimir Putin. Giuliani told the Times that Trump had said the discussions were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won.”

Giuliani also said that Trump may have spoken to Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, before Cohen gave false testimony to Congress about the timing of the Moscow discussions, claiming that they had ended in January, 2016. When, in November, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, he told prosecutors that they continued at least through June, 2016. Giuliani told the Times that Trump may have acknowledged these conversations in the written answers that he gave to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, late last year. “There was no question that he was asked by the special counsel a question that said, ‘Did you talk to him before he testified?’ ” Giuliani told the Times. The issue of whether Trump influenced Cohen’s false testimony was raised when BuzzFeed reported, on Thursday night, that according to two federal law-enforcement officials, Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress. In response, Mueller’s office issued a rare statement, saying that BuzzFeed’s descriptions of statements, documents, and testimony obtained by the office “are not accurate.” (BuzzFeed has stood by its story.)

Later on Sunday, Giuliani walked back his statements about the timing of the Trump Tower Moscow discussions, saying that they were “hypothetical and not based on conversations I had with the President.” On Monday afternoon, I called Giuliani to try to understand what he was saying about the Moscow negotiations. After telling me that he had only a minute before getting into the shower, he agreed to a conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity. In it, we discussed what he told the Times about the Trump Tower Moscow project, his feelings about Mueller’s office, and if he ever worries about his legacy.

Where are we now with Trump and Cohen and the BuzzFeed story, and your response to it?

I guess the BuzzFeed story—I don’t remember what it said about Cohen—but it said there was corroboration that the President talked to Cohen and told him to lie about, I guess it was, the Moscow proposal. There are no tapes, there are no texts, there is no corroboration that the President told him to lie. That’s why the special counsel said that the story was inaccurate. First time the special counsel has ever done that. As a prosecutor, having done that for fifteen years, that is quite a heavy rebuke of BuzzFeed. And the reality is that the President never talked to him and told him to lie. And I don’t know what Cohen is saying, but certainly the idea that two federal agents said that there was corroboration is totally untrue.

Did President Trump’s lawyers or you yourself reach out to the special counsel’s office after the story, as has just been reported?

I can’t discuss that. President Trump would not have done that. If anybody would have done it, obviously it would have been his lawyers, and I really can’t discuss that. That would be confidential.

Do you—

But I can tell you, from the moment I read the story, I knew the story was false.

Because?

Because I have been through all the tapes, I have been through all the texts, I have been through all the e-mails, and I knew none existed. And then, basically, when the special counsel said that, just in case there are any others I might not know about, they probably went through others and found the same thing.

Wait, what tapes have you gone through?

I shouldn’t have said tapes. They alleged there were texts and e-mails that corroborated that Cohen was saying the President told him to lie. There were no texts, there were no e-mails, and the President never told him to lie.

So, there were no tapes you listened to, though?

No tapes. Well, I have listened to tapes, but none of them concern this.

The Times reported that President Trump was involved in discussions about building a skyscraper in Moscow during the campaign, and you acknowledged that, and then, more recently, you said that you didn’t actually know this was the case.

First of all, the Times was absolutely wrong. Probably just as wrong as BuzzFeed was. I never said he had [narrator voice:] “conversations about a skyscraper in Moscow.” The only thing that ever happened was that they submitted a letter of intent about a possible project in Moscow that never went beyond that. No money was ever paid, no plans were ever made. There were no drafts. Nothing in the file. Nothing ever happened to it. Much ado about nothing, because the New York Times wants to crucify the President. And the President had no conversations. I shouldn’t say he had no conversations. He had a few conversations about this early-stage proposal that he ended somewhere in early 2016, and doesn’t have a recollection of anything else, and there is nothing to support anything else. This is a story that is completely exaggerated and made up.

Did you talk to President Trump about that?

If I talked to President Trump about it, of course I can’t tell you. I’m his lawyer. I can’t tell you what I talked to my client about.

O.K., so how do you know this?

Well, you have to figure out how I know it. Right? I can’t tell you what I talked to my client about.

O.K., I guess my question—maybe I phrased this badly—

No, no, no, you’re right. They did say one thing yesterday, and another thing today. But what they are doing is misinterpreting what I said yesterday. I have said the same thing for two months. And that is that the President had very little involvement in this so-called project in Moscow.

You said today, “My recent statements about discussions during the 2016 campaign between Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump about a potential Trump Moscow ‘project’ were hypothetical and not based on conversations I had with the President.”

Correct. I was pointing out how you would deal with it in court if we were going to trial, and how, even if there were such conversations, which there weren’t, they would be completely innocent. Whenever you do that, you always run the risk someone is going to report just the first part of your conversation. But I thought it was necessary to do it. If he had a project in Moscow, there would be nothing wrong with it, but he didn’t.

Wait, Mr. Mayor, if he had a project in Moscow that his attorney was discussing and he himself may have been involved in while he was calling for a loosening of sanctions against Russia and a different policy in Ukraine, and the American people didn’t know anything about that, you wouldn’t find that problematic?

First of all, the project was over in November, December, January, right into 2016. So there was no project. So there was no project. There was no project.

The Times reported yesterday, “President Trump was involved in discussions to build a skyscraper in Moscow throughout the entire 2016 presidential campaign . . .”

He’s wrong! They’re wrong!

“. . . His personal lawyer said on Sunday.”

I didn’t say that. Go find out where I said that on Sunday. I never said he was involved in such conversations. I said the same thing I said to you, which is—

The quote in the story from you is that the “ ‘discussions were going on from the day I announced to the day I won,’ Mr. Giuliani quoted Mr. Trump as saying during an interview with The New York Times.”

I did not say that.

The Times just made that quote up?

I don’t know if they made it up. What I was talking about was, if he had those conversations, they would not be criminal.

If he had them, but he didn’t have them?

He didn’t have the conversations. Lawyers argue in the alternative. If we went to court, we would say we don’t have to prove whether it’s true or not true, because, even if it’s true, it’s not criminal. And that’s why Mueller will not charge him with it.

Does it matter to the American people if it’s true? We are living in a democracy here. We want to know these things.

That’s an insane question you just asked me. I am not saying that he did it. I just told you he didn’t do it. I am telling you that their investigation is so ridiculous that, even if he did do it, it wouldn’t be a crime. Now, would the American people be interested in it? Of course. There’s a big difference between what the American people would be interested in and what’s a crime. The American people can be interested in a lot of things people conceal that aren’t crimes. I’m a criminal lawyer. I am not an ethicist. And I defend people against unfair criminal charges.

You are also—

No, I am not also anything else. My main obligation is to defend somebody, not to deal with philosophy. The Times deliberately misunderstood what I said. I started the conversation by telling them these conversations didn’t take place. You can’t turn that into “They did take place” when I say, hypothetically, “If they did take place, here are the legal ramifications of it.” It is totally dishonest when you do it. If you want to do it, we can end the conversation.

I want to hear—

I just finished the conversation. You got it. You’ve got my position. Conversations didn’t take place. If you say that I said they took place, you are lying. Now, if you want to discuss a hypothetical, if they took place, what are the legal ramifications of it, I went to law school to learn how to do that. But that isn’t what I said. I don’t know how to make it clearer, and I really don’t have any more time.

Last thing, and then you can go shower. The President has called this a witch hunt. If that’s the case, were you surprised the Mueller team said that the BuzzFeed story was flawed?

I think they had no choice but to do that. And I do think that, when they do something good, we should commend them, which I did immediately. And, when they do something bad, it is my job to point that out. And they did do something good. I don’t think their whole team is a bunch of renegades. I think some are. I think they have some good people there. But, also, they were basically being victimized. The story said two federal agents gave this information out. The federal agents would have had to work for them.

It could have been people from the Southern District of New York office.

Kinda. It could have been, but everything pointed back to . . . BuzzFeed made it sound like it came out of the special counsel’s office. I think they were angry on their own. It didn’t take us to get them angry. I would have been angry.

You have been involved in politics for thirty, forty years? How long?

About that, yeah. I hate to remember it.

Just asking you this from one human being to another.

I’ll answer it that way.

Saying things for Trump, not always being truthful about it—do you ever worry that this will be your legacy? Does that ever worry you in any way?

Absolutely. I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. “Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.” Somehow, I don’t think that will be it. But, if it is, so what do I care? I’ll be dead. I figure I can explain it to St. Peter. He will be on my side, because I am, so far . . . I don’t think, as a lawyer, I ever said anything that’s untruthful. I have a sense of ethics that is as high as anybody you can imagine. I’ve been doing this forever. I am doing what I believe in. I may not always be right, but I am doing what I believe. And I believe this man has been treated horribly. Including this BuzzFeed thing. And I think the whole reason they are misinterpreting what I said and a few other things is that they don’t want to deal with the real ramifications of the BuzzFeed story, which is, how bad has our media become, that they can publish something like that about the President of the United States that is totally untrue and leads to one day of saying he should be impeached, by Democrats and Hollywood. And even the special counsel, who I think would like to nail them if they can, had to say, ‘You are way off base and getting hysterical.’ Somebody lied to BuzzFeed who pretended to be a federal agent, or BuzzFeed is lying. That’s the big story of the last few days, not some revelation about when Trump talked to Cohen.

I felt like we were getting somewhere with that St. Peter thing, deep down.

Me?

When you brought up St. Peter. About you being dead and it won’t matter and you can bring it up with St. Peter.

I was joking.

I know you were partially joking, but it felt like we were getting somewhere.

Getting somewhere where?

About you and your legacy and how you see yourself.

I don’t think about my legacy. All I think about is doing a good job and what I believe in. When I was mayor, I got criticized for a lot of things I was praised for now. And, I think, when this is over, you are going to see that we are defending an innocent man who has been very unfairly treated. I can’t think of a person who has been as unfairly treated as this, by both the media and, to some extent, the special counsel. Now, maybe he is near the end and is starting to rethink it. I hope.

The Central Park Five? Trying to think of other people treated badly.

O.K., unfairly?

Yeah.

O.K., time to go.

I would be remiss if I didn’t let you say something for M.L.K. Day.

Oh, my goodness, yes, he was a great hero of mine. I believe he taught me, like he did all of us, how bad segregation was. Those of us in the North wouldn’t have known that without him.

TLDR: There are no tapes. I have listened to all the tapes. I should not have said that. There are no tapes. I've listened to all of them and none of them concern this. I'm afraid my gravestone will say: "Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump."

[WiseGirl]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

There are no tapes. I have listened to all the tapes. I should not have said that. There are no tapes. I've listened to all of them and none of them concern this. I'm

*raises hand to ask a question*

Teacher, that weird guy says that there are no tapes, but he listened to them all. Can you explain what he means?

Seriously,  Every time he goes on television I get confused. Can't he keep up with his lies? Maybe he needs a few cue cards...

 

Edited January 22, 2019 by WiseGirl
can't spell

[47of74]

On 1/16/2019 at 8:50 PM, Howl said:

Rudy the G is the worst fluffer ever.   

Oh man the mental images that brings up are almost as bad as the mental images of fornicate face and Putin in bed together.

Excuse me while I go dump a few barrels of this into my eyes.

[smittykins]

Are you sure that’s enough?^^^

[47of74]

18 minutes ago, smittykins said:

Are you sure that’s enough?^^^

Well I'll probably need at least a dozen of those drums for it to even be close to enough.