Who Exactly Does Rudy Giuliani Think He's Helping Here?
In anticipation of the release of the Ukrainium One "transcript" and whistleblower report, Rudy Giuliani spent approximately twenty hours in a row on Fox TeeVee yesterday, during which he screamed "Shut up, moron!" at another guest and brandished his locked cellphone as PROOF that he was sent on a "mission" to Ukraine by the State Department. After which, the president's wholly mentally stable personal lawyer retired to a room at the president's personal hotel in DC, on ground rented to the president personally by the US government. Of course. Once ensconced in his gilded safe space, he got on the phone with every reporter on the East Coast to continue spewing more inanity. Of course.
"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," Giuliani ranted to The Atlantic's Elaina Plott. "I'm not acting as a lawyer. I'm acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government." (Paging Adam Schiff: Rudy Giuliani just waived privilege because NOT A LAWYER.)
When reached for comment, "these people" told the Washington Post, "This s---show that we're in — it's him injecting himself into the process." Another of "them" told the Atlantic, "this entire thing" was "Rudy putting shit in Trump's head."
Then he capped it off by accusing The Daily Beast's Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng of being IN ON IT when they asked for proof of his batshit allegations about George Soros being the supervillain behind all Trump's problems, texting, "It seems to me your intent here is not to cover the inherent apparent corruption in the way this was done but to find any contradictions or create them."
LET THEM FIGHT.
For weeks, Rudy has been derping to anyone who'll listen that the State Department dispatched him to convince Ukrainian prosecutors to gin up an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The "transcript" of the call showed Trump repeatedly exhorting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to coordinate his investigation with Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr. In response to which Zelenskiy's people did, in fact, reach out to the State Department to put them in touch with Mayor Dentures. Clearly it was Trump himself who deputized Rudy for the "mission," not Foggy Bottom.
But that doesn't mean Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is off the hook. His part-time Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker and US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland functioned as Rudy's State Department handlers, debriefing him after every meeting with the Ukrainian government. The fact that Volker's lobbying firm got paid by the government of Ukraine during 2017 and 2018 while he was the State Department's liaison to that country is problematic, but not nearly as problematic as the fact that he supported the president's personal lawyer in an effort to aid his 2020 election campaign. We are way, way beyond a Kellyanne-style Hatch Act violation here.
Rudy has never claimed that his Ukraine shenanigans have anything to do with US foreign policy objectives. He's been very clear that he works only to benefit Donald Trump, saying "My narrow interest is for the benefit of my client." AND YET, the State Department lent its authority and resources to the cause. If Pompeo were anything other than a heat-seeking missile for Trump's ass, he'd have protected his people from getting mixed up in this gross violation. But he's just as big a whore as everyone else in the White House.
Even if, as the whistleblower suggests, Volker and Sondland were sending encouraging texts to Rudy while simultaneously going behind his back to the Ukrainians to "contain the damage," they were still participating in the president's re-election campaign.
But now those chickens are all coming home to roost, since Volker and Sondland will surely be top of the witness list at Donald Trump's impeachment hearing, while Rudy's texts are exhibit one. Because if that raving loon is going down, he's taking all y'all with him.
"I should be as sympathetic as a whistleblower. I did my job and now all these people are torturing me," Rudy whined to CNN, before adding that he had texts and "I'm going to use them to protect myself if and when I need them."
If Rudy Giuliani's verbal diarrhea is what finally ends up taking out That Orange Criminal, we will die of laughter. But we will die a happy woman! Pray for us.
[CNN / DB / The Atlantic / WaPo]
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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore with her wonderful husband and a houseful of teenagers. When she isn't being mad about a thing on the internet, she's hiding in plain sight in the carpool line. She's the one wearing yoga pants glaring at her phone.
