Elaina Plott at The Atlantic published an amazing article about Rudy Giuliani this afternoon. An excerpt:
Even among the president’s closest allies, Giuliani is now the subject of scorn. When I reached him by phone this morning, following House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s release of the full whistle-blower complaint at the center of the Ukraine scandal, he was, put simply, very angry.
“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 told me.
“I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government,” he continued, sounding out of breath. “Anything I did should be praised.”
Okay, then.
Giuliani is enraged by the notion (noted in the whistleblower complaint) that people at the State Department were trying to “contain the damage” caused by Giuliani’s freelancing in Ukraine. In retrospect, that’s why he was waving his phone around at a bewildered Laura Ingraham on Fox News earlier this week, insinuating that he has the goods on the State Department.
But according to Plott’s article, it’s not just the folks at Foggy Bottom who’ve had quite enough of Rudy:
This morning, a former senior White House official told me this “entire thing,” referring to the Ukraine scandal, was “Rudy putting shit in Trump’s head.” A senior House Republican aide bashed Giuliani, telling me he was a “moron.” Both individuals spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be candid.
On Twitter, Plott said she interviewed Giuliani over the phone while riding in an Uber, and Giuliani was ranting so loudly that when she hung up, the driver said, “Uh, everything okay?”
Republicans like Pompeo, Pence, Mnuchin, McConnell, Graham, et al, have been riding the tiger for three years. Trump is demented and unfit, but they thought they could control him. And so far, they have, at least well enough to get what they want: judges and plutocracy-friendly legislation.
I suspect Giuliani is more similar to Trump than those evil shits — a paranoid outer-borough climber with an enormous chip on his shoulder and something to prove. He’s more of a true believer, IMO, as are feral back-benchers like Nunes and Gaetz and the Fox News sycophants who peddle crackpot conspiracy theories to angry white shut-ins.
I wouldn’t place bets on which group will win the battle for the yawning void that passes for Trump’s soul, but my guess is the Foxified rage-bots will have more cred with Trump than the more traditional pols.
I’m looking forward to a couple of things. The first is Giuliani’s testimony at an impeachment hearing. The second is the Stupid Reservoir Dogs-style showdown in the administration when this shit-grenade finally explodes.
Rudy won’t go gentle under that good bus…Post + Comments (48)