Pic Of The Moment: Wingnuts Of The Long Weekend

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Pic Of The Moment: Wingnuts Of The Long Weekend





New Yorkers Gave Rudy Giuliani the Reception He Deserves at a Yankee Game This Weekend

Raucous boos rained down from the stands at the very mention of the former mayor's name.

By Jack Holmes
May 29, 2018


Getty Images

New York has contributed its fair share of the various grifters, blowhards, and scoundrels who are now afflicting the national government. That includes the president, Donald Trump, whose hometown tried to warn the rest of the country about him by shoveling 79 percent of its vote towards Hillary Clinton.

After all, to many locals, Trump was not the swashbuckling Artful Dealer of The Apprentice, but a skeevy, largely failed real estate and casino developer who had ripped off his lenders and subcontractors and humiliated the mother of his children by personally leaking details of his affairs to The New York Post.

But Trump is not alone—the same town has also given the country Rudy Giuliani. As it happens, New York is a city that keeps the receipts. Giuilani had his critics even before he launched himself into the hulking abyss of Trumpism, but the demands of his new gig as Donald Trump's TV Lawyer Who Just Says Things have dragged him very deep down indeed.

The artist formerly known as America's Mayor ventured to Yankee Stadium this Memorial Day weekend to celebrate his birthday. When the stadium announcer shouted him out, the 50,000 New Yorkers in attendance had a clear response.

Of course, this warm reception for the former mayor didn't come out of nowhere. Giuliani has repeatedly embarrassed himself and brought shame to the city he once helmed since taking his place on Trump's legal team for the Russia probe.

He shocked even Sean Hannity by joining his Fox News show to promptly declare Trump repaid Michael Cohen for the $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels—a direct admission that the president lied when he said he knew nothing about it.

He melted down on CNN when shown a clip where he completely reversed himself on whether a president must comply with a subpoena to testify. And he has repeatedly and egregiously undermined the rule of law through attacks on the Justice Department that add up to little more than blatant propaganda.

Of course, the disgrace began well before Trump snatched Electoral College victory from the jaws of popular vote defeat in 2016. In March of that year, Giuliani suggested on Fox News that Hillary Clinton "could be a founding member of ISIS."

The same month, he appeared to blame President Obama for the terror attacks in Brussels. He offered a deranged speech at the Republican National Convention, howling at the crowd about Benghazi and the prospect of the U.S. accepting Syrian refugees. "They're going to come here and kill us," he said. "We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past."

And of course, Giuliani was one of the few Trumpists willing to publicly defend the Republican nominee's talk in the Mobile Locker Room. Giuliani suggested that "he who hasn't sinned, throw the first stone here." Is it his contention that most people brag about grabbing women "by the pussy" without their consent? Do we all lack the moral standing to judge Trump for his disgusting misogyny? Or is Giuliani just willing to say anything to once again feel the adoration of the crowd—no matter what crowd that is?

The saddest part of Giuliani's self-debasement is that, while he had his detractors, his record once had features many New Yorkers could be proud of. As Jelani Cobb detailed in The New Yorker, Giuliani was staunchly pro-police—even in instances of blatant misconduct— but he also defended Muslim and Arab Americans who came under attack in the aftermath of 9/11. He backed gun control and gay rights, and he even offered a defense of undocumented immigrants:


“The anti-immigration issue that’s now sweeping the country in my view is no different than the movements that swept the country in the past ... You look back at the Chinese Exclusionary Act, or the Know-Nothing movement—these were movements that encouraged Americans to fear foreigners, to fear something that is different, and to stop immigration.”

The raucous boos you heard for Giuliani this weekend were a reflection not merely of his support for this president. There were also a testament to the disastrous moral failure that is the legacy of Rudy Giuliani's once promising public life.

He was a former prosecutor who too often sided with police, sure. He was criticized for his crackdowns on the homeless. But he was a genuine leader in the wake of an apocalyptic tragedy for the city and the country of his birth.

And more than that, this child of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, once demonstrated a real appreciation for the story of the city of New York, the beating heart of a nation continually striving to live up to its own founding principles, and a place for anyone from anywhere in the world willing to work hard and adopt the values of this nation to come and test themselves in the great, churning cauldron of America.

Now he is a modern-day Know-Nothing, working in service of a genuine monster of American history because, to Rudy Giuliani, there is no fate worse than irrelevance.

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