Rudy Giuliani sends Donald Trump spiraling

| 11:47 pm EDT August 19, 2018
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For a long time, Donald Trump melting down on Twitter in the evening was considered a rare event. As his criminal scandals have closed in on him, he’s begun having late night meltdowns more frequently, to the point that over the past week they’ve been an every-night occurrence. It’s not quite yet midnight on the east coast, but it looks like we’re not getting a defiant Trump tirade tonight. We suppose we can thank Rudy Giuliani for that.

Rudy has been screwing up Donald Trump’s defense from day one, and he keeps finding creative new ways to worsen Trump’s odds of staying out of prison. But today Giuliani managed to take the cake in a uniquely absurd manner we can’t recall having ever seen. His “truth isn’t truth” declaration on Meet The Press this morning was so stunning that it may ultimately be looked back on as having delivered a more severe blow to Trump in the court of public opinion than any of the various legal problems Rudy has caused Trump.

The last thing any political figure, or really any public figure, wants to do is to get forever tied to a timelessly idiotic remark. It’s humiliating. It’s potentially legacy ruining. It’s even worse when the quote in question torpedoes the narrative that the person was trying to get across. Rudy Giuliani has spent quite some time feverishly trying to convince the public that Donald Trump can’t testify about his criminal scandals because he’ll get convicted of perjury even if he tells the truth. Rudy had to make this notion stick in order to have any chance of getting the public on board with Trump’s decision not to testify – particularly if Trump tries to fight the inevitable subpoena.

Rudy Giuliani’s strategy was never going to work anyway. But now Rudy has unwittingly told the public that Donald Trump’s version of the truth isn’t really the truth. That’s all anyone is going to remember about about the battle over whether Trump testifies. The narrative has been cemented now: even Trump’s own attorney thinks Trump is too much of a liar, and too likely to get caught lying, to let him testify. Where does Trump go from here? This was already a terrible strategy based on desperation. Now it’s officially failed.