Rudy Giuliani runs out of gas
For awhile there, Rudy Giuliani’s semi coherent and gaffe-filled defense of Donald Trump was nothing if not spirited. Rudy would appear on cable news almost daily, accidentally confessing to one of Trump’s crimes after another, blurting out key pieces of the Trump-Russia scandal that were supposed to be secret, and making a mockery of his punchline of a client. But then things changed. Giuliani gradually appeared increasingly worn down. His latest spiel suggests he’s totally out of gas.
Over the weekend, Rudy Giuliani took a rather lazy stab at trying to spin the short prison sentence that George Papadopoulos received in exchange for cutting a plea deal against the Donald Trump campaign. Rudy tweeted “Mueller is now finished with Papadopoulos. He got 14 days. Wow big case for the Angry Democrats. Sometimes you get more for traffic violations. And again: NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION. I think they bankrupted him to flip him. Proud of yourself ‘liberals.'” It wasn’t clear if he was merely trying to spin this, or if he truly didn’t realize Papadopoulos had flipped.
Then came this bizarre tweet: “All developments point to no collusion. Papadopoulos testified no knowledge of collusion. Woodward,after exhaustive research, found no evidence. And “anonymous author” makes no such allegation. Why? Because the President did nothing wrong. Time to end it.” Wait, what? Rudy Giuliani couldn’t possibly know everything that Papadopoulos may have secretly given up to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Bob Woodward’s book was not at all focused on the Trump-Russia scandal. And there is no reason to believe that the op-ed author was involved in any White House discussions about the scandal, or that the author worked for the campaign.
What stands out here is that Rudy Giuliani’s attempts at spinning BS in Donald Trump’s favor are getting weaker and lazier. He’s gone from a spirited (if disastrous) defense of Trump, to now simply mailing it in. Maybe he’s dejected that his television bookings are now few and far between, and thus he can no longer get his lies out broadly enough for them to matter. Maybe he’s tired of defending a guilty and mentally incompetent traitor. Or maybe Rudy has simply figured out that Trump is going down one way or the other, and there’s no longer any point in fighting it.
