Rudy Giuliani picks the worst possible time to go barking mad
Here’s the thing about leverage. If you threaten to take specific actions under specific circumstances, and then it turns out you were bluffing, and everyone finds out you were bluffing, there’s no worse time to turn around and make even more threats. In fact Donald Trump and his legal team shouldn’t be saying anything at all this weekend, because their words will automatically translate to “I’m bluffing again.” Naturally, Rudy Giuliani doesn’t understand that.
Yesterday the New York Times revealed that five months ago, Trump and his legal team sent a threatening memo to Robert Mueller. In that memo Trump threatened to fire Mueller and pardon everyone, if Mueller kept pushing forward aggressively. Mueller did precisely that, and in response Trump did nothing. This means Mueller has known for months that Trump is bluffing, and now everyone in the media and the public knows it too. Apparently Rudy didn’t get the memo about the memo.
Right after the memo surfaced, Rudy “Motormouth” Giuliani gave an interview to ABC News and announced that “if Mueller tries to subpoena us, we’re going to court.” Well, okay then. Maybe Rudy means it and maybe he doesn’t. But if this is an attempt at scaring Mueller into backing down, Giuliani couldn’t be picking a worse time, because right now no one is buying anything that Trump and his legal team might be threatening.
Even if Donald Trump and Rudy “Beaker from the Muppets on LSD” Giuliani do go to court over this, it’s unclear how they could expect to win. The legal precedent for subpoenaing a sitting U.S. President was established in court long ago. But hey, there’s no better time to begin publicly making threats than a few hours after the whole world learned that you were bluffing the last time you made threats. So by all means, Rudy, please proceed.
