Rudy Giuliani begs for a lifeline
Even though Donald Trump is still periodically throwing Rudy Giuliani a verbal bone of generic support, it’s clear that Trump has moved on. He’s no longer sending Rudy on TV to defend him. He’s already trying (and failing) to hire people like Trey Gowdy as Rudy’s de facto replacement. More importantly, Trump has given zero public indication that he’s willing to stick his neck out by pardoning Rudy.
Rudy Giuliani is now in limbo, too spun around to even make up his mind whether or not he wants a criminal defense attorney of his own, essentially sitting around and waiting to be arrested. But even as Rudy has largely stopped saying things on Twitter since the arrest of his co-conspirators Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Rudy does now appear to be begging for a lifeline.
Rudy is now speaking primarily through his “likes” on Twitter, which is a surreal, if perhaps surprisingly logical, way of continuing to “speak” without running the risk of incriminating himself. So what is Rudy “saying” with these likes? He’s been making a point of liking tweets that are being posted by people like Kellyanne Conway, Jeanine Pirro, Steve Scalise, and others who still directly have the ear of Donald Trump.
It’s not difficult to figure out that Rudy Giuliani is saying “don’t forget me” to the people who are ultimately going to advise Donald Trump what to do on the day Rudy gets arrested. But the reality is that this probably isn’t going to help Rudy. Not only has Trump shown zero willingness to pardon any of his other co-conspirators (Cohen, Flynn, Manafort, etc), Rudy would likely get hit with state charges in New York immediately after being pardoned on the federal level. Rudy’s lifeline just isn’t coming.
