Tag: Rudy Giuliani

And now, a public service announcement on behalf of America’s sanity

It is the midst of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere…right now forecasters are forecasting their asses off about a major ice storm aimed at a hunk of the South.  The days are still comparatively short, and with the cold weather that has accompanied a lot of rain in our part of the world (is the drought over yet?) I am not alone in looking for more indoor distractions until golf weather returns.

But, please God, not this: American journalism outlets and associated information-providing avenues, would ya stand down on the perpetualization of the campaign for president of the United States!  Stop with the assumption that there is nothing more important to talk about, nothing so critical for me to know about, than who is favored and disfavored by people responding to public opinion polls.  Even if those people are telling the pollsters the truth, who cares right now?!  So much can happen in the months and months before anyone casts a meaningful ballot that these results are pointless; they only serve to keep funds flowing to the political-industrial complex.

It is too early.  It is soooo tiresome.  Even the primaries and caucuses that happen more than six months before the general election aren’t helpful in learning about candidates.  The whole thing has become a proxy for the on-going national food fight on “cultural issues” (that really aren’t even about culture) and not about administering government operations or even on providing leadership on issues.

And, at this point a year away from the first voters voting in the next national election, what you are telling us has proved to be, so often, so very wrong.  In Politico, Jeff Greenfield reminds us that in most recent years the “favorites” at this point do not win the contest.  You remember Howard Dean trouncing John Kerry in 2004, right?  And 2008, when Rudy Giuliani blew away John McCain while Hillary Clinton obliterated that senator from Illinois with the big ears?

The point here is not to argue for a vow of journalistic silence in the long slog leading up to the actual contests; it’s to put that part of the process into context, along with a serious dose of humility. Yes, Trump looks weakened, but are we really ready to anoint Ron DeSantis the nominee before he proves himself on the big stage? Yes, Biden is an octogenarian whose approval rating has been underwater since August 2021, but is anyone in his party really about to challenge his hold on the White House?

If you need something civic to worry about, worry about the government debt ceiling and the on-going budget deficits; give some thought to how our country can help our allies stifle threats from Russia and China; consider the real causes for and possible humane solutions to the humanitarian crisis at our southern border and the budget crisis it’s created for federal and state governments.  You could engage in the speculation about which team will win the Super Bowl or who will be selected as the next head coach of your favorite NFL team.  You could even talk to your friends about who will win The Bachelor, but please promise to do that verrry quietly so the rest of us can’t hear you.  But please leave the next race for president alone for now.

And if you need something to keep you warm on these cold winter days and nights, curl up with The Columbia Journalism’s Review of how American journalism handled coverage of Donald Trump.  There’s something here to warm the hearts of media-haters everywhere.

“demonstrably false and misleading”

A New York appellate court suspended Rudolph W. Giuliani’s law license on Thursday after a disciplinary panel found that he made “demonstrably false and misleading” statements about the 2020 election as Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer.

Thus does the New York Times kick off today’s top story, for those of us who have been patiently waiting for the true believers to open their eyes and see what has been right there all along.

“We conclude that there is uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at re-election in 2020,” the decision read.

Not just a simple assertion—backed by evidence—that what Giuliani was saying was untrue.  “Demonstrably false and misleading” is the plain and simple description of what has been coming out of the pieholes of Donald Trump and every last henchman-and-woman of his since…well, since ever.  They lie.  About anything, even things that don’t matter.  About everything, even things that aren’t in dispute, things that the evidence of our own eyes and ears and common sense tell us are so.

Don’t believe me?  Believe these judges when they tell you that the once-trusted and respected mayor of New York has become a scoundrel who will say the most ridiculous things on behalf of Individual-1.  And while you’re at it, take note, as Jeremy Stahl has in Slate, that “the meticulous 33-page chronicling and refutation of just a handful of Giuliani’s most blatant and nefarious election lies is actually kind of hilarious. The filing reads as though the five-judge committee went out of its way to show how ludicrous Giuliani’s—and by extension Trump’s—claims of election fraud are.”

In cataloguing Giuliani’s transgressions, the filing reads as a bemused and indignant greatest hits of Trump 2020 election lies, along with point-by-point refutations and comically timed footnotes. With every other sentence, the judges are almost shouting at the reader “get a load of the nerve on this guy.”

(snip)

The judges also dismantled the absurd logic Giuliani’s defense in this proceeding put forth that because dead voters are sporadically removed from the rolls—and were in 2021—that means dead people voted in 2020:

“Respondent claims his statements were justified because the state of Pennsylvania subsequently agreed to purge 21,000 dead voters from its rolls in 2021. This fact, even if true, is beside the point. This statistic concerns the whole state. Purging voter rolls does not prove that the purged voters actually voted in 2020 and per force it does not prove they voted in Philadelphia. It does not even prove that they were dead in November 2020. Moreover, the number of statewide purged voters (21,000) bears no correlation to the numbers of dead voters respondent factually asserted voted in Philadelphia alone (either 8,000 or 30,000). Clearly any statewide purging of voters from the voting rolls in 2021 could not have provided a basis for statements made by respondent in 2020, because the information did not exist.”

(snip)

At various points, Giuliani said 10,000, 32,000, or 250,000 undocumented immigrants voted in Arizona in the 2020 election. From the ruling:

“On their face, these numerical claims are so wildly divergent and irreconcilable, that they all cannot be true at the same time. Some of the wild divergences were even stated by respondent in the very same sentence.”

(snip)

Giuliani’s lone defense is that he did not “knowingly” make all of these false statements, as knowledge that he was lying is a required element to prove misconduct. The judges were largely able to brush this aside by pointing out all of the evidence that contradicted Giuliani’s statements that was available at the time he made them and his own lack of proof. More pointedly, though, they repeatedly noted that Giuliani kept lying even after he had been charged with lying.

Why?  Why, in the wide wide world of sports, would Giuliani and his “friend” insist on telling these lies—to America, and to judges they do not and did not control, who in every court challenge to the 2020 vote told them to pound sand?  Because they are so contemptuous of the rest of us, and blindingly out of touch with the reality of Trump, and so greedy and corrupt.  Because they expected the weak-minded not to question them, to just fall in line.  They proved that nearly every damn day, for anyone willing to honestly listen to what they were saying.

Now, we have a court ruling willing to point out that the emperor’s lawyer has no clothes, and by extension that neither does the emperor himself.  A little crack in the dam maybe, the one that could lead to the final catastrophic failure of the myth of MAGA Nation?  Hope so…