Rudy Giuliani on Thursday took one of the last, desperate laps of the fifth-or-so act of a storied career.
On display during a YouTube’d press conference filled with contempt for the press, the endurance of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer was spectacular as always, with over an hour of him playing all the hits: “Democrat bosses” and “crooks” using “illegals” to vote, dead voters, child voters, double voters, out-of-state voters, Mickey Mouse, voter intimidation, Republicans barred from watching ballot counting, the baseless conspiracy theory about Dominion voting machines, strenuous efforts to pull numbers out of thin air that would add up to a victory.
At turns, Giuliani reenacted a scene from My Cousin Vinny, and performed deposition-style, reprising the role of a trial lawyer after a nearly thirty-year hiatus. (For a sense of the tone: “What happened on the morning of November third, when they were going to count this new kind of ballot, the mail-in ballot?”) Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell further asserted flagrant conspiracy theories beloved by QAnon and MAGA mainstream alike, involving Hugo Chávez, George Soros, and the Clinton Foundation, citing “video on the net” evidencing that “a kid with a cell phone” can hack Dominion voting machines. Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser for the Trump campaign, devoted about 10 minutes to denigrating the whole press corps before her as fake news shills who will ensure that no election will ever be secure again.
There was even a large map.
In real life, Giuliani’s claims are as shaky as they sounded in the press conference. To the frustration of a U.S. district judge in Pennsylvania, Giuliani has amended complaints, without seeming to keep track of the core allegations. Not even Fox News bought a word of it.
As Vice reported today, the official Donald Trump YouTube account promoted a livestream from “Right Side Broadcasting Network,” which ran a Super Chat. Similar to a Twitch stream, viewers can pay to comment and YouTube gets a cut, which meant that a slew of commenters paid YouTube a 30% cut of their $US5 ($7)-$US20 ($28) conspiracy theories about “dead voting” and “illegals” (amongst other things) to the mix. According to Vice, currencies ran the gamut from dollars to pounds to yen. YouTube has not yet responded to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
But the true heroes today were photojournalists who captured and uploaded evidence of a spectacular moment about 48 minutes into the broadcast, when a dark liquid escaped Rudy Giuliani’s body and dripped down both sides of his face: perhaps hair paint, or a thin motor oil that lubricates his brain. They immediately posted their work to image licensing sites AP images and Getty Images, which now pulls up a wall of oozing Giuliani portraits under a search for “Trump.”
Here’s Rudy Giuliani.
This is the president’s surrogate and personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
This is America’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani.
This is constitutional defender Rudy Giuliani, securing our rights to free and fair elections, so long as you shut up and don’t question the fanciful schemes no matter what lies federal election oversight officials may tell you.
