RUDY, A MESSAGE TO YOU

Rudy Giuliani went on CNN last week to spout a new Trump talking point – namely that a sitting president doesn’t have to respond to a subpoena.  To coin a phrase, you won’t believe what happened next.  Or maybe you will, but Rudy didn’t. 

Because he’s an idiot, Giuliani was unprepared for the possibility that CNN might have a videotape of him saying exactly the opposite twenty years ago, when the president was Bill Clinton; and that CNN would also have the audacity to play the tape while he was on the air. 

“Unfair,” old Rudy yelled at younger Rudy.

Politicians, like the rest of us, change their minds occasionally.  Sometimes it’s because they’ve legitimately been persuaded that an earlier position was wrong.  More often, especially among Republicans, it’s because their arguments are based on expediency rather than principle.  They’ll say anything that makes their side look good in the moment.

Rudy should have known that his earlier statement was out there.  He should have had a glib response ready.  It wouldn’t even have to make sense.  He could have said something like “Chris, legal precedents have evolved since the end of the last century,” and changed the subject. The key is a rapid response.

Trump’s chumps don’t demand logic or consistency.  All they want is an immediate counterattack when one of their sacred cows is threatened.  We saw a great example of the right-wing rapid response strategy last week, in the wake of the school shooting in Texas.  The Lt. Governor immediately suggested that the problem wasn’t guns, but the fact that schools had too many doors.  The NRA didn’t care that the idea was ridiculous.  It introduced a new element into the post-tragedy conversation and deflected some of the attention from their precious firearms.       

In Trumpworld, alpha males aren’t challenged.  But Giuliani wasn’t on Fox, where they know the rules.  And Rudy, like Trump himself, is clearly well past his prime.  He doesn’t think well on his feet, and often winds up revealing information that a sharper attorney would have kept secret.  What a gift to Robert Mueller, Michael Avenatti, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Jeffrey Yohai, Paul Manafort’s ex-business partner as well as his ex-son-in-law, has cut a plea deal with the Justice Department.  My personal take on this development is that it means that Mueller really wants Manafort to flip.  He certainly doesn’t need a plea bargain to convict Manafort.  With Rick Gates and now Yohai ready to testify against him, Manafort is pretty well toast.  No, I think any plea deal Manafort might negotiate is about connecting Donald Trump directly to Russia in some way. 

And in other news, a fourth front has opened up in the battle to save democracy from Donald Trump.  A court in New York has ruled that the defamation suit against Donald Trump by a former Apprentice contestant, Summer Zervos, may proceed.  And Lordy, there are tapes!  Zervos, like other contestants on the show, was mic’d up literally 24/7.  Trump himself was live-mic’d during his entire time on the set.  Word on the street is that there’s a lot of Access Hollywood-type stuff on those tapes, crude comments about women, and maybe some racist comments as well.  The discovery process in this trial should be fascinating.