Giuliani’s changed, but he’s the same
e all think Rudy’s lost his mind,” said the former Giuliani deputy mayor to me after America’s Mayor had gotten in bed with America’s “moron” (as confirmed by former and current close associates Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster and John Kelly).
Then this past Wednesday, Team Trump’s latest lawyer said that 45 paid Michael Cohen’s hush money to Stormy Daniels — but it wasn’t an illegal campaign finance violation (the law says differently), and that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District office he once famously headed had sent “storm troopers” to seize records from Cohen’s office and home. If so, this would probably be the first time imputed Nazis got warrants.
Such a late-career move is not unprecedented for those driven to recapture earlier glory. It happened to Al Smith, a great governor who ended up becoming a shill for corporate interests and denouncing FDR. It’s happening to Alan Dershowitz, star law professor and defense attorney, now providing prestigious cover for a Trump coverup.
Rudy’s dwarf-star turn saddens many but should surprise few. I was public advocate over the same eight years he served as mayor, and we fought continuously over matters large and small. He was easy to both dislike and respect. He was smart, tenacious, sleepless, creative. You had to be on your toes to hold your own, much less prevail.
Still, pre-Trump, he was also often lawless and dishonest in an ends-justify-means pursuit of his goals. Wanting no one to ever question his pro-police cred, he refused to release files of substantiated complaints against abusive police. So we sued under the City Charter and won, gaining disclosure of all the files.
He illegally leaked the juvenile record of Patrick Dorismond, a black man killed during a mistaken-identity scuffle with the police. Again we sued and won an injunction against any future violations of juvenile records rules.
When a Bronx whistleblower disclosed that the NYPD had set a speed trap in front of the Bronx Zoo, the city sent cops to arrest and handcuff the complainant on a 13-year-old warrant.
And to obscure bad headlines about his own youth services commissioner, Mayor Giuliani slandered an excellent former youth commissioner, Richard Murphy, on charges that turned out to be utterly false.
I only wish I had a dollar for very time he used the rhetorical trick of exaggeration by citing a slightly high statistic — say, 20%, then adding “30 or 40 or 50%,” before using his fictional highest number to win an argument. At the time I used to joke, “The thing about Rudy is that either you love him . . . or he hates you.” Sound familiar?
Now this same hyperbolist has for a year in effect called a former FBI director a Nazi and literally “very perverted,” as well as screaming from podiums that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be “locked up.”
Since he went there, it seems only fair to note two commentators in this context.
Sinclair Lewis is famously attributed with saying: “When fascism comes to America, it will wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” And it was James Comey, who like Rudy had successfully gone after organized crime, who observed in his memoir that Trump operated like a mob boss, demanding loyalty to cover up crimes.
It’s one thing for an ideological hack like Sarah Huckabee Sanders to prolifically lie as a press secretary, another for a lawyer and former prosecutor to do so on behalf of, empirically, the most corrupt President in our history. (See his emolumental self-dealings, Mueller indictments and pleas so far, firings of prosecutors probing him, disparagement of law-enforcement agencies, courts overturning his “arbitrary and capricious” rules, etc.)
If Giuliani gets to use a Nazi reference to describe lifelong law enforcement officials, I can adapt Lewis’ epigram to today by saying, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and warping the justice system to criminalize the opposition.”
Andrew Kirtzman called his book on Giuliani’s mayoralty “Emperor of the City.” He did have the swagger an emperor back then, but now more resembles Shelley’s Ozymandias:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. remains.