Roxanne Tellier – A Pocketful of Rudy

It’s been eye-opening (if you’ll pardon the pun) to discover how I time waste while I recover from this eye surgery. It’s hard to see print, on screen or paper, so I’m spending a lot of time on YouTube, watching a ton of political and comedy entries, but also getting knee deep into the murky waters of decluttering and crafting. Should this next Covid wave hit hard, I’m swimming in craft supplies, so no one need worry that their holiday stockings will be empty come December – Glitter R Us! (I’M KIDDING! Or … am I?)

With nothing pressing or even ON the social calendar, I’m not missing a minute of the madness as the countdown continues to the American election. Even sat down and tried to watch the trump/Biden debate (Shawn and I were better prepped with quips and answers than either of those septuagenarians, but I digress) Still waiting for that October Surprise. Not sure there’s gonna be one, at this point.

Although, that’s not for trying. Witness a pretty obvious attempt at a Hail Mary pass from Rudy Giuliani, the man once known as America’s Mayor.

In a nutshell, Rudy wants us to believe that he somehow stumbled upon a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden, at a computer repair shop. As Slate dot com explained,

“According to the Post, someone abandoned the laptop at a computer repair shop in Delaware, and the data on the hard drive subsequently reached the FBI and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is also a lawyer for President Donald Trump. Steve Bannon is said to have notified the Post of the hard drive’s existence, and Giuliani then supplied the tabloid with a copy. The Post has now run a series of exposés based on the contents of the hard drive, the most purportedly explosive of which has to do with an email that Hunter Biden supposedly received in 2015 from Vadym Pozharskyi, a board adviser at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. In it, Pozharskyi thanks Hunter Biden for introducing him to then–Vice President Joe Biden. This would seem to be evidence limply supporting the Republicans’ allegations that Hunter Biden, who worked for Burisma, had convinced his father to do favors for the Ukrainian company using the powers of the vice presidency.”

Quite a coincidence, that the guy that’s been heavily involved in the nonsensical Ukrainian conspiracy theories that got trump impeached, just happened to find the evidence he’s been promising for months, already conveniently converted into PDF format that is, unlike regular email, stripped of any code that might actually show provenance.

We’re to believe that the same Hunter Biden that was savvy enough to be a lawyer and partner in two international investment firms somehow just snapped, and left evidence that coordinates with what Giuliani has been touting, in a rundown shop in some mall halfway across the country, conveniently run by a blind, but plucky owner, able to not only fix said laptop, but decode any potential passwording or security built in. And that guy also just happens to be best buds with Giuliani. Got it. Right.

It’s not surprising that no reputable journalists or outlets are taking the story seriously; you could shoot a cannon through the holes in this tale. Even the journalist with his name appended to the Post story has disavowed the piece, and there is scant evidence of anything remotely considered fact. It’s classic Russian disinformation tactics, right down to the hinted upon, though not pressed, suspicion of pedophilia. No authentication has been produced for any of the files.

But even trump’s most loyal cronies are distancing themselves from the story, and AG Bill Barr has taken a little Me Time, Down Time, for himself, rather than answer trump’s bellows for an investigation.

Finally, FOX News, which, like the Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, passed on the story. They just didn’t trust Giuliani, or the provenance of this well travelled hard drive’s data.

And then – just when Rudy began to slip out of the news again – the new Borat 2 film trailer arrived, along with some juicy footage of America’s Mayor trying to get jiggy with an actress in the film whom he has been told is just 15 years old.

If you’ve seen the film (and blink, and it will be gone, after the election) the scenes are cringeworthy indeed. This is cinema verité – the footage is candid camera style. Giuliani believes he is being interviewed by a young, naïve woman who is a little in awe of his legacy. Throughout their interaction, his ill-fitting grin is in full display, and he frequently touches her arms, leg, waist, hip, with a familiarity that any adult female will recognize as a type of foreplay.

When the actress asks him if he would be more comfortable continuing their chat and drinks in the bedroom, he is agreeable, and sits on the bed, as they both ham-handedly attempt to remove each other’s microphones. Rudy lays back and puts his hand down his pants, a move he later describes as tucking in his shirt, but that seems to involve a fair bit of genital handling en route. At which point, Sasha Baron Cohen, in character as Borat, and dressed in lingerie, bursts into the room, crying that the girl is, at 15, too old for him, and offering to take her place as a sex partner.

Giuliani has denied any sexual intent. But most aren’t buying his bluster.

The spotlight has been on Giuliani since he joined the president’s legal team in June of 2018, while former fixer, Michael Cohen, was under criminal investigation. (He was later charged, and did prison time, for campaign finance violations, tax fraud and bank fraud.)

Right from the jump, Rudy had both feet firmly implanted in his mouth. In TV appearances, he implicated trump in federal crimes, and suggested that he regularly paid off women to keep quiet about alleged affairs, saying that Cohen had to either pay off Stormy Daniels, or watch trump lose the election.

On a personal level, Rudy’s love life was on evidence when his third wife filed for divorce on the basis of a current affair with a married woman named Maria Rosa Ryan. In the past, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he’d be leaving his second wife to take up with his mistress. Unfortunately, his second wife learned that news along with every one else as he’d neglected to mention it to her prior to the interview. And of course, Giuliani’s first marriage was annulled when he discovered that his wife of 14 years was his own cousin. Oops!

Meanwhile, son Andrew Giuliani is best known for suing Duke University after he was cut from the golf team. He’s currently serving as the Public Liaison Assistant to trump.

Giuliani squandered his accidental canonization as “America’s Mayor” in pursuit of relevance and to help his idol, trump.  Most Americans didn’t really know much about Giuliani before events of 9/11 propelled him into a perception of being a widely admired civic leader. In fact, prior to the attack, Rudy was better known as the ‘leaky’ Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), famous for making sure his pet journalists were made aware of where and when suspects would be taking their ‘perp walks’ into court. This made him friends of those print and broadcast media hounds who were more concerned about getting eyes on their headlines, than on the defendant’s protected rights to a presumption of innocence, and a fair trial. It also created a bond between the journalists and the prosecution that virtually assured that only the proscribed narrative would be aired.

But in truth, there were many in New York City – and particularly members of the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) – who had their own fire axes to grind on his mayoral decisions.

Giuliani was sworn in as mayor of New York City on January 2, 1994, less than a year after the World Trade Center had been attacked with a 1200-pound bomb that had been concealed in a metal truck, and parked in the basement.  Six people died that day, 1000 were injured, and 50,000 more were forced to evacuate the building.

In a report written after the event, that was published in 1994 by the FDNY, a crucial component in the deaths and injuries had been the inability of firefighters and their officers to properly communicate over their analog radios. This issue was flagged as a ‘vital issue’ that needed to be addressed.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t until March of 2001 that new digital radios were deployed, but, even so, the new radios were shelved after the radios failed to work during a basement fire in Queens. The old analogs were put back into service, and were what the FDNY had to deal with on 9/11, when nearly 3000 people were killed in lower Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Of the dead, 343 of them were uniformed New York City firemen.

Mayor Giuliani was blamed for the failure of the new radios, because, as was claimed by a report issued a month later by the New York City Comptroller, his administration had willfully and recklessly violated city contracting rules, by issuing a no bid, non-competitive contract that was basically just an extension of an existing Motorola contract.  In fact, the new digital radios, purchased in an improper process, were never properly tested before being distributed to the FDNY.

“As the IAFF video documents and as the 9/11 timeline confirms, at 9:32 am on September 11^th, an FDNY Chief ordered all members in the North Tower to the lobby. Even though he repeated the order, not a single company responded.

At 9:59, the WTC South Tower collapsed, and at 10 am, the order to abandon the North Tower was repeated. Inside the North Tower were 121 firefighters who never heard that order. They perished when the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 am.

“On 9/11, firefighters went into the North Tower and started ascending the tower, yet they were being called back, and they kept going, “ said Richard Salem, an attorney who has been representing several of the firefighters’ families who lost loved ones when the North Tower collapsed. “Not one other uniform(ed) officer from any other department (who had functioning radios) perished in that tower other than the FDNY.

Despicably, Giuliani tried to cover up his own malfeasance by telling the 9/11 Commission that the North Tower firefighters had ignored the radio orders because of ‘their willingness, the way I describe it, to stand their ground.”  

Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, who lost his son Jimmy in the North Tower, will tell this tragic story to anyone who will listen. He and other surviving family members shadowed Giuliani during the 2008 primary, and carried on a media campaign that was picked up by outlets like The Guardian.

“These radios did not work in the WTC in 1993, and they did not work in 2001. We got the story out there, but when the media christened him ‘America’s Mayor’, it all went away.””  (Salon, October 2019.)

Two weeks after September 11, Giuliani asked then-New York Governor George Pataki to cancel New York City’s 2001 mayoral election, and to extend his term limit, so that he could stay in office, claiming that, “there were people that wanted me to do it. I never asked (Pataki) to do it. I never made the decision to do it.”

Pataki considered the idea, but then decided it was a ‘bad idea both as a matter of principle and politically, “adding “Are you really, right now, after a terror attack on our state, our city, asking me to just cancel the entire election? I am a conservative. We respect the law. For God’s sake, you’re a prosecutor! You know the law!”

In January of 2019, Giuliani was asked in a New Yorker interview if “Saying things for Trump, not always being truthful about it—do you ever worry that this will be your legacy? Does that ever worry you in any way?”  

And Rudy’s answer was, “Absolutely. I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. “Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.” Somehow, I don’t think that will be it. But, if it is, so what do I care? I’ll be dead.”

And he added, “I don’t think about my legacy. All I think about is doing a good job and what I believe in. When I was mayor, I got criticized for a lot of things I am praised for now. “

Nearly two years later, the 76-year-old is even closer to the grave. And it’s hard not to wonder when he will ever actually take responsibility for his misdeeds.

=RT=

Roxanne’s column appears here every Sunday 

Roxanne Tellier has been singing since she was 10 months old … no, really. Not like she’s telling anyone else how to live their lives, because she’s not judgmental, and most 10 month olds need a little more time to figure out how to hold a microphone. She has also been a vocalist with many acts, including Tangents, Lady, Performer, Mambo Jimi, and Delta Tango. In 2013 she co-hosted Bob Segarini’s podcast, The Bobcast, and, along with Bobert, will continue to seek out and destroy the people who cancelled ‘Bunheads’.