Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel roasted former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani for getting unceremoniously served with an Arizona indictment just moments after his big 80th birthday bash in Florida.
Mr Kimmel recounted the story in the opening monologue of Monday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! by describing how “MAGA OG Rudy Giuliani” had celebrated the milestone birthday in Palm Beach with a party at which “guests serenaded him with what might be the most off-key version of ‘Happy Birthday’ ever recorded”.
A clip of the song, which was indeed excruciating, was then played, before the host continued: “So this is where it gets funny.
“Rudy, as you may know, has been charged with making false claims of voter fraud in Arizona after the election in 2020, and I guess he was feeling a little bit feisty because he posted [on X], ‘If Arizona authorities can’t find me by tomorrow morning, they must dismiss the indictment’.
“So then two agents, they look at the video, they figure out where the party is, they show up and they serve him the papers.
“Happy birthday dummy!”
Mr Kimmel concluded the segment by observing: “This has to be the second-most embarrassing thing that ever happened to Rudy Giuliani.
“The first, of course, being the time he accidentally held a press conference outside a dildo store.”
That was a reference to the notorious media event staged by Mr Giuliani – then a personal attorney to Donald Trump attempting to prove the outgoing president’s spurious election fraud narrative – in the parking lot of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping garden center in industrial Philadelphia on 7 November 2020, a venue presumably booked in error after mistaking it for the Four Seasons luxury hotel.
To make matters worse, standing close by was the Fantasy Island adult bookstore and sex shop, rather undermining the gravity Mr Giuliani had hoped to instill in the occasion.
While Mr Kimmel is right that that was undoubtedly one of the most embarrassing episodes of the former attorney’s storied career, there are plenty of other contenders, from the moment black hair dye ran trickling down his face in front of the world’s press to his getting caught up in a sting orchestrated by Sacha Baron Cohen’s fictional Kazakh alter ego Borat.
Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Mr Giuliani, said in a statement to The Independent regarding the indictment, which was served over his alleged role in a fake electors plot on behalf of Mr Trump’s re-election efforts: “The mayor was served after the party and as he was walking to the car.
“He was unfazed and enjoyed an incredible evening with hundreds of people, from all walks of life, who love and respect him for his contributions to society. We look forward to full vindication soon.”
While Mr Giuliani appears to have otherwise enjoyed his night and treated his friends, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone among them, to a rendition of “New York, New York”, the bad news otherwise keeps on coming for the man once beloved as America’s Mayor, who is now fighting bankruptcy and debts of $148m after being found guilty of defaming two Georgia election workers.
He recently lost his radio show for peddling false claims about the 2020 vote, was forced to cut the asking price for the apartment he is hoping to sell to raise funds and has had to hurriedly race out his own brand of coffee beans to make ends meet.
