A biographer who wrote the book on the life and career of “America’s Mayor” has a new theory for why Rudy Giuliani remains so doggedly loyal to Donald Trump even after it has been proven time and time again that the two never had any convincing proof of election fraud from the 2020 contest.
Andrew Kirtzman gave his take on the topic to MSNBC’s Chris Jansing during an interview this week; Mr Kirtzman is the author of Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor.
Mr Kirtzman explains that the major turning point in Mr Giuliani’s political life came in 2008, when he failed to deliver a competitive performance in that year’s presidential primary race, despite all expectations for him to do so.
“[H]e entered as a front runner and ended it in humiliation with just one delegate,” Mr Kirtzman explained.
“[I]t was at that moment in 2008 when things kind of crashed around him, when he lost his 9/11 halo, was left in kind of the political wilderness. There was Donald Trump. And Donald Trump literally took him in to Mar-a-Lago right after his failure in 2008 and kind of shielded Giuliani when he was, kind of fell into a depression,” he continued.
According to Mr Kirtzman, that relationship blossomed into a mutually beneficial transaction in 2016 — Mr Trump gained an endorsement from a supposedly credible voice within the GOP, and Mr Giuliani regained a hint of national relevance.
But their friendship truly took off in 2020, when Mr Giuliani became Mr Trump’s main stooge in his campaign to tarnish Joe Biden’s name before the onset of the general election. When that failed, Mr Giuliani was right there to pick up the pieces of Mr Trump’s defeat, spinning them instead into a victory supposedly snatched away by the Democrats.
Nearly three years after the 2020 election, there’s no sign of any change in the former New York mayor’s feelings for Mr Trump, or vice versa. But it’s an objective fact that Mr Giuliani’s acceptance into the Mar-a-Lago circle has now had more negative consequences for his reputation than positive effects.
His law licence is now suspended in both New York and Washington DC; a disbarrment looks likely at least in the latter jurisdiction. He also now faces several felony counts in Georgia, where prosecutors this week handed down a massive indictment charging Mr Trump and his team with crimes related to their election result manipulation efforts.
Mr Giuliani has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
It’s unclear where Mr Giuliani goes from here. But it seems, at least for now, that wherever he ends up will have been thanks to a path that became inextricably linked with Mr Trump way back in 2008.
