Rudy's micro-comeback: Giuliani to lead pro-Trump private sector cybersecurity force

Spurned for secretary of state, the former NYC mayor will lead private cybersecurity consulting team

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published January 12, 2017 7:45PM (EST)

Rudy Giuliani   (AP/Evan Vucci)
Rudy Giuliani (AP/Evan Vucci)

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is going to work for President-elect Donald Trump after all -- as the leader of a new private-sector cybersecurity consulting team.

"The president-elect decided that he wanted to bring in, on a regular basis, the people in the private sector, the corporate leaders in particular, the thought leaders, who were working on security for cyber," Rudy Giuliani told "Fox & Friends" on Thursday morning. "Because we’re so far behind."

Giuliani later added, "It’s his belief, which I share, that a lot of the solutions are out there, we’re just not sharing them. It’s like cancer. You know, there’s cancer research going on all over the place -- you’d almost wish they’d get together in one room and maybe we’d find a cure."

The former New York mayor also said that "the idea here is to bring together corporate leaders and their technological people. The president will meet with them on an ongoing basis as well as anybody else in the administration."

This isn't the first time that Giuliani has made headlines on behalf of his newfound political beau ideal, Donald Trump. In addition to being an early supporter of Trump's presidential candidacy -- a relationship that goes back at least to 2000, when Giuliani appeared in drag so he could perform in a skit in which Trump pretended to sexually assault him -- Giuliani has a long history of problematic comments, positions, and connections. These include insulting President Obama by saying that Vladimir Putin is "what you call a leader," accusing Hillary Clinton of being "a founding member of ISIS," denouncing Black Lives Matter for putting "a target on the back of police," claiming that Trump would be better at formulating economic policy "than a woman," arguing that Democrats would rig the election against Trump because they "control the inner cities," and bragging that he had known about James Comey's pre-election letter on Clinton's emails in advance. (He was probably telling the truth.) Giuliani also openly campaigned for an appointment as Trump's secretary of state despite a lengthy record of accepting payments from foreign countries, including Qatar and Venezuela.

Notably absent from Giuliani's background, however, is any expertise on technology or cyber-warfare that would suggest he is qualified to lead a project such as this.

 


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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