When it comes to his undeterred defense of his new client, President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani has left much of the country wondering, "What happened to the man we once lovingly referred to as 'America's mayor?'"
Thankfully, HBO's John Oliver has an answer. And, in short, it is: Rudy Giuliani has "always been this way."
"How do you separate fact and opinion?” Trump's lawyer mused aloud Sunday during an appearance on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. It was just the latest jaw-dropping moment from a tour of erratic on-camera interviews that Giuliani has blitzed the media with since being hired by Trump to represent the president in the ongoing probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into his 2016 campaign's relationship with Russia.
And Giuliani just can't keep his facts straight.
In an exhausting 16-minute long segment on "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" on Sunday, the Emmy Award-winning comedian documented Giuliani's epic fall from grace. Since serving as the mayor of New York City, the politician went from being named Time's "Person of the Year" to winding up as Trump's latest "Mr. Fix It." (Michael Cohen, who was previously in the role, is now facing his own legal woes.)
But, has everything in Giuliani's life actually been leading up to this moment?
After a meteoric rise to fame in the wake of 9/11, Giuliani found himself as a front-runner for the Republican nomination for president in 2008. Yet his campaign fizzled out fast, and a decade after earning the big honor from Time, he suddenly found himself fronting "Mob Week" for the AMC network.
"Holy sh*t, that is a steep fall," Oliver said. "Just 10 years after being named Time 'Person of the Year,' Giuliani was doing VJ work for a cable network's edited for TV presentation of 'Scarface.' Just think about how crazy that is!"
So, how did Trump's man crush on Giuliani develop, given his fall from the A-List to the D-List?
Oliver began his well-researched examination of Giuliani by taking a look at the New Yorker's questionable relationship with the institution of marriage, whose sanctimony is fiercely defended as a value of the Republican Party. In case you didn't already know, Giuliani's first bride was actually his second cousin. "That's right, America's mayor was a cousin hustler," Oliver deadpanned.
Giuliani's second marriage concluded like a bad business decision. "We've grown to live independent and separate lives," the mayor said in a press conference to the media – one he delivered without forewarning his partner.
"The truth is, Trump's real affection for Giuliani probably came from his willingness during the campaign to lend his last shreds of credibility to various amounts of poisonous nonsense like this," Oliver declared, before cutting to clips of Giuliani's pro-Trump media blitzes from the 2016 campaign trail. "If I did one-tenth of what Hillary Clinton did, I'd be in jail," the former mayor asserted in one.
"Go online, and put down 'Hillary Clinton illness,'" Giuliani continued in another. "Take a look at the videos for yourself."
When you look at all of Oliver's evidence – which includes an erratic encounter that Giuliani had with a ferret-loving constituent – you could possibly also reach his same conclusion: Giuliani's job as Trump's attorney is fate.
"Everything in his life has lead to this point," Oliver suggested. "And while he may well be providing terrible legal representation for Trump, he's actually the most honest representation of him in general. Because – think about it – they're basically two versions of the same person."
Commonalities Oliver finds between Trump and Giuliani are: They are both New Yorkers "coasting on their reputations" who have had three marriages each. And, neither of them is capable of keeping their mouths shut when a camera is in front of them.
But, "perhaps most importantly they both want to f**k Ivanka," Oliver bluntly added. "Which is weird for Trump, because Ivanka is in his family. And, it's weird for Giuliani, because she isn't."
"So what happened to Giuliani is really not the right question. He's always been like this," Oliver stated. "What's going to happen to him is more to the point."
"Maybe he brings Trump down through sheer incompetence," the comedian predicted. "Maybe he gets fired in the next two weeks. Although, to be honest, at the rate that we're going, he is so fatally flawed as a human being, that he is probably going to end up president."
The latter move could already be ill-fated, because Oliver's team purchased the domain Giuliani2024.com. And, it now displays a dancing ferret waving its two middle fingers at the former New York mayor. To learn more about Giuliani's torrid history with ferrets, watch the full segment above.
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