There Goes My Hero (Rudy Giuliani)

Credit where credit is due: Rudy Giuliani’s extremely big mouth and addiction to having his face plastered all over television has played a significant role in the whistleblower scandal that’s becoming an existential threat to Donald Trump’s presidency. But to hear Rudy tell it, he’s not just a bit player in this whole saga who may have done some extremely sketchy mob-like shit on behalf of the president, but rather, in his words, a “hero.”

The former mayor of New York and world’s worst lawyer referred to himself as such in an interview with The Atlantic’s Elaina Plott:

Even among the president’s closest allies, Giuliani is now the subject of scorn. When I reached him by phone this morning, following House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s release of the full whistle-blower complaint at the center of the Ukraine scandal, he was, put simply, very angry.

“It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m not. And I will be the hero! These morons—when this is over, I will be the hero,” Giuliani told me.

“I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government,” he continued, sounding out of breath. “Anything I did should be praised.”

We’ll know if Rudy actually believes his own bullshit if he ceases talking about anything else but this, which is essentially how he handled 9/11 from 2001–2016.

But Rudy has reason to feel self-conscious, because according to Plott, Trump’s allies have turned on Giuliani in a way that they hadn’t even through his many, many, many, many embarrassing episodes over the past few years. One “former senior White House official” essentially blamed the whole Ukraine scandal on “Rudy putting shit in Trump’s head,” while another “senior House Republican aide” called Giuliani a “moron.”

“They’re a bunch of cowards,” Giuliani told Plott. “I didn’t do anything wrong. The president knows they’re a bunch of cowards.”

Incredibly, Giuliani also threatened to leak a bunch of text messages with officials from the State Department, whom the whistleblower alleged “had spoken with Mr. Giuliani in an attempt to ‘contain the damage’” to national security:

When I asked him about this specifically, Giuliani nearly began shouting into the telephone. “The State Department is concerned about my activities? I gotta believe [the whistle-blower] is totally out of the loop, or just a liar,” he said.

Giuliani went on to say that State Department officials had asked for his assistance. “If they were so concerned about my activities, why did they ask for my help? Why did they send me a bunch of friendly text messages reaching out for my help, thanking me for my help?” Giuliani said he planned to make sure these “friendly text messages” came out “in a longer story.”

Rudy, simply put, is on one. Is it any wonder why he and Trump are such great friends?