How the mighty have fallen.
Standing last Saturday in front of “Trump 2020” campaign signs plastered onto a commercial garage door in Philadelphia, Rudy Guiliani — the former New York
City mayor, presidential candidate, and national hero — tried to counter media reports on voting tallies giving Joe Biden the presidency with claims of voter fraud and threats of lawsuits.
The tawdry event marked a steady and sad decline for the man who was once TIME magazine’s Man of the Year and tagged with the title, “America’s Mayor.” Cameras captured Guiliani one day after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks striding down a New York street wearing an FDNY ball cap with a brash, can-do New York expression plastered to his face.
Flash forward almost 20 years and Guiliani is one of Trump’s few remaining apologists. He has cast aside all shreds of dignity, and maybe sanity, to suggest the Nov. 3 election somehow deprived the 45th president of the United States of a second term.
“We’ve been deprived of the right to inspect ballots,” the Associated Press quoted Guiliani as saying on Saturday.
Why, one might ask former prosecutor Guiliani, did ballots need to be inspected? Exactly what election-law violation disqualified any ballots cast in the presidential election?
Challenging American election results in the 21st century is a precise, legally-complicated process that requires the challenger to point to specific violations by people involved in ballot-handling and counting.
Even election challenges mounted on the local level require pinpointing specific violations in the election process. Trumpeting claims of fraud or stolen elections doesn’t cut it.
Standing on a landscaping company’s driveway bellowing about fraud should be well beneath Guiliani’s dignity. But as a member of Trump’s steadily-shrinking band of loyal minions, he is comfortable tarnishing the reputations of election workers and volunteers who spent hours, even days, counting ballots in gymnasiums, church basements and municipal buildings.
Reputation demolition is a Trump speciality and, apparently, a Guiliani specialty. He did the president’s bidding during the 2019 Ukraine interference controversy and now he is carrying Trump’s water with the voting results challenge.
Once the epitome of the brash, bare-knuckle New Yorker, Guiliani has embarrassed himself on Trump’s behalf. Here’s hoping January and Biden’s inauguration will see Guiliani slink off the public stage and set to work on rehabilitating his reputation.
