Is Rudy Giuliani Okay?

Rudy Giuliani is trying hard to place himself front and center in the current impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump.

Last week, he had a bit of a screamy meltdown on CNN, where said the allegations that he had helped Trump pressure the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s son were “ridiculous” right before admitting he did that exact thing and that he’s “proud of it.”

Now that Nancy Pelosi has opened a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump (including into that very thing Giuliani admitted to doing on his behalf), Giuliani appears to be in full freak-out mode. He called the now-released whistleblower complaint “total nonsense” while also making it clear that he had an exit strategy in place and it involved taking a whole bunch of people down with him.

He also gave a really weird interview to Elaina Pott at The Atlantic that read like a legit supervillain rant.

“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,” Guiliani said.

That’s definitely a totally normal thing that not-evil people say in a very reasonable tone of voice.

Giuliani continued, saying. “I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government. Anything I did should be praised.” Plott described him as “nearly shouting” and “sounding out of breath.”

Giuliani then went and backtracked on that whole “not acting as a lawyer” thing.

This not-a-lawyer also won’t say whether or not he has security clearance. “Doesn’t matter keep chasing irrelevant info,” he texted The Daily Beast.

Meanwhile, Trump’s allies seem to be turning on him, either because they’re really sick of him or because he’s making himself the obvious scapegoat.

According to NBC, a former senior White House official “said that Giuliani’s claim that he worked through the State Department to coordinate his talks is highly questionable.” The former official said Giuliani should have “nothing to do with any of this stuff.”

“It’s Giuliani who’s really dragged the president into something that’s a legal matter and a political matter and will be part of impeachment,” the former official said. “What Giuliani did, there’s no argument that it was a legitimate, government, law enforcement endeavor.”

Yet Trump, who is often quick to abandon even his most loyal allies when it becomes politically expedient, was notably supportive of Giuliani when asked about him during a meeting with Ukraine’s president on Wednesday. He even praised Giuliani’s recent appearances on television.

Trump will like pretty much anyone who praises and defends him–which Giuliani has been doing–even if that person is incriminating themselves at the same time–which Giuliani has also been doing.

What a hero.

(image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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