From September 11th to January 6th: Rudy Giuliani's Fall From Grace

Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. One of the few rays of light coming from the day of darkness was the aplomb of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. His was a voice of both reassurance and righteous outrage. He would soon be dubbed America's Mayor. 

Some thought he should become America's President - myself included. Of course, his 2008 White House bid was a spectacular failure. For my part, I ended up supporting John McCain. But Giuliani still had plenty of goodwill and he could have ridden off into the sunset.

Instead, Giuliani became a stooge for defeated, former President Donald Trump as his personal lawyer and ended up losing his law license in both New York and in D.C. in the process. Giuliani's association with Trump consisted of working behind the scenes to put the screws to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open up an investigation against then former Vice-President Joe Biden resulting in Trump's eventual first impeachment. Giuliani was subsequently heavily involved in trying to overturn the 2020 election both in Georgia and in the events leading up to January 6th up to and including telling Trump's supporters, "Let's have trial by combat." 

Of course, Giuliani is among those charged in the Georgia RICO case and is an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal January 6th case. For bad measure, a federal judge recently issued a default judgment against Giuliani for defaming two Georgia election workers who happen to be an African-American mother and daughter. Giuliani falsely claimed the daughter handed the mother a thumb drive "like they were vials of heroin or cocaine" while dealing a full deck of race cards.

In the midst of all this, there were the farts heard round the world, the press conference in front of a landscaping business next to an adult bookstore and a crematorium as Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, the hair dye running down his cheeks and, of course, then there was Borat's daughter. 

As political strategist Rick Wilson put it, "Everything Trump touches dies." Or in Giuliani's case, we have a painful, steep decline. Mind you, I don't feel sorry for Giuliani. He brought this on himself and made some awful decisions and probably won't stop short of testifying against Trump. Yet Giuliani did some good for New York City and did a great deal of good in the days after the 09/11 attacks. (And there was a time when Giuliani would occasionally call Trump out on his bullshit especially where it concerned 9/11). Sadly, that good has been all but negated by putting Donald Trump ahead of the country. The same could be said for most of the Republican Party.