Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has received much ridicule (again) for a TV interview where he said, “Truth isn’t truth”.
In the fuller exchange that occurred after that clip, we realize that Giuliani was not addressing the deep and long-standing philosophical question about the nature of truth because he goes on to clarify by saying that if, after the private conversation between Trump and former FBI director James Comey, Comey gives one version of events and Trump another, who can say what the truth is? He was implying that we sometimes have a Rashomon-like situation where the information we have is insufficient to determine what really happened or what was said.
Fair enough. But as a lawyer, you would think he would be able to say what he thinks more clearly and precisely and not in such a way that opens him up for mockery. Unless this is all part of a deliberate plan to deflect attention away from the substantive to trivialities.
After the travesty of the Central Park Five trial and conviction………
I think it’s a deliberate plan to make the substantive trivial. When we get used to them saying ridiculous things like this and shrug it off with “there he goes again,” we pay less attention when they say dangerously outrageous things and mean it or tell the outrageous truth -- or we stop listening altogether because half of what they say makes no sense or is an obvious lie.
This is the brother of Trump’s uncharacteristically clear statement that “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Let’s see . . . one was Comey and one was 45. I think I can make a determination of who was lying because every time he opens his mouth, lies come out. (And just to hammer the subtlety home, 45 is an established and documented liar.)
You are giving the ghoul far more credit than he deserves. This is a deliberate effort to deny, deflect, and destroy. The is the same idiot who’s first appearance on this case was summed up by Stephen Colbert thusly:
Step 1) Go on every cable news show in America.
Step 2) Learn the facts of your case
He also said bullshit like this: “I don’t know the facts, but I know the law and no laws were broken.” This is the same level of bullshit as Sean Spicer’s “Nobody kept numbers [about inauguration crowd size], but our numbers were definitely bigger than anyone else’s.”
Trump’s crowd does not care about truth, they are spinning a narrative. They are inventing the story and selling it as legitimate. They are deliberately, willfully, and with malice aforethought concealing the truth and creating lies. They are trying to put all evidence, even irrefutable documentary evidence, on a he-said-she-said basis and getting the public swayed to their side by weight of Trump’s charisma.
In a just world, a lawyer would be disbarred and publicly flogged for this bullshit. But not in this world.
Trump and Giuliani seem perfect for each other.