What In The World Is Happening To Rudy Giuliani?

It’s no secret that Team Trump is in the process of falling apart: the outgoing U.S. president refuses to concede despite losing both the popular and electoral vote to Joe Biden, and even the vice president appears to be in hiding over this mess. In yet another desperate attempt at a power grab — or, depending on who you ask, a coup — Trump is engaging in election interference, spreading lies and misinformation on television, and filing countless lawsuits (most of which have been dismissed). And at the helm of all of this is Mr. Rudy Giuliani, Trump's lawyer and the recent surprise star of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. 

Giuliani has been by Trump’s side since the president hired him during the Mueller investigation, turning a decades-long acquaintanceship into a partnership-of-sorts. Over the course of Trump's presidency, Giuliani has become known for his role in the Ukraine mess that got the president impeached, and more recently, his appearance at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference. Even former national security adviser John Bolton has reportedly described him as a “hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up” in regards to his bumbling diplomacy attempts.

But between his baseless lawsuits around invisible voter fraud and his rant about Mickey Mouse in a Pennsylvania courtroom earlier this week, we have to ask: WTF is happening to Rudy Giuliani?

At a press conference on Wednesday regarding efforts by Trump’s team to invalidate votes in Michigan, Giuliani quoted the classic film My Cousin Vinny. Mimicking a courtroom scene from the movie, Giuliani did his best Joe Pesci impression, asking, “How many fingers do I got up?” while he held up two fingers. He then explained how, in the film, the witness wrongly identifies the number of fingers as three.

The purpose of Giuliani's conference was, of course, to continue pushing a false story of voter fraud in the 2020 election on the American people. "What I’m describing to you is a massive fraud," Giuliani said, before lashing out at reporters who provided facts that proved otherwise. "You're lying," he responded.

But many people watching the presser were distracted by something far more confusing than the nonsense Giuliani was spewing: the brown liquid dripping down both sides of his face. It appeared Giuliani was sweating gravy — or maybe just toxins, or maybe just bronzer — but the internet quickly theorized that it was spray-on hair colour that was mixing with beads of his sweat and slowly making its way down his cheeks (see image above for reference). This is the kind of literal storyline from an episode of Frasier that makes the distinction between fiction and reality increasingly difficult to find.

But beyond the surface-level mocking of Giuliani's appearance, the former New York City mayor has repeatedly outdone himself in displaying new levels of incompetence. It was Giuliani who led the doomed and now-infamous press conference outside the Four Seasons Total Landscaping (read: his team clearly meant to book the Four Seasons Hotel for the presser, and instead booked the parking lot of a local landscaping company located next to a sex shop). He was also caught on film by actor Sacha Baron Cohen and the makers of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, where he appeared to be putting his hands in his pants while in a hotel room with an actress who was posing as a minor.

Of course, all of this is in line with Giuliani’s sordid history. After all, while he was Mayor of New York City, he smeared the name of a murder victim in order to protect the cop who killed him; often used intimidation as a political tactic; and regularly took credit for things other people had done.

While Giuliani acts as Trump's talking head (and a melting one at that), spewing lies about "legal ballots" and "election tampering" while pursuing baseless lawsuits on the outgoing president's behalf, he is only running his own reputation further into the ground — if such a thing is possible. And at then end of the day, Giuliani looks like a losing man on the wrong side of history who’s chances of winning are dripping away right along with his hair dye.

So, perhaps the answer is that there's nothing wrong (or different, at least) with Rudy Giuliani. He is just still, unfortunately, Rudy Giuliani.