By: Zeke O’Connell | Staff Writer
*DISCLAIMER: Political Op-eds are independently written and do not reflect the views of the Mosaic Student Newspaper or Salve Regina.
Rudy Giuliani has not had the hottest couple months. On December 6th, President Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Defending President Trump, he ended up issuing a press conference at a Four Seasons Total Landscaping office in Philadelphia instead of a Four Seasons hotel. In other recent press conferences, he has sweated like an Irish kid in a confession booth trying to conceal his blatant lies, and he has also farted.
In October, “Borat 2” presented a scene where the seventy-six-year-old Giuliani is interviewed by Borat’s fifteen-year-old daughter, played by the phenomenal twenty-five-year-old Maria Bakalova. Following the bizarre, unprofessional interview, Giuliani follows the actress into a bedroom, and after his charming verbal foreplay, takes off his and Bakalova’s microphones and reaches his hand down his pants as he faces the young woman. Now call me old-fashioned, but I have a problem with his behavior.
You would think someone in politics for over 30 years would be able to suppress their strange appetites and hold some virtue. Unfortunately, he has abandoned the little morality he previously had. Defending himself, Giuliani addressed the scene with a tweet, saying it was manipulated out of context: “The Borat video is a complete fabrication. I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment…At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate.” If you have not viewed the scene, it is pirated on YouTube; watch it and digest it as you please.
Hired as President Trump’s personal attorney in 2018, Giuliani previously has run his personal firm for decades, following two term reign as New York City’s mayor. He rose to prominence as he was the US Attorney for the southern district of New York from 1983 to 1989 where he did commendable work. He became renowned for his crack down on corruption and organized crime in New York City, and was praised with the revival of the city. Popular as New York’s mayor, his term culminated with the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Although he was nicknamed, “the hero of 9/11,” I would argue that anybody could have stood in front of a camera near some rubble and spewed blank clichés about hope or how great the city is. He gained national fame in those two months and used his celebrity to launch his unsuccessful presidential campaign for 2008. In the ten years before Trump hired him, Giuliani had returned to his law firm.
Once hailed as “America’s mayor,” Rudy Giuliani has become a shell of his former self. His downfall is disheartening to say the least. He has also been into conspiracy theories of late, prescribing to whatever Trump has suggested, and has not waned from his statements invalidating the election results in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia. Giuliani has perpetuated the right-wing fear mongering surrounding the Black Lives Matter Movement, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2020 Election. His disregard of morality is indicative of the Republican party as a whole. He has only added ingredients to the hysteria stew which has been stirring division into the brains of working class Americans. It is ironic that the man hired to protect the integrity of Trump is also endorsing conspiracy theories about election fraud which hold no truth. Giuliani signifies the moral decay of politicians. Of all the horrible things which have come out of the Trump presidency, it has brought light to the power that wealth holds in this country. Giuliani paragons as a formerly independent politician that has done and said anything he has needed to in order to maintain a good relationship with Trump: who, whether you like it or not, remains the most powerful person in the world for another month. Although members of his cabinet are already morally deficient, Trump is a puppeteer, making socks out of cabinet members once they sign the dotted line. Decadent politicians and lawyers have bowed to Trump, and received power and wealth in return. To follow Trump’s crooked footsteps is a choice Giuliani made, and he has left justice and the betterment of America behind. Especially considering the “Borat 2” scene, he does not deserve America’s compassion. Giuliani needs to take a hint from Kate McKinnon’s impression of him on “Saturday Night Live”: he is pathetic.
Cover Image: “Rudy Giuliani” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
