Rudy Giuliani is doing such a bang-up job as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer that there’s speculation he might be doing television interviews while drunk. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough brought up the subject on the air, saying that Giuliani hadn’t gotten the Trump cabinet position he wanted because he was “falling asleep five minutes into meetings” and “drinking too much.” Giuliani had a less-than-convincing rebuttal:
“None of that is true,” Giuliani said of Scarborough’s remarks in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “I’m not sleeping now. I’m in Dallas. I’m wide awake. I’ve handled numerous cases including some sensitive cyber matters. I’m a lot more aware and intelligent than Joe has ever been and a lot more accomplished. Joe hasn’t been knighted by the Queen of England. He hasn’t run a U.S. attorney’s office, much less a city that he turned around or went through 9/11.”
As for the allegations about his drinking, Giuliani acknowledged being a social drinker but said he doesn’t have alcohol early in the day.
“I’m not drinking for lunch,” he said. “I may have a drink for dinner. I like to drink with cigars.”
A cigar, a cocktail and 9/11? Also, can we talk about how convincing “I’m not sleeping now,” said on a Tuesday afternoon, is as a rebuttal to perhaps having had a few drinks before going on the air and saying things that cause problems for your client? And furthermore, being more aware and intelligent and accomplished than Joe Scarborough may not be the world’s largest challenge, but that’s not the question at hand. The question at hand is not what happened in 2001 but how many drinks Giuliani is having before he goes out and makes Stormy Daniels’s lawyer a very happy man on a regular basis.
Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn and Ben Schreckinger report that:
Several Giuliani friends noted that much of his business is conducted in settings in which drinks are served, and that Giuliani’s flamboyant personality only gets more colorful when he imbibes.
Moreover, “Two New York insiders” said Giuliani had been at a cigar bar where he is known to drink before that notorious Hannity interview. So it sounds like Rudy’s friends think he was probably at least a little buzzed when he admitted that Trump had paid Michael Cohen back for the $130,000 in hush money and had fired James Comey “because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn't a target of the investigation.”
Even though 9/11 9/11 9/11.