There are champs and there are chumps. This past week, one champ stood tall and one chump, well, I’ll let you be the judge.
Rudolph William Giuliani, 79 years old, former two term New York City Republican mayor, once nicknamed America’s mayor after 9/11, once the pantheon of the incorruptible, is now the chump of all chumps, the capo di tutti capi of chumps.
Rudy was indicted in Georgia under that state’s RICO Act for allegedly running a criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 election in favor of his liar-in-chief, a guy whose last name rhymes with chump.
He was ensnared by the same anti-racketeering law he himself used to burnish his reputation as an organized crime fighter. How the tables have turned on the guy who battled the New York mob when he was a lawman and not an alleged law breaker.
Remember the Rudy Giuliani whose crime-fighting prowess was the envy of the nation? That svelt, naturally dark-haired guy who took on the mob commission in 1987? That indomitable US Attorney who sent Genovese family boss “Fat” Tony Salerno, Carmine “The Snake” Persico of the Columbo family, and Tony “Ducks” Corallo of the Luchese family to the pen?
Click below on Old Rudy to watch a video from back then, with local news guys Steve Dunlop and John Roland.
Giuliani is now a punk, just like the punks he busted decades ago. He’s a made man in the Trump crime family, just like the made men of the mafia crime families he sent up the river. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a chump!
Rudy’s a chump because he willingly orbited around a death star to keep himself relevant. He thought he could fly close to the heat of that dark star without getting burned.
Instead, what he got was a 13-count indictment that may or may not land him in jail for the rest of his life, but most certainly will land him in the poorhouse.
And here’s where Rudy Giuliani gets even chumpier, if there is such a word.
CNN reports that Giuliani has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for lawsuits tied to the stolen election delusions. So he flew to the Red Keep, for all you Game of Thrones fans, to Mar-a-Lago, to plead for money from tight-wad Donald Trump.
Rudy is flat broke, but he was a huge chump for asking Trump to slip him some dough.
The former president is notorious for turning his back on friends and associates when they ask for cash. But Rudy Giuliani? The man who was a Trump whisperer? The guy who took command of the stolen election onslaught right from the start? True to form, Trump sent Rudy back north with a couple of shekels but not nearly enough to bail him out of his desperation.
Rudy, if you weren’t such a chump, you’d be one of the most tragic figures in American politics.
As my old friend, political guru Hank Sheinkopf told the Wall Street Journal this past week, Giuliani “rose to prominence as the most honest of them all—the only one who could take down organized crime, get the gangsters off New York’s streets and make the world safe. Now he’s going down into the sewer as a guy who’s undermining democracy.”
Ironically, from those same Georgia grand jury indictments, a champ emerged this past week.
Geoff Duncan, former Georgia Lt. Governor, is an honest man and speaks with an honest tongue.
He was a key witness in the Fulton County grand jury investigation into Trump and his cohorts and their twisted efforts to overturn the will of the American people.
Trump actually had the chutzpah to tell Duncan in a social media post not to testify before the grand jury, but Duncan blew him off and did what was right.
Interviewed right after his testimony, Duncan said that if Republicans want to win in 2024, they’d better dump Trump. Duncan said, “Donald Trump was the worst candidate ever, in the history of the [Republican] Party and that our nation is at a “pivot point…to do something more than just stew on the 2020 election cycle.”
Duncan should be the example to all Republicans who still kowtow to Trump, who perpetuate his lies and delusions.
Geoff Duncan was once in Trump’s corner, but he saw behavior that was unforgivable in our democracy and he’s speaking out.
Rudy Giuliani was once a champ but somewhere along the road he got punch drunk and he’s now almost down for the count.
Chump/champ. Just one letter makes an enormous difference of not only who you are, but also of what you believe in.