When Donald Trump tasked Rudy Giuliani with spearheading his legal effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, it was obviously the final nail in the coffin of this extremely sad attempt to overthrow democracy. While Giuliani started his career as a federal prosecutor, of late his professional activities have involved trying and failing to take Joe Biden down via hard drive, appearing in a Sacha Baron Cohen movie with his hands down his pants, and unironically holding a postelection press conference between a crematorium and a sex shop running a sale called “DILDO MADNESS.” This is not the person you turn to when you need help getting out of a parking ticket, let alone convincing federal courts to give you a second term despite decisively losing the presidential election. Unfortunately for Trump, no reputable law firm wants anything to do with him. Also unfortunately for Trump, both he and Giuliani became untethered from reality several decades ago. So despite the fact that their odds of success are on par with those of Biden nominating Jared Kushner as Secretary of State or replacing Kamala Harris with Ivanka Trump on the 2024 ticket, they’re apparently intent on not only dragging this thing out as long as possible, but doing so in the most unhinged, mortifying fashion possible.
Which brings us to the press conference held by Giuliani on Thursday, an appearance that seemingly had no chance of topping his performance in court earlier this week but somehow did, by leaps and bounds. And that’s not just because, at one point, sweaty beads of what appeared to be hair dye dripped down the side of his face as though they were trying to flee the scene:
Hair and makeup malfunctions aside, the first thing you need to know about this press conference, in which Giuliani and company alleged they have evidence of mass, coordinated voter fraud, is that despite such claims, they told reporters they can’t actually provide any evidence of them at this time. “It’s not a singular voter fraud in one state,” Giuliani said, speaking from the Republican National Committee headquarters. “This pattern repeats itself in a number of states, almost exactly the same pattern, which any experienced investigator prosecutor, which suggests that there was a plan—from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud, specifically focused on big cities, and specifically focused on, as you would imagine, big cities controlled by Democrats, and particularly if they focused on big cities that have a long history of corruption.” He added: “I know crimes, I can smell them. You don’t have to smell this one, I can prove it to you, 18 different ways. I can prove to you that he won, Pennsylvania, by 300,000 votes. I can prove to you that he won Michigan, probably 50,000 votes,” Giuliani continued. And yet, he didn’t prove anything, not 18 different ways or even one way. He did, however, act out a scene from My Cousin Vinny:
Later, he claimed that more than 600,00 ballots in Pennsylvania weren’t inspected, rendering them “null and void,” which is false; that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had said ballots coming in Pennsylvania after 8 p.m. couldn’t be opened, which is also false; and that votes have not been certified in Wayne County, Michigan, which, you guessed it, is also false.
Incredibly, the award for the most batshit-crazy portion of the presser didn’t even go to Giuliani. Instead, it was clinched by attorney Sidney Powell. Taking over from the former mayor, Powell, who previously represented disgraced National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, told reporters she was here to talk about “Massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China and the interference with our elections here in the United States. The Dominion voting systems…were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he didn’t want it to come out.”
Then she remembered to work in George Soros and the Clintons, like any conspiracy theorist worth her salt:
And in a feat no one thought possible, she made Giuliani sound lucid.
Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser for the Trump campaign, took to the podium to yell at the press assembled, telling them: “This is basically an opening statement so the American people can understand what the networks have been hiding and what they refuse to cover because all of your fake-news headlines are dancing around the merits of this case and are trying to delegitimize what we are doing here.”
Also, at one point Powell told reporters, “this is the 1775 of our generation and beyond,” which definitely sounds like a threat of revolution involving muskets and bayonets, though one truly never knows.