Are they objective?
The Post annotates Giuliani’s chat with Hannity.
GIULIANI: Here’s what it’s all about. It’s real simple. The American people can follow this along with me. Are they objective?
HANNITY: Are they?
GIULIANI: Well, right now, a lot of things point in the direction of, they made up their mind that Comey is telling the truth and not the president.
Ok wait. He’s implying that that’s not “objective”…But an objective observer (who hadn’t just popped out of an eggshell fully mature yesterday) has a million reasons to think Comey is more likely to be telling the truth than Trump is. An objective observer can remember that clip on Air Force One when Trump lied about who paid Stormy Daniels and whether he knew about it, to name just one item. Trump lies constantly; Comey not so much.
GIULIANI: He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation. He’s entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that. And, he couldn’t get that. So, he fired him and he said, I’m free of the guy, and he went on Lester Holt. Lester Holt’s interview was as good as anybody could do, better than I think any of the people around Mueller could have done, and Lester Holt asked him, why did you do it? He said, I did it because I felt that I had to explain to the American people the president was not the target of the investigation.
No he didn’t. That’s not what he said at all. So there’s Giuliani either lying about or failing to remember accurately an important fact. So much for objectively deciding who is telling the truth.
GIULIANI: And even Jake Tapper pushed him, like, really hard, I’m talking about Comey. Comey had no answer for why he didn’t say this, even though he had done the same thing for Hillary.
So, you can’t blame the president for feeling, I am not being treated the same way they were.
But, again, it’s the difference between a closed investigation and an open one. I can grasp that as a random citizen with no legal training, so I’m well convinced former prosecutor Giuliani can…so he’s bullshitting.
GIULIANI: I know James Comey. I know the president.
Sorry, Jim, you’re a liar. A disgraceful liar. Every FBI agent in America has his head down because of you. It would have been good for God if God had kept you out of being head of the FBI.
HANNITY: Explain where he lied.
GIULIANI: Well, he lied about his conversation with McCabe. He knew all of McCabe’s conflicts. McCabe should testify against him. He lied about his conversations with the president. He only told the truth when the president said, I made — we know Donald — I’m sorry, Mr. President, he was Donald before.
He lied about the fact that they talked about whether the president was a subject or target, then he immediately changed it. It’s one lie after another.
How does Giuliani know Comey lied about his conversations with the president? Was he in the room? Did he have a wiretap on Comey? Where does he get his certainty?
HANNITY: Rod Rosenstein — everyone forgets when he wrote that recommendation to fire Comey. He said the FBI cannot be reestablished if he stayed at the helm.
GIULIANI: Yeah, why? Because he’s a liar. His conduct of the Hillary Clinton investigation was a total disgrace. If Hillary Clinton had been elected president, he wouldn’t have lasted past day one. We know she would have fired him.
I don’t think she’d deny that today. She was right. We should have fired him. When I say we, I mean the collective we here, day one.
That’s seven times so far he’s called Comey a liar.
HANNITY: Well, wait a minute. And you have a guy who hates Hillary and loves Donald Trump during the interview. That would be the Hillary standard. That’s not going to happen with Robert Mueller.
GIULIANI: We’re not going to get that. Could we accept something less than that? Yes. Could we accept a situation in which they are telling us basically we believe Comey, who is now a pathological liar, as opposed to Donald Trump? Then the answer to that is no.
Eight times.
GIULIANI: Also Comey and McCabe contradicting each other. One of them has to be lying. I mean, I actually think Comey is lying. I think Comey is a big liar than McCabe. McCabe isn’t a situational liar. He’s a much big liar.
So, if this were equal system of justice, they’d all be prosecuted.
Nine ten.
Did Trump write his dialogue?
No, no, Ophelia, that’s not how it works. You can’t go using evidence to reach an uncomfortable conclusion. “Objective” means that you either (1) are “keeping an open mind” and refusing to decide whether you believe the allegations; or (2) have decided, like Giuliani, that the allegations are false. Disagreeing with Rudy is, ipso facto, proof of a lack of objectivity.
Have you learned nothing from sexual assault and harassment cases?
“I can’t possibly come to any sort of opinion on the allegations against Famous Dude. All I have to go on is detailed eyewitness accounts from the victims and other witnesses, corroborating accounts from people they complained to, documentary evidence, and Famous Dude’s generally skeevy attitude towards women. As a true skeptic, I couldn’t possibly form an opinion until all of these witnesses are brought before me in a courtroom, which I know will never happen.” = OBJECTIVE
“Although I remain open to further evidence, and any actual criminal punishment would have to await a prosecution and conviction, it appears from the detailed eyewitness accounts from the victims and other witnesses, corroborating accounts from people they complained to, documentary evidence, and Famous Dude’s generally skeevy attitude towards women, that Famous Dude has harassed women. And so perhaps that should have some social consequences.” = NOT OBJECTIVE
“I’ve had beers with Famous Dude, and I believe him when he says these women are all lying bitches.” = OBJECTIVE
Screechy, that is depressing…and even more depressing because it is so exactly on the nose.
I guess I would have to say I am not objective, then.
The idea that he’s calling Comey a ‘pathological liar’ in a conversation defending Donald Trump is so alternate-universe for me that I can’t even think of something clever to say about it.
[…] a comment by Screechy Monkey on Are they […]
I have read the following several times and still wonder; is it just me…..
…or do those last three words seem somewhat incongruous with the preceding assumptions? Did this highly-paid super-lawyet really just jump from ‘if she had’ and ‘I don’t think she would’ to She’s right’? How can she be right for doing a thing that she didn’t do?
That’s dishonest arguing on the scale of The Horde; ignore what a person has actually said; declare that the person said – or would have said, or had really meant – something completely different; declare the person to be wrong or right based on that invention.
” Trump lies constantly; Comey not so much.”
When you choose to wade into a quicksand or quagmire, you have to be prepared to disappear forever, particularly if those accompanying you don’t mind scooping up a bit, with however big a shovel, and throwing it your way.
The inadvertent word ‘roll’ here can be interpreted a number of ways: eg as in ‘rock ‘n roll’ with all its raunchy implications, or ‘roll’ as in a wad of notes hauled out of a pocket in a smoke-filled back room in some B-grade gangster movie.
With Abraham Lincoln, what they saw was what they got. With Trump, it’s what he is concerned that you never get to see that you finish up getting anyway. It’s that kind of chapter in American history.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/03/trump-stormy-daniels-michael-cohen-campaign-money
As I read it, Trump says he funneled money to Daniels, but that it wasn’t a payment for silence; or for sex; or for anything in particular. (Probably just on a whim.)
Republican heavyweights like Giuliani, now Trump’s lawyer and thus on his payroll, back him up; with indignation as done by students down at the local Saturday Morning Drama School.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/may/03/timeline-donald-trumps-explanations-stormy-daniels/
I read earlier something that Rudy appears to have forgotten; in the 1980s he was federal prosecutor in Manhattan, where he hired a promising young prosecutor by the name of…James Comey.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/03/rudy-giuliani-trump-friend-new-york-9-11
Re #9 – Guiliani mentioned it in the interview as a source of shame and regret, from a Twitter recount I read.
Yes, it’s in the Post transcript too. I didn’t include it because the post was [too] long already.