Editor's note: In November, 2016, when President-elect Trump considered appointing Rudy Giuliani Secretary of State or Attorney General, Jim Sleeper wrote an essay for Foreign Policy magazine warning against giving him any national power or influence. Prescient then, the essay, slightly updated, is even more insightful now.
As Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign went from bad to worse in the 2008 Republican primaries, he must have been stung by Joe Biden's observation then that every one of his sentences “contains a verb, a noun, and 9/11.” Now Rudy's frantic efforts to discredit Biden's candidacy are stinging his credibility even more as Donald Trump's third big lawyer/fixer after Roy Cohn and Michael Cohen.
Having observed and written about Trump's and Giuliani's New York from the mid-1980s through Giuliani's first term as mayor, I have something to say about how his career – as a prosecutor, mayor, operatic “hero” of 9/11, and, then, as a “consultant” of dubious repute – led him to find a fellow-fallen soul mate in Trump. Giuliani's mind and career tell us as much as the impeachment inquiries are likely to do about why Trump's presidency is so perverse. It has something to do with how and why extreme characters like Giuliani and Trump rise when millions of people are feeling stressed and dispossessed.
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