Donald Trump’s former inner circle is just completely imploding, pointing fingers at each other and eating their own during the House Jan. 6 insurrection hearings, which started Friday. But perhaps the funniest (and also least funny?) narrative about Trump’s final days is that on election night, he chose to listen to the advice of a visibly drunk Rudy Giuliani instead of his...more sober advisors—which led to a full attempted coup and deadly storming of the Capitol.
In her opening remarks on Monday, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) explained how Trump “rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani, to just claim he won, and insist that the vote counting stop.” Former senior Trump campaign advisor Jason Miller added in his own testimony that the former New York City mayor was “definitely intoxicated” during a conversation that evening.
Giuliani’s media office denied the claims Monday night, insisting that he was drinking Diet Coke all night.
Then, hilariously, the former mayor himself tweeted on Tuesday that he’s “disgusted and outraged” at insinuations that he was hammered and couldn’t possibly have been, because his favorite drink is...Diet Pepsi.
You would think that if you were trying to desperately prove your sobriety to the media and public, you’d at least coordinate the name of your supposed favorite soft drink with your media office. But we’re talking about a man who mistook Four Seasons Total Landscaping for the Four Seasons Hotel and delivered a press conference about the election results next to a porn shop, a crematorium, and a jail.
Look—I really don’t care if Giuliani was drunk on that particular night. The man is so objectively unhinged that even if he were dead sober on election night, it would be equally absurd for an outgoing U.S. president to take any kind of advice from him, much less the kind of advice that would inspire said president to try to deny and overturn the results of an election he clearly lost.
That said, we all know Giuliani loves to booze. His ex-wife once implied in an interview with New York magazine that he’s an alcoholic, and he responded: “I love Scotch. I can’t help it. All of the malts. And part of it is cigars—I love to have them with cigars. I’m a partyer.”
Just own it, Rudy. Most of us get drunk and text “u up?” to a terrible ex, or eat too many 7/11 taquitos. You got drunk and inspired a whole insurrection. At least you inspired something with your one wild and inebriated life.