'Taking his extra 15 minutes': Rudy Giuliani ridiculed on MSNBC for willingness to 'humiliate himself in courtrooms'
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace couldn't help but note that all of President Donald Trump's legal team has slowly shrunk to just a few people willing to continue to fight for a failed reelection.
"With 30 percent of the country believing that somehow fraud took place and you've got the most senior official in charge of securing the election saying systemic, widespread voter fraud did not take place, neither did election interference. And you've got even this Trump-friendly election board in Michigan that Trump got ahead of himself and tweeted his congratulations, they were going to defy the will of the voters of Michigan, not certify the vote," began MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday. "Even they caved to reality. You covered this space of the intersection between Trump and his fixers and the National Enquirer. What does it suggest that he managed to take that model and using as fixer apparatus for the next 60 days of the United States federal government, Rudy Giuliani's willingness to humiliate himself in courtroom after courtroom after courtroom for the sweet price of $20,000 a day apparently to spread these lies? He leaves having brainwashed 30 percent of the country."
New York Times writer-at-large Jim Rutenberg agreed, noting that it's going to become an issue for President-elect Joe Biden moving forward because there will be tens of millions of Americans who will never trust that he's the legally elected president. It has become a similar campaign to the GOP's effort to undermine former President Barack Obama by claiming he wasn't a real citizen.
He did have an optimistic moment, saying that it was eventually possible to get Trump's supporters to do the right thing and certify the election in Michigan. But he anticipates more examples of that kind of effort before the election is finally certified.
Wallace cited the 30 percent of voters that always were unflappable when it came to Trump.
"It was never the 44 percent that got him into the White House, it was always this 30 percent that he can never shake off," she explained. "You talk about Joe Biden having to contend with that, this was the strategy that Donald Trump applied to President Obama, and I don't want to give him too much credit for having some ideology here, I think he reaches for the gutter and this is where he lands. Delegitimizing a president that isn't himself is the reflex, the impulse; it is not thought out. To your point out about what Joe Biden inherits, is that anything that factors into sort of the shrinking army around Donald Trump? I mean, the legal operation, you had law firms peel away, folks in states peel away, it is really just Rudy."
Rutenberg also agreed with Wallace about the Giuliani problem.
"That's true. It is Rudy," said Rutenberg. "He sure is taking his extra 15 minutes pretty far here. That said, I guess the question I want to see the answer to -- and this will take time -- is: does this minority support that the president has managed to continue to apply pressure to the Republican Party? And I think it certainly will, to some extent, the question is how much."
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