By now you‘ve likely heard the news that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had a terrifying weekend. According to the longtime Trump attorney, who, over the last two decades, has gone from “America’s mayor“ to “Sir, the Department of Health has rules about people manscaping in places where food is served,” he was assaulted by a ShopRite employee while campaigning for his son, Andrew Giuliani, who is running for governor of New York. “I got hit on the back as if a boulder hit me. It knocked me forward a step or two…. It hurt tremendously,” the elder Giuliani claimed in a video posted to Facebook on Monday. He also suggested to The New York Times that it’s a miracle he is still able to walk, and told Insider that if he wasn’t in better shape, the blow would have resulted in him falling to the ground, cracking his skull, and dying. All of which sounds pretty harrowing if one actually believes anything Rudy Giuliani says—which one, obviously, should not.
Thanks to video of the event, we know that what Giuliani has called an “assault” that could have killed him was…a tap on the back that didn’t even cause him to lose his balance, let alone knock him forward or almost crack his skull.
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Naturally, the reality of the situation has not resulted in Giuliani retracting his various statements about the incident, which he has instead doubled down on. During the Monday morning news conference posted to his Facebook page that shockingly was not held outside a dildo emporium, he said the employee, Daniel Gill, should be fired from his job and prosecuted. “This guy should be imprisoned to say to other people, ‘[It’s] over, doesn’t happen,’” Giuliani said. “I believe you let Mr. Gill go, a lot more of these crazy pro-choice people are going to start attacking people.” According to a statement from the NYPD, Gill asked Giuliani, “What’s up, scumbag?” as he tapped his back. Giuliani has claimed Gill also commented on Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, saying “You kill women. You’re one of the people who kills women.” Gill has been charged with second-degree assault and “suspended pending termination,” according to Insider. Andrew Giuliani has since claimed the incident—which, again, appears to show his father being tapped on the back—is an example of “the left wing…encouraging violence.” He also said in a statement that “Innocent people are attacked in today’s New York all of the time. This particular incident hit very close to home. The assault on my father, America’s Mayor, was over politics…. I will stand up for law and order so that New Yorkers feel safe again.”
The Legal Aid Society, which is representing Gill, said in a statement: “The charges facing Daniel Gill, who has no previous contact with the criminal legal system, are inconsistent with existing law. Our client merely patted Mr. Giuliani, who sustained nothing remotely resembling physical injuries, without malice to simply get his attention, as the video footage clearly showed. Mr. Gill was then followed and threatened by one of Mr. Giuliani’s associates who allegedly poked Mr. Gill in the chest and told him that he was going to be ‘locked up.’ He was then needlessly held by the NYPD in custody for over 24 hours. Given Mr. Giuliani’s obsession with seeing his name in the press and his demonstrated propensity to distort the truth, we are happy to correct the record on exactly what occurred over the weekend on Staten Island.”
Rudy Giuliani’s election lies—for which he’s had his law license suspended in New York and Washington, D.C., and been sued for defamation—of course, helped lead to the January 6 insurrection that left numerous people dead. His boss at the time, Donald Trump, also incited said insurrection, so the guy knows a little something about the encouragement of violence. As for whether or not anyone should ever take his word on something, he is also know for, in the words of one U.S. diplomat, waging a “campaign full of lies” concerning Ukraine that got Donald Trump impeached the first time. And last week, the country heard how his lies about two election workers literally ruined their lives.
So yeah, there’s plenty of evidence that he’s not exactly the most reliable narrator, to say nothing of the accounts re: him being a drunk—which he has unconvincingly denied, saying in one instance, “I don’t think I’ve ever done an interview drunk.”