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Rudy Giuliani: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

15 minutes 36 seconds

🇬🇧 English

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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ -♪ We thought we'd check in on the latest development in the ongoing Trump scandals that we've been calling Stupid Watergate. A story with all the gravity of Watergate, if during it there was a gas leak in the White House and Nixon had been really into huffing glue. Well, this week, Stupid Watergate had another plot twist, thanks to Rudy Giuliani, who only joined Trump's legal team 2 weeks ago, but on Wednesday made big news during an appearance on Fox. Basically, Trump is on record denying knowing about a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about their alleged affair.

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Speaker 1

00:37

But despite that, for some reason, Giuliani, Trump's lawyer now, remember, offered a whole new story about where the money came from that even startled Sean Hannity.

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Speaker 2

00:46

I'm giving you a fact now that you don't know. It's not campaign money. No...

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Speaker 2

00:53

Campaign finance violation. So, they funneled it through the law firm? Funneled through the law firm, and then the president repaid it.

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Speaker 3

01:01

Oh. I didn't know that he did. Yeah. There's no campaign finance law.

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Speaker 3

01:05

0.

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Speaker 1

01:07

0. He not only contradicted what his client said, he topped it off with the drunk-sounding 0 of a man saying, my girlfriend left me, but guess how many fucks this guy gives? 0. -...

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Speaker 1

01:21

-... Now, in saying that, Giuliani may have just exposed Trump to multiple new legal and political problems, but he wasn't done, because During his media blitz, he also undercut the White House's official line on why James Comey was fired, prematurely announced the release of American hostages from North Korea, something that, as of this taping, has still not happened, and made this creepy comment about what would happen if prosecutors targeted Trump's daughter.

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Speaker 2

01:45

I think I would, get on my charger and go right into their offices with a lance if they go after Ivanka.

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Speaker 3

01:52

What about his son-in-law? They've talked about him.

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Speaker 2

01:55

I guess, I, Jared is a fine man, you know that.

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Speaker 1

01:57

-♪ -♪

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Speaker 2

01:59

But Men are, you know, disposable. But a fine woman like Ivanka, come on.

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Speaker 1

02:05

Okay, setting aside the sleaziness of calling Ivanka a fine woman, let's not forget that he also just called a living human being disposable. Which is pretty harsh, but also,

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Speaker 2

02:17

it is Jared,

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Speaker 1

02:17

you know?

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Speaker 2

02:18

It's Jared. I mean, he is basically a six-foot, three-inch stack

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02:23

of packing peanuts. It's Jared. He's useless.

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Speaker 1

02:26

Now, Giuliani's interview was so ill-advised and chaotic, it left many people on TV wondering what exactly had become of him.

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Speaker 4

02:33

It's a long way from America's mayor after 9-11.

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Speaker 5

02:36

There's something off about Rudy Giuliani. This is not the Rudy Giuliani we

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Speaker 1

02:40

used to know.

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Speaker 4

02:41

I mean, this is shocking, coming from somebody who was the post-9-11 mayor of New York City. After 9-11, I think Giuliani had a ton of credibility with the American people. Over this past week, it seems like that's kind of all worn off.

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Speaker 1

02:55

Exactly. People seem to be as shocked at finding out who Giuliani really is as a child at Disney World who accidentally saw Mickey Mouse pull off his head to reveal that he was actually Tilda Swinton. -♪ -♪ Not only are you not what I thought you were a moment ago, you are fucking terrifying! -♪ -♪ And if any part of you is also wondering what on Earth happened to Rudy Giuliani.

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Speaker 1

03:18

Tonight, we're gonna try and answer that for you, because the short answer is, nothing. He's always been this way. And I know that that might be a little jarring to hear, because the thing that he's most famous for is being mayor of New York City on 9-11, after which he was rightly celebrated for being a calm, steady presence. He was Times Person of the Year.

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Speaker 1

03:37

He received an honorary knighthood from Great Britain, and its closest American equivalent, being played in a made-for-TV movie by Mr. James Woods.

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03:46

Democrats always talked about things getting better. Republicans did whatever they could to make them better. That's what we're here for, right?

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Speaker 1

04:01

♪♪ Hot. Right? Right?

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Speaker 1

04:14

I mean, come on. Who wouldn't want to watch James Woods and the lady from Kindergarten Cop trade Republican-themed pillow talk on a green screen beach before exchanging the most sexless kiss in the history of film? How did that not win all of the awards? But To truly understand Giuliani, you have to go back before 9-11.

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Speaker 1

04:33

Now, he first made a name for himself as a federal prosecutor, where he acquired a deep and lasting taste for the limelight, performing stunts like going undercover to buy crack, while dressed in a Hell's Angels vest and a white dress shirt, which made him look less like a street junkie, and more like the third best member of an all-dad blues band called Dad to the Bone. Now, he eventually decided to run for mayor, which was somewhat risky at the time due to some substantial baggage. An internal document produced by his own campaign flagged a weirdness factor around him because, and this is true, his first marriage was to his second cousin. That's right, America's mayor was a cousnuzzler.

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Speaker 1

05:13

But... But... But don't worry, don't worry, because he had an excuse for that.

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Speaker 4

05:19

Giuliani says they only discovered their family relation after many years of marriage.

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Speaker 2

05:24

Oh, bullshit! He didn't think it

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05:27

was just a little bit weird at the wedding ceremony when 1 side of the church was both families, and the other was just 1 very nervous photographer who didn't take a single picture. Now, nevertheless, Giuliani was elected, and as mayor, he continued his love of the camera showing up everywhere, from the whoopie Goldberg movie, Eddie, to an episode of Law & Order, to Bill Cosby's CBS sitcom, which has not dated badly in any shape or form. But what many New Yorkers remember most about the Giuliani years was his unrelentingly abrasive personal style.

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Speaker 1

05:59

He had a weekly local radio show where he would take calls from constituents, which should be easy to do. You just listen to their concerns, and you politely disagree whenever necessary. But just listen to this exchange with a ferret owner, annoyed by the city's ban on owning them as pets.

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Speaker 5

06:15

There's something

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Speaker 2

06:15

deranged about you.

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Speaker 5

06:16

No, there isn't, sir.

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Speaker 6

06:17

The large stage... The excessive concern that you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist.

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Speaker 2

06:24

This conversation is over, David. Thank you. This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness.

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Speaker 1

06:32

That's right. That is the mayor of New York actively choosing to insult a New Yorker whose only crime was being a fan of ferrets. And I'm sure that when that ferret fan was given the chance to present his side without interruption, he was completely reasonable.

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Speaker 7

06:48

David, thanks for coming on.

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Speaker 5

06:49

Thank you very much, sir.

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Speaker 7

06:51

You have in your hands, my notes here say, 1 ferret is named Master Linus Van Pelt, and the other, Princess Katie Minimitz.

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Speaker 1

06:59

And that's her. Fuck it. I hate to say it, but I think I'm on Giuliani's side.

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Speaker 1

07:04

I'm on Team Giuliani. It turns out that ferret advocates are a lot like ferrets. I thought I'd like them, then I saw 1, and now I'm not so sure. But it went well beyond picking fights with ferret enthusiasts, Because Giuliani adopted a famously tough-on-crime stance with a severely increased police presence and an aggressive crackdown on so-called quality-of-life crimes like panhandling and jaywalking.

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Speaker 1

07:27

Now, this approach antagonized a lot of people, especially people of color. Many remember it as a time when the police were licensed to do whatever they wanted. A criticism even shared by some former cops.

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Speaker 8

07:39

We would get a lot of flack, oh, you're just doing this because Giuliani is letting you do this. And in my heart, I knew it was true. If police officers were just every single person, I'm gonna stop you, I'm gonna question you, I'm gonna frisk you, then the civil rights are gone.

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Speaker 1

07:58

And that is pretty chilling, because it's not like it's easy to navigate New York streets anyway. At worst, you're trying to get around 14 Belgian tourists who don't know how to fucking walk in a city. And at best, you might be ambushed by Billy Eichner, and if you are not up on your Meryl Streep trivia, You deserve everything he's about to give you.

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Speaker 1

08:18

Now, by the end of Giuliani's second term, many New Yorkers were sick of his bullshit. At 1 point, he even had to move out of the mayor's residence amid accusations of an extramarital affair, which he handled in the worst possible way.

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Speaker 9

08:32

Giuliani told the media, in an extraordinary news conference, that he intended to separate from the First Lady.

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Speaker 2

08:38

We've, grown, grown to live independent and separate lives.

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Speaker 9

08:41

He'd given no heads-up to his wife.

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Speaker 1

08:43

-♪

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Speaker 5

08:43

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

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Speaker 1

08:44

-Wow! Wow! That is just about the most humiliating way possible to end a marriage, other than announcing publicly, whoopsie, I boned my cousin.

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Speaker 1

08:55

But... But then, of course, 9-11 happened and all was forgotten because as America's mayor, his reputation was suddenly solid gold. And upon leaving office, he immediately cashed in. He wrote a book, he gave speeches, making as much as $200,000 a pop, and he launched a consulting firm called Giuliani Partners, a name that sounds a lot like a euphemism for cousins who fuck.

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Speaker 1

09:17

Oh, 0, them? They're Giuliani partners. It was love at first sight at their great-grandmother's funeral. Nana always was a matchmaker.

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Speaker 1

09:27

Now, he also became a partner in a law firm, and over the years, his firms represented clients such as a tobacco company, a private prison company, Bank of America, News Corp, who owned Fox News, and Purdue Pharma, the company that got in trouble for supercharging the opioid crisis. Basically,

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09:45

The kind

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09:45

of companies whose logos you'd expect to see on a NASCAR driven by a homicidal grizzly bear. And then, in 2007, Giuliani launched what was supposed to be his destiny, a campaign for president, which was catastrophically bad. He talked nonstop about 9-11, with some supporters even holding a $9.11 per person fundraiser, all of which triggered this memorable line from then-candidate Joe Biden during a debate.

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Speaker 1

10:12

Rudy Giuliani,

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10:13

there's only 3 things he mentioned in a sentence, a noun and a verb, and 9-11.

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Speaker 1

10:17

I mean, there's nothing else. There's nothing else. He's right.

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Speaker 1

10:22

Giuliani could not stop leveraging 9-11 for his own ends, as evidenced by his classic children's book, 1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, 9-11. -♪ 9-11 -♪ 9-11 Now, in the end, his campaign flamed out spectacularly. He did not win a single state, and he went from the front runner for the presidency to being out of the race by January, having spent around 50 million dollars, all to end up with precisely 0 delegates. Or, as he would put it...

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10:51

0.

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Speaker 1

10:52

Exactly. Exactly, Rudy. 0. -♪ -♪ 0.

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Speaker 1

10:57

And after that completely humiliating presidential flop, Giuliani ended up fading from view, eventually washing up in D-list places like this.

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Speaker 5

11:07

We love the mob movies you love.

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Speaker 1

11:09

Oh, forget about it.

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Speaker 5

11:12

ANC Mob Wave, hosted by Rudy Giuliani.

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Speaker 1

11:16

Holy shit! That is a steep fall! Just 10 years after being named Time Person of the Year, Giuliani was doing VJ work for a cable network's edited-for-television presentation of Scarface.

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Speaker 1

11:31

Just think about how crazy that is. That would be like if in 10 years from now, Bravo announced a Fuck Boys of the 90s marathon hosted by Malala Yousafzai. How the fuck did that happen? What did I miss?

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Speaker 1

11:47

Clearly, a significant amount of goodwill has somehow been squandered. Wow! Wow! After that, after that, Giuliani fritted away years as a rent-a-quote pundit on cable news saying various awful things.

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Speaker 1

12:03

And he didn't truly join Trump's orbit until January 2017, when he was named Trump's cybersecurity advisor. Now, why did Trump give him that job? Who knows? Maybe it was because Giuliani had a security consulting business called Giuliani Security and Safety, despite seemingly having no real background in cybersecurity.

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Speaker 1

12:20

And if you watch Giuliani for even 10 seconds, you do really get the sense that he tries to check his email by opening a Word doc and typing, -"Hi, Google. Check email. Thanks. Rudy." -$1,000.

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Speaker 1

12:31

Although the truth is, Trump's real affection for Giuliani probably came from his willingness during the campaign to lend his last shreds of credibility to various amounts of poisonous nonsense like this.

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Speaker 2

12:42

If I did one-tenth of what Hillary Clinton did, I'd be in jail. She paid people to create violence at his rallies. She sold 20% of our uranium to Russia.

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Speaker 2

12:56

I have 8 times online since January in which she's had massive coughing fits. So, go online and put down, Hillary Clinton illness, take a look at the videos for yourself.

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Speaker 1

13:08

Now, obviously, that is all horse shit, but I do agree with him on 1 point there. You should definitely go online and visit HillaryClintonIllness.com and take a look at the videos, because they are eye-opening. And the reason I know that is, we bought the URL for HillaryClintonIllness.com and made it automatically redirect to something that Rudy Giuliani would hate, this animation of 2 ferrets fucking.

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Speaker 1

13:32

Also, also, also, it is worth noting... Stop it. Also... It is worth noting that Giuliani Security, despite Giuliani's cyber security expertise, didn't seem to think to buy the URL Giuliani-security.com, So we now own that as well.

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Speaker 1

13:50

And it linked to the only thing that he would hate more than 2 ferrets fucking, 2 ferrets who are cousins not fucking. I mean, the sexual tension there is unbearable. You know each other so well. And when you look at all of this in total, you realize that Giuliani's role as Trump's lawyer isn't an aberration.

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Speaker 1

14:09

Everything in his life has led to this point. And while he may well be providing terrible legal representation for Trump, He's actually the most honest representation of him in general, because think about it. They're basically 2 versions of the same person. They're both New Yorkers, coasting on their reputations.

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Speaker 1

14:25

They both had 3 marriages. Neither of them can shut up when in front of a camera. And perhaps most importantly, they both want to fuck Ivanka. Which is weird for Trump because Ivanka is in his family, and it's weird for Giuliani because she isn't.

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Speaker 1

14:39

So... So... So, what happens... What happens to Giuliani is really not the right question.

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Speaker 1

14:48

He's always been like this. What's going to happen to him is more to the point, because he is now the public face of Trump's legal team, and who knows what is gonna come of that? Maybe he brings Trump down through sheer incompetence, Maybe he gets fired in the next 2 weeks. Although, to be honest, at the rate we're going, he is so fatally flawed as a human being, that he's probably going to end up president.

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Speaker 1

15:09

Although, to do that, he'll need a campaign website, which he might find difficult, because... For the record, Rudy, Giuliani2024.com is no longer available because we bought it and it links to a dancing ferret giving

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Speaker 5

15:30

you