Giuliani melted down on Fox News and just made Trump's impeachment crisis worse

Rudy Giuliani isn’t really doing Donald Trump any favors these days. His increasingly disjointed appearances on television in which he first denies, then loudly admits, any number of illegal actions about Ukraine, are becoming a near-daily thing.

On Tuesday night, after word broke that the House would indeed be pursuing impeachment, Giuliani thought it would be a great idea to go on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, “The Ingraham Angle.” It didn’t go well.

In under 90 seconds, Giuliani threatened to sue another Ingraham guest, Chris Hahn, for libel and screamed “Shut up, moron!” at him. Then Giuliani went on to try to explain that Hahn had mischaracterized Rudy’s interactions with the State Department: “He said about me that I was asked by the State Department to go dig up political dirt on Trump’s opponent. Totally false. The State Department asked me.”

When Hahn pointed out that was, indeed, the same thing, Giuliani demanded that Ingraham “turn him off so I can speak.”

This isn’t the first time Giuliani has been confused as to whether or not he asked the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Just last week, he had a depressingly similar television appearance where he first denied, then confirmed, that he’d pressured a foreign government to investigate one of Trump’s political rivals.

Giuliani should really be more aware of his role in the Ukraine affair because it turns out to have been pretty substantial. Tuesday night, the Washington Post reported that key national security officials were “sidelined” in favor of letting political loyalists like Giuliani run rampant. Things were so shadowy that officials from the Departments of State and Defense are still trying to piece together what Giuliani actually did — but by all accounts, he did a great deal.

According to U.S. officials, after the Russia investigation closed, Giuliani turned his attention to Ukraine. He demanded personnel changes at the U.S. embassy and tried to meet directly with subordinates of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. He installed his own emissaries in the country to set up meetings. He targeted the then-ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, alleging she was part of a grand conspiracy orchestrated by George Soros and demanding she be investigated as “part of the collusion.”

The Daily Beast is reporting that Giuliani also worked with other high-level U.S. diplomats, including the special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Sondland donated a million dollars to the Trump inaugural committee, a move which netted him the nomination for U.S. ambassador two years later, in 2018.

And of course, Giuliani did all this as the personal attorney for Trump. Not as a diplomat. Not as someone with the best interests of our country or Ukraine at heart. Rather, Giuliani is someone whose only interest is preserving the interests of his corrupt client. But now, as that client faces impeachment, Giuliani’s activities may be limited to yelling on television again and again.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.