President-elect Biden is building a team of competent professionals and buttressing his national security chops with a coterie of outside experts. By contrast, Trump has Rudy Giuliani.
That’s all you need to know about the current state of play. While one presidency is busy being born, the other is thrashing in its death throes, digging its own grave in the court of law with help from a has-been who infamously ranted next to a porn emporium in a northeast Philly parking lot.
Even Trump must realize that things look bleak when virtually all your lawyers quit and all you’ve got left is Rudy. The attempted coup d’etat – the doomed president’s detestable bid to overturn the will of the people – is looking more and more like a failed con d’etat.
The big plan was to stop Pennsylvania from certifying the results that clinched Biden’s national victory. (By the way, Biden has won Pennsylvania by more than 81,000 votes – nearly twice the size of Trump’s ’16 winning margin.) But alas, on the eve of a federal court hearing, Trump’s legal eagles basically flew the coop. Which was understandable, because they have reputations to protect and didn’t want to soil themselves for a loser’s losing cause.
So, earlier this week, the respected law firm of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur bailed on Trump. The firm was replaced by three new lawyers: John Scott, Linda Kerns, and Douglas Bryan Hughes. That was on Monday. Early Tuesday, all three sought to withdraw. The federal judge said that Scott and Hughes could go, but Kerns had to stay. Kerns was then joined by a new lead counsel, Marc Scaringi, a conservative radio host with a law degree. But that quickly became awkward, because Scaringi had recently said on the radio that Trump’s flailing efforts were a waste of time; in his words, “There really are no bombshells that are about to drop that will derail a Biden presidency, including these lawsuits.”
Clearly somebody had to come to the rescue. Enter Rudy. Who was last seen in Philadelphia railing about massive voter fraud without a scintilla of evidence. Tuesday he petitioned to join the federal court hearing, got the OK, and proceeded to behave as if the courtroom was a Fox News studio, lying anew about “widespread national voter fraud,” about how mail-in ballots are “dangerous,” about how Biden “stole” the election – without a scintilla of evidence.
But that’s what you’d expect from a guy who has famously said that “truth isn’t truth.” Problem is, that kind of cant doesn’t cut it in a courtroom. (Rudy hadn’t argued a case in a court since 1992.) He said at one point that 680,000 mail-in ballots from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should be invalidated – again without any evidence of fraud – and railed that such ballots “are inherently difficult, fraudulent … As far as we’re concerned, Your Honor, those ballots could have been from Mickey Mouse.”
Finally, the federal judge decided he’d heard enough. He told Rudy, “At bottom, you’re asking this court to invalidate more than 6.8 million votes, thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the Commonwealth. Could you tell me how this result could possibly be justified?”
Rudy had no substantive answer for that. No surprise there. At last check, the desiccated Trump team has lost 24 of 25 election lawsuits, because there’s no evidence of fraud to support its MAGA rhetoric. But Rudy’s performance was particularly egregious; as Rick Hasen, an election law expert, told CNN Tuesday night, “It was an embarrassment. That was probably the worst lawyering I have heard from any lawyer in my life … I don’t see any of (these lawsuit) amounting to anything.” Instead of hiring Rudy, “I would argue the case myself, even if I was just a high school graduate.”
This is what happens when a tinpot authoritarian, determined to slime democracy in order to salve his eggshell ego, pins his hopes on a flailing flunky. Meanwhile, Trump’s pandemic is threatening to overwhelm the health care system and the top medical groups are pleading with Trump to “work closely with the Biden transition team to share all critical information related to Covid-19.” Good luck with that. He has tuned out the rising death toll. He’s solely focused on Rudy losing all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where somehow he thinks his presidency will be saved. Good luck with that, too.
In one of Bob Woodward’s earlier books, there was a telling episode on Trump’s ’16 campaign plane. The Access Hollywood tape had just surfaced, and Rudy went on TV to defend his pal. But Trump reportedly felt that Rudy had been too conciliatory, so he yelled on the plane: “Rudy, you’re a baby! I’ve never seen a worse defense of me in my life … You’re weak, Rudy. You’ve lost it!”
Rudy’s not the only one.
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2020
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