RIP Rudy Giuliani

jeez get on it

It's not excusing, is it? It's just acknowledging just a sliding scale of wrong. All murder is wrong but we still classify it by degrees.

Sure, but imo it's fucking gross to write this off as "old guy trying to bang journalist". Ffs he's not awkwardly propositioning her via email or at a bar, he's groping himself in a private room, which is way more intimidating, gross and awful.

Fair enough.

Basically I just want to make sure no one excuses this steaming pile for any reason at all and I hope he gets every ounce of fallout from this he deserves.

my understanding was that there was some implied consent, she was elaborately removing his microphone in a private room they went to, the issue was less about harassment and more about giuliani being a complete sleazebag but i guess we'll all just have to see the film! (i will never see the film and am already getting kinda bored with this story tbh)

I’m intrigued by the “feral child” part. Sure sounds like she was presenting herself as a kid!

the impression i got was that she was coming on to him but maybe that's just me wrongly assuming this was some kind of classic honeypot operation and not something way more shitty

This incident pretty much cements my belief that kompromat exists for a number of these Trumpian fuckos. If someone in that position displayed the lack of judgment to get got by SBC, it stands to reason they probably got got by people who aren't international celebrities.

yeah i had 0% interest in watching the Borat movie and that number has not moved. to be fair, if the whole movie was shit like this then i probably would be down for it but my impression from the trailer was that at least 80% of it is him going around and making unsophisticated small-town folks look like idiots.

your sophistication level has little to nothing to do with your capacity to be an idiot

thank you that was EXACTLY the point i was trying to make

I'm just saying, as someone who ran screaming from a small town I have very little sympathy for anyone flaunting their racism/sexism in what they think is a safe space

I got a short clip of that scene:

https://media.giphy.com/media/FqKjtMCOAqEUw/giphy.gif

As someone who grew up in several shitty small towns, DJP very very much otm and fuck small town racists forever.

I mean obvs all of them, everywhere. But especially small town ones that assume everyone thinks like them and that their shitty little towns are exceptional bubbles.

to be clear, fuck racists/sexists from big cities, too

no one gets special dispensation because of their area code

we got chodes
in different area codes

Nothing like the small-town racist who, with a smirk and maybe a little knowing side-eye, slyly drops a racist comment into an otherwise ordinary conversation, never questioning that you might not be a hateful idiot like them. Perhaps with an added 'you know what I mean' or 'you know who I'm talking about'. Nothing like it.

right, there's a definite gap between "married (?) guy trying to bang journalist" and "married guy trying to bang what he thinks is an underage girl"

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Wednesday, October 21, 2020 12:44 PM (one hour ago)

there are also differences between a 76-year-old man trying to sleep with someone else who is in their 70s, someone in their 40s, someone in their 30s, someone in their 20s, and someone portraying a 15-year-old in a film

Nothing like the small-town racist who, with a smirk and maybe a little knowing side-eye, slyly drops a racist comment into an otherwise ordinary conversation, never questioning that you might not be a hateful idiot like them. Perhaps with an added 'you know what I mean' or 'you know who I'm talking about'. Nothing like it.

this. still fucking happens when I go back to visit my family.

pic.twitter.com/kgw3Ctt37J

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) October 21, 2020

Genius

Rudy seems to have learned his lesson, is tightening protocols, checking ID's, and is now being taken in by someone claiming to be Ivanka Trump but who is in fact the vice president of the College Democrats of Indiana https://t.co/Tv27pygxbu

— David Freedlander (@freedlander) October 21, 2020

I saw something about him replying to anyone who texts him the other day, but this is too much. How the fuck is this guy real?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tun92VU2OkU
this Brazilian smash provides ready-made raw parody material

isnt he literally the head of a cybersecurity firm?

i didn't think borat would enter onto the stage of history again

isnt he literally the head of a cybersecurity firm?

He was the US government's cybersecurity czar:

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article126490159.html
https://mashable.com/article/rudy-giuliani-locked-iphone-password-apple-store/

I was confused by that, too. From the Guardian article: "Bakalova, 24, is highly plausible in the sting, despite also having to pretend, for the benefit of viewers, to be a feral child posing as a far-right journalist."

If she was posing as a journalist, I don't see why Giuliani would have reason to assume she was underage. But I don't get the feral child part.

For the benefit of viewers. She isn't going to have told Giuliani that she is the underage child-bride / daughter of fictional character Borat during the interview, but the audience will have seen earlier parts of the film before this scene, and be reading her performance in context.

(Saw her and Borat's Kimmel appearance on youtube last night, and a minute or two after she entered was impressed enough by her commitment to try and look up the actress - Baron-Cohen has attempted extra obfuscation by crediting a fictional actress with no credits, so it's a shame this Giuliani story has blown kayfabe.)

from the Hollywood Reporter review:

(Editing is a major distraction in the film's ballyhooed scene with Rudy Giuliani. The shaping of the sequence and its music, in service to the film's overall plot, suggest the disgraced former mayor is trying to seduce a young woman who interviews him. But it looks like some microphone-fitting footage is being repurposed here, and if you really want to make the man look like an ass, you could just play his interview straight

Oh what?

that's not at all what Vanity Fair said. wouldn't put it past Borat but the description I read in VF very much didn't sound like "lol clever editing made him look like a lecher"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ek3ofgRU0AAebjP?format=png&name=900x900

'It's not what it looks like!'

damn I was really hoping this movie would definitively prove rudy giuliani is a bad person

Lame on the part of SBC

I saw some post from someone that has seen the scene, saying the still is misleading. Supposedly she had just helped him remove his microphone, and he is merely tucking his shirt back in. To which I say, so what? Nothing else in the situation makes him seem any less gross.

He’s a monster. But manipulating footage like this only adds to Trumpland’s claim that the “fake news” is always setting them up.

lmao come on

Lame on the part of SBC

I think I prefer Rudy Giuliani to Sacha Baron Cohen tbh.

SBC isn't the one releasing these stills

Cohen isn't even *real* fake news. It's not like Trump falling for the Bumblebee Star or whatever the other day. Setting people up is literally what Cohen does and ... mission accomplished.

you're taking one sentence from Hollywood Reporter at face value when so far they're the only one to suggest it was clever editing?

none of us have seen the actual scene, just the stills.

xxxpost

"The Stills" is what Rudy's friends call it when they think he is dead and have to poke him with a stick, like a possum.

I mean they go back there after she suggests they get a drink and he lies on a fuckin' bed, like...unless that was done out of order too, not yet buying HR's take

besides, this isn't taking RG down, half of America is looking at the stills and creepily saying "niiiiice".

He’s a monster. But manipulating footage like this only adds to Trumpland’s claim that the “fake news” is always setting them up.

― treeship., Wednesday, October 21, 2020 3:14 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i missed the part where SBC was a journalist and not middlebrow punk'd

someone bring up the Cokie the Clown vid now

Is punk’d highbrow?

highbr'w

lol

supposedly he patted her backside as well from someone who saw it at the Guardian

treeship'd