Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani have been through a lot. Together, they withheld military funds and pushed Ukraine’s government into investigating Joe Biden. And together, they tried to overturn election results by making baseless claims about voter fraud. All very normal, ethical, and definitely-not-fascist things for a President and his personal lawyer to do, right? Well, this week, Trump and Giuliani have gone viral once again — this time, for something that isn’t technically shady or illegal, just odd and pretty unsettling.
TikTok user @superjake100 unearthed a decades-old video from Giuliani’s time as Mayor of New York. In the clip, Giuliani walks through a department store dressed in head-to-toe drag. Trump — then just a businessman, not a twice-impeached President — approaches Giuliani, sniffs his neck, and sticks his face into his chest. Giuliani calls him a “dirty boy.” Trump looks directly into the camera and says, “You can’t say I didn’t try.”
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In the video we've since come to formally refer to as That Time Trump Motorboated Rudy Giuliani In A Wig, comments on TikTok range from “I just want one normal day” to “impeach him a third time” to “you know your life is off the rails when this is the video that DOESN’T surface.”
@superjake100 How is this NOT the weirdest thing I’ve ever see Rudy Giuliani do?
♬ original sound - SuperJake
So, where did this ungodly episode in the simulation that is Trump's presidency even come from? The footage was filmed for the 2000 Mayor’s Inner Circle Show, an annual parody event in New York. This isn’t the first time it’s randomly popped up to haunt Trump and Giuliani: Stephen Colbert aired the video on his show in 2019, and various versions have been posted on YouTube since Trump’s 2016 election. Every time it reemerges, though, it seems to find a new audience to haunt until the end of time.
The video also calls to mind brighter, better days of Trump’s relationship with Giuliani. Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that Trump told his aides not to pay Giuliani’s legal fees. He is reportedly unhappy with some of Giuliani’s recent actions, and he “did not appreciate” Giuliani’s demands for $20,000 a day. Sad!
Over the past several months, Giuliani has begun melting, holding press conferences in parking lots, and rapidly losing his grip on reality more than ever before. Maybe the resurgence of this video and his recent Borat performance are a sign that Giuliani should pursue a new career as an actor instead of an attorney. Or maybe, the New York Bar Association will make that decision for him.