After tangling with Robert Mueller and pushing for investigations into all involved in the Trump-Russia “witch hunt,” Rudy Giuliani is now gearing up for a vicious battle against 2020 Democratic candidates.
Giuliani will meet with Trump and his 2020 campaign over the next few weeks to discuss pivoting his efforts into this new role, which he told Politico he expects to include making policy and political connections.
“We’ll see where they have holes and where they need help,” said Giuliani, adding “I’m available to do a lot of it.”
While Giuliani has served as an effective personal attorney to Trump, some close to the Trump reelection effort suggested to Politico that Giuliani could hinder the campaign.
“I imagine not all of Rudy’s ideas are brilliant ones, but the vast majority are and I’ll take the good with the bad,” said former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo, who met with the president last month in Washington DC. Caputo otherwise “offered gushing praise for Giuliani coming out of the Mueller investigation,” primarily for keeping Trump out of a sit-down interview with the special counsel that many Trump allies viewed as a “perjury trap.”
“Because so many people realize the vital role he played in defending the president through the Russia hoax, I think his surrogacy would appeal across the entire base,” Caputo added. “And I think everybody wants to hear from him. In fact, I can’t think of one demographic in the column of the president that would not want to hear from him.”
Perhaps most importantly, President Trump loves hanging out with Rudy, and vice-versa.
“The president is most effective when he’s in a great mood and he’s having fun on the campaign trial and Rudy adds to that,” a current Trump campaign aide told Politico, adding “I think he has the potential to be very effective in certain circumstances.” That said, the aide added “He also has the potential to be unhelpful at times.”
As Trump’s attorney, Giuliani talks to the president two or three times a week and makes twice-a-month White House visits. He’s also a regular media presence defending the president, an act he’s continued since the end of the Mueller probe last month. Giuliani has launched fusillades on Trump’s potential Democratic rivals, including Joe Biden and Bill de Blasio and swinging away at the expanding congressional investigations that are threatening to morph into impeachment proceedings.
Now, Giuliani is being cast as someone who can reprise the “jack-of-all-trades” role he played during the 2016 presidential campaign, helping senior aides brainstorm policy ideas and mark up speeches, introducing Trump at rallies and serving as the president’s private sounding board. It also means letting Giuliani be Giuliani during his media hits, drawing eye-rolling fact checks from reporters but giving the president a megaphone for whatever he wants to say, however politically incorrect it may be. –Politico
“I think he can be a great warm-up act,” said the current Trump adviser. “Having him on the plane is a great idea. As a core messenger he can get sloppy with details and also leave a lot of shrapnel on the ground.“
Another member of Trump’s advisory team told Politico that Rudy is absolutely necessary to the campaign.
“We view him as a necessary component to the overall picture, because there are frequently messages that the president absolutely needs and wants to get out and he serves that role ably and cheerfully,” the source said. “That’s the best way to characterize him. If there wasn’t a Rudy Giuliani, we’d have to invent one.“
Giuliani’s time in front of the camera has been spotted with gaffes and the occasional misstatement. As Politico notes, “After some of his worst performances on TV, Giuliani went notably quiet. Just weeks into his assignment, an Associated Press story noted Trump was asking around whether he should sideline his lawyer from making so many questionable media appearances. The New Yorker last fall labeled him “Trump’s clown.””
As 2020 approaches, however, Giuliani says he’s ready to rock – and can be a helpful surrogate for Trump in various battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Putting Giuliani on the campaign trail would also give Trump’s campaign someone who can speak freely about a Russia probe that the president sees as a rallying cry to his base — his campaign has been raising money and building email lists off the issue.
“Having spent so much time at the elbow of the president, he knows what happened better than most so he can explain it better than most,” Caputo said. –Politico
“He’s an expert at dissecting and honing in on the weaknesses of the other candidates,” said Mike DuHaime, a New Jersey-based political operative who managed Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. “He takes that prosecutorial style. No matter who the nominee is on the other side, Rudy will be good at finding a weakness and being able to explain that weakness, almost like he’s talking to a jury.”
And Rudy has already begun tearing into the 2020 candidates, starting with former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Perhaps his biggest focus, though, has been Biden, who leads several early Democratic primary polls. Earlier this month, Giuliani said he was planning to travel to the Ukraine to urge the country’s president-elect to investigate Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, over his involvement in a Ukrainian energy company. Giuliani also insinuated that Joe Biden had somehow nefariously used his position as vice president to squash an investigation, without offering any evidence.
Giuliani later backed out of the trip as Democrats accused him of openly trying to encourage a foreign country to meddle in an American election. The country’s lead prosecutor also told reporters he’d found no evidence of wrongdoing by either Hunter or Joe Biden, and media reports have further poked holes in Giuliani’s theories. –Politico
And while Ukraine may have turned down the heat on the Bidens, Giuliani appears to have accomplished a large part of the mission in terms of public perceptions.
“The information is now out there,” said DuHaime. “He’s about getting the job done and not about what other people may think about him.”
Democrats on the other hand, such as former House Democratic aide Julian Epstein, think Rudy may turn off swing voters.
“The rule about a junkyard dog is you don’t want to make yourself the issue. That’s what Rudy does,” said Epstein. “For the base, you get a good dopamine hit for him. But for swing voters [and] independents, I think he underscores the lack of credibility he has.”
On the other hand, Obama 2012 surrogate chief Ellen Qualls thinks Giuliani is perfect for Trump’s base.
“Stylistically, that won’t work for Caroline Kennedy. But it will work for Rudy Giuliani.”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Xan3L5 Tyler Durden