Washington – President Donald Trump’s personal attorney says he wasn’t trying to make an existential point about the meaning of veracity when he declared “truth isn’t truth.”
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Rudy Giuliani’s puzzling statement on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, following one by another Trump aide last year about “alternative facts,” suggested that people in Trump’s orbit might be denying the existence of reality.
Giuliani says his intent was more mundane: to make the case that having Trump sit down for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team wouldn’t accomplish much because of the conflicting nature of witnesses’ recollections.
“My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology,” he tweeted, “but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic ‘he said, she said’ puzzle. Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn’t.”
Giuliani had told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd that Trump might “get trapped into perjury” if he were interviewed by the special counsel’s Russia investigation. “You tell me that, you know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well, that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth.”
When Todd replied: “Truth is truth,” Giuliani responded: “No, it isn’t truth. Truth isn’t truth.”
Babbling, fummfering Crazy Ol’ Uncle Rudy doesn’t need to clarify. We saw his dismal double-tawking performance on TV, which became the global lead story on the BBC, mocking him. He didn’t do his UberFuhrer any good, that’s for sure. What’s his point? To insult news hosts and then get destroyed by the media the next day? The amazing news that Trumpf’s lawyer has been COOPERATING W MUELLER got completely swallowed by Rudy’s insane performance on TV. LOL!
Someone has gone off the deep end again. To paraphrase Giuliani into my terms: “facts” are objective, but “truth” is subjective – it is all a matter of interpretation. I remember, for example, seeing a made-for-TV re-enactment of the Patty Hearst trial. For those too young to remember, Patty Hearst, who came from a white,”rich” family, was kidnapped at age 19 by the self-named (and home-grown criminal/terrorist-wannabee group) “Symbionese Liberation Army”. The prosecutor claims Hearst was a willing participant in later criminal acts, but she claims she was coerced.
The prosecution asked her on the stand – Do you have STRONG feelings for (your kidnapper).. The judge forced her to reply only with either a YES or NO without elucidation. So she answered YES. Instantly the prosecutor screams out – SO YOU ADMIT YOU LOVED (YOUR KIDNAPPER)! Is it the “truth” that she admitted to loving her kidnapper? The defense attorney gets her to explain her answer. She explains that HATE is a STRONG feeling and she HATES her kidnapper. Had she originally answered NO, the prosecution could have screamed out that an ordinary kidnap victim would HATE their kidnapper, so she must love him. “Truth”?
My bro Munch says it’s not really a puzzler so much as it is a KenMism.