Shortly after numerous outlets reported on Thursday night that the intelligence community’s whistleblower complaint about President Donald Trump involves Ukraine, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani showed up on CNN for a largely incomprehensible interview that featured the former New York City mayor repeatedly contradicting himself while he tossed out personal insults at anchor Chris Cuomo.
Giuliani, who has long been lobbying Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 elections, immediately began arguing with Cuomo over the merits of a Ukrainian investigation into Biden and his son Hunter. (Back in May, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said there was no evidence that Biden or his son broke the law.)
After the CNN host noted that Giuliani was obviously doing this for political purposes to serve his client—Democratic lawmakers are currently probing Giuliani’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Biden—Giuliani flip-flopped on his position within 30 seconds.
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“You’re saying that’s what Biden said to the Ukraine,” Cuomo responded to Giuliani’s claim that then-Vice President Biden bribed the Ukrainian president to squash an investigation into Hunter. “Did you ask the Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?”
“No, actually I didn’t,” Giuliani answered. “I asked Ukraine to investigate the allegations that there was interference in the election of 2016 by the Ukrainians for the benefit of Hillary Clinton.”
“You never asked anything about Hunter Biden, you never asked anything about Joe Biden to the prosecutor?” Cuomo asked, prompting Giuliani to assert that he had only asked why the case into Hunter’s company was dismissed.
“So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden,” Cuomo shot back.
“Of course I did,” Giuliani exclaimed, causing a befuddled Cuomo to shout: “You just said you didn’t!”
The rest of the 30-minute marathon went pretty much down this road. Giuliani, performing for an audience of one, used much of his time to take pointed personal shots at Cuomo, calling him a “sellout” while constantly evading the anchor’s questions.
Despite repeatedly telling Giuliani they were getting nowhere in the segment and expressing his frustration over the former mayor’s tactics, Cuomo allowed the interview to go on and on and on. Even when they were supposedly wrapping it up, the two continued to go at each other for what seemed an eternity.
“You are not fair and impartial,” Giuliani seethed after telling Cuomo he’d never give him documents that prove his allegations against Biden because the CNN host is “the enemy.”
“You are totally biased and your network is a creature of a Democratic National Committee,” Giuliani added.
“I’m embarrassed,” Cuomo responded. “I’m embarrassed for you. Have a good night.”
Shortly after his battle with Cuomo and another (much friendlier) interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham, Giuliani took to Twitter to essentially admit that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden.
“A President telling a Pres-elect of a well known corrupt country he better investigate corruption that affects US is doing his job,” he tweeted. “Maybe if Obama did that the Biden Family wouldn’t have bilked millions from Ukraine and billions from China; being covered up by a Corrupt Media.”
