Tucker Carlson: “I have never been fired by a major news network”

One reason that Rudy Giuliani has remained somewhere in Trump’s inner circle of toupee dyers is his willingness to simply tells lies that literally everyone is aware are lies and never back down:

Former Trump lawyer and adviser Rudy Giuliani vehemently denied having a drinking problem Wednesday, following a report from the New York Times detailing the former New York City mayor’s drinking habits.

“I do not have an alcohol problem. I have never had an alcohol problem,” Giuliani said during a press conference in Concord, New Hampshire in response to questions about the Times report.

“[If] I have an alcohol problem, I should be in the Guinness Book of World Records,” Giuliani said, citing his various accomplishments and his job history as evidence refuting the report.

“Nobody could have achieved that if they did [have a drinking problem]. … I was working 24 hours a day. It’s a big damn lie,” Giuliani told reporters, who had gathered outside Merrimack County Superior Court to hear the former mayor announce his plans to sue President Joe Biden over a comment Biden made about him during the 2020 presidential race.

According to the Times, those close to Giuliani have been concerned about his drinking for years. That concern has now caught the attention of prosecutors in the federal election case against former President Donald Trump, they report.

Could a man with a drinking problem keep up a schedule of doing random hits on Fox News Newsmax Glenn Greenwald’s Cable Access Fascist-Fluffing Hour? Perhaps the better question is how a person without an extremely serious drinking problem could debase themselves like this.

The linked Times story is highly entertaining, although it would be deeply sad if an even minutely better person than Rudy was involved:

For more than a decade, friends conceded grimly, Mr. Giuliani’s drinking had been a problem. And as he surged back to prominence during the presidency of Donald J. Trump, it was getting more difficult to hide it.

On some nights when Mr. Giuliani was overserved, an associate discreetly signaled the rest of the club, tipping back his empty hand in a drinking motion, out of the former mayor’s line of sight, in case others preferred to keep their distance. Some allies, watching Mr. Giuliani down Scotch before leaving for Fox News interviews, would slip away to find a television, clenching through his rickety defenses of Mr. Trump.

Even at less rollicking venues — a book party, a Sept. 11 anniversary dinner, an intimate gathering at Mr. Giuliani’s own apartment — his consistent, conspicuous intoxication often startled his company.

[…]

Around this time, Mr. Giuliani was drinking heavily, according to comments Ms. Giuliani made to Andrew Kirtzman, the author of “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor,” published last year.

“Literally falling-down drunk,” Mr. Kirtzman said in an interview, noting that several incidents over the years, in Ms. Giuliani’s telling, required medical attention. Mr. Kirtzman said that he came to consider Mr. Giuliani’s drinking “part of the overall erosion of his self-discipline.” (Mr. Giuliani has said he spent a month “relaxing” at Mar-a-Lago. Ms. Giuliani declined through her lawyer to be interviewed.)

Some who encountered Mr. Giuliani after the campaign were struck by how transparently he missed the attention he once commanded, how desperate he seemed to recapture what he had lost.

George Arzt, a longtime aide to former Mayor Edward I. Koch, with whom Mr. Giuliani often clashed, recalled watching Mr. Giuliani wander on a loop through a restaurant in the Hamptons, as if waiting to be stopped by anyone, while the rest of his party dined in a back room.