Giuliani Goes Full Orwell: 'Truth Is Not Truth'

By Benjamin Hart, New York Magazine

21 August 18

lert: another half-chilling, half-laughable Trump administration mantra is ready to add to the trophy case, in the space just beside “Alternative Facts” and “What You’re Seeing … Is Not What’s Happening.”

In an exchange with Meet the Press’s Chuck Todd about whether President Trump will eventually sit down with Robert Mueller (he probably won’t), presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani not only disputed the special counsel’s tactics, but the very notion of reality.

The official transcript below:

“Look, I am not going to be rushed into having him testify so that he gets trapped into perjury,” Giuliani said. “And when 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. He didn’t have a, a conversation …”

TODD: Truth is truth. I don’t mean to go like… GIULIANI: No, it isn’t truth. Truth isn’t truth. The president of the United States says, “I didn’t…” TODD: Truth isn’t truth? Mr. Mayor do you realize, what, I, I, I – GIULIANI: No, no – TODD: This is going to become a bad meme.

Todd’s wry prediction was, of course, immediately proven right.

In the other noteworthy section of his interview, Giuliani once again changed the Trump administration’s line on its fateful meeting with Russians at Trump Tower in 2016. He now claims, confusingly, that the sitdown was all about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton (not adoptions after all!), but that Trump officials had no idea that actual Russians would be involved (which is definitely not true).

But then, what is truth, when you really think about it?