FAKE NEWS? Or Just Giuliani Acting as Distraction Czar?

How I long for the days when Rudy Giuliani did simple, somewhat boring things — like appearing on Saturday Night Live in full drag. Ah, memories…Unfortunately, dear readers, those days are long gone. The noble mayor who once reassured New York City in the wake of 911 is no more.

Behold the new — yet pathetically UN-improved — Rudy Giuliani. He not only serves as Trump’s attorney but now performs nightly as the new Distraction Czar. Rudy’s latest mission? As The Donald himself might say, His job is to distract the hell out of everyone and everything so they won’t notice what the hell I’m doing and won’t give me any crap!

I know, I know, that POTUS #45 is a real potty mouth, isn’t he? But what he might have said about Rudy wouldn’t have been too far from the truth.

Like so many pseudo-loyalists before him, Giuliani now works as Trump’s decoy. His real job is to direct attention away from Trump’s wacky White House the way you’d distract a magpie with a shiny object. Only Rudy himself is the shiny object that can “glitter and be gay” (no pun intended) before the American public and the mass media. So now he’s become the star of his own oblique political performance art.

So now he uses all manner of distraction, diversion, or dysfunction to focus attention on himself — and away from the President. That way, Trump can function as unethically or as illegally as he wants without getting any criticism or unwanted attention.

As long as Giuliani keeps exhibiting outrageous conduct and spouting unexpected commentary, he remains in the public eye. And, as long as he remains in the public eye, Trump’s tweets and blurbs and misbehaviors should, in theory, fade more and more into the background. But to what end?

As long as Trump’s latest Distraction Czar promotes “fake news” — with all its confusion, contradictions, interpretations, re-interpretations, denials, and hyperbolic glory — he’s distorting reality and conning the American people. That might be what his boss wants him to do, but that’s NOT what America needs right now.

Our Democracy needs Truth — and the sincere discernment and vigilance of leaders and fellow citizens alike to help us separate fact from fiction. Otherwise, no one in this country is going to be able to discern truth from “fake news” anymore. No one is going to know WHAT to believe anymore. Thanks to Trump’s regime, however, the damage has already been inflicted on our perceptions.

The Great Leader has already bombarded us with so much cognitive dissonance that our brains are getting too overloaded to reliably process information anymore. That’s really the endgame: to get us so tired and confused that we won’t have any energy to figure out what’s actually going on in our own country.

I know all about that crisis of perception because it happened to me last weekend. I came across a news story online about Giuliani that was so bizarre I just couldn’t believe it. The account seemed too strange to be real. It sounded, for all the world, like “fake news.”

Furthermore, it seemed odd to me that very few other newscasts or newspapers even reported this incident about Giuliani. Lack of coverage, though, doesn’t necessarily mean that the news is fake. Not all the “news that’s fit to print” is actually printed on the front page of The New York Times, you know.

After more research, another story about him from a different news service corroborated the first news story. So I’m convinced this reported incident actually did take place. Both reports — the first account in The Times of Israel (AKA, The Israel Times) and the other one in Politico — gave similar information and details.

No, I’m not referring to Giuliani’s media blitz about Trump’s reimbursing attorney Michael Cohen for his payment to Stormy Daniels. No, I’m not directing attention to Giuliani’s remarks about Trump’s knowledge of this hush money. No, I’m not alluding to the interview Giuliani gave that raised the possibility of even more hush money given to other women.

I’m specifically referring to the Distraction Czar’s performance on Saturday, May 5th, that stirred up so much ill will — and offended — the Iranians and Iranian-Americans.

So you have no idea what I’m talking about? Don’t feel out of the loop because you didn’t hear or read about it. Too many news organizations arbitrarily decided to ignore what happened — and they shouldn’t have. Not reporting about an incident doesn’t mean that it never happened. It just means that journalists aren’t responsibly doing their jobs. That’s a shame because the Distraction Czar sure was doing what he was hired to do: create chaos.

Apparently, Trump wanted him to indicate the Administration’s official disdain for the “Iran deal”(AKA, The Joint Comprehensive Action), and Rudy G. went overboard.

During a speech to a largely Iranian-American crowd at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington D.C., last Saturday night, Giuliani asked the assembly what they thought would happen to that accord. He yelled at them, then took papers he’d been holding and ripped them up and spit on them. Really. That’s what he did. He gave a surreal performance of an Ugly American rejecting a treaty that had already been accepted by the United States.

Talk about a new diplomatic low!

He engaged in unnecessary and overly dramatic antics to emphasize the current Administration’s viewpoint. Forget about finding common ground. Forget about peace though understanding. Giuliani went overboard when he didn’t have to go to such extremes, and both news organizations gave similar accounts of his theatrics.

From The Times of Israel (as reported by Eric Cortellessa):

“WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s new attorney indicated Saturday that the US president plans to exit the Iran nuclear deal.
Speaking before the Iran Freedom Convention for Democracy and Human Rights, Rudy Giuliani bellowed at the crowd: ‘What do you think is going to happen to that agreement?’ Then he held up a piece of paper and pretended to rip it apart and spit on it.”
From Politico, here’s more information about Giuliani’s speech that corroborates his divisive showboating:
“The speech was hosted by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities, a group that aims to promote democracy in the Islamic Republic and was supportive of the December protests there.
At one point in his speech, Giuliani, who has served as an informal adviser to Trump and was under consideration to be his secretary of state, pretended that his notes were the Iran nuclear deal, ripping them up and spitting on them.”

Even more bizarre than Giuliani’s ripping or spitting was his backtracking after he’d dramatically asserted his political position.

The Israel Times article reported, “He also tempered his ripped-page gambit by adding that he couldn’t predict Trump’s decision.”

“Asked again about the Iran deal, the former presidential candidate said, ‘I can’t predict. It wouldn’t be fair. If I were just in private life completely, I would give you a prediction.’
He went on, ‘You know what my desire is, but I can’t give you a prediction, because I represent the president.’”
Then from Politico came even more echoes of Giuliani’s indecisiveness:
“Amid the focus on his comments about the release, Giuliani told reporters Saturday, ‘The less said about it, the better,’ adding he does not know anything about the status of the prisoners.
‘Nothing has changed, they’re working on it,’ Giuliani added. ‘I’m not privy to what they are doing. I’m reading the newspapers just like you are.’”

So then why bother to deliver such an incendiary speech?
Why not? If his theatrics don’t pan out, who’s going to notice — aside from that gathering of disgruntled Iranians and Iranian-Americans?
Welcome to the shadow side of “fake news.” It’s not just about fabricating something that never happened. It’s also about ignoring something that DID happen in order to make it magically go away — as if it had never happened in the first place. If the Great Leader doesn’t like something that happened because he feels it’s too embarrassing or negative, then the incident doesn’t get reported. The news story about the event never gets published. And a significant number of Americans never knows what happened.
Looks like Rudy G. has his work cut out for him all right. What I want to know is this: How long is it going to take America to realize this Distraction Czar and his antics are destroying our democracy?