With Rudy Giuliani, What You See Is What You Get

Rudy Giuliani marked this week’s 9/11 anniversary by reminiscing about that fateful day from the friendly confines of Fox & Friends. His hosts dutifully recycled the TV footage of Giuliani walking the streets of smoky Lower Manhattan, paper mask affixed to his face, imploring people to flee northward. He told his Fox couchmates that he walked for hours, and that there were times when he could barely breathe.

That’s still the way many Americans see Giuliani, notwithstanding his current stint as Donald Trump’s truth-averse emissary. The 9/11 visuals resurface once a year, burnishing the myth of “America’s mayor,” and it’s seemingly hard to square the Giuliani of 2001 with the Giuliani of 2018—the TV lawyer who says, “Truth isn’t truth”; who says presidents can’t be subpoenaed (at least three have