They called themselves an “elite strike force team.” But the madcap news conference by President Donald Trump’s attorneys on Thursday afternoon was more campaign farce than cogent legal argument, as Rudy Giuliani offered several conspiracy theories and a litany of false claims that he pledged would reverse the outcome of the 2020 White House race.
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In the 90 minutes that followed, the former New York mayor and his colleagues spun a web of mistruths that made mention of the Clinton Foundation, liberal megadonor George Soros and the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez.
And although Ellis described their remarks as merely an “opening statement” on behalf of the campaign, the discursive briefing — during which streams of what appeared to be hair dye dripped down both sides of Giuliani’s face — betrayed almost immediately the desperation of Trump’s flailing effort to undermine President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
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Trump campaign officials looked on aghast as the circus-like affair unfolded. At one point, the campaign’s own audio livestream of the news conference was interrupted by unknown voices remarking about the hair dye that seemed to be running down Giuliani’s face. The Trump campaign later claimed on Twitter that the people who could be heard mocking the former mayor “were NOT campaign employees.”
Trump chose to put Giuliani in charge of his legal battle last Friday following a string of courtroom losses. People close to the president saw Giuliani’s promotion as a tacit admission that Trump was going to lose and that he was more interested in pushing a PR narrative that the election was being stolen from him than pursuing further lawsuits.
But senior Trump aides have rolled their eyes over Giuliani’s assertions and have derided his antics — especially his news conference earlier this month outside a Philadelphia landscaping business — as embarrassing. Within the confines of Trump’s Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters, there is growing annoyance over Giuliani’s legal team, which has been described as disorganized and frenzied.