Former President Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani is known for follies such as asking the ex-president for a pre-emptive pardon and pushing baseless claims that Dominion voting machines were rigged. For his latest trick, The Daily Beast reports that Guiliani is saying he couldn’t possibly have been inebriated as former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller claimed in his Jan. 6th committee testimony because “he loves Diet Pepsi.”
I have never seen any amount of soda push someone to tell a sitting President to declare victory before an election is decided. During the second Jan. 6th committee hearing, former Trump campaign chairman Bill Stepien and Miller alleged that the former N.Y. mayor had too much to drink during election night. The edited video also alleges that Guiliani said former President Trump should reject his aides’ advice and “declare victory and say we won it outright.”
During his testimony before the committee, Miller was asked if there was “anyone in that conversation who, in your observation, had had too much to drink?”
“Ah, Mayor Giuliani,” Miller replied.
“Tell me about that,” the committee counsel asked. “What was your observation about his potential intoxication during that discussion about what the president should say when he addressed the nation on election night?”
“The mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president, for example,” Miller said.
The Daily Beast noted Guiliani declared in a tweet that he was “disgusted and outraged at the out right lie by Jason Miller and Bill Steppien and that he “REFUSED all alcohol that evening. My favorite drink.Diet Pepsi.”
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) spoke to CNN and responded. to the question of why the committee felt Guiliani’s election night state was an important tidbit to include.
“I don’t know that is it was important to include,”because I really can’t tell the difference between those two conditions for him. And it doesn’t make any difference, because what he was spouting – as Attorney General [William] Barr said and as numerous witnesses confirmed – was complete nonsense. And he was telling fairy tales about foreign leaders and deceased communists and so on. And it was just one absurdity after another.”
Drunk or not, the former advisor knew the election wasn’t called either way, and Trump still took his advice which led to chaos leading up to the Jan. 6th riot. The Jan. 6th select House committee has a handful of hearings left in June to continue to connect the dots for the American people.