Rudy Giuliani: From ‘America’s mayor’ to out-Trumping Trump | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Rudy Giuliani is doing what many thought to be impossible: He’s out-Trumping Donald Trump.

The former New York mayor is becoming a regular source of over-the-top statements and slams about Democrats, often amplifying and even surpassing Trump in grabbing headlines, if also sometimes confounding fact-checkers – all in the name of promoting Trump.

This week alone, Giuliani suggested that “everyone” commits infidelity and voters would rather have Trump, an “economic genius” who knows his way around the tax code, “than a woman.”

Before that, he’s proclaimed Hillary Clinton “too stupid” to be president because she remained with then-President Bill Clinton despite his affair with Monica Lewinsky, charged that President Barack Obama hates America and argued that there were no Islamic terrorist attacks on U.S. soil prior to Obama’s presidency – seemingly forgetting the 9/11 World Trade Center attack that catapulted him to “America’s mayor” hero status.

Giuliani has produced such a prolific collection of cringe-worthy comments as one of Trump’s chief surrogates that several political veterans wonder whether he’s doing more harm than good for his candidate.

“It’s surprising,” said Douglas Heye, a Republican Trump opponent who served as deputy chief of staff for communications for former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

“But it’s kind of consistent from what you’ve seen from his speech at the Republican convention to now. It’s definitely a sea change as Trump surrogates more and more act like ‘The Addams Family’ than serious surrogates, and that’s what I find surprising, particularly with Rudy.”

Craig Robinson, a former Iowa Republican Party political director, said Giuliani had morphed into “a Trump echo chamber – he repeats lines Trump does, sometimes louder.”

“If there’s a politics 101 playbook, surrogates don’t do that,” he said. “Surrogates steer the conversation back to the candidate’s strong points. It seems to me that he’s taken on a role similar to Trump – he fans the flames and lets them burn itself out. I don’t think he’s been helpful.”

Katie Packer, a prominent anti-Trump Republican, applauded Giuliani for helping to galvanize New York and the rest of the country after the 9/11 attacks.

But she said she was “repulsed” by the responses of Giuliani and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., after Hillary Clinton raised comments Trump has made in the past about women and his alleged verbal mistreatment of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.

“Rudy Giuliani was someone who was thought of as progressive,” Packer said. “Maybe this is who he was all along.”

Packer, Heye and others surmised that Giuliani, 72, is angling for a Trump administration Cabinet post with his full-throated defense of the candidate.

“It’s been very painful for him to be out of power, and he looks to Trump as his best bet to get back into power again, both he and Newt,” Packer said. “They are willing to press their lips against his buttocks.”

McClatchy’s efforts to reach Giuliani were unsuccessful. He swatted away Trump administration job speculation in a statement to The Washington Post, saying, “I’m very happy practicing law at Greenberg Traurig and business consulting at Giuliani Partners.”

Still, there’s no denying that he’s been one of Trump’s most aggressive, and most controversial, surrogates among a group that includes Gingrich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. – hardly shrinking violets.

After Trump congratulated himself for not bringing up Bill Clinton’s sexual past during last week’s debate, Giuliani said he would have brought up the former president’s affair with Lewinsky.

When NBC’s Chuck Todd pointed out Sunday that the thrice-married, twice-divorced Giuliani also had strayed from his marital vows in the past, the former mayor argued that “everybody” commits infidelities.

After last week’s debate, he lashed out at Hillary Clinton for claiming not to know that Bill Clinton was having an affair with Lewinsky, a White House intern.

“After being married to Bill Clinton for 20 years, if you didn’t know the moment Monica Lewinsky said that Bill Clinton violated her that she was telling the truth, then you’re too stupid to be president,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani hasn’t limited his aim to the Clintons. In February 2015, before Trump announced his candidacy, the former mayor told a private dinner gathering that he doesn’t believe that Obama “loves America.”

In July, Giuliani used an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” to lecture African-American parents to “teach your children to be respectful to the police, and you’ve got to teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police.”

He added that “99 out of 100 times” the real danger isn’t the police but “other black kids who are going to kill them.”

He generated mocking New York tabloid headlines the following month when he told Trump supporters that there were no “successful radical Islamic terrorist attacks” on U.S. soil before Obama took office in 2008, apparently omitting the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Rudy’s most pathetic politicizing of 9/11 yet,” a New York Daily News headline read.

Dan Schnur, a former communications director for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is somewhat sympathetic to Giuliani’s plight.

“Defending some of Trump’s positions is not an easy task and, clearly, he’s been struggling doing it,” he said. “For him (Giuliani), it’s not clear if there’s an effective way to defend Trump’s last week on the campaign trail.”