Giuliani Waxes Philosophical: ‘Truth Is Relative And It’s Not Absolute’

Rudy Giuliani on Fox News Monday Aug 20 2018.
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani continued his tirade against the meaning of truth on Monday evening, after telling NBC’s Chuck Todd over the weekend that “truth isn’t truth.”

Suggesting that truth is “relative” and “not absolute,” Giuliani suggested the only way to prove if a certain conversation between Trump and former FBI Director James Comey about Michael Flynn took place is if there are recordings.

“One person says the Flynn conversation took place. The other person says the Flynn conversation didn’t take place. What’s the truth? You tell me you how you figure out the truth,” Guiliani said during an interview with Fox News on Monday evening.  

“It either did or it didn’t,” Fox News Martha MacCallum shot back.

“But it’s like the tree falling in the forest. Did anybody hear it? I mean, how do we know what the truth is?” he questioned.

In situations like this, the prosecutors, the truth is relative and it’s not absolute like some philosophical concept,” Giuliani continued. “Maybe, maybe through their prejudices the New York Times and Chuck Todd can figure out the truth that Comey is telling the truth, but I can’t. I believe the President is telling the truth.”

Giuliani and the rest of Trump’s legal team have been haggling with special counsel Robert Mueller for months over the terms of a potential presidential interview with Trump. Trump’s team wants Mueller to avoid questions about obstruction of justice, but Mueller’s team has insisted on asking those questions in writing, at the very least.

Trump himself has been publicly enthusiastic about meeting with Mueller’s team, but only because he reportedly thinks he can convince the special counsel that his campaign did not collude with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.

Latest News

Notable Replies

  1. A mind is a horrible thing to waste…

  2. Funny how this works.

    "Four years before he was hoisted to Speaker of the House, a smooth-faced Representative Paul Ryan declared, ‘If you ask me what the biggest problem in America is, I’m not going to tell you debt, deficits, statistics, economics—I’ll tell you it’s moral relativism.’”

  3. Avatar for j.dave j.dave says:

    All truth is relative, which means all doubt is reasonable.

    Spoken like a true, uh, what’s the word, Rudy?

    Oh, yeah.

    Defendant.

  4. Dear Lord. He can. Not. Stop. Digging!

  5. For once it’s clear what he’s doing. It’s the same thing they’re all doing, trying to tear down the very concept of objective reality by suggesting there’s much that’s unknowable, subjective, impossible for people of differing views to agree on or see the same way. You hear it from the left, too, reality is a social construct, maaan. And in today’s politics it comes from Putin. Straight from Putin. The idea is to take the third of society that’s in the middle and make them throw up their hands in frustration and give up.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

133 more replies

Participants

Avatar for austin_dave Avatar for matthew1961 Avatar for mattinpa Avatar for clemmers Avatar for cervantes Avatar for theod Avatar for steviedee111 Avatar for sandyh Avatar for ralph_vonholst Avatar for alyoshakaramazov1 Avatar for leeks Avatar for maxaroo Avatar for dickweed Avatar for masterlever Avatar for darrtown Avatar for tena Avatar for caltg Avatar for rickjones Avatar for dannydorko Avatar for edys Avatar for clare Avatar for the_loan_arranger Avatar for markhax Avatar for captain_america

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: