What’s evidence got to do with it? Understanding Giuliani.

I think I finally understand some of the really extraordinary things Giuliani has said in the last couple of days, which have left observers thunderstruck by their weirdness and total irrationality. My conclusions don’t show that Giuliani’s position is tenable: that is impossible. All I aim to show here is what Giuliani is thinking: to understand Giuliani’s mind (at least what’s left of it).

The most common objection to Giuliani’s recent comments is this: You say that you don’t want to allow Trump to be interviewed by Mueller, because an interview with Mueller would be a perjury trap. But, Giuliani’s critics ask, how could Trump perjure himself if, as he claims, he is innocent? All he has to do in that case is answer the questions in the interview truthfully.

Giuliani’s response to this in the last several days has been that since this is ultimately a political question — and therefore a question of what a person wants to believe — the question of whether Trump obstructed justice in the conversation he had with Comey about Flynn is not a question that involves truth or falsity at all. Since the matter is essentially a political question, people will answer it differently, depending on whether they are pro-Trump or anti-Trump. No matter how much evidence Mueller develops to show that Trump did obstruct justice in that conversation, it can’t matter. In fact, it is a mistake to think that it is a decidable matter whether there was any conversation that night about Flynn at all.

There is no doubt that this is now Giuliani’s position. Here’s what Giuliani said the other day in an interview with Chris Cuomo:

CUOMO: I think it’s a little early on that. And if fact [checking] is anything, we’ve never had anybody with the level of mendacity that he has. Not even close.

GIULIANI: It’s in the eye of the beholder.

CUOMO: No, facts are not in the eye of the beholder.

GIULIANI: Yes it is — yes they are. Nowadays they are.

And today Giuliani said this in an interview with Chuck Todd:

Giuliani: “When you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well, that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth.”

Todd: “Truth is truth.”

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Giuliani: “No, no, it isn’t truth,” Giuliani said. “Truth isn’t truth. The President of the United States says, “I didn’t …”

Todd: “Truth isn’t truth?” Todd interjected. “Mr. Mayor, do you realize, what … I think this is going to become a bad meme.”

Giuliani: “No, no, no … don’t do this to me.”

Todd: “Don’t do ‘truth isn’t truth’ to me.”

Giuliani: “Donald Trump says I didn’t talk about [former national security adviser Michael] Flynn with [then-FBI Director James] Comey. Comey says you did talk about it. So tell me what the truth is.”

Clearly, in this conception of the universe, evidence is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how much evidence Mueller might have accumulated. Since no one else was in that room in the White House except Trump and Comey, there is no objective truth of the matter as to whether Trump obstructed justice. It’s all, as Giuliani says, in the eye of the beholder. Which is to say, it’s all political.

However, Giuliani is not a thoroughgoing deconstructionist about truth, and this makes his position inconsistent. I say this because there is no way to reconcile his views about what is decidable in the political realm — all of which is irredeemably subjective, according to Giuliani — and what transpires in the realm of law enforcement and the judicial system.

Keep in mind that Giuliani is a former federal prosecutor and still has a lot of respect (apparently) for the FBI and the judicial system. That is why he says: Although Trump wants — really wants — to agree to an interview, I am advising him against it because I don’t want him to perjure himself.

But if there is no truth of the matter whether the conversation at the White House between Trump and Comey is evidence of obstruction of justice — in fact, if there is no truth of the matter whether there was a conversation about Flynn then and there at all — how could Trump possibly perjure himself? Perjury is knowingly and willingly telling a material falsehood under oath. It is, therefore, a notion that is only meaningful to the extent that “evidence” and “truth” and “falsehood” are recognized, meaningful concepts. Dismiss these fundamental concepts, and any and all procedures in law enforcement and the judiciary become charades. In particular, apart from the concepts of evidence, truth, and falsity, the notion of a “perjury trap” makes no sense at all.

But Giuliani (I guess to his credit — we’ve got to be grateful for small favors) is not willing to go that far, and apply what he says and apparently believes is true outside law enforcement and the judicial system to law enforcement and the judicial system themselves.

If Giuliani were consistent, and willing to abandon the concepts of evidence and truth and falsity in the realms of law enforcement and the judiciary the way he is in the realm of politics, he could easily advise Trump to grant Mueller an interview. There would then be no problem. According to Giuliani, it is predictable that under questioning by Mueller Trump will say X, and Mueller will write a report alleging that Trump perjured himself, because not-X. And that’s that. No one else was there, so who is to say whether Trump is right or Mueller is right? And that being the case, it will become a matter of opinion whether Trump perjured himself or not.

That would be a consistent position, but it isn’t really Giuliani’s position. (He might, however, get there eventually, given the way he is going.) Giuliani continues to speak of a “perjury trap” as a meaningful concept. And that is probably due to the deference and respect for law enforcement and justice that Giuliani is trying desperately to hold onto under the impact of Trump’s baleful influence.

Giuliani is saying, in effect, that it’s perfectly all right for Trump to say anything he wants in public, and for his voters to believe it, even if it turns out that the evidence is overwhelmingly against what he says — but don’t let the President be questioned by law enforcement or the judiciary when this happens, because applying the same principles (or rather, the lack of them) to law enforcement and the judiciary would lead to their extinction — which is exactly what happens in authoritarian societies, where there is no independent judiciary, and the line between politics and the judicial system has been obliterated.

If I am right, Giuliani’s position is not Trump’s position. Trump isn’t going to grant Mueller an interview, and never intended to do so. (Trump isn’t smart, but he isn’t that stupid, either.) But it is quite believable that Trump has earnestly told others that he wants to be interviewed, and that gullible people like Giuliani have taken him at his word. But Trump has no more respect for the notions of truth and falsity as applied to law enforcement and the judiciary than he does outside it in the political culture. He is a serial, pathological, almost committed, liar. He has lied in depositions in the past, and is quite prepared to lie again to Mueller. To Trump this would mean nothing. To Giuliani, to his credit, it would mean something. He cannot bear the thought that there might be an interview, and that he would have to see Trump saying in that context — one that Giuliani still respects and doesn’t want to see trashed — what he knows Trump would say. Above all, Giuliani would not want to be forced into applying to law enforcement and the judiciary the same principles (or lack of them) that he has already applied to the political culture in this country.

This position is, as I’ve said, inconsistent. Giuliani’s belief that a society can apply objective standards to its law enforcement and judicial systems while dispensing with them in its political culture is a fantasy. Ultimately, the two rise — or fall — together.