Raw Story

Rudy Giuliani has fallen low in the four years since conducting a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, which kickstarted the former New York City mayor’s inglorious era of election denialism, indictments, lawsuits, disbarment, debt and bankruptcy.

It’s hard to imagine how the man once widely admired for leading his city in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack could fall any lower. It would take something like hosting a Nazi on his YouTube channel.

Which is exactly what Giuliani did on Aug. 23 following the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party's presidential nomination.

Speaking on his show “America’s Mayor Live,” Giuliani introduced the 10-minute segment with Rachel Siegel, a woman who drew attention during the previous week for her racist actions, Hitler salutes and antisemitic protests outside the Democratic National Convention.

Rachel Siegel gives a Hitler salute in response to a pro-Palestine protester calling her a white supremacist during a rally on Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (Jordan Green / Raw Story)

Giuliani said on his show that Siegel was 21 years old, suggesting that her youth gave her a unique perspective.

“Therefore, what we thought was we would ask Rachel her view of what’s going on in Chicago and in the United States, particularly with the influence now of this convention,” Giuliani said.

Siegel described herself in the interview as a “lifelong hardcore conservative.”

But four days earlier, in an interview with video journalist Ford Fischer at Chicago’s Union Park — where pro-Palestine protesters gathered to protest the DNC — Siegel had used another word to describe herself: “Fascist.”

Among a dozen or so far-right extremists who sought to infiltrate or otherwise exploit the pro-Palestine protests to promote their own agenda during the week of the convention, Siegel stood out.

On Aug. 19, the first day of the convention, Raw Story observed Siegel holding up a hand-written cardboard sign at Union Square that was replete with slogans attacking Jews, Black people and LGBTQ+ people.

Siegel’s sign read: “F--- n-----s. Go the f--- back to the s---hole you’re from. Jews f--- off. F-----s eat s---. Get AIDS and die!’”

Siegel’s sign also included a hand-drawn swastika.

RELATED ARTICLE: Nazi infiltrators lurk at Democratic National Convention protests

The following day, Raw Story observed Siegel and another woman holding a banner outside the Israeli consulate in Chicago that promoted the white supremacist conspiracy theory known as the Great Replacement. The banner included the Telegram channel for a white supremacist group.

At least twice that night, Siegel was observed giving straight-arm Hitler salutes, one of which Raw Story witnessed in person.

Siegel’s racist and antisemitic actions were the subject of an article published by Raw Story on Aug. 22.

Ted Goodman, Giuliani’s publicist and spokesman, did not respond on the record to an inquiry from Raw Story about Giuliani’s decision to bring Siegel on the show.

But a video published on X by the @satireAP account shows Goodman walking over to Siegel after dozens of pro-Palestine protesters had been arrested near the Israeli consulate on Aug. 20. The owner of the @satireAP account can be heard in the video mocking Giuliani as “RICO Rudy” while calling Goodman “Nurse Boy.”

“Go hang out with the Nazis, Nurse Boy,” the @satireAP account owner says. “She’s a Nazi. Go get her. Go get her. Follow her. That’s just your type right there.”

The video then shows Goodman and Siegel huddling.

Siegel pulls out her phone as Goodman speaks, and she appears to punch in his number.

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“Did you not see her videos today, Nurse Boy?” the @satireAP account owner says. “Oh, you’re going to be in so much trouble. This is bad. This is a bad look. I’m gonna have the shot. Exchanging contact info with the Nazi…. Bro, you just gave your phone number.”

“That’s a bad look,” the @satireAP account owner continues, speaking directly to Goodman. “Did you see her videos from today?”

“Who is that?” Goodman asks.

“You should have found out before you exchanged info with her,” the @satireAP account owner says. “That’s so bad. She is viral like crazy today here. She’s a literal Nazi, bro. She has the worst racist Nazi sign.”

Goodman ignores the @satireAP account owner, a livestreamer known for trolling Trump associates involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Goodman turns his camera toward the protesters, and says, “I got friends! All right, guys. Guys! What is going on? Look at these guys.”

That was three days before Siegel appeared on Giuliani’s show.

‘You are not colonized; you are conquered’

Siegel altered her message from the time she was protesting in Chicago’s streets to her appearance on Giuliani’s show.

Instead of holding a sign that read “F— off Jews” as she did earlier last week, she told Giuliani that she believes the treatment of the Jews by Hamas is “abhorrent.”

ALSO READ: Donald Trump exploits AP photo error for new $99 'Save America' book

“If anyone who is an American citizen thinks it is acceptable for a terrorist cell to invade a sovereign recognized nation with its own military, its own set of laws that has existed for decades, and say, ‘Well, we were here first.’ Are you 6 years old?” Siegel told Giuliani. “‘We were here first.’ You were not colonized; you were conquered. When a stronger society or civilization comes into an area, you are not colonized; you are conquered.”

Siegel’s rhetoric echoes Patriot Front, one of the most active white supremacist groups in the United States, which uses the slogan “Not Stolen. Conquered” to describe the relationship between people of European descent and the land of North America.

Siegel also used her appearance on Giuliani’s show to convey a watered-down version of the message on the banner she displayed during the protest outside the Israeli consulate on Aug. 20, the night she exchanged contact information with Goodman.

The banner stated, “Stop the white replacement. Deport them all.”

Siegel emphasized to Giuliani that she is an American citizen and her family members were born in the United States.

“I’m very proud to live here. I would never want to live anywhere else,” Siegel said. “And I feel very much to my core that people who are not grateful to live in this country should leave. If you are not happy, you go to Palestine.”

ALSO READ: Inside the Democratic National Convention corporate moneyfest

Giuliani appeared to be charmed by Siegel, laughing at least twice in response to her remarks.

At one point, following a rant in which Siegel called her progressive contemporaries “hyper-opinionated” and “mentally ill,” Giuliani paused a moment, as if to take it all in, and then blurted out: “I think you’re absolutely right!”

Following Siegel’s guest appearance, one of her followers on X gave her credit for adapting her message to Giuliani’s more mainstream MAGA audience.

“I didn’t hear anything objectionable,” the X user commented. “Not really shilling for Israel. She did a good job considering the audience.”

“I would never!” Siegel replied, adding a smiley face.

Giuliani described himself on the YouTube show as “a very, very strong emotional supporter of Israel.”

Common ground on racist stereotypes about immigrants

It’s been a year for Giuliani.

A very bad year.

Last August, Giuliani was criminally charged in Georgia — alongside former president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump and 16 others — with racketeering and other alleged offenses to overturn the election.

Three months later, a federal jury found Giuliani liable for $148 million in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Black election workers in Georgia.

And last month, he was disbarred in his home state of New York for repeatedly lying about the 2020 election.

The conduct at the heart of the defamation case against Giuliani involves characterizations that play on stereotypes of Black criminality that are deeply rooted in American society.

ALSO READ: ‘Absolutely essential’: Son of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes is all in for Kamala Harris

During a Dec. 10, 2020, hearing at the Georgia state legislature, Giuliani called attention to “two people” — a mother and daughter who were Black election workers — who he falsely accused of passing USB thumb drives containing manipulated election data “as if they’re vials of heroin and cocaine. I mean, it’s obvious to anyone who is a criminal investigator or prosecutor, they’re engaged in surreptitious illegal activity.”

Following Giuliani’s remarks, the women faced a deluge of racist threats. State investigators found that they engaged in no wrongdoing. And the incident Giuliani described as “surreptitious illegal activity” was nothing more than the two women exchanging a mint.

Prior to Siegel’s appearance on his show, Giuliani played a video clip showing protesters burning an American flag outside the Israeli consulate. He used the clip as a jumping-off point to convey a negative and false — in short, racist — characterization of Palestinian people.

“Don’t go soft on me on Palestinians or we’re going to have a terrible problem here,” Giuliani said. “Palestinians are taught to kill you at 2 years old. They’re taught to kill Jews. They’re taught to kill Americans.”

Noting that Israel’s neighbors have closed their borders to Palestinians seeking to escape Gaza and the West Bank, Giuliani continued: “But we’re supposed to take them. Is there a reason for this? We don’t have enough murder?”

Siegel expressed a similar view — also echoing Trump’s rhetoric — by falsely equating immigrants and refugees with criminality and violence.

“We are living in a death spiral in this nation,” she said. “We have an immigration problem that is murdering children, raping children, and there is no hold on it. There is no gauge on it. We have no idea how many of these individuals are even in our nation.”

During Siegel’s segment, Goodman, Giuliani’s publicist, can be heard speaking off camera as Giuliani asks him to adjust the shot.

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Later, Goodman joined the show as Giuliani lamented that his mayoral legacy has been erased. Giuliani also complained about the cost of housing migrants in New York City.

“It makes me feel exceedingly sad to the point of every once in a while wanting to cry,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani recalled that he recently told a supporter that “the only thing they haven’t ruined is the hope,” adding that someday in the future a leader might come along and pick up where he left off.

“There are men in this country’s history that cannot be replaced, and you are one of them,” Goodman replied.

One person who has not forgotten Giuliani: Trump.

In May, Trump recorded a video greeting that was played at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan where Giuliani was celebrating his 80th birthday.

“You’re a very special guy, Rudy,” Trump reportedly said to the man who for years served as his personal attorney. “Just keep fighting. There’s nobody like you.”

Last September, Trump hosted a fundraiser at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club to help Giuliani cover his legal bills.

Giuliani also still enjoys elevated standing at five colleges that — unlike several others — have declined to rescind honorary degrees they bestowed on Giuliani prior to his current legal troubles.

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Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) is one of former President Donald Trump's committed surrogates, and she has leveled a number of attacks at Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

“Walz is no leader. He’s a radical. I served with him in Congress. He pretended to be moderate, then showed his true extremist colors as soon as he became governor,” she said in one recent social media post.

And in a recent interview, she called him "a radical leftist governor who truly believes that socialism is the future for America."

But she was saying something very different at the time they actually worked together in Congress, representing neighboring states, reported CNN. In fact, the two of them routinely worked together on local issues and praised one another.

ALSO READ: Trump revives widely mocked digital trading cards as Harris gains in polls

According to Daniel Strauss and Allison Gordon, Walz and Noem even posed for a video in which they discussed a prairie lands protection bill they were working on together, where Walz said, “It’s a smart bill and I’m grateful to the Congresswoman both as we share similar geography out there, and while our producers are great stewards of the land, we share that land with our sportsmen and making sure that we have those resources available,” and Noem said, “I love working with Tim just because he’s got such a commonsense approach, which I like too.”

Noem, notably, was under consideration at one point to be Trump's running mate. He ultimately went with Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who has stirred up controversy by going after Walz's military service.

Additionally, Noem has come under fire of her own after she boasted in her book about shooting a puppy that she was unable to properly train for hunting, a story that drew outrage from dog owners around the country, including those in rural areas who disputed her claim that this was a normal way to handle a dog unfit for work.

Walz, who ironically has been facing a conspiracy theory about his own dog, was one of many who criticized Noem at the time, writing on his X account, “Post a picture with your dog that doesn’t involve shooting them and throwing them in a gravel pit. I’ll start.”

Former Republican Tara Setmayer cannot help but notice Donald Trump is struggling to fight back against Vice President Kamala Harris the ways that worked in the past.

Speaking to MSNBC on Tuesday, Setmayer, who leads the Seneca Project, said that Trump's team knows he can't debate while Harris can.

"And they're worried because she's a prosecutor, and Donald Trump has never really fully been cross-examined in front of the American people," she explained. "He didn't take the stand in his criminal trials. He is ill-prepared to be challenged by, not only a woman, but a woman of color. So, if I were his campaign sure, I'd be nervous about having Donald Trump on the stage next to a younger, smarter, more skilled debater and speaker than my candidate."

ALSO READ: History shows presidential debate victors often win the battle but lose the war

Meanwhile, after spending months attacking President Joe Biden for being too old, Trump is "the old one in the race now." Setmayer said that there's nothing the campaign can do to fix the visual. "And the American people will see that contrast and the binary choice."

Trump on Thursday announced that he had finally agreed to do a debate with Harris on ABC News on Sept. 10, and Setmayer said she couldn't possibly imagine him actually backing out of it.

"I don't think Donald Trump's ego will allow him to let those taunts go by," she said. "I think it's interesting that the Harris campaign is going about it this way, but it's smart politics. They know that this gets under Donald Trump's skin, and when he's irritated, he makes more mistakes."

Ultimately, Setmayer explained, Harris is in the stronger position "and it's unraveling him. He just cannot seem to land a punch on her and it shows in his response thus far."

See the full comments below or at the link here.

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Sen. J.D. Vance threw an insult at Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday that almost immediately boomeranged.

Former President Donald Trump's running mate took to X to accuse Harris of "flip-flopping" on her border security policy positions ahead of the presidential election in November — then faced stern reprimand from a fellow Republican.

"Kamala Harris is a fake," wrote Vance. "If she wants to build the border wall, she could start right now!"

Vance shared an Axios report that described Harris' support of a bipartisan border security bill — killed earlier this year by Trump allies who reportedly feared the impact such a solution would have on his reelection campaign — as an about-face.

Harris, as California's representative in the Senate, was one of three senators to oppose a compromise that would provide billions of dollars for then-President Trump's promised border wall in exchange for a Dreamers citizenship policy, Politico reported in 2020.

At the Democratic National Convention last week, Harris promised to revive the dead-on-arrival border security bill that includes $650 million in funding for a border wall, about 4 percent of the $18 billion Trump requested in 2018.

ALSO READ: Trump is losing his audience

It was this policy position Vance presented as proof that Harris was a "fake" — an argument that did not impress former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).

"BREAKING," replied Kinzinger, "In the irony of all ironies, @JDVance calls Kamala Harris 'fake.'"

Vance has also been accused of flip-flopping with his support of Trump — whom he once dubbed "America's Hitler" — and misrepresenting his upbringing for the convenience of his political career, spurring one columnist to dub him the "Hillbilly phony."

Political commentator Keith Olbermann mocked Vance with the fake rumors involving the Ohio senator and common living room furniture.

"You voted against it," Olbermann said, with the addition of an unprintable moniker involving a futon.

Political commentator and Navy veteran Jared Ryan Sears replied with a lengthy rebuke of Vance's analysis that included a basic political lesson about the extent of Harris' power as vice president.

"The Vice President doesn't have the authority to build a wall or to pay for it," he wrote. "Someone running for the position should know that...Just because you want a dictatorship, doesn't mean America is one."

Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign is earning praise for the way that it is taking the fight to former President Donald Trump in the area that is supposed to be one of his strongest points: Masculinity.

Writing in The Bulwark, Ilyse Hogue made the case that the Harris campaign is trying to present a more positive vision of masculinity than the one presented by the twice-impeached, thrice-married, quadruple-indicted, 34-count convicted felon at the top of the GOP ticket.

In fact, Hogue thought that the goal of the campaign is to "demolish" Trump's masculinity altogether.

In particular, Hogue examined the contrast in masculinity projected by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

ALSO READ: Democrats are reclaiming freedom and the American flag

"He sprinkled his speech with references to football plays and trophies he earned by shooting rifles, and he undergirded those endeavors with a clear directive about the responsibility that naturally accompanies them," she argued. "Might and brawn mean nothing if they are not used to protect and defend — and not just your women and children, but your community and country."

Hogue also zeroed in on comedian D.L. Hughley, whom she said came in to "drive a stake through the heart of the former president's brand of toxic virility" by making him the butt of nonstop jokes.

"He may have landed the punchline of the night by branding the ex-president’s need for a succession of trophy wives as being more than a little sad and embarrassingly outdated," she wrote. "His remark that the rise of Republicans for Kamala meant Trump would finally know what it feels like when 'YOU get left for a younger woman' got uproarious applause."

The U.S. Supreme Court has made voting rights advocates nervous about November's election with a recent decision changing registration rules in Arizona.

The justices neglected to clarify in that ruling when they would take up election and voting cases, and experts fear the court will unevenly applying an ambiguous legal principle, known as Purcell, that's intended to minimize chaos by making changes to voting rules right before an election, reported CNN.

"[The Arizona ruling] is creating additional uncertainty around a principle that already had very few concrete parameters,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “It’s hard to understand exactly what the court is doing when it comes to Purcell and that creates a lot of anxiety that the rule could be applied in a way that’s inconsistent and tips the scales one way or the other.”

A 2006 Supreme Court decision established the "Purcell principle" cautioning federal courts about last-minute changes to the election status quo, but it's not entirely clear what should count as "last-minute" or "status quo," and experts are concerned that lack of clarity could be an important factor in this year's election – especially since the court avoided making any clarifications on that topic in their Arizona decision.

“If the entire purpose of Purcell is to reduce the risk of voter confusion, how does that come within a country mile of the difference-splitting result that we saw in the Arizona case?” said CNN legal analyst Steve Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

ALSO READ: Donald Trump exploits AP photo error for new $99 'Save America' book

The court will almost certainly be asked to take up election-year lawsuits, some of which are already being considered by lower courts, right up to Election Day and beyond, but some experts were puzzled by their silence on the Purcell principle.

“It’s something we need, but it needs some fleshing out,” said Chad Ennis, vice president of the conservative Honest Elections Project. “I’d like a little more clarity on when Purcell applies going into the election.”

Ennis said some flexibility was needed on the doctrine because some election rules take longer to implement, but he said more certainty would be helpful – and others would have preferred some clarity on what type of cases the court would consider taking up.

“The problem is, these cases are always in an emergency posture, so you’re always dealing with short fuses,” said Derek Muller, a professor and elections expert at the Notre Dame Law School. “But the court just seems not interested in adding more details about its basis for granting or denying.”