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Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s attorney, sought to clarify on Monday what he was talking about when he told NBC News’ Chuck Todd Sunday morning that “truth isn’t truth.”
“My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic ‘he said, she said’ puzzle. Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn’t,” Giuliani said on Twitter.
Giuliani made the puzzling remark on “Meet the Press,” where he sparred with Todd over the risks of letting the president sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“Look, I am not going to be rushed into having [Donald Trump] testify so that he gets trapped into perjury. And 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. He didn’t have a, a conversation — ” Giuliani began.
“Truth is truth,” Todd interjected, to which Giuliani retorted, “No, it isn’t truth. Truth isn’t truth.”
Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, seemed to know he had stumbled into uncomfortable territory.
“This is going to become a bad meme,” Todd said.
“Don’t do, don’t do this to me,” Giuliani said.
The remark instantly made headlines, however, and was seized on by news shows and commentators alike. The reaction was similar to what met Trump aide Kellyanne Conway after she defended then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer for inaccurately describing the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd as “the largest ever.”
Spicer didn’t tell a falsehood, Conway said on “Meet the Press” in January 2017, he simply “gave alternative facts.”