The Slatest for Aug. 16: Rudy Giuliani’s Role in the Latest Indictment Is Beyond Ironic

Oh, how the tables have turned. In the 1980s, Rudy Giuliani pioneered the art of using RICO to bust Mafia members and Wall Street inside traders. When he was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, his aggressive prosecution of organized crime helped launch his political career. Now Giuliani finds himself on the opposite side of the law: a co-conspirator in Fani Willis’ sprawling RICO case against Donald Trump and his team.

Given Giuliani’s deep familiarity with how RICO works, how did he fall into this trap? Fred Kaplan makes sense of it all.

Plus, catch up on Giuliani’s long downward spiral:

• Earlier this month, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern argued that Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump was also an indictment of the legal profession. Specifically, Lithwick and Stern analyzed how Smith took to task lawyers like Giuliani, who were “so besotted with Trump and Trumpism that they were willing to work against the law—to break the law—in order to … keep Trump in power.”

• In July, a panel in D.C. recommended that Giuliani be disbarred for his election subversion shenanigans. Jeremy Stahl compiled the most brutal passages from the ruling.

• And way back in 2020, Kaplan reflected on the ruinous “devil’s pact” Giuliani had struck with Trump, which turned him into a “ranting, eye-bulging water boy of an ideologue”—in sharp contrast with the goodwill he had accrued as New York’s 9/11-era mayor.

Text conversations have become less and less private, and our obsession with “receipts” is making everything worse, Alexis Shore argues. She makes the case that it is time to stop taking screenshots of messages.

Contrary to what the headlines might say, Americans are really not that “divided” about Trump’s conduct in 2020. Ben Mathis-Lilley digs into recent polling to argue that Americans broadly agree that the former president acted illegally or unethically. For all the hand-wringing about American partisanship and polarization, let’s take the win for unity here and not overthink it!

The song of the summer is … a parody of ’90s Europop one-hit wonders? Luke Winkie caught up with comedian and musician Kyle Gordon (aka DJ Crazy Times) to hear about his song’s unlikely success, and what else to expect from Gordon’s debut album.

An unholy alliance has come together to criticize Disney’s forthcoming live-action remake of Snow White. Why? Because the film’s titular star, Rachel Zegler, had some not-so-positive things to say about the original 1937 animated feature. Nadira Goffe explains the controversy.

… much like the Royal Caribbean’s deliriously maximalist cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas. Heather Schwedel interviewed Jay Schneider, who was involved with designing the waterslide- and pool-filled cruise ship, about his creation.

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