If you're looking for a manifesto of Trumpism, you could do worse than Rudy Giuliani's line to conclude an interview with Chris Cuomo Tuesday night. The simplest explanation for why Trumplandia is home to a rogue's gallery of liars and frauds is that none of them really believe in the concept of truth—at least as it exists in the public discourse. The truth is whatever you can get enough people to believe. That's how you get "alternative facts," or Giuliani's claim Monday that perhaps no president has behaved as crassly and boorishly as Trump has because "maybe nobody's been as honest."

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CUOMO: No president has ever spoken to people the way Trump does.



GIULIANI: "Maybe nobody's been as honest as he is. And also, their achievements don't come close to his." pic.twitter.com/t8uJlqZStU — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 15, 2018

CUOMO: If fact-counting is anything, we've never had anybody with the level of mendacity that he has.

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

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

GIULIANI: [laughing] Yes they are. Nowadays, they are.

That, right there, is the essential attitude of Trump and his associates. It's just that Giuliani had more of a giggle going. Normally you'd expect a sneer.

Chip Somodevilla Getty Images

You can see the dual claims working in tandem here. The only way Trump is the most honest president we've ever had is if facts are "in the eye of the beholder." The Washington Post assessed that Trump made 4,229 false claims in his first 558 days in office. That's 7.6 a day. But he—and Giuliani—know that his base of support mostly doesn't read The Washington Post. They watch Fox News, or listen to talk radio, or otherwise marinate in the wider conservative media ecosystem, where the president's word is gold and ICE is liberating entire towns from the grip of MS-13. Reality is irrelevant when you have an entire media apparatus ready and willing to bend its contours to your needs.

Giuliani himself has taken advantage of this state of affairs frequently. Take this Sunday, when Giuliani told Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union that, "There was no conversation about Michael Flynn" between Trump and then-FBI Director James Comey. The latter claims Trump asked him to let the Flynn thing go, which Comey took to be the president's attempt to interfere in an ongoing investigation into his associate. But just last month, Giuliani claimed there was a conversation, where Trump asked Comey if he could give Flynn "a break."

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So did he ask him to give Flynn a break, or did the conversation never happen? Yet again, Giuliani seems to be saying everything at once, even if it's contradictory. It's an attempt to muddy the waters so that the average member of the public can't really get a grasp on what's going on in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe, or why the findings might matter from an objective legal standpoint. If all kinds of accusations are constantly flying, it becomes a he-said-she-said where everyone just retreats to their partisan corners.

That's why we've also had a range of talking points on possible collusion:

There were no contacts of any kind with the Russians.

There were some contacts, but it was just low-level members of the campaign.

There was a meeting at Trump Tower with some of the most senior-level members of the campaign, but it was just about Russian adoptions.

OK, they offered dirt on Hillary Clinton, but that's politics. Anyone would've taken the meeting.

(And, most recently:) Collusion is not a crime.

How long until we hear that collusion is good as long as you own the libs? Another instructive element of Giuliani's latest foray into post-truth politics last night was his implication that vicious, cruel, and boorish attacks on your opponents are a form of "honesty." This was a cornerstone of campaign Trumpism, and it's a stunning indictment of our politics. In the WWE-pantomime democracy of the moment, landing a punch that earns a roar from the crowd is worth a whole lot more than speaking the truth.

Giuliani and Co. are banking on the idea that it doesn't even really matter what excuse they go with this week. If everyone throws on their team's jersey when push comes to shove, they believe they can ride out whatever Mueller finds—even if there's an objective truth about what happened, discoverable and provable, with profound implications for Western democracy, American sovereignty, and the rule of law.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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