Over recent days, in a spectacularly ill-advised war of words with the former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, he and his minions sought to discredit her by essentially calling her a tramp. Isn’t that precisely what they’re complaining that the Clintons and their minions did to Monica Lewinsky?

Giuliani’s gripes range far and wide: President Obama doesn’t love America; Hillary Clinton is secretly on death’s door; Lester Holt displayed an awful prejudice against Trump at the first presidential debate.

It’s all wild hallucination, but he bellows nonetheless, because the television cameras eat it up. In this wretched race there’s a leitmotif of cockamamie cameos from men who are stars no more. It’s not exclusive to Republicans. Howard Dean had a Giuliani moment all his own, suggesting that Trump, who doesn’t even drink alcohol, might have a nasty cocaine habit. Who engages in such rash slander? Someone itching to be heard.

Newt Gingrich knows that itch, and he, too, has been scratching it lately, in the service of Trump. He repeated baseless rumors that Clinton got the debate questions in advance. He piped up to say that Machado deserved to be shamed for her weight gain. His reasoning went something like this: Live by the sash, die by the sash. It’s amazing how much physical license men will give themselves while giving women none. It’s amazing how oblivious they are to the paradox.

It’s amazing how alike some of the manservants clinging to Trump are: His campaign is like some Canyon Ranch for bullies needing revitalization.

And it’s amazing how far they’ve fallen. For a significant stretch of the 2008 election cycle, Giuliani was the favorite for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, and not just any favorite. He was going to prove that a Northeastern Republican who flouted certain right-wing orthodoxies could travel a somewhat centrist path to the White House.

That mantle passed to Christie. Some Republicans tried to draw him into the 2012 presidential race, then anointed him as the 2016 front-runner — before the bridge fiasco, that is. He, like Giuliani, was hailed in some quarters as a choice more sensible than stringently ideological.