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Rudy Giuliani's Many Clinton Conspiracy Theories

by Joseph D. Lyons

This week, Fox News Sunday was a window into Rudy Giuliani's paranoia — or at least his grand delusions about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The former mayor of New York went on the news channel's political talk show to defend Trump and his latest poll numbers. The only way he could do so was throwing out the most bizarre of conspiracy theories, telling the country to Google Clinton. Because, you know, you can always trust the internet.

Host Shannon Bream asked Giuliani about Trump being behind in swing states. Clinton's lead ranges from 2 to 11 percentage points in states like Florida and Virginia. He first pointed to past races like Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush or Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to argue that a Republican can still pick up speed this late in the game and go on to win the White House. Then he just argued that Trump had a better week if only because Clinton wasn't in the headlines as much — even though not all publicity is good publicity in the presidential race.

Cue Giuliani's many tangents, all attacking the Democratic candidate. He said police officers don't like her. Then her support for Syrian refugees will turn her into the "American Angela Merkel," because apparently there's nothing as scary as a strong woman leader in Giuliani's mind. But that wasn't all. When Bream asked Giuliani about Trump's "apology" Thursday, he didn't even comment. He only tried to spin back to Benghazi, trying to bring back those conspiracies to life — even after Clinton set the record straight at the GOP hearings.

But the real moment comes when Bream points out, once again, that Clinton is beating Trump — despite Giuliani's claims that Americans agree with Trump on the issues. Why is she doing so well in the polls? Here's Giuliani's take:

She doesn't have to campaign. She has The New York Times. She has The Daily News. She has ABC. She has CBS. She has NBC.

She has an entire media empire that constantly demonizes Donald Trump and fails to point out that she hasn't had a press conference in 300 days, 200 days, 100 days, I don't know how long. Fails to point out several signs of illness by her. What you've got to do is go online.

Bream tried to steer things back to reality — pointing out most argue there's "nothing factual to the claims about her health and that that's speculation at best" — but Giuliani won't have it. This is when he suggested all Americans disconnect from reality too: "So, go online and put down Hillary Clinton illness, take a look at the videos for yourself."

Terrifying, right? As Ema O'Connor for BuzzFeed News reported, the top hits for "Hillary Clinton illness" in the search engine were (before Giuliani started showing up) "Hillary Clinton Parkinson's Disease EXPOSED," a video shot from within a car on a selfie camera making claims about her facial expressions as signs of deteriorating health. The other is a personal blog of a self-published author quoting mystery doctors.

The evidence doesn't support Giulaini's claims about Clinton's mental health. But given his support for such conspiracy theories, you can't help but wonder what he's thinking.