The post-mortems on Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss to President-elect Donald Trump keep rolling in, but really, who’s paying attention? The campaign is over. Rage, grievance, and fitful dreams of an American autocracy won. It’s time to move on.
For tens of millions of Americans, though, a pressing question remains: move on to what? In this twilight zone between the election and next month’s inauguration, when we’re in dire need of some positivity, we’re at a loss not only for words, but for mirth. It might be the most wonderful time of the year, but the wonder feels ruined. Curdled, somehow.
Happily, one figure in American public life can still reliably brighten even the gloomiest of post-election days. That this once-relevant scoundrel’s fall from something like grace uplifts so many is a testament to the joy to be found in seeing a cocky operator get his overdue comeuppance.
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The unlikely bringer of this joy? Rudy Giuliani—the guy sycophants everywhere still refer to as America’s Mayor, even though he hasn’t held elected office for close to a quarter-century. In his time off, he has worked overtime with a circus of other loons to overturn a free and fair election, and he’s now rightly facing ruin because he viciously defamed two private citizens who were simply doing their civic duty.
This sordid spectacle has sparked in millions of people—in the United States and around the world—some serious Schadenfrudy, or pleasure derived from Rudy Giuliani’s misfortunes.
Let’s tackle the America’s Mayor nonsense first. Even New Yorkers who are not Giuliani fans recall with respect and gratitude the way he led the city in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. When the city and the nation were reeling, he embodied resolve, shared our outrage, and displayed a palpable compassion for families, friends, and colleagues who lost loved ones, and countless others whose lives were irrevocably changed that day.
The America’s Mayor label fit, for a while. But after a few years, and then decades, as Giuliani continued to make bank on the worst day in New York’s history, America’s Mayor morphed into America’s boozy tabloid punchline, and then America’s most prominent election-denying jack-in-the-box, and finally America’s smarmiest high-profile deadbeat.
It’s worth keeping in mind that before becoming mayor Giuliani served as a U.S. associate deputy attorney general, a U.S. associate attorney general, and in the prestigious role of attorney for the Southern District of New York. He put a lot of mobsters and white-collar creeps behind bars. But again, that was five and, in some cases, six decades ago. When he joined Sidney Powell as the loudest and most obnoxious election deniers in America not named Donald J. Trump, Giuliani essentially torpedoed his own legacy in the service of a thankless authoritarian goon.
Pro tip: When the enduring image from your time as a minion spewing election lies is a toss-up between a press conference where you appeared with what appeared to be hair dye streaming down your face, or another press conference in front of a landscape business and next door to a sex shop and a crematorium, your time as a serious person is over. You have entered the kaleidoscopic realm of unintentional self-parody, from which few ever return. (Looking at you, Nic Cage. Welcome back.)
Finally, of course, there is the defamation lawsuit brought against Giuliani by mother and daughter Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, after he repeatedly and very publicly lied about them committing ballot fraud. That Giuliani chose to attack two women diligently working the polls during a high-stakes election was bad enough. That he spoke of Freeman and Moss in language positively dripping with racist tropes made it worse. For the mom and the daughter and the civil jury sitting in judgment, that his accusations brought harassment and threats by pro-Trump lowlifes to their front door was the last straw.
The jury awarded Freeman and Moss $148 million in damages—which feels just about right. For his part, Giuliani has continued to lie about Freeman and Moss and has been playing games with the court to avoid paying even a tiny fraction of what he owes. Oh, and he’s been disbarred in both New York and Washington, D.C.
Rudy Giuliani must know that after years spent engaged in loathsome anti-American behavior on behalf of an insurrectionist ex-president, the first line of his obituary will almost certainly include the words Sept. 11, mayor, Trump, and disgraced (or perhaps dishonored).
In the meantime, if you see a smile playing on someone’s lips when they hear his name, go ahead and assume that it’s today’s Giuliani, and not the complicated but occasionally admirable Giuliani of decades ago that they’re thinking of. After all, in days as grim as these, we’ll take our Schadenfrudy where we can get it.
Benedict Cosgrove is a librarian, former editor at LIFE.com, and freelance writer who has contributed to The New York Times, Washington Post, Smithsonian, and other outlets. He lives in New York City.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
