Give Or Take

 If you had one hundred forty-eight million dollars, I suppose I could imagine having one hundred fifty million dollars. That's what I was thinking about when I heard that Rudy Giuliani was told to pay "nearly one hundred fifty million dollars" to the Georgia election workers who the court decided had been defamed by Rudy in his vain and vague attempts to make America gross again.

The math that decided the penalty for insisting that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss had manipulated the vote count of the 2020 election when there was absolutely no proof of any sort of ballot shenanigans. A jury awarded Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss a combined $75 million in punitive damages. It also ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay compensatory damages of $16.2 million to Ms. Freeman and $16.9 million to Ms. Moss, as well as $20 million to each of them for emotional suffering.

About one hundred fifty million dollars. “I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said outside the courthouse, suggesting that he would appeal and that he stood by his assertions about the two women, adding that the torrent of attacks and threats the women received from Trump supporters were “abominable” and “deplorable,” but that he was not responsible for them. 

Apparently, Rudy was not responsible for his own defense either, as he chose not to testify on his own behalf. Even though he insisted earlier in the trial that he would "set the record straight." That tune changed to something less than a bang and more like this whimper: “...if I made any mistake or did anything wrong,” he thought the judge would hold him in contempt or put him in jail. “And I thought, honestly, it wouldn’t do me any good.”

The conspiracy theory former mayor, former federal prosecutor and former special counsel to the "president" has a price tag. Now it's time to pay. Nearly two hundred million dollars. 

Give or take.