There’s a photo going viral that shows Rudy Giuliani swinging a golf club that may cause people to do a double take. Is the photo real? No. It’s been altered with image editing software like Photoshop, though it’s subtle enough that some people may think it’s authentic.
The image started circulating on Twitter and Bluesky, often with the most popular post containing the caption, “why does rudy guiliani looks like a goomba.” A goomba is a fictional character from Super Mario Bros. that looks like a mushroom with eyes and a mouth.
The altered photo has over 450,000 views already on Twitter, despite being up for just a few hours. It’s not clear who originally created the altered image.
The original unaltered image of Giuliani golfing is actually a screenshot from a May 2022 video that Giuliani created to promote his services on Cameo, which allows celebrities to charge a fee for random users to request a customized video message.
“I’m Rudy Giuliani. If you want to have a really nice conversation or a birthday greeting or just talk golf, go to the link below,” Giuliani said in the video promotion. Rates for the promotion started at $375, according to the news outlet Defector.
Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and an unindicted co-conspirator in federal charges brought Tuesday against former president Donald Trump, is facing mounting legal trouble on several fronts. Aside from his alleged attempt to help overthrow the government after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he’s also being sued for sexual assault and harassment by a former employee, Noelle Dunphy. But Giuliani says Dunphy was never an employee and insists the sexual relations were consensual, according to the New York Times.
Transcripts from tape recordings made of Giuliani have been made public and they make for uncomfortable reading, to say the least. Giuliani makes a number of homophobic and antisemitic comments, according to the transcripts, making several sexually explicit comments to Dunphy. The recordings themselves have not been made public yet.
Notably, Dunphy also claims that Giuliani was selling pardons at the end of Trump’s time in the White House for $2 million, which Giuliani would allegedly split with the former president. Giuliani told NBC News back in May that he “unequivically [sic] denies” those allegations.
Giuliani has made a number of appearances on various news outlets in recent days, taking particular issue with comments made by former vice president Mike Pence, who referred to Trump’s “crackpot lawyers.” Giuliani was one of those crackpot lawyers, and told Newsmax that Pence, “went to a law school nobody even knows.”
Giuliani said that he used to think Pence was a good guy but “too weak to be president” and suggested that Pence’s wife was too controlling.
“She lets him go to the bathroom by himself, but that’s about it,” Giuliani said on Thursday.
It’s unclear if Giuliani will ever be charged as a co-conspirator in the federal case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith against Trump, but the lawsuit he’s facing over sexual harassment claims is for $10 million.
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