Trending On Twitter: Why Is Rudy Giuliani Selling Discounted Sandals For MyPillow.com?

Rudy Giuliani has a new gig as the pitchman of discounted samples on the MyPillow.com e-commerce site, and the former New York City mayor’s brand of salesmanship has elicited a flood of astonishment on Twitter Inc TWTR.

If The Shoe Fits: Yesterday evening, Giuliani posted an advertisement on Twitter under the banner “NEW SANDALS!” that noted the regular price of $79.98 was slashed to $49.98 if consumers used the promo code “RUDY” on MyPillow.com. The sandals come in a choice of eight colors.

Giuliani disabled the comments feature on his tweet, perhaps in anticipation of the social media abuse his promotion would create. While he spared himself direct comments, Twitter was nonetheless chockablock with withering remarks.

"Not your father's political flip flop," quipped Keith Olbermann, a former ESPN and MSNBC broadcaster. "Before you criticize a man walk a mile in his sandals; and give him a pat on the back — there's a decent chance he's advertising the Sandals resort! Rudy! Sole Man! Today's Worst Person In The World!"

"Torn between pitying his ignominy — quite a fall from global powerbroker to hawker of sandals — & disgust at his thin skin," tweeted attorney Ric Fouad. "Then I remember bereaved Black mom whose son was killed by NYPD & his utter cruelty toward her, his jeering at her. #Giuliani is an awful person."

"And Giuliani's shilling of crappy sandals offends you as an American?" asked digital marketing executive Adam Singer. "No, it offends me as a marketer."

However, Plexus Resource Solutions founder Shaun Potts attempted to put the promotion into context by tweeting, "2022 in a nutshell, Rudy Giuliani is selling sandals people."

Galivanting Around: Giuliani has never been shy about putting himself into situations that could be considered ridiculous or worse, ranging from a 2000 television comedy sketch where he dressed in Marilyn Monroe-style drag and flirted with Donald Trump to his appearance as the Jack-in-the-Box character this spring on "The Masked Singer."

Last week, Giuliani was back in the headlines after claiming he was assaulted by a supermarket worker in Staten Island, although an in-store video showed the worker merely patted him on the back in a friendly manner and did not strike him. A Staten Island prosecutor reduced the charges against the worker from felony to misdemeanor, but New York City Mayor Eric Adams stated the prosecutor is looking at the wrong person for a crime.

“I think the district attorney, he has the wrong person that he’s investigating,” Adams said during a press conference covered by the New York Times Co NYT. “To falsely report a crime is a crime. If that video wasn’t there, then this person would have been charged with punching the former mayor.”

Photo: Gage Skidmore / Flickr Creative Commons

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