U.S. President Donald Trump‘s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, left the hospital Thursday after boasting about the “celebrity” treatment he received for COVID-19, including a rare dose of the same drugs that helped the president.
Giuliani, 76, received two experimental drug cocktails that were used to get Trump back on his feet following his positive COVID-19 diagnosis in October, the New York Times reports. The same treatments were also handed out to Trump allies Ben Carson and Chris Christie, at a time when some hospitals are holding lotteries for use of the drugs.
“If it wasn’t me, I wouldn’t have been put in a hospital, frankly,” Giuliani told WABC New York from the hospital on Wednesday. “Sometimes when you’re a celebrity, they’re worried if something happens to you they’re going to examine it more carefully, and do everything right.”
Giuliani celebrated his release from hospital with a tweet on Thursday, calling it “miraculous.”
“I walked in with serious symptoms. I walked out better than ever,” he wrote.
Giuliani tested positive for the virus late last week following a suspected superspreader event involving Trump’s legal team. Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, another lawyer on the team, both tested positive for the virus amid their failing efforts to overturn the result of the U.S. election, which Trump lost. Both lawyers have travelled widely across the U.S. for their fight.
Giuliani was admitted to hospital in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, though that didn’t stop him from tweeting or calling into his radio show, WABC, on a regular basis.
“I think you can overdo the masks,” he opined on Tuesday, adding that Trump’s White House doctor pushed him to go to the hospital.
“He said, ‘Don’t be stupid. We can get it over with in three days,” Giuliani said, according to Fox News.
Giuliani received a mix of drug cocktails that were approved for emergency use last month, but remain out of reach for most Americans. Only 77,262 patients have received a course of the drugs to date, including just 108 in D.C., records show.
Meanwhile, the U.S. broke its record with more than 3,000 new deaths on Wednesday, while the country’s death toll has surpassed 291,000, approaching 300,000 at a rapid clip.
The experimental treatment has Giuliani back at work fighting for Trump, who still hopes to overturn the results of a free and fair election that he lost to Joe Biden.
COVID-19 is only the latest setback in a series of unforced errors for Giuliani’s team, which he previously described as an “elite strike force.”
The missteps go back to Nov. 7, when Giuliani kicked off his efforts at a press conference outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia.
Giuliani later introduced his “strike force” at a bizarre press conference in mid-November, at which he appeared to sweat through his hair dye while quoting movies and making baseless allegations.
Then-ally Sidney Powell also pushed a wide range of false claims at the press conference, including allegations that Venezuela, Communists, Hillary Clinton and Hugo Chavez (who is dead) had conspired to deny Trump his victory.
The Trump team cut ties with Powell a short time later, though she appears to have continued on a separate path toward the same end.
Giuliani and his team have suffered dozens of court defeats in various battleground states, while failing to prove any allegations of systemic voter fraud. Trump’s team has won one argument and lost 55 to date, according to Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who has been tallying up their results.
Giuliani’s team has also piled up viral gaffes in public, including an infamous appearance before Michigan state lawmakers on Dec. 2. One witness was widely mocked for arguing with a Republican at the hearing, while another made the racist suggestion that voter fraud is easy because all Chinese people look alike.
Giuliani also appeared to pass wind while making a point at the hearing.
The elite strike force went back to work on Thursday.
Biden will be inaugurated as the next president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2021.
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