For Sidelined Giuliani, a Tumble Is an Unsubtle Metaphor

The third night of the Republican National Convention was kicking off in Fiserv Forum on Wednesday and Rudolph W. Giuliani sat by himself across the street, poring over blown-up printouts of New York Post articles he had highlighted with a red marker as if they were pages of a scholarly text.

A cast of rising Trump loyalists in the House was taking turns in the spotlight giving three-minute speeches in the main auditorium, while Mr. Giuliani, who over the years has served a keynote speaker on that main stage, was getting ready to host the 453rd episode of “America’s Mayor Live,” his livestream program, across the street in an overflow media center.

This year, Mr. Giuliani — indicted, disbarred and bankrupt — has no speaking slot. He has been roaming around the arena for days nonetheless, recording his show and giving hours and hours of interviews to virtually anyone who could grab him.

His viral spill on the convention’s floor on Tuesday, in which he crashed into two folding chairs near where the Ohio delegation congregates and had to be helped back to his feet, felt like an unsubtle metaphor for his fall through the Trump era.

Mr. Giuliani, 80, faces indictments in Arizona and Georgia in election cases and owes $148 million to two Georgia election workers stemming from a judgment in a defamation lawsuit. At the Republican National Convention, which helped resuscitate his flagging career eight years ago, he has been relegated to a fringe character in the G.O.P., roaming the halls with people like Mike Lindell and Roger Stone, all of them still playing up their undying loyalty to Mr. Trump and the MAGA movement they helped launch, despite what they’ve lost in the service of defending the former president.

Mr. Giuliani’s high-profile fall immediately raised questions on social media about whether he was drunk.