Rudolph Giuliani was once one of the most admired men in the world. He was “America’s Mayor,” Knight of the British Empire, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a AAA-certified hero. He was the type of hero for whom monuments, airports, highways, schools, museums, train stations, bridges, warships and great institutions are named.
I’ve known (or knew) Rudy since 1983. He was always strange. Particularly awkward and static, he owes every bit of his public persona and success to his ex-wife Donna Hanover. He knew nothing of media presence and his “hero” energy was nothing more than blustery anger and ambition at that time. He lacked charisma and awareness. The Reagan era gave us the beginnings of Rudy’s public myth as well as Trump. It was a time of myth. Nothing that has been revealed about Giuliani has surprised me a bit. He was always a bully. A walking vulgarity. Donna cleaned him up, coached him and genuinely loved him. He was no prize! I remember his breakfasts with Christine Letegano, the sneers from Peter Powers, at that same table. His story was spun around the circumstances and timing of events. Having known him privately and professionally on many levels, I’ve seen and heard the real Rudy. This is him, and nothing happened to him. He’s just gotten older and sloppy.
Nailed it! He probably couldn't deal with not being important as he aged and life changed. Plus, people don't really change as they age they just become a more virulent form of themselves. Drinking doesn't help. Dementia kicking in?
You know Rudy, for sure. All of us watched him from the time his rise began and I totally agree with you about Donna Hanover. After the Christine Lategano affair, then Judy who thought she was marrying Churchill it all went downhill. Friends in town tell me Rudy is now a stumbling public drunk.
He has always been a thug. He ran NYC as a bully and many bought into his brand of bravado. Like, “don’t “F“ with Rudy.” But people tend to forget that he was about to leave in disgrace in 2001 before 9/11 happened. He got a golden opportunity to parade around pretending to do things when he was just showboating. This created his reputation as “America’s mayor,” even though locally he was still Rudy the thug. I was not the only one who was rolling my eyes while Rudy was sucking up all the media oxygen when people had just been throwing themselves out of the windows of the WTC to escape being burned to death and families parading through the streets, looking for their missing, loved ones, putting up posters everywhere. This is the guy who thought it was a good idea to put the control center for the city up in the same World Trade Center. He’s the same guy who was tripping around town with a new girlfriend while his wife was in the hospital with cancer, who found out he filed divorce on the TV news. The guy is and always was an a$$hole.
That's certainly the view of Rudy I've always held. He always gave off the vibe of having his hand up someone's skirt. I saw slime before his hair dye drooled down his jaw.
AH HA! I love this Wendi - behind this successful man is Donna Hanover. And when she’s gone the real man emerges once again. It’s a story as old as time itself. Best wishes!
This is precisely what I was going to say about him. I do not know him personally, but could see his lack of character from miles away. It is tragic when a person so involved in the enormous events of history proves to be a fraud, but, that's what it is. Nothing "happened" to him that wasn't bound to happen.
Thank you, Wendi, for sharing this "close up" view of this despicable and disgraceful bit of (in your words) "walking vulgarity". He fits perfectly into this 8 year period of fascist and authoritarian slide, and each passing event he moves closer to the its center.
I totally believe you! I don't know him (thank God) and never have met him (also thank God for that as well). But I always caught sleaze vibes off the guy for decades.
I still have family in NYC and Queens and none of them ever liked him. They always said he was a big phony and never thought of him as a hero of any sort after 9/11. I believe you and I believe Ms. Dunphy too. She's got receipts that most likely will prove to the world what a slimy sleazo he is through and through and at the same time will prove to me, for the umpteenth time, always pay attention to my gut feelings about someone.
I understand now. I had thought it may have been some sort of dementia many people suffer as they age, and a result of someone like that falling into the Trump camp, for whom there are no limits of depravity that can be expressed. Thank you, for letting us know that he is who he always was. Still, it’s terribly sad that he has the world stage.
I don’t think people understand what chronic alcohol abuse does to the brain. Couple that with a weak character that needs attention more than it stands by any moral compass and you can see how a man like this becomes Rudy 2023.
Giuliani has always been sketchy. He took down the Mob - but allowed Russian organized crime to fill the vaccuum (feel free to speculate why/how). His catastrophic insistence against all opposition and common sense to place the city's emergency command center at WTC caused incalculable loss.
He always had a deep streak of anti-black racism. Self-aggrandizement and grievance peddling were the tools he used to become mayor. Greed, corruption, and lack of any true policy agenda prevented him from rising higher.
Also, I would argue that - and he bears a lot of responsibility for moving services into the towers- he was NOT as famous as you think, until an act of random terrorism. Rudi was famous for 1 thing, 9/11. Elsewhere in America, (I lived in Chicago at the time) - he wasn’t so much. We knew he was unpopular.
Some people say he was always this way. My guess is that he was to a lesser degree and it's gotten worse over time. An African American New Yorker friend of mine who's very savvy about reading people said at the time he was mayor that he was racist, not a good guy, and she disliked him. She wasn't fooled by him, but many were. Alcohol, Trump, and who knows what other drugs have made him worse. I hope he's held accountable for his crimes, which seem to be many.
Unfortunately there are a lot of Rudy’s in the world. I mostly agree with all of the responses I have just read. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. He is a horrible alcoholic and that explains a lot of how he came to be the disgusting character he has become. What is most peculiar to me is how aggressively he pursues the limelight and how he worships the pathetic Donald Trump like a lapdog. He is not a patriot, and his descent into the pathetic joke he has become today is another example of the power of alcoholism to destroy peoples lives, combined with another bad case of narcissistic personality disorder.
I believe he’s easily described as a behavioral-avoidant “follower”. Chronic feelings of inadequacy drove him from childhood, his father and uncle both convicted felons. Smart enough to navigate personally multiple shifts of power (he was a registered Democrat, Independent, now Republican) to follow Kennedy, Reagan and Trump, all for their ability to manage the media better than their foes. Married 3 times to smarter media savvy women he used to gain his own fame, cheating on all three when faced with boredom, and needing more media attention.
He, semi-mastered leverage points (not you), pulling levers to gain popular attention until his pedestal fall, breaking the law (which we hope gets him disbarred and jail time) and now seems to be ambulance chasing claiming a man assaulted him whilst video shows the man patting him on the back.
Following Trump and Sidney down the path of election fraud, must have seemed like a good idea to a washed-up drunk, trying to prop-up his son’s political career now seems like where he will end up. 77 year old political has been? What happened was a slow methodical return to his roots, a life lived following criminals, void of true leadership, using every lever he could grip.
Interesting - I hadn't know his father and GF were felons - a methodical return to roots indeed. I recall he had a habit of dressing in drag too, under the pretense of his love of opera; it was noticeable to me. The Catholic upbringing likely kept him on path for a while, but it wasn't enough. Alcohol and dementia brought out the real monster.
Actually he was increasingly unpopular in NYC just before 9/11 (as was GWB) and both took maximum advantage of the tragedy. His administration's decision to move emergency headquarters into the WTC made coordinating the response impossible and led directly to the deaths of many in the FDNY. RG has been exposed in several books for being a loudmouth know nothing when the US Attorney. Bottom line: there is no dramatic turn in the man from them until now, just a more desperate liar/cheat facing death and jail.
Rudy was never ever America's mayor. He played the part, a well determined PR effort to project competence and integrity. In fact he has neither and never has. His administration was in shambles with Giuliani trying to take credit for all the good (hiring William Bratton) and none of the bad. He was wandering around lower Manhattan on 9/11 because he refused to move the Emergency Services office to an underground bunker in Brooklyn instead of the WTC which had already been targeted--thanks to a well placed campaign contribution from the WTC owners. It also mattered that Giuliani had a pied-à-terre downtown where he and Bernard Kerik would entertain women who were not their wives. The major reason the FDNY and NYPD could not talk to each other on 9/11? Giuliani. This is the guy who married his second cousin for sex, the guy who informed wife number 2 that he was getting divorced in a Mayor's press conference, a guy who thought nothing of dropping his pants in Borat2 and the guy who has embraced fascism for his own personal comfort. That is the shit stain known as Rudolph Giuliani.
Yes, cronyism with his lowers was a pattern too. He outed his own incompetency by nominating B Kerik to be "Homeland Secy" which then revealed what type of person Kerik was. He is still a Giuliana tag-a-long.
I think it was just a toxic mixture of alcohol, perhaps drugs, sex, a narcissistic personality, fame, power, and trump that brought us to the "man" we have today. He was a jerk before 9/11, he is a jerk now, and forevermore shall be. His son is not much better. Never liked him - we are better off without him. As far as I am concerned, if trump goes down, so should Rudy.
Breslin got it right when he described Giuliani as "a small man in search of a balcony" Some people were willing to overlook his poor judgment and racist policies because of his actions around 9/11, many people were not fooled. Any political ambition, greater than mayor, never went anywhere because his character was deeply flawed and obvious (no one, btw, can seem to explain how that didn't apply to Trump) By the time Rudy paired with Trump, he was primed to be a stewing toxic mess -- ready to do anything for power and money. Good god, Four Seasons Landscaping.
“Let’s book a press conference for 4:00 at the Four Seasons.I gotta color my hair first and then I’ll meet you there. This is gonna be a big deal. Oh, one other thing, make sure CNN is there.”
Giuliani was never a good guy. Check out "The Prosecutors" by James B. Stewart. And in which universe did Bill Clinton's behavior compare with that of Rudolph Giuliani?
When I wrote this, I did not know the complaint alleges Giuliani wanted oral sex from Nicole Dunphy during telephone calls because it made him feel like Bill Clinton. I thought Steve was just being snarky about Bill. So, again, sorry Steve.
Some of it may be like the superstar High School athlete who doesn’t quite make it in college or beyond. They have their one point of greatness and when that is gone, there is a hole left unfilled. They latch on to ideas, schemes that offer a return to that past glory. And, I agree with Susan, everything Trump touches dies.
I’ve known (or knew) Rudy since 1983. He was always strange. Particularly awkward and static, he owes every bit of his public persona and success to his ex-wife Donna Hanover. He knew nothing of media presence and his “hero” energy was nothing more than blustery anger and ambition at that time. He lacked charisma and awareness. The Reagan era gave us the beginnings of Rudy’s public myth as well as Trump. It was a time of myth. Nothing that has been revealed about Giuliani has surprised me a bit. He was always a bully. A walking vulgarity. Donna cleaned him up, coached him and genuinely loved him. He was no prize! I remember his breakfasts with Christine Letegano, the sneers from Peter Powers, at that same table. His story was spun around the circumstances and timing of events. Having known him privately and professionally on many levels, I’ve seen and heard the real Rudy. This is him, and nothing happened to him. He’s just gotten older and sloppy.
That I believe is very much exactly how I would describe his drift in to hell! You are so smart Wendi!
He was always a incompetent low life.
...just like Trump. Birds of a feather and all that.
I don't know him personally or professionally, but I agree. If he were really a good man, it would show. It doesn't.
Nailed it! He probably couldn't deal with not being important as he aged and life changed. Plus, people don't really change as they age they just become a more virulent form of themselves. Drinking doesn't help. Dementia kicking in?
You know Rudy, for sure. All of us watched him from the time his rise began and I totally agree with you about Donna Hanover. After the Christine Lategano affair, then Judy who thought she was marrying Churchill it all went downhill. Friends in town tell me Rudy is now a stumbling public drunk.
He has always been a thug. He ran NYC as a bully and many bought into his brand of bravado. Like, “don’t “F“ with Rudy.” But people tend to forget that he was about to leave in disgrace in 2001 before 9/11 happened. He got a golden opportunity to parade around pretending to do things when he was just showboating. This created his reputation as “America’s mayor,” even though locally he was still Rudy the thug. I was not the only one who was rolling my eyes while Rudy was sucking up all the media oxygen when people had just been throwing themselves out of the windows of the WTC to escape being burned to death and families parading through the streets, looking for their missing, loved ones, putting up posters everywhere. This is the guy who thought it was a good idea to put the control center for the city up in the same World Trade Center. He’s the same guy who was tripping around town with a new girlfriend while his wife was in the hospital with cancer, who found out he filed divorce on the TV news. The guy is and always was an a$$hole.
That's certainly the view of Rudy I've always held. He always gave off the vibe of having his hand up someone's skirt. I saw slime before his hair dye drooled down his jaw.
Power corrupts. He just got worse with time.
AH HA! I love this Wendi - behind this successful man is Donna Hanover. And when she’s gone the real man emerges once again. It’s a story as old as time itself. Best wishes!
Did he always drink this much? I was wondering if maybe increase alcohol and possibly some dementia have ramped him up?
This is precisely what I was going to say about him. I do not know him personally, but could see his lack of character from miles away. It is tragic when a person so involved in the enormous events of history proves to be a fraud, but, that's what it is. Nothing "happened" to him that wasn't bound to happen.
Thank you, Wendi, for sharing this "close up" view of this despicable and disgraceful bit of (in your words) "walking vulgarity". He fits perfectly into this 8 year period of fascist and authoritarian slide, and each passing event he moves closer to the its center.
I totally believe you! I don't know him (thank God) and never have met him (also thank God for that as well). But I always caught sleaze vibes off the guy for decades.
I still have family in NYC and Queens and none of them ever liked him. They always said he was a big phony and never thought of him as a hero of any sort after 9/11. I believe you and I believe Ms. Dunphy too. She's got receipts that most likely will prove to the world what a slimy sleazo he is through and through and at the same time will prove to me, for the umpteenth time, always pay attention to my gut feelings about someone.
I understand now. I had thought it may have been some sort of dementia many people suffer as they age, and a result of someone like that falling into the Trump camp, for whom there are no limits of depravity that can be expressed. Thank you, for letting us know that he is who he always was. Still, it’s terribly sad that he has the world stage.
I don’t think people understand what chronic alcohol abuse does to the brain. Couple that with a weak character that needs attention more than it stands by any moral compass and you can see how a man like this becomes Rudy 2023.
You have answered the question Heather-chronic alcohol abuse eventually takes it’s toll on the human brain, including impulse control.
Giuliani has always been sketchy. He took down the Mob - but allowed Russian organized crime to fill the vaccuum (feel free to speculate why/how). His catastrophic insistence against all opposition and common sense to place the city's emergency command center at WTC caused incalculable loss.
He always had a deep streak of anti-black racism. Self-aggrandizement and grievance peddling were the tools he used to become mayor. Greed, corruption, and lack of any true policy agenda prevented him from rising higher.
Also, I would argue that - and he bears a lot of responsibility for moving services into the towers- he was NOT as famous as you think, until an act of random terrorism. Rudi was famous for 1 thing, 9/11. Elsewhere in America, (I lived in Chicago at the time) - he wasn’t so much. We knew he was unpopular.
Yep - he was MAGA before MAGA ever MAGA'ed
Some people say he was always this way. My guess is that he was to a lesser degree and it's gotten worse over time. An African American New Yorker friend of mine who's very savvy about reading people said at the time he was mayor that he was racist, not a good guy, and she disliked him. She wasn't fooled by him, but many were. Alcohol, Trump, and who knows what other drugs have made him worse. I hope he's held accountable for his crimes, which seem to be many.
Unfortunately there are a lot of Rudy’s in the world. I mostly agree with all of the responses I have just read. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. He is a horrible alcoholic and that explains a lot of how he came to be the disgusting character he has become. What is most peculiar to me is how aggressively he pursues the limelight and how he worships the pathetic Donald Trump like a lapdog. He is not a patriot, and his descent into the pathetic joke he has become today is another example of the power of alcoholism to destroy peoples lives, combined with another bad case of narcissistic personality disorder.
Sadly the DSM has become required reading these days.
Always for me, and great response!
I believe he’s easily described as a behavioral-avoidant “follower”. Chronic feelings of inadequacy drove him from childhood, his father and uncle both convicted felons. Smart enough to navigate personally multiple shifts of power (he was a registered Democrat, Independent, now Republican) to follow Kennedy, Reagan and Trump, all for their ability to manage the media better than their foes. Married 3 times to smarter media savvy women he used to gain his own fame, cheating on all three when faced with boredom, and needing more media attention.
He, semi-mastered leverage points (not you), pulling levers to gain popular attention until his pedestal fall, breaking the law (which we hope gets him disbarred and jail time) and now seems to be ambulance chasing claiming a man assaulted him whilst video shows the man patting him on the back.
Following Trump and Sidney down the path of election fraud, must have seemed like a good idea to a washed-up drunk, trying to prop-up his son’s political career now seems like where he will end up. 77 year old political has been? What happened was a slow methodical return to his roots, a life lived following criminals, void of true leadership, using every lever he could grip.
But what do I know? Just my opinion here.
Interesting - I hadn't know his father and GF were felons - a methodical return to roots indeed. I recall he had a habit of dressing in drag too, under the pretense of his love of opera; it was noticeable to me. The Catholic upbringing likely kept him on path for a while, but it wasn't enough. Alcohol and dementia brought out the real monster.
It’s curious to me how he managed to get those three, smart, media savvy women to marry him?
Actually he was increasingly unpopular in NYC just before 9/11 (as was GWB) and both took maximum advantage of the tragedy. His administration's decision to move emergency headquarters into the WTC made coordinating the response impossible and led directly to the deaths of many in the FDNY. RG has been exposed in several books for being a loudmouth know nothing when the US Attorney. Bottom line: there is no dramatic turn in the man from them until now, just a more desperate liar/cheat facing death and jail.
Wayne Barrett in the Village Voice shredded Giuliani but the MSM left him alone.
Untrue. The tabloids covered him constantly when he was in office. It was the Times which never wrote a bad word.
That's what Deane is saying: Main Stream Media left him alone.
Rudy was never ever America's mayor. He played the part, a well determined PR effort to project competence and integrity. In fact he has neither and never has. His administration was in shambles with Giuliani trying to take credit for all the good (hiring William Bratton) and none of the bad. He was wandering around lower Manhattan on 9/11 because he refused to move the Emergency Services office to an underground bunker in Brooklyn instead of the WTC which had already been targeted--thanks to a well placed campaign contribution from the WTC owners. It also mattered that Giuliani had a pied-à-terre downtown where he and Bernard Kerik would entertain women who were not their wives. The major reason the FDNY and NYPD could not talk to each other on 9/11? Giuliani. This is the guy who married his second cousin for sex, the guy who informed wife number 2 that he was getting divorced in a Mayor's press conference, a guy who thought nothing of dropping his pants in Borat2 and the guy who has embraced fascism for his own personal comfort. That is the shit stain known as Rudolph Giuliani.
Rudy as “America’s Mayor” was just a disingenuous political marketing gimmick.
Yes, cronyism with his lowers was a pattern too. He outed his own incompetency by nominating B Kerik to be "Homeland Secy" which then revealed what type of person Kerik was. He is still a Giuliana tag-a-long.
Everything Trump Touches Dies. Rick Wilson wrote a book deciding on that very title. Rudy is more proof that is a true thing.
I posted the same before reading your comment
Because it’s a real phenomenon.
Oh, he was well rotted from the inside before the tRump hey days. He's evidently always been a total schmuck.
I think it was just a toxic mixture of alcohol, perhaps drugs, sex, a narcissistic personality, fame, power, and trump that brought us to the "man" we have today. He was a jerk before 9/11, he is a jerk now, and forevermore shall be. His son is not much better. Never liked him - we are better off without him. As far as I am concerned, if trump goes down, so should Rudy.
He’s already gone down! No one could survive such a catastrophic fall. Four Seasons Landscaping and Borat? What a disgusting POS!
Breslin got it right when he described Giuliani as "a small man in search of a balcony" Some people were willing to overlook his poor judgment and racist policies because of his actions around 9/11, many people were not fooled. Any political ambition, greater than mayor, never went anywhere because his character was deeply flawed and obvious (no one, btw, can seem to explain how that didn't apply to Trump) By the time Rudy paired with Trump, he was primed to be a stewing toxic mess -- ready to do anything for power and money. Good god, Four Seasons Landscaping.
“Let’s book a press conference for 4:00 at the Four Seasons.I gotta color my hair first and then I’ll meet you there. This is gonna be a big deal. Oh, one other thing, make sure CNN is there.”
A good essay, but:
Giuliani was never a good guy. Check out "The Prosecutors" by James B. Stewart. And in which universe did Bill Clinton's behavior compare with that of Rudolph Giuliani?
When I wrote this, I did not know the complaint alleges Giuliani wanted oral sex from Nicole Dunphy during telephone calls because it made him feel like Bill Clinton. I thought Steve was just being snarky about Bill. So, again, sorry Steve.
He was always a scum bag. He just fooled people for a while.
Some of it may be like the superstar High School athlete who doesn’t quite make it in college or beyond. They have their one point of greatness and when that is gone, there is a hole left unfilled. They latch on to ideas, schemes that offer a return to that past glory. And, I agree with Susan, everything Trump touches dies.
He was no longer relevant. DjT gave him attention. He was like a homeless puppy.
And I haven't read one thing in the comments that I would disagree with, the alcohol, the racism, the Twin Towers, all of it.