Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s close and complicated relationship goes way back, according to writer Andrew Kirtzman.
Not only has Kirtzman covered Giuliani’s political career for over 30 years, but he’s also the author of Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America's Mayor. He came on this episode of political podcast The New Abnormal to give us insight into the lives of the former New York mayor and his pal Trump.
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“We found a lot of correspondences between Giuliani and Trump during [Giuliani’s] mayoralty. And it was just fascinating. I mean, there was this kind of need that they both seemed to feel to impress the other. And I think that that still exists to this day,” he explains to co-host Molly Jong-Fast.
Kirtzman recounts that at one point Giuliani’s third wife, Judith, told him Trump was the one to step up and help Giuliani at one of his most depressive, lowest points—right after he lost the bid to run for president.
“For the next month, Trump houses them at this kind of beachfront property, and [they] found there were tunnels under Mar-a-Lago, where they were able to kind of walk back and forth undiscovered. It was there that Giuliani kind of was allowed to get back on his feet and rejoin the world,” he says.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses between them though, says Kirtzman. As the public now knows, Trump did not choose Giuliani for the coveted Secretary of State position on his cabinet while president, and it was not an oversight on Trump’s part.
“He started just hearing all of these negative stories about him, about his drinking; Giuliani waged this campaign in the press to get the job which turned Trump off. They launched an investigation internally in the campaign into Giuliani’s clients, and he had so many clients with potential conflicts that had filled a report, dozens of pages, and eventually, Trump moved on,” says Kirtzman, who shares a lot of other Giuliani anecdotes on this episode, including his ex-wife’s speculation that he had a drinking problem.
Plus! Fever Dreams podcast host Will Sommer, who is the expert on all things far-right, joins this podcast episode to talk about the up-and-coming ultra-conservative, QAnon-type candidates—à la Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert—running in the midterms. And also, what the Proud Boys think of their founder Gavin McInnes and his alleged fake arrest prank.
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
