“America’s Mayor” is fighting for his life, and Americans are remembering him as the man who fought for them—everywhere.
Media reports say the man who led New York City from 1994 to 2001 is on a ventilator in an intensive care unit at a Florida hospital.
President Trump, in a May 4 Truth Social post, expressed his heartfelt concern:
“Our fabulous Rudy Giuliani, a True Warrior, and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City, BY FAR, has been hospitalized and is in critical condition. What a tragedy that he was treated so badly by the Radical Left Lunatics, Democrats ALL — AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING! They cheated on the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did anything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!”
Rudolph G. Giuliani first walked onto the national stage in 1974, when he prosecuted Rep. Bertram L. Podell (D.-N.Y.), the Brooklyn congressman who was working a side hustle for an airline seeking routes to the Bahamas.
It was the height of the Watergate Hoax, and the young Brooklyn-born assistant U.S. attorney put the congressman on the stand for a cross-examination that was so brutal that Podell asked for a recess.
When the congressman returned to the courtroom, he agreed to a guilty plea that ended his political career—and launched a legend.
Here are two chapters of the Giuliani story in the recent past that show his uncanny ability to read the situation and take action.
Giuliani Ends The Mueller Probe
I met the mayor, who was serving as Trump’s attorney, as a Washington-based reporter trying to make heads or tails out of the Russian Collusion Hoax.
While the mainstream media promoted the hoax, I had established by February 2017 that it was all so much garbage from sifting through the hoaxers’ own work product and sources on Capitol Hill. When it was over, I asked the mayor how he did it.
“I told them, if they didn’t shut it down, I would go after their law licenses,” he told me.
For nearly two years, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and his team had kept the investigation going in order to trip up as many Trump donors, staffers, and associates as possible. It was very much reminiscent of how the Watergate prosecutors managed to convict 90 associates of President Richard M. Nixon while promoting that hoax.
Giuliani told me he had been keeping a list of prosecutorial abuses by the Mueller team, but then he got hold of a big one.
Mueller attorneys approached a man with a script they wanted him to read. The script had the man testifying that one of his friends was a conduit between Russians and the Trump campaign.
When the man refused, the Mueller team went to his wife with a story about her son and the man’s stepson and told her: You love your son, but your husband does not. We told him that if he cooperates, we will not prosecute his drug dealing—but he refused. What kind of husband is he?
Giuliani told me it had always been difficult dealing with Mueller, whose head was already filled with bread pudding.
He said every time he would call to speak to the prosecutor, the staff would put him off and claim Mueller was busy and unavailable, such that it might go months between the president’s attorney and the prosecutor looking to take the president down.
That all ended when Giuliani threatened to take away law licenses.
Shutting down the Mueller probe was a masterstroke by a true man of the law.
Giuliani to Trump: ‘This is bad.’
Another telling episode from later in Giuliani’s career was his recognition that something was very wrong on Election Night 2020.
It was at the East Room watch party, packed with 400 guests, big screens, and drinks.
At or around 11 p.m., Giuliani recognized that in key Democratic strongholds, like Fulton County, Georgia, and Philadelphia, the vote tallies were being held back.
This is a classic maneuver, made famous by Theodore White in his book The Making of the President 1960. White described how Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley ordered his machine to hold back its vote totals until after the heavily Republican southern and central Illinois reported, so he would know what number to write in to give the state to Sen. John F. Kennedy (D.-Mass.)—not Nixon.
Giuliani started barking to people at his table that something was up. Then he got up to find Trump.
Hearing the commotion, Trump’s campaign manager, William Stepien, grabbed the mayor and, with some others, pulled him into another room.
What is the problem? Stepien asked.
The mayor told Stepien that Trump needed to declare victory immediately because there was something strange about how the returns were coming in.
Stepien told Giuliani to relax and stop making people upset.
At the stroke of midnight, Trump was leading in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—four states and 62 electoral votes he carried in 2016, but which would be certified as going to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the man who moved into the White House that next January.
In the morning, Trump called Giuliani.
The president asked his friend what the problem was. Although he still led in Georgia and Pennsylvania, the lead was gone in Michigan and Wisconsin, and their 36 electoral votes were trending away.
“This is bad,” Giuliani told Trump.
By the end of the call, the president told Giuliani he was in charge of protecting the president’s victory—a task he could not achieve, but not for want of trying.
Fighting to protect Trump’s 2020 victory cost Giuliani his fortune, his professional standing, and contributed, no doubt, to the health crisis with which he is now grappling. Yet he never backed off—and he has lived long enough to be vindicated.
There are thousands of Giuliani stories, maybe more, but these are the two that stick with me as my friend fights through this health challenge, so he can fight again.