How Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump’s Toxic, Twisted Bromance Nearly Drove the Country Off a Cliff

Inside the Hive

Vanity Fair

News

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Host Brian Stelter talks to Rudy Giuliani biographer Andrew Kirtzman and Vanity Fair executive editor Claire Howorth about the epic fall of “America’s Mayor” and his decades-long, symbiotic relationship with Donald Trump. “There's something about Rudy that makes Donald Trump swoon,” says Kirtzman, a veteran political reporter who recalled Giuliani as a “calm, fatherly general” in responding to the Sept. 11 attacks, only to spiral after his failed 2008 presidential bid and sink even lower in the aftermath of the 2020 election. They explore what's next for Giuliani, who may face charges in Georgia and Washington D.C., where he appeared to be co-conspirator #1 in the DOJ's latest indictment of Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Andrew, you've been covering Rudolph Giuliani for over 30 years.
0:05.4	Is he the same guy that you met in the early 90s?
0:09.1	There are obviously elements of the person who was such an extraordinary prosecutor and
0:14.6	mayor.
0:16.0	But if you speak with any of the people who he surrounded himself with back in the prosecutor
0:21.4	days, his mayor days, his presidential election days, none of them recognize who Giuliani
0:27.2	is now.
0:28.2	Why?
0:29.2	Most of them have fallen away.
0:30.8	Hmm.
0:31.8	You call the former mayor your muse?
0:35.6	I mean, I have never covered someone who has captured my imagination as much as Rudy
0:42.4	Giuliani.
0:43.4	I mean, the Giuliani story is one of the great rise and fall stories of our lifetime.
0:49.3	He was at one point the most famous prosecutor of the 1980s, the most famous mayor of the
0:57.6	1990s.
0:58.6	When he ran for president, he was voted more popular than the Pope.
1:03.3	This is someone who you cannot overstate the extraordinary popularity of Giuliani at his
1:09.2	height at his post 9-11 height, right?
1:13.5	That's Andrew Kertzmann, a journalist who's been covering Rudy since 1992.
1:17.6	He's the author of two biographies of the man, including most recently Giuliani, the rise
1:22.9	and tragic fall of America's mayor.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vanity Fair, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vanity Fair and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.