Rudy Giuliani’s ex-wife claims that the man she married more than 20 years ago possesses little resemblance to the election denying Trump-pundit she sees in today’s political arena.
“I can certainly tell you - the person you see now is not the man I married,” Judith Giuliani said in an interview with Inside Edition, set to air on Tuesday night. “We, for a long time, were a very good team. Then things changed.”
The candid remarks from Ms Giuliani, who was married to the former Trump attorney from 2003 until filing for divorce in 2019, arrive as a series of tell-alls are set to be released on Tuesday. The tell-alls have been teased in recent weeks to paint an unflattering picture of the politician once toasted as America’s mayor.
Geoffrey Berman, a former US attorney for the southern district of New York (SDNY), has a memoir on the shelves on Tuesday that documents his legal battles with the Trump administration. It reportedly will also unearth details about Mr Giuliani’s drinking habits while employed at the New York lawyer’s law firm.
“It was unbelievable,” Mr Berman writes about a dinner party that the former New York mayor attended with several high-profile clients. “Rudy was unhinged.”
Political reporter Andrew Kirtzman’s book, also on shelves Tuesday, focuses solely on Mr Giuliani.
Mr Kirtzman, who also spoke with Ms Giuliani for his tell-all, describes a moment in the former mayor’s life when he lost the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. This, he writes while citing Ms Giuliani, triggered a drinking bender that he later recovered from when his long-time friend and political ally, Donald Trump, offered up his Palm Beach estate as a spot to dry out in.
“We moved into Mar-a-Lago and Donald kept our secret,” his third wife told Mr Kirtzman, according to The Guardian who obtained a copy of the book ahead of its September publication.
Ms Giuliani also confirmed in the Inside Edition interview that during this period in the couple’s life, they spirited away to Trump’s sprawling Florida estate so that her husband could “recover” after he suffered an embarrassing defeat that saw him secure just one delegate.
“We stayed at Mar-A-Lago. We were given a place to go where Rudy could have sanctuary and recover,” she reportedly said.
Ms Giuliani seems to also discuss the couple’s relationship with the former president, of whom her ex-husband has been an avowed supporter.
According to the interview, Ms Giuliani said that she found herself charmed when the then-president tapped her ex-husband to serve as his personal attorney in 2018.
During the same interview that the “power” that came with that appointment seemed to tip him over in a bad direction, she notes: “There becomes this thing I watched happen to him – that power just becomes extremely addictive.”
She adds that tracing his fall from being one of the more vaunted figures in American politics in the early aughts to more recently becoming the face of the Masked Singer and the subject of a special grand jury investigating attempts by Trump and others to overturn his election defeat in Georgia has been “sad” to witness.
“From America’s hero to now a man whose hair dye is running down his face, what happened?” Ms Giuliani asked. “It breaks my heart. It’s sad.”
“The guy I married would not have gone on The Masked Singer,” she said, adding that she thought “it was rather silly for someone in his position.”
Ms Giuliani, who is suing her former husband for $262,000 in unpaid remittances from their split, isn’t the only one who has noticed a chance in the former mayor’s disposition.
On Monday, while speaking to Gina Loudon, a Conservative media personality who goes by Dr Gina on her right-wing programme, the former personal attorney for Trump told the Real America’s Voice host that he finds himself saying things nowadays that, five years ago, he would’ve thought “crazy”.
“I find myself now saying things and realising their true that if I said them five years ago I was crazy,” Mr Giuliani said to the right-wing host, after she’d sympathised with conspiracy theorists who believe the US government might’ve played a role in 9/11. “Let’s take Russian collusion,” the former mayor said, before claiming that the entire Mueller probe was created by a mass of politically charged Democrats beset on taking down his then client, Mr Trump. “That a political party would make up a charge … I would’ve said that’s crazy, that can’t happen.”
When Dr Gina asked the Brooklyn-born mayor why he thought President Joe Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, Mr Giuliani told the host that while he couldn’t provide an explanation, he was keeping all possible theories on the table.
“I come up with theories,” he began. “That are the conspiracy theories that you know ten years ago I would’ve said, ‘oh, that guys crazy’”.
The Inside Edition interview with Ms Giuliani is set to air on Tuesday evening.
