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    ‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book says

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    ‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book saysFormer New York mayor’s ex-wife describes breakdown Trump helped hide, years before mutual White House drama Depressed and drinking to excess after the failure of his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, Rudy Giuliani secretly recovered at the Florida home of a close friend and ally – Donald Trump.Trump stash retrieved from Mar-a-Lago runs to hundreds of classified filesRead more“We moved into Mar-a-Lago and Donald kept our secret,” Giuliani’s third wife, Judith Giuliani, says in a new book.Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, by Andrew Kirtzman, will be published in September. The Guardian obtained a copy.In 2018, Giuliani told the New York Times he “spent a month at Mar-a-Lago, relaxing” after the primary a decade before. He has not otherwise discussed the period.Giuliani initially polled well in 2008 but won just one delegate and dropped out after placing fourth in Florida.The former mayor, Kirtzman writes, had “dreamed of becoming president from a young age, [but] blew his big moment when it arrived”.Judith Giuliani tells Kirtzman her husband fell into “what, I knew as a nurse, was a clinical depression”.“She said he started to drink more heavily,” Kirtzman writes. “While Giuliani was always fond of drinking scotch with his cigars while holding court at the Grand Havana or Club Mac, his friends never considered him a problem drinker. Judith felt he was drinking to dull the pain.”Giuliani has repeatedly denied having a drinking problem. But reports of his drinking while fulfilling his late-career role as Trump’s personal attorney are legion, whether regarding his behavior around reporters or in his presence at the White House on election night in 2020, when he exhorted Trump to declare victory before all results were counted.In testimony to the House January 6 committee, Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, said Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated” that night.Kirtzman’s reporting of Giuliani’s little-known 2008 stay at Mar-a-Lago – a period when in Giuliani’s ex-wife’s words he was both speaking to therapists and “always falling shitfaced somewhere” – also prefigures Giuliani’s current role in American public life, as a chaotic, picaresque Trump booster seemingly impervious to personal or political embarrassment.Trump is a lifelong teetotaler but also a longtime Giuliani ally. In 2008, Kirtzman says, as Giuliani was struggling even to get out of bed, Trump came to his rescue.The former mayor and his wife, Kirtzman writes, moved into a bungalow across the street from Mar-a-Lago but connected by a tunnel underneath South Ocean Boulevard, one of many little known passages and rooms beneath the expansive resort. The secret route allowed the couple to come and go from Trump’s home without the media knowing.As Kirtzman’s book nears publication, underground rooms at Mar-a-Lago are in the news, after the FBI searched some for classified material taken from the White House at the end of Trump’s four years as president.Giuliani eventually emerged from seclusion to appear on Saturday Night Live. He made “self-deprecating jokes about the failure of his campaign”, Kirtzman writes, but “his makeup barely hid a large scar above his right eyebrow”. According to Judith Giuliani, the scar was the result of a fall when getting out of a car.Kirtzman writes that Giuliani’s third wife “was known to exaggerate, and the depth of his depression [during his secret spell at Mar-a-Lago] is something that only she and Giuliani knew for certain”. But the author also quotes friends, among them the 2013 Republican New York mayoral candidate Joe Lhota, as saying the Giulianis were out of touch at the time in question.Kirtzman recounts Giuliani’s career from his days as a hard-charging New York prosecutor to two terms as a controversial mayor, the 9/11 attacks and Giuliani’s widely praised leadership in the immediate aftermath.The author also covers Giuliani’s business deals after leaving office and his failed Senate run against Hillary Clinton in 2000.04:35In Giuliani’s meltdown after the primary in 2008, Kirtzman finds the seeds of a relationship which ultimately saw Giuliani contribute to Trump’s first impeachment, over approaches to Ukraine for political dirt, and to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Those efforts resulted in Trump’s second impeachment, over the Capitol riot, and extensive professional and legal jeopardy for Giuliani.Rudy Giuliani informed he is target of criminal investigation in GeorgiaRead moreAs reported by the New York Times, Kirtzman ultimately describes a Giuliani associate’s failed request that Trump pardon his ally in the aftermath of the Capitol attack – and give him the Presidential Medal of Freedom while he was at it.Giuliani and Trump had “a compelling kinship”, Kirtzman writes. “The former mayor and the famous developer were two New York colossuses, dinosaurs from another time and place.” Judith Giuliani tells Kirtzman Trump and his own third wife, Melania Trump, “kept a protective eye” on their friends.Judith, Kirtzman writes, “contends that, eight years before Washington began talking about Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump in the same breath, the future president took the failed candidate under his protective wing at a vulnerable moment.“What’s clear is the two men’s friendship survived when a hundred other Trump relationships died away like so many marriages of convenience. Giuliani would never turn his back on Trump, much to his detriment.”TopicsBooksRudy GiulianiUS politicsDonald TrumpRepublicansPolitics booksBiography booksnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Let’s do it’: John McCain knew Palin VP pick was a huge gamble, new book says

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      ‘Let’s do it’: John McCain knew Palin VP pick was a huge gamble, new book saysReporter says 2008 Republican nominee mimed rolling dice and said ‘Fuck it’ before picking hard-right Trump precursor Deciding to pick the inexperienced and extreme Sarah Palin as his running mate – a choice many say facilitated the rise of Donald Trump, threatening US democracy itself – John McCain mimed rolling a pair of dice and said: “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”Reuse this content More

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      Mike Gravel, former Alaska senator and anti-war campaigner, dies aged 91

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      Mike Gravel, a former US senator from Alaska who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and confronted Barack Obama about nuclear weapons during a later presidential run, has died. He was 91.Gravel, who represented Alaska as a Democrat from 1969 to 1981, died on Saturday, according to his daughter, Lynne Mosier. Gravel had been living in Seaside, California, and was in failing health, said Theodore W Johnson, a former aide.Gravel’s two terms came during tumultuous years when construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was authorized and when Congress was deciding how to settle Alaska Native land claims and whether to classify enormous amounts of federal land as parks, preserves and monuments.He had the unenviable position of being an Alaska Democrat when some residents were burning President Jimmy Carter in effigy for his measures to place large sections of public lands in the state under protection from development.Gravel feuded with Alaska’s other senator, Republican Ted Stevens, on the land matter, preferring to fight Carter’s actions and rejecting Stevens’ advocacy for a compromise. In the end, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, a compromise that set aside millions of acres for national parks, wildlife refuges and other protected areas. It was one of the last bills Carter signed before leaving office.Gravel’s tenure also was notable for his anti-war activity. In 1971, he led a one-man filibuster to protest the Vietnam-era draft and he read into the Congressional Record 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page leaked document known as the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department’s history of the country’s early involvement in Vietnam.Gravel re-entered national politics decades after his time in the Senate to twice run for president. Gravel, then 75, and his wife, Whitney, took public transportation in 2006 to announce he was running for president as a Democrat in the 2008 election ultimately won by Obama.He launched his quest for the 2008 Democratic nomination as a critic of the Iraq war.“I believe America is doing harm every day our troops remain in Iraq – harm to ourselves and to the prospects for peace in the world,” Gravel said. He hitched his campaign to an effort that would give all policy decisions to the people through a direct vote, including health care reform and declarations of war.Gravel garnered attention for his fiery comments at Democratic forums. In one 2007 debate, the issue of the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Iran came up, and Gravel confronted Obama, then a senator from Illinois.“Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?” Gravel said.Obama replied: “I’m not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike.“Gravel ran as a Libertarian after he was excluded from later debates. In an email to supporters, he said the Democratic party “no longer represents my vision for our great country”.“It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism – all of which I find anathema to my views,” he said.He failed to get the Libertarian nomination.Gravel briefly ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020. He again criticized American wars and vowed to slash military spending. His last campaign was notable in that both his campaign manager and chief of staff were just 18 at the time.“There was never any … plan that he would do anything more than participate in the debates. He didn’t plan to campaign, but he wanted to get his ideas before a larger audience,” Johnson said.Gravel failed to qualify for the debates. He endorsed Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in the contest eventually won by now-President Joe Biden.Gravel was born Maurice Robert Gravel in Springfield, Massachusetts on 13 May 1930. In Alaska, he served as a state representative, including a stint as House speaker, in the mid-1960s. He won his first Senate term after defeating incumbent Ernest Gruening, a former territorial governor, in the 1968 Democratic primary.Gravel served two terms until he was defeated in the 1980 primary by Gruening’s grandson, Clark Gruening, who lost the election to Republican Frank Murkowski. More

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      in US Politics

      Hillary review – did the US presidential hopeful take the wrong road?

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      This epic documentary ranges across Hillary Clinton’s life, from the Arkansas governor’s mansion, through the White House years to her own shot at the top job – but the enigma remains There is a melancholy fascination to Nanette Burstein’s sympathetic and respectful documentary interview with the enduringly opaque Hillary Rodham Clinton. It will be broadcast […] More