Former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani is breathing on his own after being hospitalized with pneumonia and put on a ventilator, his spokesperson said Monday, days after the former lawyer to U.S. President Donald Trump told his talk show audience he was “a little under the weather.”
His representative, Ted Goodman, wrote in an X post that Giuliani was recovering from the respiratory illness, which he said emerged as a complication of restrictive airway disease, which the 81-year-old reportedly developed in 2001 after he “ran toward the towers to help those in need,” Goodman said.
“This condition adds complications to any respiratory illness, and the virus quickly overwhelmed his body, requiring mechanical ventilation to maintain adequate oxygen and stabilize his condition,” his statement continued.
Goodman had previously called the former Mayor of New York City a “fighter,” but did not specify the illness he was suffering from.
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He said Giuliani remains in a “critical but stable condition.”
President Trump addressed Giuliani’s hospitalization in a Truth Social post Sunday night, calling his former lawyer “a True Warrior, and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City, BY FAR,” before jabbing at “Radical Left Lunatics,” whom he accused of treating the disbarred lawmaker “badly.”
As Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani became a vocal proponent of allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.
Trump and his backers lost dozens of lawsuits claiming fraud, as numerous recounts, reviews and audits of the election results turned up no signs of significant wrongdoing or error.
Two former Georgia election workers later won a US$148-million defamation judgment against Giuliani. As they sought to collect the judgment, the former federal prosecutor was found in contempt of court and faced a trial this winter over the ownership of some of his assets.
He was subsequently disbarred in New York in 2024 and in Washington, D.C., after findings showed he made false claims about the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won.
Decades prior, Giuliani’s eight-year tenure as mayor of New York City saw the country’s largest city through 9/11, during which time he became celebrated as “America’s mayor” for his leadership following the terrorist attack that toppled the Twin Towers and killed almost 3,000 people.
Giuliani was hospitalized last September after suffering a fractured vertebra and other injuries in a car crash in New Hampshire.
A native New Yorker, Giuliani was elected mayor in 1993 after serving as one of the nation’s highest-profile federal prosecutors, taking on mobsters and crooked Wall Street traders.
— with files from The Associated Press
I was there on 911, he ran toward the towers to promote himself and used the disaster to Enrich himself much like trump has done and is doing.
Damn hes going to make it?
why is this even news? who cares about him