Rudy Giuliani is philosophical about the fact that getting attention for an issue he cares about means also getting attention himself — usually unwanted.
That’s certainly the case as Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, makes headlines every day for urging Ukraine’s government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter for possible corruption in the country.
President Barack Obama made his vice president, the elder Biden, the point man on Ukraine policy, and shortly thereafter, the younger Biden secured a $50,000-a-month consulting gig with the country’s largest private gas company despite having no experience in Ukraine or energy. Biden went to Kyiv in 2016 and demanded that Ukraine oust its top prosecutor or give up $1 billion in U.S. aid, and Ukraine obliged. The prosecutor was allegedly looking into that gas company, Burisma Holdings, and the oligarch who ran it.
As Giuliani, 75, puts the Democratic front-runner to challenge Trump for the presidency in 2020 under the microscope, some are doing the same to the onetime Republican presidential hopeful. The New York Times recently called Giuliani’s divorce from his third wife, the former Judith Nathan, “nasty” and “operatic.”
“What relevance does my divorce have to anything in the world but me, my wife?” Giuliani said to the Washington Examiner. “We have no children together. So, the relevance is only to the two of us.”
The former mayor of New York City was speaking in Manhattan across the street from the United Nations, where he gave a speech to a rally of thousands of Iranian Americans supporting regime change in Iran by Iranians.
“You can make your own conclusion,” he said in answer to a question about why his divorce was now newspaper fodder. “I don’t comment on it except to say: So, don’t you have your own lives?”
He continued, “I also found that most people don’t pay much attention to it. It’s a one-day story. Everybody enjoys gossip a little bit. You have to take, with the good of being a public official or public figure, having some ability to influence opinion, you have to take with it, you’re going to get a lot of criticism. I can’t say it doesn’t bother me at all, but it stopped really bothering me a long time ago.”
He pauses and reflects on his second marriage, whose end he announced in 2000, when he was mayor.
“I went through another divorce, and I did have children, and that broke my heart,” he said. “Luckily, that’s taken care of. My children and I are very close. And I’m going to tell you one of the people that helped me with that: the president of United States, Donald J. Trump.”
Trump was a real estate mogul in New York then.
“He became very close with my son. He played golf with him all the time,” Giuliani said. Andrew Giuliani is now 32. The former mayor also has a daughter, Caroline, 30.
“Donald J. Trump, who all the Democrats demonize, is probably one of the two or three people who most effectively and very adult way counseled my son and got him to see that when there is a split-up like this in a marriage, it’s not about the children, it’s about something going on between the two adults, and it’s not their fault,” Giuliani said. “The biggest issue in a divorce is: Are the children going to blame it on themselves? Well, he helped me, and so did people close to my former wife, helped my children understand that’s not the case. Right now, we both have a very close relationship with him. We were both at Andrew’s wedding. So, I’m very happy.”
Media reports in 2000 said the Giuliani divorce had estranged the children from their father. They’re not anymore. Andrew lives in Washington, working as the White House public liaison assistant. “But since I’m in Washington all the time, I get to see him all the time. And he’s a fabulous golfer. Andrew’s a very good golfer. He was a professional. He played about three or four years in Europe,” Giuliani said.
When asked who wins when Andrew and the president play, Giuliani said, “I never announce the president’s golf scores. I can tell you one thing: The president beats me. But I’m not a good golfer. I’m just OK. I’m enthusiastic.”
