Episode 15: ‘Rudy! Rudy?’
Producer/Director John Marks
The man once hailed as “America’s Mayor” is now at the center of the most confounding political story of the Trump presidency. Rudy Giuliani’s back-channel efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials on behalf of President Trump has helped prompt the impeachment inquiry that may tarnish both men.
It’s a disquieting late act in Giuliani’s more than four decades in public life that has many people asking how a tumultuous political career that at times appeared transcendent has become a seemingly repetitive series of angry cable news appearances.
Giuliani burst on the public stage as an aggressive prosecutor who used the same tactics to take down New York’s notorious mafia bosses as he did Wall Street’s felonious financiers. He earned top billing as a zero-tolerance mayor who cleaned up Gotham as he inflamed racial tensions. And when the city — and the country — came under terrorist attack, he stepped into his defining role as “America’s Mayor” by comforting the grief stricken and rallying the faithful.
“The Weekly” examines his career and we ask New York Times reporters who observed the former New York mayor at every turn: How did Rudy Giuliani get here?
Senior Story Editors Dan Barry, Liz O. Baylen, and Liz Day
Director of Photography Robert Barocci
Video Editors Geoff O’Brien, Sean Frechette, Jim Gaynor, and David Herr
Producers Lizzie Blenk and Lora Moftah