Empathy for the Devils

On Rudy Giuliani, and other powerless drunks for our Sunday paid subscriber roundup.

A big topic this week amongst several alcoholics I know was Wednesday’s brutal New York Times story about Rudy Giuliani’s drinking problems, a very open secret that was now a potential legal liability for former President Trump in the election interference case: Was Giuliani giving him the poisonous legal advice while completely obliterated? And if so, did Trump know this while taking his advice? 

The quotes from disgusted former colleagues and concerned ex-friends are grim, portraying the former world-famous mayor as a tired, broken wash-up who craves the power and celebrity he once had. And his drinking has only hastened his descent. Here are some of the more disturbing portions:

• “It’s no secret, nor do I do him any favors if I don’t mention that [drinking] problem, because he has it,” said Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president who has known Mr. Giuliani for decades. “It’s actually one of the saddest things I can think about in politics.”

• During his presidential run in 2008, Mr. Giuliani bet heavily on a strong performance in Florida, but finished third and dropped out a day later. Around this time, Mr. Giuliani was drinking heavily, according to comments Ms. Giuliani made to Andrew Kirtzman, the author of “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor,” published last year. “Literally falling-down drunk,” Mr. Kirtzman said in an interview, noting that several incidents over the years, in Ms. Giuliani’s telling, required medical attention. Mr. Kirtzman said that he came to consider Mr. Giuliani’s drinking “part of the overall erosion of his self-discipline.”

• Some who encountered Mr. Giuliani after the campaign were struck by how transparently he missed the attention he once commanded, how desperate he seemed to recapture what he had lost. George Arzt, a longtime aide to former Mayor Edward I. Koch, with whom Mr. Giuliani often clashed, recalled watching Mr. Giuliani wander on a loop through a restaurant in the Hamptons, as if waiting to be stopped by anyone, while the rest of his party dined in a back room.

The quote I found most distressing was from his only supporter featured in this story, a political adviser named Ted Goodman.

“I’m with the mayor on a regular basis for the past year, and the idea that he is an alcoholic is a flat-out lie,” Mr. Goodman said, adding that it had “become fashionable in certain circles to smear the mayor in an effort to stay in the good graces of New York’s so-called ‘high society’ and the Washington, D.C., cocktail circuit.”

“The Rudy Giuliani you all see today,” Mr. Goodman continued, “is the same man who took down the mafia, cleaned up the streets of New York and comforted the nation following 9/11.”

I’m still processing all that’s come up for me from this story and have culled what added up to thousands of words, many of them unnecessary and meandering off on tangents that probably don’t belong here, but here’s what I have left of that: