Ken Frydman, who served as Rudy Giuliani’s spokesman and media relations director during his 1993 mayoral campaign, made waves in 2019 when he published an op-ed in The New York Times titled, “What Happened to Rudy Giuliani?” where he wrote, “‘America’s Mayor,’ as Rudy was called after Sept. 11, is today President Trump’s bumbling personal lawyer and henchman, his apologist and defender of the indefensible. Friends and family constantly ask me, ‘Has he lost it? Is he crazy?’”
Frydman also was involved in the recent CNN film Giuliani: What Happened to America’s Mayor? -- a four-part series premiering Sunday night. In an interview published in Vanity Fair this Friday, Frydman said his inspiration for writing the 2019 op-ed was a statement Giuliani once made where he said he doesn't care what's written on his tombstone because he'll already be dead.
"...I said to myself, I care about my legacy, and I'll bet other people who worked for him on his campaigns and his mayoralty care about their legacy," Frydman said. "So I started calling people, and they all said they do care about their legacy, and that he had tarnished it, and continues to tarnish it. I spoke to one person I’ve known now for 30 years who said she had a 10-year gap in her resume, because if she told people she worked for him, the interview was over."
Frydman said that his opinion of Giuliani began to sour when he joined "Trump World."
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"That was enough. Because I knew it would be downhill from there."
Frydman thought the 2019 op-ed would be a "wake-up call" for Giuliani, but he was obviously mistaken. "[Giuliani] was disappointed. He thought we were friends. And we were friends. But I couldn't ignore what I was seeing and hearing once he started working with Trump."
In regard to Giuliani's antics when he was firmly enmeshed in Trump World, Frydman said he was "shocked to the extent that I could never imagine this hero of 9/11 and this great mayor of New York City devolving into a punchline."
"I still hope to snap him out of it, and for him to start caring about his legacy and about his obituary, because, 'America's mayor' won't be in the lead anymore. Page one above the fold in The New York Times, Donald Trump will be in the lead of his obituary, and that's really sad."
Read the full interview over at Vanity Fair.
