How Rudy Giuliani turned into Trump's clown

As the legal peril to Trump has mounted, Giuliani’s behavior has become increasingly unhinged. He’s started tweeting with the casual recklessness—and the buzzwords—of his client, inflaming Trump’s supporters and taunting his enemies. After Trump revoked the security clearance of John Brennan, a former C.I.A. director who has been critical of his Presidency, Brennan said that he was considering suing. Giuliani tweeted to Brennan, “Today President Trump granted our request (Jay Sekulow and me) to handle your case. After threatening if you don’t it would be just like Obama’s red lines. Come on John you’re not a blowhard?” This assertion makes no sense; if Brennan sues, the government will be represented by Justice Department lawyers, not by Giuliani and Sekulow.

At the same time, the more fraught the situation becomes the more Giuliani seems to be enjoying himself. In his appearances during the 2016 campaign, Giuliani often seemed angry, grim-faced, and ferocious. Now, making the rounds on cable news, he’s usually beaming, even as he lays into Trump’s adversaries. His transformation may be tied to the latest changes in his marital life, which has been nearly as complicated as Trump’s. In 1968, he married his second cousin Regina Peruggi, whom he divorced fourteen years later. In 1984, he married Hanover, a television journalist. On May 10, 2000, toward the end of his mayoralty, Giuliani announced at a press conference that he was seeking a separation from Hanover—which, it turned out, was news to her. The disintegration of their marriage was tabloid fodder, and Giuliani became a kind of citywide joke; he was seen around town with Judith Nathan, whom he married in 2003. Early signs suggest that Giuliani’s third divorce may turn out to be as rancorous as his second. Bernard Clair, Judith Giuliani’s lawyer, told me that she “wants to remain silent at this point in time regarding the whys and wherefores of her divorce filing and the causes behind her husband’s changes in behavior observed by people around the country—friend and foe alike.” When we began speaking this summer, Giuliani seemed to have moved on. He was dating Jennifer LeBlanc, a Republican fund-raiser from Louisiana whom he met during his 2008 Presidential race. “Jennifer was chairman of my finance committee in Louisiana, and then in the South raised a lot of money for me,” Giuliani told me. “Fine woman.” (They are no longer dating.)