Rudy Giuliani, the 81-year-old former New York City mayor, has regained consciousness and is communicating with those around him after being hospitalized in Florida with pneumonia, according to New York businessman John Catsimatidis.
The former New York City mayor had contracted pneumonia on Sunday, which placed him in the hospital. He was reportedly in critical condition.
Catsimatidis, a billionaire supermarket and media mogul and longtime friend of Giuliani’s, said he learned the encouraging news Monday afternoon from a former close aide.
“He’s talking, he’s alert. To me, that’s great news,” Catsimatidis said, according to the New York Post.
President Trump has praised Giuliani as a ‘True Warrior’ as well as ‘the best mayor in the history of New York City, by far.’
‘Rudy had a tough weekend,’ Giuliani’s business partner Tom von Essen said earlier.
Von Essen worked as the New York City Fire Commissioner during the 9/11 terrorist attacks when Giuliani was mayor.
‘Today is an important day,’ he added.
Rudy Giuliani at the 9/11 memorial in September
He held a livestream on his Facebook page on Friday night where he could be heard coughing
President Trump called Giuliani a ‘True Warrior’ in a post on Truth Social on Sunday
‘Mayor Rudy Giuliani is recovering from pneumonia. On September 11, Mayor Giuliani ran toward the towers to help those in need, which later led to a diagnosis of restrictive airway disease,’ Giuliani’s spokesman Ted Goodman confirmed.
‘This condition adds complications to any respiratory illness, and the virus quickly overwhelmed his body, requiring mechanical ventilation to maintain adequate oxygen and stabilize his condition.’
The 81-year-old held a livestream on his Facebook page on Friday night during which he could be heard coughing.
As it started, he said: ‘My voice is a little under the weather, so I won’t be able to speak as loudly as I usually do.’
Giuliani famously campaigned with Trump and a group of Republicans to overturn the 2020 election results, citing unverified fraud that later opened him up to defamation suits he settled in court.
‘Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the most transformative figure in the history of NY City politics,’ former deputy FBI director Dan Bongino wrote.
‘He pulled off an economic and public safety miracle in a relatively short amount of time, and the city rose from the dead. I worked for the NYPD during the end of his second term. It was the honor of a lifetime.’
Giuliani mostly recently chimed in on remarks made by comedian Jimmy Kimmel prior to the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Kimmel joked that Melania Trump had a ‘glow like an expectant widow,’ which sparked fury from the First Lady and the White House after the shooting.
Trump and Giuliani at the groundbreaking for Trump International Hotel and Tower in 1995
Giuliani dressed in drag in a comedy video he shot with Trump in the early 2000s
Giuliani holding up a paper touting his mayoral victory in November 1993
Giuliani also gave his two cents, calling Kimmel an ‘incompetent jackass,’ to which Kimmel responded, saying Giuliani ‘rose from the grave to weigh in on the ongoing drama.’
In November of last year, Giuliani was pardoned by Trump, among other Republicans, for his role in trying to overturn the election against President Biden.
The former NYC mayor gave an infamous speech outside the Four Seasons landscaping business in Pennsylvania as Trump desperately attempted to claw back the presidency.
In 2023, Giuliani filed for bankruptcy with staggering debts of $153 million owed to creditors, including two Georgia election workers he defamed.
Giuliani was elected New York’s mayor in 1993 after serving as one of the nation’s highest-profile prosecutors, taking on mobsters and crooked Wall Street traders.
He was celebrated for a widespread crackdown on crime using the ‘broken windows’ philosophy and implementing the controversial stop-and-frisk program.
Giuliani ran for the Senate in 2000 but abandoned his race against Hillary Clinton after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
He ran for president in 2008 before dropping out and backing John McCain.
