Rudy Giuliani, the 81-year-old former New York City mayor, was taken off a ventilator and speaking to his children Monday night after being rushed to a Florida hospital with pneumonia, according to people close to him. The news marked a significant turn after what associates described as a harrowing weekend.
Giuliani was admitted to Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach on Sunday night in what was described as a critical but stable condition. The hospital sits roughly five minutes from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence.
Both of Giuliani's children, Caroline Giuliani, 40, and Andrew Giuliani, also 40, raced to his bedside. By Monday night, a source close to the situation told the Daily Mail that Giuliani was breathing on his own and able to communicate with them after being removed from mechanical ventilation.
Giuliani's spokesman Ted Goodman tied the severity of the illness to a longstanding health condition rooted in the September 11 attacks:
"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. 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."
Goodman did not specify which virus caused the pneumonia.
Tom von Essen, Giuliani's business partner and the former New York City Fire Commissioner during the 9/11 attacks, offered a blunt assessment. "Rudy had a tough weekend," von Essen said. He added: "Today is an important day."
Billionaire supermarket and media mogul John Catsimatidis, a longtime friend, told the New York Post he had learned encouraging news Monday afternoon from a former close aide to Giuliani.
"He's talking, he's alert. To me, that's great news."
That Giuliani could speak at all after requiring mechanical ventilation was a relief to those who had gathered around him. The Daily Mail reported he may remain hospitalized for several more days.
Giuliani had shown hints of being unwell before the hospitalization. On Friday night, he held a livestream on his Facebook page and told viewers: "My voice is a little under the weather, so I won't be able to speak as loudly as I usually do." Two days later, he was on a ventilator.
The timeline underscores how quickly pneumonia can escalate in an 81-year-old man already dealing with restrictive airway disease, a condition his spokesman directly linked to Giuliani's proximity to Ground Zero on the day of the attacks. That connection is well documented among first responders and others who were at the World Trade Center site, and it remains one of the lasting health legacies of that day.
President Trump responded to the hospitalization Sunday with a post on Truth Social calling Giuliani a "True Warrior" and praising him as "the best mayor in the history of New York City, by far." Trump and Giuliani's relationship stretches back decades. The two were photographed together at the 1995 groundbreaking for Trump International Hotel and Tower, and they appeared together in a comedy video in the early 2000s. Their political alliance deepened in the years that followed, particularly during Trump's first term and the contested aftermath of the 2020 election.
The administration's broader activity continues at a rapid pace, with Trump recently signing a bill to restore DHS funding after a prolonged shutdown left border agencies in limbo.
Giuliani was elected mayor in 1993 and became one of the most consequential figures in New York City's modern history. Dan Bongino, who worked for the NYPD during the end of Giuliani's second term, put it plainly:
"Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the most transformative figure in the history of NY City politics. 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."
That record, the dramatic reduction in crime, the city's economic revival, the leadership on September 11 that earned him the title "America's Mayor", is what many conservatives remember first. It is a record that stands regardless of what came later.
And what came later was turbulent. Giuliani ran for the Senate in 2000 but abandoned the race after a prostate cancer diagnosis, clearing the way for Hillary Clinton. He ran for president in 2008 before dropping out and endorsing John McCain. He became Trump's personal lawyer and one of the most visible figures in the effort to challenge the 2020 election results, an effort that included a now-infamous press conference at the Four Seasons landscaping business in Pennsylvania.
The legal and financial fallout was severe. Giuliani filed for bankruptcy in 2023, listing $153 million in debts owed to creditors. He was pardoned by Trump in November of last year for his role in efforts to overturn the election results. The broader political environment around Trump's administration continues to generate headlines across multiple fronts.
The scene at Good Samaritan Medical Center on Monday was, by all accounts, a family affair. Caroline Giuliani, described as a California-based activist filmmaker and a Democrat voter who endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, set aside whatever political differences exist and went to her father's bedside. Andrew Giuliani, who heads the 2026 World Cup task force for the White House, was there as well.
Whatever the public debates about Giuliani's later career decisions, the image of his children rushing to a Florida hospital tells a simpler story. An 81-year-old man was fighting for his life. His family showed up.
The episode also comes during a period of intense public drama around political figures and personal crises. Just weeks earlier, the White House Correspondents' Dinner was disrupted by a shooting incident that shook Washington. Giuliani himself had recently commented publicly on remarks made by comedian Jimmy Kimmel at that event, Kimmel had joked that First Lady Melania Trump would "glow like an expectant widow," and Giuliani weighed in from his Facebook page.
That Giuliani was still engaging in public commentary just days before being placed on a ventilator speaks to both his combative nature and the speed with which his condition deteriorated.
Several questions remain unanswered. Goodman's statement referenced a "virus" that overwhelmed Giuliani's body but did not identify which one. The hospital itself has not issued a public statement. It is unclear how long Giuliani was on mechanical ventilation before being taken off it, or what his longer-term prognosis looks like beyond the expectation of several more days in the hospital.
Giuliani's restrictive airway disease, a direct consequence of his presence at Ground Zero, adds a layer of medical vulnerability that makes any respiratory illness far more dangerous. For a man who ran toward the towers when others ran away, the lasting physical cost of that day continues to exact a price more than two decades later.
The political world has not always been kind to Giuliani in his later years. His finances collapsed. His legal standing was battered. His reputation became a partisan flashpoint. But the outpouring from Trump, from Bongino, from von Essen, and from Catsimatidis reflects something that transcends the controversies, a recognition of what Giuliani meant to New York and to the country at a moment when both desperately needed leadership. Even members of the Trump family have spoken publicly about the personal toll that crises take on those closest to public figures.
For now, the news is cautiously good. Giuliani is off the ventilator. He is talking. He is alert. His children are with him.
A man who once led a city through its darkest day is owed at least the grace of well-wishes while he fights through his own.