Rudy Giuliani’s daughter has an urgent warning to America: Don’t let Donald Trump do to you what it did to my dad.
Caroline Giuliani, 35, penned a column in Vanity Fair to endorse Kamala Harris and declare that Trump led to the “implosion” of her dad’s life, from beloved New York City mayor to indicted and disbarred attorney.
“Nothing I have experienced prepared me for the very public and relentless implosion of my father’s life,” she wrote Monday.
Donna Hanover and Caroline Giuliani photographed together in 2007.
Patrick McMullan/Getty Images
Caroline said she witnessed her father’s decline begin when his association with Trump grew during the latter’s presidency. Giuliani was hired as a Trump attorney in 2018 and was integral in his stop-the-steal voter fraud hoax, which ultimately led to them both facing criminal charges. Caroline wrote that she cried when her dad told her he was going to work for Trump.
“I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad to Trump,” she wrote. “I cannot bear to lose our country to him, too.”
The younger Giuliani emphasized Monday that doesn’t want to absolve her 80-year-old dad from personal responsibility, but said Trump was largely to blame for his and others in the MAGA world’s downfall.
Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani attend an event together this month on the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Michael M Santiago/Getty Images
“Not to disregard individual accountability in the slightest, but it would be naive for us to ignore the fact that many of those closest to Trump have descended into catastrophic downward spirals,” she wrote. “If we let Trump back into the driver’s seat this fall, our country will be no exception.”
Caroline asked the U.S. to not forget “what the chaos felt like” in Trump’s first term of office, which she described as “deeply destabilizing.” In the same paragraph, she praised Harris for “infusing this election with vitality and hope.”
The Harris endorsement from Caroline, a filmmaker and political activist, shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Her Instagram includes a photo of her and Harris smiling together that was posted on July 22 with the caption, “PLEASE join me in uniting behind @kamalaharris to stop Trump. IT’S NOW OR NEVER.”
Caroline is the daughter of Donna Hanover, Giuliani’s second wife. She hadn’t started elementary school yet when her dad was elected to lead New York City and eventually earned the moniker “America’s Mayor.”
Rudy Giuliani, his then-wife Donna Hanover, and his daughter Caroline, in a red hat, stand together at his swearing in ceremony to become mayor of New York City in 1993.
Reuters
She added in Monday’s essay that she still loves her father, which is perhaps why his dramatic fall from grace has hurt her so much.
“My dad and I have a cartoonishly complicated relationship,” she said. “But he is still my father, and despite his faults, I love him.”
Caroline’s grilling of Trump and her dad isn’t the first time she’s been published in Vanity Fair. Her first byline in the magazine came in 2021, when she wrote about being polyamorous and her love of threesomes.
Going further back, the youngest of Rudy’s two children has publicly supported Democrats since 2008, when she joined a Facebook group supporting Barack Obama called “One Million Strong for Barack.”
Eight years later, Caroline threw her support behind Hillary Clinton at the same time her dad was a vocal supporter of Trump. Questioned about her and her dad’s disagreements politically in that election year, she said the rift was recognized by both of them but hadn’t—to that point—ruined their relationship.
“I love Hillary, I think she’s by far the most qualified candidate that we’ve had in a long while,” she told POLITICO in 2016. “My dad knows I was for Barack in 2012. He knows and is fully comfortable with it and thinks I have a right to my opinion.”
