Leah Millis/Reuters Rudy Giuliani did not take kindly to a new profile of him in The New Yorker.
- Rudy Giuliani blasted a recent New Yorker profile of him on Tuesday, saying he "regretted ever talking" to the author, Jeffrey Toobin.
- The profile characterizes Giuliani as a "weary" mouthpiece for President Donald Trump and a "talking head spouting nonsense on cable
news ." - Giuliani said his objections to Toobin's profile didn't stem from the comments he was quoted as saying, but from what he characterized as "nasty editorial asides."
- Toobin responded: "My story speaks for itself."
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's lead personal defense attorney, on Tuesday slammed a major profile of him in The New Yorker by staff writer Jeffrey Toobin.
The article, titled "How Rudy Giuliani Turned Into Trump's Clown," characterizes the former New York mayor as a combative and bombastic lawyer and a "talking head spouting nonsense on cable news."
"I'm not going to get into it," Giuliani said in an interview with Business Insider. "I read the first two paragraphs of it and regretted ever talking to Jeff Toobin in the first place. I expected more from him because he's a lawyer, but then I remembered that he's a CNN guy."
In addition to being a staff writer at The New Yorker, Toobin is also a senior legal analyst on CNN, where he frequently criticizes the president.
In the first paragraph of his profile, Toobin described Giuliani as "weary."
"He limps," Toobin wrote. "He has surrendered his comb-over to full-on baldness, and, as his torso has thickened, his neck has disappeared."
Responding to that description, Giuliani said he recently had a knee operation and several other health problems.
"But I played golf in Scotland for three days after that and I work 15 hours a day," Giuliani said. "This article gives the impression that I'm old and tired, none of which is true."
Giuliani added that his objections to Toobin's profile didn't stem from the comments he was quoted as saying, but from what he called "gratuitous" and "nasty editorial asides."
Since he catapulted back into the spotlight several months ago, Giuliani has gone on a
Giuliani's controversial and often contradictory remarks prompted several of his former colleagues in the Justice Department to speak out against him.
"He has totally sold out to Trump," John S. Martin, a former US attorney who later became a federal judge, told The New Yorker. "He's making arguments that don't hold up. I always thought of Rudy as a good lawyer, and he's not looking anything like a good lawyer today."
Preet Bharara, the former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, echoed that view.
"His blatant misrepresentations on television make me said," Bharara told The New Yorker. "It's sad because I looked up to him at one point, and this bespeaks a sort of cravenness to a particularly hyperbolic client and an unnecessary suspension of honor and truth that's beneath him. I would not send Rudy at this point in his career into court."
Referring to Toobin and those quoted in the profile, Giuliani said, "I've been in this business long enough to know when people have a bias."
Responding to Giuliani's comments on Tuesday, Toobin said in an email, "My story speaks for itself."