Rudy Giuliani, the 81-year-old former New York City mayor, was breathing on his own by Monday after a weekend bout of pneumonia so severe that a Catholic priest was called to his bedside to administer last rites, the Daily Mail reported.
Giuliani had been placed on a ventilator at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach after the illness overwhelmed his respiratory system. By Monday, a well-placed source told the Daily Mail he was off the ventilator and breathing independently, a turnaround his doctor called miraculous.
The former mayor's spokesman, Ted Goodman, tied the severity of the episode to damage Giuliani's lungs sustained more than two decades ago. Goodman said Giuliani carries a diagnosis of restrictive airway disease linked to his exposure to dust and toxins at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, the day he ran toward the collapsing towers while most of the city ran the other way.
The timeline moved fast. On Friday night, Giuliani held a livestream on his Facebook page. Viewers could hear him coughing. He acknowledged as much in plain terms.
"My voice is a little under the weather, so I won't be able to speak as loudly as I usually do."
By Sunday, pneumonia had landed him in the hospital. Doctors placed him on mechanical ventilation to keep his oxygen levels stable. His condition deteriorated to the point that Dr. Maria Ryan, Giuliani's physician, told Fox News a priest was summoned.
Ryan described the moment in stark terms, as reported by Fox News:
"The way he was yesterday in such a critical condition, he did have a priest come anoint him and all the prayers from around, it's like a miracle."
Then Monday came, and Giuliani started turning the corner. Ryan told Fox News simply: "Today he's doing much better." She added, "This guy's got nine lives."
Goodman's statement placed the medical crisis in a context that anyone who lived through September 11 will understand. Giuliani was on the ground that day, covered in ash and debris, leading the city's response in the hours when no one knew whether more attacks were coming. The long-term health toll of that exposure has claimed lives and damaged lungs across the first-responder community for years.
As Just The News reported, Giuliani's spokesperson said the respiratory illness was exacerbated by his exposure to toxins and dust from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. That preexisting damage, Goodman explained, made what might have been a manageable infection far more dangerous.
"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's statement, confirmed by Newsmax, also noted that Giuliani "is recovering from pneumonia and is being monitored as a precautionary measure." He remained in critical but stable condition.
The Associated Press reported that Giuliani had been placed on a ventilator and was now breathing on his own, corroborating the accounts from Ryan and Goodman. The AP noted the spokesperson attributed the worsened condition to dust and toxin exposure from the September 11 attacks.
Word of Giuliani's improvement brought relief to a circle of friends who had spent a grim weekend waiting. John Catsimatidis, the billionaire supermarket and media mogul who has been a longtime friend, told the New York Post he learned the encouraging news Monday afternoon from a former close aide.
"He's talking, he's alert. To me, that's great news."
Tom von Essen, Giuliani's business partner and the man who served as New York City Fire Commissioner during the 9/11 attacks, offered a measured but hopeful assessment. "Rudy had a tough weekend," von Essen said. "Today is an important day."
President Trump praised Giuliani as a "True Warrior" and called him "the best mayor in the history of New York City, by far." The hospital sits just a five-minute drive from Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in West Palm Beach.
As we previously reported, Trump was among those who rallied behind Giuliani as his condition became public.
Dan Bongino, the former deputy FBI director who served in the NYPD during Giuliani's second term, weighed in with a tribute that cut through the noise of recent years:
"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."
Giuliani's public life has been defined by moments when the stakes were highest. Elected mayor of New York in 1993, he presided over a dramatic drop in crime that made the city livable again for millions of working families. His leadership on September 11, 2001, earned him the title "America's Mayor", a label that stuck for years.
The decades since have been rougher. He ran for the Senate in 2000 but abandoned the race against Hillary Clinton after a prostate cancer diagnosis. He launched a presidential campaign in 2008 before dropping out and backing John McCain. His legal work on behalf of Trump following the 2020 election drew fierce opposition and legal consequences. In 2023, Giuliani filed for bankruptcy, reporting $153 million in debts owed to creditors. Trump pardoned him in November of last year for his role in efforts to challenge the election results.
Whatever one makes of those later chapters, the man lying in a Florida hospital bed this week earned his place in the city's history long before the controversies. Giuliani's recovery from this pneumonia crisis now depends on how well his damaged lungs can hold up against an infection that nearly took him over the weekend.
Ryan said she expects Giuliani to make a full recovery, though he may spend several more days at the waterfront facility in West Palm Beach. The questions that remain, how long the recovery will take, whether his 9/11-related lung damage will create further complications, and what virus triggered the pneumonia in the first place, have not yet been answered publicly.
The contrast between the current state of New York City leadership and the era Giuliani built is hard to miss. Bongino's description of a city that "rose from the dead" under Giuliani's watch reads less like nostalgia and more like an indictment of what came after.
Ryan's description of Giuliani, "He's a fighter", may be the simplest and most accurate summary of a man who has spent half a century in public life picking fights, winning some, losing others, and refusing to go quietly. The priest who anointed him over the weekend may have been premature.
Giuliani started to feel sick after returning from a trip to Paris, Ryan said. Within days, he went from coughing on a Facebook livestream to lying in critical condition with a ventilator doing the breathing for him. Within hours of his lowest point, he was talking to his children, Caroline and Andrew.
That kind of turnaround, at 81, with lungs scarred by Ground Zero, is not nothing.
The man who walked through the dust on September 11 is still paying the price for it, and still fighting through. That ought to count for something, regardless of where anyone stands on the battles that followed.
