Rudy Giuliani in critical condition at hospital, his spokesman says

For­mer New York City May­or Rudolph Giu­liani is hos­pi­tal­ized in crit­i­cal but sta­ble con­di­tion, his spokesper­son said Sun­day, days af­ter the Re­pub­li­can hoarse­ly told his talk show au­di­ence that his voice was “a lit­tle un­der the weath­er.”

The spokesper­son, Ted Good­man, didn’t say what sent Giu­liani, 81, to the hos­pi­tal, how long he’s been there or what his prog­no­sis is.

“May­or Giu­liani is a fight­er who has faced every chal­lenge in his life with un­wa­ver­ing strength, and he’s fight­ing with that same lev­el of strength as we speak,” Good­man said in a state­ment. He said that Giu­liani “re­mains in crit­i­cal but sta­ble con­di­tion.”

Giu­liani’s eight-year tenure as the may­or of the na­tion’s largest city was punc­tu­at­ed by the 9/11 at­tack in his fi­nal months in of­fice, and he be­came cel­e­brat­ed as “Amer­i­ca’s may­or” for his lead­er­ship af­ter the 2001 al-Qai­da ter­ror­ist at­tack that felled the World Trade Cen­ter twin tow­ers.

Giu­liani lat­er made an un­suc­cess­ful run for pres­i­dent and was an ad­vis­er to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, spear­head­ing his ef­forts to stay in of­fice af­ter his 2020 elec­tion loss.

Last year, Trump said he was award­ing Giu­liani the Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom.

Giu­liani coughed as he be­gan his night­ly on­line show “Amer­i­ca’s May­or Live” on Fri­day. As he spoke, he sound­ed more raspy than usu­al. Be­fore launch­ing in­to a com­men­tary on the Iran war, he re­marked: “My voice is a lit­tle un­der the weath­er, so I won’t be able to speak as loud­ly as I usu­al­ly do, but I’ll get clos­er to the mi­cro­phone.”

In a post on his Truth So­cial plat­form, Trump called Giu­liani “a True War­rior, and the Best May­or in the His­to­ry of New York City, BY FAR.”

“What a tragedy that he was treat­ed so bad­ly by the Rad­i­cal Left Lu­natics, De­moc­rats ALL — AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERY­THING!” Trump wrote. “They cheat­ed on the Elec­tions, fab­ri­cat­ed hun­dreds of sto­ries, did any­thing pos­si­ble to de­stroy our Na­tion, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!”

As Trump’s per­son­al at­tor­ney and ad­vis­er, Giu­liani be­came a vo­cal pro­po­nent of the pres­i­dent’s al­le­ga­tions of fraud in the 2020 elec­tion, won by De­mo­c­rat Joe Biden. Trump and his back­ers lost dozens of law­suits claim­ing fraud, and nu­mer­ous re­counts, re­views and au­dits of the elec­tion re­sults turned up no signs of sig­nif­i­cant wrong­do­ing or er­ror.

Two for­mer Geor­gia elec­tions work­ers lat­er won a $148 mil­lion defama­tion judg­ment against Giu­liani. As they sought to col­lect the judg­ment, the for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor was found in con­tempt of court and faced a tri­al this win­ter over the own­er­ship of some of his as­sets.

Giu­liani ul­ti­mate­ly struck a deal that let him keep his homes and var­i­ous be­long­ings, in­clud­ing prized World Se­ries rings, in ex­change for un­spec­i­fied com­pen­sa­tion and a promise to stop speak­ing ill of the ex-elec­tion work­ers.

Giu­liani was pre­vi­ous­ly hos­pi­tal­ized last Sep­tem­ber af­ter suf­fer­ing a frac­tured ver­te­bra and oth­er in­juries in a car crash in New Hamp­shire.

A na­tive New York­er, Giu­liani was elect­ed may­or in 1993 af­ter serv­ing as one of the na­tion’s high­est-pro­file fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, tak­ing on mob­sters and crooked Wall Street traders.

He ran for the U.S. Sen­ate in 2000 but aban­doned his race against Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton af­ter be­ing di­ag­nosed with prostate can­cer.

In 2007, Giu­liani ran for pres­i­dent. Buoyed by his post-9/11 pop­u­lar­i­ty, he start­ed as the front-run­ner for the Re­pub­li­can nom­i­na­tion. But that was short-lived. He with­drew from the race af­ter strug­gling in the pri­maries amid GOP con­cerns about his past sup­port for abor­tion rights, gay rights and gun con­trol, and ques­tions about his per­son­al life and busi­ness ties to the Mid­dle East.

He toyed with run­ning for oth­er of­fices be­fore piv­ot­ing to po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary.

In 2016, Trump leaned on Giu­liani’s po­lit­i­cal acu­men and loy­al­ty and put him to work as a sur­ro­gate lead­ing at­tacks on Clin­ton, his De­mo­c­ra­t­ic ri­val. Af­ter Trump won, Giu­liani con­tin­ued as his at­tack dog, even trav­el­ing to Ukraine to seek dam­ag­ing in­for­ma­tion about Biden’s son, Hunter.

We­ber re­port­ed from Los An­ge­les.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and CHRISTO­PHER WE­BER

NEW YORK (AP)