Trump initially 'promised' the Secretary of State role to Giuliani but changed his mind after hearing 'negative stories' about the ex-New York City mayor: book

Trump decided against naming Giuliani as Secretary of State over "negative stories," per a forthcoming book.
Writer Andrew Kirtzman on "The New Abnormal" recounted how Trump shifted gears on Giuliani.
"Giuliani waged this campaign in the press to get the job, which turned Trump off," Kirtzman said.

After Donald Trump captured the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was at the top of the list among candidates who would likely get a top post in a potential Cabinet.

As a former federal prosecutor and ex-2008 GOP presidential aspirant, Giuliani had long been a bold-type politician on the national scene, but his alliance with Trump was poised to take him to new heights.

During a recent episode of The Daily Beast's "The New Abnormal" podcast, Andrew Kirtzman — who wrote a forthcoming book about Giuliani — said that Trump initially "promised" the role of Secretary of State to the ex-mayor.

"According to a lot of the people I interviewed, he [Trump] had promised Giuliani that job during the campaign," Kirtzman said during the podcast. "That was the only job Giuliani wanted. He was offered attorney general — he turned it down. He was offered homeland security — he turned it down."

"He fashioned himself after his kind of God-like perception as this statesman even though he didn't have five minutes experience with foreign policy," he added.

In the book, "Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America's Mayor," Kirtzman delved into the life of the longtime public figure, including his emergence as a high-profile member within Trump's political orbit.

But during the podcast, Kirtzman — who has covered Giuliani for 30 years — detailed how Trump went on to bypass the former mayor when it came time to pick his administration's top diplomat.

"Trump — once reality set in — actually had to decide whether to name Giuliani," Kirtzman said. "He started just hearing all of these negative stories about him, about his drinking. Giuliani waged this campaign in the press to get the job, which turned Trump off. They launched an investigation internally in the campaign into Giuliani's clients, and he had so many clients with potential conflicts that had filled a report — dozens of pages — and eventually, Trump moved on."

Giuliani has long denied having a drinking problem.

"I'm not an alcoholic," he said during an interview with NBC New York last year. "I'm a functioning — I probably function more effectively than 90 percent of the population."

When asked by podcast co-host Molly Jong-Fast if Trump saw Giuliani as "corrupt," Kirtzman disagreed.

"I don't think Trump saw him as corrupt. I think he saw him as being hopelessly conflicted," he said.

Kirtzman during the course of his reporting also found out about a meeting where Trump assembled many of his leading advisors to get their feelings on a potential Giuliani Secretary of State nomination.

"Trump holds this meeting at Trump Tower and he gathers all of his top aides in a room, and it's Jared Kushner and Hope Hicks and Reince Priebus," Kirtzman recounted on the podcast.

He continued: "He asked for a show of hands — at the time he was considering Giuliani and Mitt Romney. And he's like, 'Ok, everybody raise your hands for Mitt Romney if you prefer him.' And no one did. And then he asked about Giuliani and almost every single person in the room voted for Giuliani as Secretary of State. There's kind of where his star was at the time despite people's misgivings, but Trump wasn't convinced."

Trump would go on to pick former energy executive Rex Tillerson as his first Secretary of State, but not before hosting Romney at Jean-Georges restaurant, located inside his Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York.

The dinner produced a photo that seemingly reflected the tenuous nature of their relationship.

Kellyanne Conway, who managed Trump's successful 2016 White House campaign and went on to serve as a senior White House counselor, was firmly opposed to Romney becoming Secretary of State.

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Contributer : Business Insider https://ift.tt/qEG0gtL

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