Caroline Giuliani says her father Rudy has become President Donald Trump's "bulldog". Photo / Supplied
Caroline Giuliani says her father Rudy has become President Donald Trump's "bulldog". Photo / Supplied
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's daughter has publicly criticised her father and revealed she is voting for Joe Biden in a searing personal essay.
Caroline Giuliani shared details about her relationship with her father, the personal lawyer to US President Donald Trump, including claims they had political arguments whenshe was a child, which she said she was not "emotionally equipped" to handle.
In the essay, published in Vanity Fair on Thursday, she calls Trump's administration "toxic" and his presidency a "reign of terror", and calls her father, the former Mayor of New York City, the "president's personal bulldog".
"If being the daughter of a polarising mayor who became the president's personal bulldog has taught me anything, it is that corruption starts with 'yes-men' and women, the cronies who create an echo chamber of lies and subservience to maintain their proximity to power."
"We've seen this ad nauseum with Trump and his cadre of high-level sycophants (the ones who weren't convicted, anyway)," she wrote.
Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump. Photo / Getty Images
Giuliani said she started having debates with her father about age 12 "before I was emotionally equipped to handle such carnage". Rudy Giuliani is the former US Associate Attorney-General, and is famed for his prosecution of major American Mafia crime bosses in the 1980s. He also led New York during the 9/11 terror attacks when he was dubbed "America's mayor".
"It was disheartening to feel how little power I had to change his mind, no matter how logical and above-my-pay-grade my arguments were," his daughter wrote. "He always found a way to justify his party line, whatever it was at the time."
She wrote when she "tried to explain [her] belief" about gay marriage, "I distinctly remember him firing back with an intensity fit for an opposing politician rather than one's child".
She said she wasn't sharing the anecdote to "complain" about her privileged upbringing, but to explain her "fraught" relationship with politics.
"It's taken persistence and nerve to find my voice in politics, and I'm using it now to ask you to stand with me in the fight to end Donald Trump's reign of terror."
Caroline Giuliani said she would argue with her father, Rudy, at age 12, which she was not 'emotionally equipped' to cope with. Photo / Supplied
She said she related to a "desperation to escape corrosive political discourse", and said she was exposed to "cruel, selfish politics" as a child.
"It made me want to run as far away from them as possible. But trust me when I tell you: Running away does not solve the problem. We have to stand and fight.
"The only way to end this nightmare is to vote. There is hope on the horizon, but we'll only grasp it if we elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris."
Caroline Giuliani is an LGBTIQ+ filmmaker based in Los Angeles.
