Rudy Giuliani had 'reservations' about endorsing Trump's 2016 presidential campaign: book

• Giuliani had "reservations" about endorsing Trump's 2016 campaign, per author Andrew Kirtzman.

• "Donald Trump was the only one who was calling him, urging him to endorse him," Kirtzman said.

• Kirtzman wrote a forthcoming book on Giuliani, who in recent years has become a staunch Trump ally.

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For years, Rudy Giuliani has been one of former President Donald Trump's staunchest allies, at one point serving as his personal lawyer while in the White House and later traveling across the country to contest the results of the 2020 presidential election.

However, after Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2016, Giuliani initially had reservations about endorsing the then-Republican candidate, according to author Andrew Kirtzman in a forthcoming book about the former mayor.

During a recent episode of The Daily Beast's "The New Abnormal" podcast, Kirtzman recounted that Trump solicited Giuliani's support in 2016, at a time when the former federal prosecutor had nearly become an afterthought in many top political circles after his unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid.

"At the time that he endorsed Trump in 2016, [he] really was facing kind of an irrelevance," Kirtzman said. "It wasn't like all the presidential candidates were knocking on his door or begging for him for an endorsement. Donald Trump was the only one who was calling him, urging him to endorse him, and Trump needed him far more than any other candidate."

He continued: "Giuliani had his reservations. He didn't think much of Trump or his potential, but there were not a lot of options and Trump was the frontrunner."

Kirtzman went on to remark that Trump and Giuliani developed "a close bond" while on the campaign trail, though Trump would later decide not to nominate Giuliani for Secretary of State over a string of "negative stories" about the former mayor.

Giuliani last month appeared before a special grand jury as part of a criminal investigation in Fulton County, Georgia, regarding the 2020 presidential election.

Kirtzman's book, "Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America's Mayor," which chronicles the life of the longtime public figure, will be released on September 13.

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