If only Rudy's dad could see him now

Wiki photo

Harold Angel Giuliani, the father of Rudy, once served 18 months at Sing Sing for robbing a milkman at gunpoint for $128.82. Harold gave a fake name to the police when he was pinched.

Rudy has said proudly his dad was the “muscle” for a loan-sharking outfit, where he “broke legs, smashed kneecaps [and] crunched noses” in the 1950s. 

Rudy further credits his father as the “finest man” he’s ever known, and “compulsive about being honest.” In 2000, Giuliani said of his father, ''He would tell me, 'Never take anybody else's money, make sure you always pay for things. … He wanted to make sure that I didn't make the same mistakes that he believed he had made.”

But, as much as he admired his felon dad, Rudy for decades seemed bent on playing cop to his dad’s robber. This fits the well-known “Highway Patrolman” tradition of white ethnic families, a nice homeostasis in which lawmen and outlaws are brothers and everyone loves grilled meat and The Irishman. (The grandfather of Kellyanne Conway, who is also “tough on crime,” was Jimmy "The Brute" DiNatale, a Philly mob associate.)