Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic a year ago:
In Iowa, Giuliani was up to principle No. 2 (“Follow your hopes and dreams”) when he was interrupted. From down in the audience, just beyond the stage, he heard a cell phone ring. He stopped in the middle of telling a story. “It’s okay, you can answer your cell phone,” he said. “You won’t interrupt me.” The woman whose phone had rung was mortified; he had just embarrassed her in front of 18,000 people. In the “town hall” meetings he used to conduct as mayor of New York, through a radio show, Giuliani was not known for his good-natured populism. He was known for making fun of constituents who called him with what he thought were petty problems. This is the dark Giuliani, and here he was, making an unwelcome appearance. He shifted to a long digression about the scene in Dr. Strangelove where General Buck Turgidson answers a call in the middle of a crisis and whispers sweet nothings to his girl on the phone, as the nation’s political and military leadership looks on impatiently. “Just tell him you love him so I can go on with my speech,” Giuliani said. No one was laughing. Giuliani actually waited for the woman to hang up. Then, after a painful minute or so, he was back in candidate mode, talking about Vince Lombardi and the mind of a champion.
CNN report last week:
WASHINGTON (CNN) – When former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani gets a call from his wife Judith he takes it, even if it happens in the middle of a speech to hundreds of people.
The New York Republican presidential hopeful was delivering a speech to the National Rifle Association Friday in Washington when his cell phone began to ring. He was in the middle of discussing the importance of the 2nd amendment.
“Let’s see now, this is my wife calling, I think,” he said as he answered the phone.
“Hello dear, I am talking to the members of the NRA right now, would you like to say hello?,” he asked, as the crowd sat mostly silent.
She apparently did not.
“I love you and I will give you a call when I am finished, OK,” he said, trying to wrap up the call. “Have a safe trip, talk to you later dear I love you.”