Hold onto your Worldwide Pants: Mayor Rahm Emanuel is making his first visit to the “Late Show with David Letterman” Monday on WBBM-Channel 2.
Following in the footsteps of another famous Chicagoan (Oprah), Emanuel will be a guest on Letterman’s New York City-taped talk show along with comedian Ricky Gervais. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall in that green room? Monday’s show includes a musical performance by Janelle Monae.
Emanuel will be on the small screen quite a bit next week. He’s featured in the upcoming TV documentary “The Presidents’ Gatekeepers,” a two-part Discovery channel special airing at 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday.
The doc brings all 20 living White House Chiefs of Staff together to share their stories about working at 1600 Penn. Emanuel served as White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama following Obama’s election in 2008. He resigned in 2010 to run for Chicago mayor. Fellow Chicagoan and former Chief of Staff Bill Daley is in the documentary, too.
“It’s brutal on you; it’s brutal on your family,” Emanuel says about the job in “The Presidents’ Gatekeepers.”
“While you’re in a meeting with the President, the left side of your brain is usually operating on what’s going on on the Hill or in the press,” he said.
On a typical day, Emanuel said he’d leave the White House around 7 p.m. and would be on the phone during the drive home, during dinner and during the bedtime story he was trying to read to his kid. “And you’re woken up at night around 1 in the morning with probably something bad happening around the world.”
As tough as the job got, Emanuel said he has no regrets about doing it.
“Is it miserable going through it? Are you getting the wind shear, whiplash — can’t tell up from down? Yeah! But would you trade it in and not have done it? And I guarantee, to every Chief of Staff you ask, they will say, ‘I would do it again if asked.'”
