“Asked who in the White House is responsible for handling Giuliani’s missteps, a White House aide said, ‘Handling Rudy’s f***-ups takes more than one man.’”https://t.co/8AGiFaepJs
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) January 23, 2019
Eventually the circle always comes down to family and/or those who are equally compromised/culpable. https://t.co/L1qT9z8yr0
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) January 23, 2019
… According to sources, a debate is playing out inside the West Wing over Giuliani’s future. Trump is being encouraged by several people, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, to dump Giuliani before it’s too late, while outside advisers Corey Lewandowski and Dave Bossie are lobbying Trump to keep Giuliani. “Trump is screaming. He’s so mad at Rudy,” one of the sources said. (“No, he’s not pissed. He just wants it clarified,” Giuliani told CNN’s Dana Bash on Tuesday, when asked about the president’s response to the interviews.) The White House had not responded to a request for comment by press time.
As Giuliani’s unforced errors pile up, former West Wing officials and 2016 campaign veterans are privately debating what’s gone wrong with Rudy. Why, they ask, is he making statements that so obviously damage his client? A former White House official speculated that maybe Giuliani “has lost his mind.” But there are other, more charitable ways of interpreting Giuliani’s interviews. As I’ve previously reported, the Trump-Giuliani relationship hasn’t been good for weeks. Giuliani has said privately that he “hates the job” and that Mueller’s final report will be “horrific” for Trump. Facing these challenges and pressures, it’s understandable he would make mistakes, the thinking goes. “Everyone who works for Trump screws up because there’s no way to please the guy,” an outside Trump adviser said.
But, frustrating as the job may be, Giuliani also may be addicted to it. Friends said the former New York mayor was embittered after being out of the limelight for years following his failed 2008 presidential campaign. He’s been exhilarated by the press attention that comes with being Trump’s lawyer. Sources said Giuliani often books his own interviews and frequently texts with television news anchors. “There’s a school of thought that it’s better to be famous and ridiculed than ignored,” a Giuliani friend told me. But the media environment has become vastly more complicated than it was a decade ago, the last time Giuliani was on the national stage, and he has struggled to adapt. “This has been a trial by fire for him,” the friend said. “He can’t just say whatever he wants, because he’s being fact-checked on Twitter. Every time he does anything he gets caught.”
To quote an old proverb: As above, so below…
Giuliani "also dismissed talk that he doesn’t have a firm grasp of the facts. 'I do have a mastery of the facts which is why I can spin them, honestly, argue them several different ways,' Giuliani said."https://t.co/YCs4oQUyZC
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) January 23, 2019
Rudy Giuliani is lucky that "First do no harm" isn't an articulated ethical principle of lawyering. https://t.co/5cdN7VnGqM
— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) January 20, 2019
Rudy revealed the Trump legal strategy months & months ago https://t.co/MwCGQqGRjd
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 22, 2019
TRUMP: How do I lose this thing?
GIULIANI: How do I get fired?
GOP: How do I break this thing?#failingup
— Shane Celis (@shanecelis) January 23, 2019
Martin
Giuliani himself is compromised. Which leads to two potential problems:
1) If Rudy was part of the criminal act, then Trumps conversations with him aren’t protected.
2) If Rudy was part of the criminal act, then Rudy has an incentive to hang Trump out to dry to save himself.
Hiring Rudy was fucking idiotic, not just because Rudy is an idiot and loose cannon, but also because Rudy has his own problems in this case which might be best solved by representing Trump in a way that is favorable to Rudy and not Trump.
Villago Delenda Est
All of Donald’s “best people” are absolute morons.
NotMax
Clash of the
TitansMunchkins.Gvg
If Trump fires him, he will feel angry and be more out of control. Even if
Trump could manage to slit without war, Guillini would soon want media attention again because he is addicted as much as Trump. What would he say then. The thing is, he seems to be almost as much of a liar, so I am not sure how seriously to take his gaffes.
Do you realize that even after we get Trump out of office, he will still want our attention and will stay or do more outrageous things?
Mart
I thought Rudy was playing 11 dimensional chess by breaking the story ahead of the story breaking. Or something.
hueyplong
@Martin: Co-conspirators always have a potential conflict of interest and Trump surrounds himself with no one else. He either avoids justice via a heavily compromised GOP or he goes down. There is no third way.
SRW1
Rudy is worth every president he’s paid by the resident. Which I hear is zilch.
Mart
I thought Rudy was playing 11 dimensional chess by breaking the big stories ahead of the big stories breaking. So then we are numb and not outraged. Or something.
JDM
Why doesn’t everybody just step on over to the obvious answer: Rudy is, and always has been, a fuckup. Does no one remember his insistence that the NYC response unit be housed in the biggest terrorist target (which already had been once) in the city? His outfitting the emergency services with radios that couldn’t communicate with each other (causing preventable deaths among first responders). And that’s without getting into his affairs on the taxpayer dime and the mangled mess he made of handling the aftermath.
Rudy, like Donald, is a longstanding fuckup. There’s really nothing more there.
John Revolta
Rudy doesn’t give a shit about Trump. He thought he was gonna be Attorney General but Trump fucked him over like he fucked Christie over.
Everybody in NY hates Trump but Rudy’s got extra reasons. If he’s not deliberately shivving Trump, and I wouldn’t put it past him, he’s at least putting no thought or effort into trying to defend him.
TriassicSands
I don’t know, Giuliani may be doing a good job for Trump. He’s regularly feeding the choas machine, which is Trump’s lifeblood and nothing Giuliani says is likely to be useful in “getting” Trump because Rudy is obviously a complete idiot. He’s just one more exhausting thing about the Trump Virulent Clown Show.
oatler.
Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Schadenfreude: I’ve seen enough Fassbinder movies.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@JDM:
Amen.
trnc
@SRW1:
But what we’re getting from him is priceless.
Amir Khalid
I’m not too surprised at Rudy’s comically inept lawyering for Trump. You’re not setting yourself up to succeed when you go to work for Donald Trump. In the circumstances, it’s the best a man can get, from Giuliani.
Honus
“ it didn’t cost nothin’ and it was worth it too”
-Huckleberry Finn
Snarki, child of Loki
Trump and Giuliani: two wrinkly old shouty dotards. Peas in a pod.
Suzanne
I don’t know if anyone else could really do any better. I mean, Individual-1 is a total fucking liar and a complete mess.
That’s not a defense of Rudy. The dude is doing this for free. If you’re going to humiliate and shame yourself, at least get paid.
NobodySpecial
@Suzanne: He’s doing it for exposure!
Ella in New Mexico
What in the ever loving fuck happened that these guys and Stephen Miller now essentially run our country?
Sonoran
Who could Trump replace him with? Rudy is the bottom-of-the-barrel lawyer. No self-respecting lawyer will work for Trump at this point. Better call Saul?
The Moar You Know
They can’t fire him. He will start talking. Dude has no filter anyway but he will start blabbing to anyone about anything because he’s hooked on the attention.
What is it with all these people who need 24/7 public adulation? Haven’t they ever met the public? The public sucks!
Ruckus
@Ella in New Mexico:
Of course you know the answer. drumpf and overt racism. drumpf and overt grifting. I’d bet money that some voted for drumpf because they wanted to finally feel like better human beings than the president. Or because they wanted someone like them to win, it’s difficult to understand why someone would look at this piece of shit and decide, PRESIDENT.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
They need the attention because they are shitty humans and without doing what they do as shitty humans they would get all the attention they deserve, legal system attention. Except that they have some power or the taint of money, that glorious items that scream, there must be something there. And when that is all gone or isn’t enough any longer they have to go to further and further lengths to get attention. They are addicted to attention. It’s like alcohol or heroin to them. Except that we get to suffer the affects with them.
catbirdman
Ooh, another story about how POTUS is “screaming” and “mad” about something — i.e., he’s in his f*cking resting state — I’m really tired of hearing about it, because it’s meaningless.
feebog
@JDM:
You nailed it. With Trump, the dumbest possible answer is most likely correct.
brettvk
@John Revolta: IIRC Trump offered Rudy the attorney general post but Rudy turned him down because he wanted the State Dept. I think about that sometimes.
Mustang Bobby
@Snarki, child of Loki: They are the Statler and Waldorf (vide The Muppet Show) of Washington but without the charm or sense of humor.
RinaX
Calling a recess would be the easiest thing. Let him worry about barging in there on his own. I had a feeling he’d pull something like this. To hell with norms.