President Trump has become increasingly frustrated with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani because of his repeated turbulent interview performances that have led him to walk back or clarify his comments on the Russia investigation.
Three White House officials and Republicans close to the White House told the Associated Press the president is agitated by Giuliani, especially after his interviews over the weekend muddied Trump’s timeline regarding discussions about a Trump Tower in Moscow and sparked interest in whether there were tapes of discussion between Trump and his former fixer Michael Cohen.
The president told his allies he felt Giuliani overshadowed special counsel Robert Mueller’s statement disputing a BuzzFeed News report that said Trump instructed Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower deal. Trump raised the prospect of sidelining Giuliani from cable TV interviews after he “changed the headlines” for the worse.
On Sunday, Giuliani told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump’s conversations with Cohen about the Trump Tower deal extended up to November 2016, which would be longer than previously known and right up to the presidential election. Giuliani backpedaled in a statement Monday, saying his comments were “hypothetical and not based on conversations I had with the President.”
In an interview with the New Yorker, Giuliani appeared to suggest he had listened to tapes of Trump and Cohen that had not been previously mentioned. In the same interview he walked back those comments.
“I shouldn’t have said tapes,” Giuliani said. “No tapes. Well, I have listened to tapes, but none of them concern this.”
Giuliani denied Trump is frustrated with him.
“We’ve known each other for 30 years. And I haven’t heard him complain,” he told Politico. “And nobody in the White House would complain to me. They just do it behind my back.”
He also blamed the media for taking his hypothetical arguments literally.
Despite his agitation, Trump is not inclined to fire the attorney, who is working pro bono, the reports said.
Vanity Fair reported last week that working for Trump has taken a toll on Giuliani.
“Rudy hates the job,” a Republican briefed on Giuliani’s thinking told Vanity Fair. “Trump is very hard to deal with.”
