Someday, when we look back on the history of the Trump administration, May 2, 2018, will likely stand out as a date of huge significance.
That was the day former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News, and waded in to a contentious issue surrounding the president, the porn star and the hush money paid to her.
In doing so, Giuliani torpedoed what little credibility might have remained in the White House and touched off another legal firestorm for his boss.
If there was a strategy, it’s likely known only to him and the president. Reports suggest no one else inside the White House — not the chief counsel, the chief of staff or the press secretary — knew this was coming.
They probably would have advised against it.
It should have been obvious from the moment Giuliani sat down with Fox News host Sean Hannity that there would be trouble.
Hannity is as Trump-friendly as they get, and he also happens to be a client of Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, the man who inked that US$130,000 non-disclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels in the first place.
WATCH ABOVE: Rudy Giuliani says Trump repaid Michael Cohen’s $130K payment to Stormy Daniels
Sitting on set, Giuliani seemed a little too comfortable, and started freestyling with his explanations. That’s where the problems started.
One month ago, President Trump denied any knowledge of the payment made to Stormy Daniels by Michael Cohen.
But then Rudy Giuliani came along, and seemingly blew that story out of the water.
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As Giuliani tells it, Trump actually reimbursed Cohen for the US$130,000 settlement by keeping him on retainer, and sending him monthly payments to clean up all sorts of messes.
“He didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know about the general arrangement that Michael would take care of things like this,” Giuliani told Fox News.
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President-elect Donald Trump’s rocky transition back to the White House
In short, Giuliani is saying that Trump didn’t know the nature of the work being done on his behalf by his personal lawyer, but was willing to shell US$35,000 per month as a retainer, without asking too many questions.
Giuliani later went on to tell The Washington Post that he and the president recently discussed revealing the reimbursement, presumably to stave off an embarrassing leak in the future.
But by Friday, Trump had gone full circle, contradicting Giuliani.
The president claimed his new legal advisor didn’t have all the facts “when he made certain statements.” Which statements? Well, that’s apparently open to interpretation.
Giuliani then tried to clean up a mess of his own making by issuing a statement, saying the payment to Daniels was made to resolve “a personal and false allegation,” and it would have been done even if Trump wasn’t running for president.
Well then.
The story has become so massively complex that you practically need a law degree to follow it.
But put aside all the arguments about campaign finance violations, and advance knowledge and intent, because as with everything surrounding the president, this is just as much a battle in the court of public opinion.
The issue is not just about who paid whom, or who knew about it, or when it happened, or why. This has grown into a full-blown crisis of credibility for President Trump. It speaks to the way he and his administration operate, not just on this issue, but so many others.
A president who has a long history of selling exaggerations, half-truths and flat-out falsehoods has somehow managed to undermine his own integrity even further.
“There is nobody in America who didn’t think the president had the affair with the porn star. I doubt there’s anybody in America who didn’t think the president had Michael Cohen pay off the porn star,” said one former Trump advisor to the Washington Post.
And yet the White House keeps spinning a new story almost daily.
Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has been dragged down by the whole mess, too. Back in March, Sanders denied Trump knew about the payment to Daniels saying, “I’ve had conversations with the president about this.”
In the wake of Giuliani’s surprise explanation, one reporter asked, “Were you lying to us … or were you in the dark?”
Sanders response was to sell-out her boss by essentially admitting the president may have misled her.
“We give the very best information that we have at the time,” she said, before admitting she learned about Trump’s payments to Michael Cohen the same way the rest of us did: by watching Fox News.
WATCH ABOVE: Gaping holes in hush money story will cost Trump ‘dearly,’ says Stormy Daniels’ attorney
It’s all deeply troubling to hear these kinds of contradictions and this sort of double-speak from the president, and from his staff, but it also raises serious questions about how the White House will respond to other issues in the future.
What happens when there’s a real crisis, like a war, a natural disaster or a national emergency? Can the White House be believed, or just as troublingly will the White House be believed?
A national poll found that a majority of Americans — 61 percent — now believe Trump regularly has trouble telling the truth.
The president and his staff have no one to blame but themselves for that.
Jackson Proskow is Washington Bureau Chief for Global National News.
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