As Rudy Giuliani made the television rounds earlier this week, declaring that "collusion is not a crime," it did nothing to help his reputation inside the White House.
President Trump "thinks he's saying too much," one Republican close to the White House told Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman on Tuesday, and another said Trump knows there's "give and take" with Giuliani: "The give is Rudy is going to fight for him. The take is that you're going to get some crazy, too."
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and White House Counsel Dan McGahn really can't stand Giuliani, and Kelly has reportedly been "trying to get rid of Rudy for two months," one of Trump's outside advisers told Sherman. McGahn "hates Rudy with intensity of 1,000 burning suns," the adviser added, but speaking of McGahn, he's on shaky ground, too. Sherman reports that McGahn has clashed with Trump over the House Freedom Caucus' push to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and Trump has been toying with the idea of replacing him with attorney Emmet Flood, who joined his legal team in May.
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When Trump's not discussing personnel changes, he's focusing on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe, Sherman reports, and feeling hurt by what he sees as a betrayal by his former lawyer Michael Cohen. He's been communicating with Cohen on Twitter, a person with knowledge of the matter told Sherman, and said he won't get a pardon: "He's just letting him know, you're done."
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