People who know Rudy Giuliani are torn on whether he's lost it or is living his best life

There is no in between with Rudy Giuliani — one day he'll go to Yankee Stadium and get booed by a massive crowd, only to hit up a Manhattan restaurant a few weeks later and take selfies with people thanking him for helping President Trump.

Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, became Trump's lawyer earlier this year, working for free. He's the one who appears on television to declare that the president won't be talking to Special Counsel Robert Mueller anytime soon, and to share with a shocked Sean Hannity that yes, Trump knew about the hush money payment his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.

Several of Giuliani's friends and former coworkers told The New York Times that he's changed since becoming enmeshed with Trump, first as a campaign surrogate and now as a lawyer. Daniel C. Richman, a prosecutor under Giuliani when he was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said he felt "honored to serve under him and thrilled to work in his office. Now I feel embarrassed to be connected to him." Giuliani is "hectoring" and "bullying" people, he added, and "seems untethered to the respect for the law and decency that I knew him to have had."

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One close friend told the Times everyone needs to keep in mind that Giuliani "survived prostate cancer and just got out of a rough marriage. I think he's feeling a little emboldened now." Longtime aide Anthony Carbonetti is still a supporter, and he wants people to stop looking at Giuliani as merely Trump's lawyer. "It pains me that Rudy is the most transformative figure in New York in the last 100 years — and too many people only know him for defending the president," he said.