Rudy Giuliani explains why you haven't seen him on TV in so long

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published 18 March 2019

The last time Rudy Giuliani appeared on TV to attack Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation on behalf of his client President Trump was Jan. 20, when he told NBC News that talks to build a Trump Tower Moscow may have lasted until November 2016 and rambled to CNN about Michael Cohen. Those appearances led to speculation that Trump would pull Giuliani from TV interviews, and Jonathan Swan at Axios said Sunday there's probably some truth to that.

Two people "with direct knowledge" said Trump and his Russia investigation lawyer Emmet Flood have privately griped about some of Giuliani's TV appearances, Swan reports, and a third source said Trump thought it would be best for Giuliani to stay off the air after his Jan. 20 hits. Giuliani himself told Swan that he's laying low to protect Trump from Mueller, not his own TV gaffes.

After the Jan. 20 appearances, "we thought the Mueller report was imminent" and decided "it it would be better not to comment until the report was filed or made public," Giuliani texted Swan, adding that he opted to stay of-the-air so as "not to upset the apple cart, not to create unnecessary, additional, needless friction" with Mueller. Swan said he found that "odd," because "sources familiar with Giuliani's thinking say he views a major part of his job as trying to undermine public confidence in the Mueller probe and harden the support of Republican voters for Trump to protect him against impeachment."

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So Swan asked "the president's lawyer" if he thought Giuliani's purported strategy could work. And "the president's lawyer" — who sounds an awful lot like "John Barron" or another Trump alter-ego, probably coincidentally — said: "Yes, because we've had, over a period of time, after we were very tough, we've had some what we regard as very fair decisions, and some that aren't as fair. So we see that there's the capacity to go either way."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.