8/27/2018

LEGAL/RUDY GIULIANI/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “The man identified these days as President Trump’s lawyer seems vaguely familiar. It’s in the way he feigns genuine laughter. How he clasps his hands. How he widens his eyes, as if he’s just been handed a birthday cake with a firecracker for a candle. He is, of course, Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose public utterances of late have people debating whether he is a shrewd manipulator of public opinion or just — befuddled. But all agree that he relishes the limelight, every microphone a corkscrew capable of unleashing the spirits of his considerable id. Indeed, he is working for the president free of charge. There Mr. Giuliani was again on Thursday [8-23-18], opining from a Trump-owned golf course in Scotland while dressed in green-plaid golf togs bearing the Trump name…Mr. Giuliani was once seen as a kind of national healer — America’s mayor, he was called, in tribute to his leadership of New York City in the fresh wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Many thought he embodied a country’s resolve. But speaking by telephone from Scotland last week, the erstwhile icon, now 74, offered the first detailed look at his strategy for representing the president, in blunt and divisively political terms. Mr. Giuliani said he believes that since Mr. Trump is essentially having his day in court, in real time, his ‘jury is the public.’”

Dan Barry, Benjamin Weiser and Alan Feuer, “In Defending Trump, Is Giuliani a Shrewd Tactician or ‘Untethered’?,” The New York Times online, August 27, 2018