Humiliated Trump tries to whitewash Giuliani's trainwreck media tour

Welcome to the club, Rudy. Getting undermined by Trump is a rite of passage in this administration.

Two days after creating a Washington, D.C., firestorm by conceding that Trump paid back his attorney for the six-figure hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election, Trump on Friday tried to fix the problems his new attorney had created.

Talking to reporters outside of the White House, and promptly appearing to undercut his new legal counsel, Trump suggested Giuliani simply didn’t understand the facts of the Stormy Daniels pay-off case.

“Rudy knows it’s a witch hunt,” said Trump. “He started yesterday. Ah, he’ll get his facts straight. He’s a great guy.”

Moments later Trump added, “He wasn’t totally familiar with everything. He just started yesterday.”

The second part is false. The announcement of Giuliani’s hiring was two weeks ago, and he obviously has been making public — and occasionally incoherent —appearances all week in the role of Trump’s attorney.

But lying about Giuliani’s start date was the least shocking part of Trump’s performance, which was clearly prompted by the bipartisan backlash Giuliani produced this week.

“I’m in complete shock. I’ve never seen anything like this,” noted defense attorney Caroline Polisi on CNN, moments after Trump publicly raised doubts about his own attorney.

Indeed, it’s stunning to watch the chaos unfold on an hourly basis, as Trump feels the walls closing in, both regards to the Daniels lawsuit and Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

Giuliani was hired to help Trump mop up his messes. But now the client has to clean up after the attorney.

Note that Trump didn’t say which facts Giuliani got wrong. So now anyone trying to follow the White House’s endlessly changing explanations about the Daniel’s payoff has no idea which narrative is supposed to be the real one, which one has been flushed, and which news one might soon emerge.

Stay tuned.