Loyalty, to Donald Trump, has always been a one-way street. But even so it’s gobsmacking to read a report (in the Washington Post) that Trump is in the process of stiffing his sometime personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, whose support for Trump has been positively doggish throughout this sordid two-month period during which the president has been trying to overturn the election results. Giuliani willingly set fire to his hard-earned reputation and strayed far from his field of expertise in order to help Trump pursue his fantasy belief that he was both defrauded out of an election win and that there was some conceivable political workaround that would enable Trump to be inaugurated again next Wednesday.
Now Trump doesn’t want to pay Rudy’s legal bills, and is even combing over the expenses Giuliani incurred flitting around on Trump’s behalf like one of the Wicked Witch’s flying monkeys. Says the WaPo:
Trump has instructed aides not to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, two officials said, and has demanded that he personally approve any reimbursements for the expenses Giuliani incurred while traveling on the president’s behalf to challenge election results in key states. They said Trump has privately expressed concern with some of Giuliani’s moves and did not appreciate a demand from Giuliani for $20,000 a day in fees for his work attempting to overturn the election.
Trump had better be careful here: If he gives Giuliani cause to turn on him, and Giuliani wrote a tell-all about his relationship with Trump, it would be sensational. And turning on Trump might be the only conceivable means Giuliani could devise of partially restoring his reputation.
