WASHINGTON — When Rudolph W. Giuliani was treating his efforts to carry out President Trump’s wishes to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election as a payment opportunity — he proposed a daily retainer for his legal services from the burgeoning Trump campaign legal fund — the president responded by demanding to personally approve each expense.
Nine weeks and another impeachment later, Mr. Trump began the day on Thursday by asking aides to erase any sign of a rift. Stripped of his Twitter account, Mr. Trump conveyed his praise through an adviser, Jason Miller, who tweeted: “Just spoke with President Trump, and he told me that @RudyGiuliani is a great guy and a Patriot who devoted his services to the country! We all love America’s Mayor!”
White House officials are universally angry with Mr. Giuliani and blame him for both of Mr. Trump’s impeachments. But the president is another story.
Even as he complains about Mr. Giuliani’s latest efforts as fruitless, the president remains unusually deferential to him in public and in private. “Don’t underestimate him,” Mr. Trump has told advisers.
The on-again, off-again tensions are a feature of a decades-long, mutually beneficial relationship between the former New York City mayor from Brooklyn and the former real estate developer from Queens. Although the two were never particularly close in New York, Mr. Trump enjoyed having the former mayor as his personal legal pit bull during the special counsel investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
In return, Mr. Giuliani, who failed at his own bid for the presidency in 2008, got to hang out with the president in the Oval Office and used his new connections to pursue lucrative contracts.
Mr. Trump deployed Mr. Giuliani on politically ruinous missions that led to his impeachment — twice. Now, isolated and stripped of his usual political megaphones, the president faces the devastation of his business and political affairs for his part in encouraging a pro-Trump mob that went on to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Mr. Giuliani — who, for his part, encouraged a group of the president’s supporters that day to carry out “trial by combat” — is one of few people still willing and eager to join Mr. Trump in the foxhole. While most lawyers are reluctant to represent the president in a second Senate impeachment trial, Trump advisers said Mr. Giuliani remained the likeliest to be involved. Despite President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s certification as the winner, Mr. Giuliani has continued to push unproven theories about the election results and falsely attributed the violence to anarchists on the left.
A podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, was taken down on Thursday because of an interview in which Mr. Giuliani repeated false claims about the election. During the interview, Mr. Bannon pleaded with Mr. Giuliani to move on to a new topic.
“I don’t mind being shut down for my craziness,” Mr. Bannon told Mr. Giuliani, according to Alexander Panetta, a reporter for CBC News who listened to the podcast before it was removed. “I’m not going to be shut down for yours.”
Mr. Trump has always had an abundance of yes men and women around him, but Mr. Giuliani occupies a unique space in his orbit. Few people have had such durability with the president, and few have been so willing to say and do things for him that others will not.
“Your typical role as legal counselor is to tell your client the hard truth and walk them away from risk,” Matthew Sanderson, a Republican political lawyer based in Washington, said in an interview. “Rudy instead seems to tell his client exactly what he wants to hear and walk him toward risk like they’re both moths to a flame.”
That journey has left him looking worse for wear. Days after the election, Mr. Giuliani hit the road, challenging the results in a much maligned news conference in front of a Pennsylvania landscaping company. In another appearance that month, Mr. Giuliani was on camera with black liquid, apparently hair dye, streaming down his face as he railed against the election outcome.
Few have been so willing to defend the president, and, paradoxically, few have been so damaging to his legacy.
Mr. Giuliani stepped into the president’s legal affairs in April 2018. His eagerness to attack Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, impressed Mr. Trump, who was constantly making changes to his legal team. Most Trump advisers came to see Mr. Giuliani’s efforts with Mr. Mueller as a success.
