As much as Donald Trump appears to enjoy Rudy Giuliani, the relationship is not without its difficulties. “Rudy hates the job,” a Republican briefed on Giuliani’s thinking told my colleague Gabriel Sherman last month. “Trump is very hard to deal with.” Trump, in turn, has occasionally exploded at his personal attorney for his bewildering, confessional television appearances. “Trump is screaming. He’s so mad at Rudy,” a source close to the president said after Giuliani participated in a rambling Q&A with The New Yorker. Several people close to Trump have suggested that he fire Giuliani before he does any more damage.

These tensions have largely played out behind the scenes, in the West Wing. But on Thursday, the president addressed the latest controversy surrounding Giuliani directly. “Rudy has been wrong,” Trump claimed in his first sit-down interview with The New York Times in over a year, contradicting his attorney’s shifting statements regarding efforts by the Trump Organization to build a luxury high-rise in Moscow during the 2016 election.

While Giuliani has since walked back his comments about the Moscow development, his original conjecture—that Trump was involved in conversations about the real-estate project up until November 2016—created a massive political headache for the White House. In late January, Giuliani told the Times that the talks were “going on from the day [he] announced to the day [he] won,” then immediately told Meet the Press that it was an “active proposal” through the very end of the election.

On Thursday, Trump attempted to repair the damage by tossing his attorney under the bus. “So let me tell you about about Trump Tower Moscow,” he told Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker, who were accompanied in the Oval Office by the paper’s publisher, A. G. Sulzberger. “This was a very unimportant deal. This was a very unimportant deal. No. 1. No. 2, this was a deal, the only thing you heard is through Rudy [Giuliani]. Is that what you heard? Through Rudy?”

“More recently we heard through Rudy, he quotes you,” said Baker.

Trump responded by making it exceedingly clear that Giuliani did not know what he was talking about: