Rule No. 1 for advisers to Donald Trump is: don’t become the story. The list of subordinates who fell out with Trump after drawing press attention away from the boss is long (see: Anthony Scaramucci, Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, Sam Nunberg, et al). Now Rudy Giuliani appears to be the latest Trump adviser to make this mistake.

In recent days, Giuliani has given a series of erratic television interviews to push back against Michael Cohen’s claim that Trump knew in advance of his son Don Jr.’s infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. But instead of helping the president’s cause, Giuliani’s gaffes undermined the president’s defense. During an interview with Fox & Friends on Monday, Giuliani said he had been “looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. . . . Collusion is not a crime.” That statement shifted the emphasis away from Trump’s frequently tweeted assertion that there was “no collusion.” Speaking on CNN on Monday morning, Giuliani disclosed that there was a planning meeting to prep for Donald Trump Jr.’s June meeting with Russians that was attended by the president’s eldest son, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Rick Gates, and others. Later, in an interview with Fox News, Giuliani reversed himself, claiming that this alleged meeting—which Cohen has never mentioned publicly—“never, ever took place” and was “a figment of [Cohen’s] imagination.”

The appearances have attracted the wrong kind of notice. “Trump thinks he’s saying too much,” one Republican close to the White House told me. Another Trumpworld figure elucidated: “Trump likes that Rudy is a fighter. He knows there’s a give and take. The give is Rudy is going to fight for him. The take is that you’re going to get some crazy, too.”

The crazy on show in the last few days has given ammunition to his West Wing critics. Two of his most vocal detractors are Chief of Staff John Kelly and White House counsel Don McGahn. ”Kelly [has] been trying to get rid of Rudy for two months,” one outside adviser to the White House told me. “And Don McGahn hates Rudy with intensity of 1,000 burning suns.” Of course, McGahn and Kelly have their own problems with the boss. According to two sources, Trump has clashed frequently with McGahn, whom Trump has told people is too cautious. One flash point: a source said McGahn has told Trump that the Justice Department should not cooperate with the House Freedom Caucus’s request for documents in their effort to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Kelly, meanwhile, is a survivor. Yesterday afternoon, Trump marked his first year as chief with a tweet. “Congratulations to General John Kelly. Today we celebrate his first full year as @WhiteHouse Chief of Staff!” Trump wrote. Afterward, according to two sources familiar with the matter, Trump turned to aides and said, “Now can I get rid of him?” But The Wall Street Journal reported that Kelly told staffers Trump had asked him to stay on at least until 2020.

One name being discussed as a replacement for McGahn is Trump’s attorney, Emmet Flood, who joined his legal team in May. Flood, a veteran of Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense team, has been keeping a conspicuously low profile. One source familiar with his work said he’s aggressively challenging Robert Mueller’s document requests by claiming executive privilege (Trump’s previous legal team, headed by Ty Cobb, cooperated extensively with Mueller). “The guy is a fucking pro,” the source said. “He’s playing hardball. Trump wants to make him White House counsel.”

Meanwhile, Trump is acting increasingly besieged. Advisers I spoke with said the president is “furious,” “frustrated,” and “flustered” that the Mueller probe is grinding on, and he’s personally hurt by Cohen’s betrayal. Last week, sources told me that Trump told Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Shine to ban CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins from a White House event because he was angry that she asked questions about Cohen. Trump has also been sending messages to Cohen on Twitter that he won’t pardon him, a source said. “He’s just letting him know, you’re done.”