So yes, Republicans largely agree that Trump would be better served sans Giuliani (who told me last Wednesday evening that he is in fact still the president’s personal attorney). But they also agree on something else: Giuliani isn’t going anywhere. According to another senior House GOP aide, “We’re so far beyond that at this point.”

Giuliani himself also seems to agree. He told me in a text message that Trump “knows that every one of the stories are false and defamatory and intended to remove me as a defense lawyer for him.” He added: “If I was less effective they would have left me alone. But they, including unethical law enforcement sources, are swinging from their shoe tips and missing … The scandal is not with me or Trump but how the Corrupt Press and their leakers in law enforcement can cover it up for so long.”

It’s rare that any of Trump’s associates seems “safe” in his or her standing with the president. (Trump, of course, fired his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, via a tweet from the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base after just six months on the job, while an unsuspecting Priebus sat in a black SUV nearby.) But current and former White House officials and lawmakers close to Trump told me that Giuliani is uniquely positioned in this moment. He is in many ways Trump’s closest ally apart from his family, having cultivated a mutual affection and trust over several decades. But if scorned, he could also prove to be Trump’s worst enemy—a dynamic that Giuliani himself has been happy to tout in recent media interviews, joking, essentially, that he knows too much for Trump to risk axing him. Added to that, the sources said, is the fact that Trump has dug in his heels on impeachment: To condemn Giuliani, they said, would be to concede that this administration’s dealings with Ukraine were short of, in the president’s words, “perfect”—something Trump and his allies are not at all willing to do.

David A. Graham: Why hasn’t Trump thrown Rudy Giuliani under the bus?

“That line of thinking—that throwing a team member under the bus [will] ‘make the media go away’—is not only foolish, it’s idiotic,” Jason Miller, a former Trump-campaign communications adviser, told me. “All it will do is convince Democrats and certain members of the media that they’re onto something, and the intensity will increase tenfold.”

“The damage is done,” added a Republican National Committee official. “Rudy’s been like this forever, and Trump has never wanted to dump him. Plus at this point, it’s like, doesn’t he know too much?”

In Giuliani’s eyes, at least, that may well be his saving grace. So far, he’s refused to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify about his dealings in Ukraine and answer questions about what Trump did or didn’t know. In recent days he’s suggested that his testimony would be just as revelatory as Democrats assume. On November 14, in an interview with The Guardian, Giuliani said he wasn’t worried that Trump would “throw him under a bus” as impeachment proceedings move forward. “But I do have very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid,” Giuliani added. (His lawyer quickly interjected that he was “joking.”) Giuliani referenced his “insurance” against Trump again in a Fox News interview last weekend. “You can assume that I talk with him early and often,” he said of his relationship with the president. “I’ve seen things written like he’s gonna throw me under the bus … When they say that, I say, ‘He isn’t, but I have insurance.’”