President Trump lied about the Stormy Daniels payoff. Anyone who mentions Rudy Giuliani's interview on Fox News last night and doesn't mention that it is as clear-cut evidence as humanly possible that Trump lied is doing you a disservice. Last month, the president told a gaggle of reporters on Air Force One that he knew nothing about the $130,000 in hush money that his longtime fixer, Michael Cohen, paid the porn star to keep quiet in October 2016.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

"No," he responded when asked. "You'll have to ask Michael Cohen." That is not the only time, to say the least, that Trump and his team have denied he knew about the payment.

Yesterday, Giuliani told Sean Hannity that Trump reimbursed Cohen, and thus knew full well about the payment:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

There is no need to say Trump's first statement was a "falsehood," or that Giuliani's "appears to contradict it," or dodge the issue with any other couched language. The president knew the truth—that he was aware of, and even reimbursed Cohen for, the payment—and instead said the opposite. That is a lie.

Of course, it was always patently absurd that Cohen would be running around making six-figure payments on his client's behalf with no expectation of being paid back. That is not something lawyers do, even lawyers for Donald Trump. But that explanation also presented a legal problem for Trump: if he was not reimbursed, Cohen's $130,000 could be seen as a contribution to Trump's campaign. (After all, it was made just before the election in an attempt to prevent damaging information about the candidate from coming out.) If so, it was well over the FEC limit for individual contributions to a political campaign. It would have been illegal.

Getty Images

It's still unclear whether Giuliani's admission was an attempt to nip those campaign finance concerns in the bud. Right after he spilled the beans, Giuliani seemed to be trying to walk things back a little: "I don't know," he told Hannity after the Fox host reminded him the Trump camp's story was that Cohen did it on his own. "I haven't investigated that." Giuliani, as a reminder, is now Trump's lead lawyer in the special counsel investigation—a different inquiry, but you'd think he might be abreast of this.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Giuliani attempted to prove he was:

However, Giuliani told The Post that he and Trump discussed the fact that he planned to disclose that Trump reimbursed Cohen. “Oh, yeah, yeah,” he said. “Sure, sure. He was well aware that at some point when I saw the opportunity, I was going to get this over with.”

That would indicate that Trump's team decided the truth would eventually have to become public—particularly after the FBI raided Cohen's home and offices, when they could have secured documentation of all this—and this was as good a time as any to get it over with. (Giuliani's characterization of that raid as "stormtroopers coming in and breaking down [Cohen's] apartment"—likely not a Star Wars reference but a Nazi one—was fairly extreme considering the agents were operating using a warrant that required extensive sign-off procedures.)

Giuliani attempted to cast the payment as "personal," rather than campaign-related, in a subsequent interview this morning on Fox & Friends. But he then undermined his own case almost immediately:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

So the timing in the campaign did have something to do with it? So it may well have been a contribution to the campaign?

The "nothing to do with the campaign" line was echoed by none other than the president himself, who leapt to the Tweet Machine to make his case:

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. These agreements are..... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2018

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

...very common among celebrities and people of wealth. In this case it is in full force and effect and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels). The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair,...... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2018

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

...despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll in this transaction. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2018

Except the money does not have to come or go from the campaign coffers for it to be considered a contribution. The shakeup on Trump's legal team sure has been a change in approach—it's just they're now throwing stuff at the wall and not much is sticking.

Oh, and Trump's tweets are themselves confirmation that he knew about the payment and lied repeatedly about it. Which we all knew, but now we know. After all, the president has made 3,000 false or misleading claims since taking office.

This is just about as clear-cut as things can get. And yet, a survey of our various Papers of Record is not hugely promising. The New York Times called this a "contradiction." The Washington Post outlined Giuliani's claim and said he made it "despite Trump’s assertion last month that he was unaware of the payment." The Los Angeles Times said this was something "the president had previously denied." CNN said Giuliani's statement "contradicted Trump."

We know Trump knew the truth and said something false instead. If we can't call this a lie, what are we going to call a lie?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io