Because this is our lives now, some portion of our politics are devoted to questions like, can a sitting president be indicted, and can the president be subpoenaed? This is obviously a major issue for President Trump's new lead lawyer in the Russia probe, Rudy Giuliani, formerly known as America's Mayor and now known as someone who will "get his facts straight" at some point. Yes, Giuliani has had a torrid time of it on the cable news circuit: He admitted Trump knew about the Stormy Daniels payment, exposing the president's continual lies, and he echoed Trump's own admission that James Comey's firing had to do with The Russia Thing.

The latter has the pungent aroma of obstruction of justice, which is guaranteed to be part of the line of questioning Trump will see if he sits down with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The question is whether Trump will agree to the interview, whether he can be compelled to sit for it through a subpoena, or whether he can avoid it entirely.

Giuliani joined CNN's Chris Cuomo Friday morning to suggest there was no way a sitting president could be compelled to testify. He then promptly melted down when Cuomo played back a clip of Giuliani saying the opposite when the president in question was Bill Clinton:

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“That’s really unfair!” Giuliani said. “That’s extremely unfair what you’re doing right now! This is the reason people don’t come on this show!” In a novel and fairly effective strategy, Giuliani tried to just talk over the clip showcasing his obvious hypocrisy. We can probably expect this to become the norm among presidential defenders. For reference, when asked in the clip what would happen if the president is subpoenaed to testify, Giuliani answered, "You gotta do it."



(Based on how quickly Giuliani identified what was going on, it seems he's very familiar with the clip—yet has been contradicting it in substance constantly. That is to say, he may be indulging in some very willful hypocrisy.)



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There is something vaguely Daily Show about Cuomo's strategy, but it's not unfair: it's the clearest way to show Giuliani has flipped his position on whether a president can be subpoenaed to testify. The ex-New York-mayor's strategy up to that point was to try to muddy the waters by talking about complying with document subpoenas as opposed to subpoenas to testify. Cuomo nailed him down and he had no answer.

It's not like we can any longer expect the president, or his allies and defenders, to have any regard for the truth or prior events or what they said previously. But there's danger in accepting it as normal. It should be pointed out and, when necessary, ridiculed. The question of whether Trump can be subpoenaed to testify will likely, if it comes to that, be determined in a court of law at the highest levels of our judicial system. We don't need the Supreme Court to determine what direction Giuliani is headed.

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.

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