What did Donald Trump do today?

He got his story straight with his lawyer.

Trump took a phone call from Rudy Giuliani today. Giuliani is—as far as we know—still Trump's lawyer, but for much of the last few weeks, the two men have been carefully trading warning shots in the press over who will take the fall for the ever-widening Ukrainian scandal.

Earlier in the week, Giuliani told Fox News that he had "insurance" against any attempt Trump might make to pin criminal responsibility on him. He later claimed he meant he had blackmail information against the Biden family, although this doesn't make much sense, since there's no reason he'd withhold any such evidence if he had it.

By the time the phone call between the two men took place, Giuliani had dropped the Biden story and is now insisting that he was just joking about the "insurance" remark.

Trump, for his part, radically changed his story during an interview with Bill O'Reilly yesterday. He now claims that he never ordered Giuliani to do anything with respect to Ukraine, and that Giuliani was simply freelancing in his search for "corruption." This, of course, completely contradicts the notes that the White House released of the "perfect" call with the Ukrainian president, in which Trump repeatedly demanded that President Zelensky work with Giuliani specifically.

Giuliani has especially good reason to be worried about what Trump might do next, since the way he talked about Giuliani in that interview was strikingly similar to how he talked about his last "fixer," Michael Cohen, right before Trump turned on him completely. Cohen is now in prison for crimes he committed on Trump's behalf. 

Why should I care about this?

• Criminals don't usually go around committing freelance crimes on behalf of innocent people.

• Innocent people don't keep changing their story.