MSNBC’s Morning Joe believes ‘Rudy Giuliani is distancing himself from Donald Trump’ as Mueller moves closer

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said President Donald Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, appears to be distancing himself as the special counsel probe encircles the White House.

Another round of court filings are expected Friday in the special counsel probe of Trump campaign ties to Russia, but the "Morning Joe" host said the president appears to have no plan in place to deal with what's coming.

"We're not getting a lot of clarification from Donald Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who basically got the very real impression that the president was just winging it in his answers to Robert Mueller," Scarborough said.

The former New York City mayor promised in July that the president's legal team would counter Mueller's findings with their own report, but a half dozen current and former White House officials told The Atlantic there was no plan in place to respond.

"Giuliani said it's been difficult in the past few months to consider drafting response plans or to devote time to the counter plan they were working on as he and Trump confronted Mueller's written questions about the campaign," said co-host Willie Geist.

The president's attorney said answering those questions was a "nightmare" and took Trump about three weeks, when it should have taken two days.

"You don't want your lawyer saying that," Scarborough said.

A former senior White House official said a strategy could not be put in place without an honest conversation with Trump about the legal trouble he's facing, but Giuliani said that would not stop the president from tweeting about the investigation.

"Isn't that fascinating that you could look at about four or five different parts of that statement and you would see Rudy Giuliani distancing himself from Donald Trump," Scarborough said. "Or it's just late in the day."