“Good luck … over my dead body.”

— Rudy Giuliani, when asked by Fox News whether President Trump would submit to a sit-down interview with special counsel Robert Mueller.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds a robust 62% majority say President Trump has not been honest about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, up from 56% in August.

A 46% plurality says guilty pleas by Trump associates suggest wrongdoing by the president as well, up from 40% in August and 36% a year ago. Half the public say the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has given them more doubts about Trump’s presidency.

Also important: Just 38% say they would probably or definitely vote for the president if he seeks a second term, while 52% say they’d probably or definitely vote for the Democratic candidate.

Rudy Giuliani blasted the president’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as “pathetic” and a “serial liar” when questioned about Cohen’s claim that as a candidate Trump directed him to arrange hush payments to women who claimed to have past affairs with Trump, ABC News reports.

Said Giuliani: “The man is pathetic.”

Saturday Night Live imagined a world in which Donald Trump never became president in a black-and-white spoof of It’s a Wonderful Life.

“President Trump made an unscheduled visit to Arlington National Cemetery on a rainy Saturday, following weeks of criticism for skipping ceremonial visits in the United States and abroad that other presidents have made and for his lack of meetings with U.S. troops in combat zones,” the Washington Post reports.

“The president spent 15 minutes at the storied Virginia cemetery, walking with two military officers dressed in camouflage and a tour guide, looking at the thousands of grave markers that had been decorated with holiday wreaths. The visit was not on Trump’s public schedule, which often signals a last-minute decision.”

“Two years after Donald Trump won the presidency, nearly every organization he has led in the past decade is under investigation,” the Washington Post reports.

This includes his private company, his 2016 campaign, his foundation and the 2016 inaugural committee.

“The mounting inquiries are building into a cascade of legal challenges that threaten to dominate Trump’s third year in the White House. In a few weeks, Democrats will take over in the House and pursue their own investigations into all of the above — and more.”

Mike Allen: “White House insiders expect Mulvaney to get the permanent gig. But Trump keeps control and doesn’t fully empower his guy, reminding Mulvaney who the real chief of staff is: No funny business like General John Kelly tried to pull, restricting enablers’ access to POTUS.”

“This is exactly why some other candidates didn’t take the job or didn’t get the job: They would have insisted on changes Trump doesn’t want to make.”

Asked why Mulvaney was named “acting,” the official said: “Because that’s what the president wants.”

“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team continues to be interested in interviewing the President Trump,” CNN reports.

“Mueller’s interest in talking with the President is believed to include asking questions about the Trump’s state of mind in regard to actions under scrutiny in the obstruction of justice probe.”

“Yes, I am supporting Donald Trump, but I’m doing so despite the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being.”

— Interim White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, quoted The State in November 2016.

President Trump’s search for a new White House chief of staff is centering around former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, senior adviser Jared Kushner and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Reuters reports.

While other candidates remain, the three men appear to be the top contenders with Christie leading the pack.

Washington Post: “In the cases of Cohen, former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Mueller has proceeded to the sentencing of each without first making him testify at trial against others. That’s at odds with the common practice of prosecutors — which is to hold the stick of a tougher prison sentence over defendants until they have completed all of their cooperation, particularly any public testimony.”

“While the recent legal action has led to speculation that prosecutors are narrowing in on the president in anticipation of more criminal charges, Mueller’s sentencing timeline suggests a different outcome to some legal experts — that the accounts of those cooperating witnesses will appear in a written report, not in court.”

Glenn Kessler: “There has been no serial exaggerator in recent American politics like the president. He not only consistently makes false claims but also repeats them, even though they have been proved wrong. The explosion of false and misleading statements from him in 2018 is well documented in our database: In the seven weeks leading up the midterm elections, the president made 1,419 false or misleading claims — an average of 30 a day.”

“Trump says many things that are factually incorrect, but he sometimes says things that are mind-blowingly false. Despite having access to more information than anyone on Earth, he persists in making claims with literally no foundation.”

First Read: “Any one of these investigations or inquiries would be enough to create a crisis for a presidency. But for Trump, there are at least six of them, and we’re not counting all of the probes into cabinet and administration officials.”

“The sheer number of different investigations and scandals involving the president appears to have benefited him, since it’s easier to keep track of one big story (Hillary’s emails!) than multiple investigations you have to keep track of.”

“But at some point, does the weight of these different investigations and scandals become too much?”

Susan Glasser: “In other words, the criminality of key figures in the President’s inner circle is now established, by their own admissions, as they start to implicate the President himself. And this is even before Mueller issues findings or criminal charges related to the central subject of his inquiry into whether Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russians in 2016. Additional damning evidence against Trump is increasingly likely to emerge from outside of the Mueller investigation, as in the case of Cohen, or as a consequence of aggressive investigations and oversight by the new Democratic House. For example, on Thursday, the de-facto incoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said that the Ways and Means Committee will use its subpoena powers to demand Trump’s tax returns, which, given the extensive reporting in the Times about his family’s decades-long tax dodges, could produce an untold wealth of damaging information.”

“Largely overlooked in the daily flood of Trump-era news, a week ago, his former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, said in an interview that Trump had repeatedly pressed him to violate the law… The coverage of Tillerson’s interview with the journalist Bob Schieffer focussed more on Trump’s outraged response than on the underlying revelation… But Tillerson’s allegation was more than just another bout of Trump-era name-calling between a former Secretary of State who once called his boss a “fucking moron” and the President who fired him by tweet. Imagine Tillerson before Congress come January, testifying under oath and live on television, about which laws Trump told him to break.”