RUDY HAS A NEW CELLPHONE TRICK

Rudy Giuliani caught a lot of flak for taking a cellphone call from his wife during his speech to the National Rifle Association. The Romney campaign pointed out that he'd done this before, and then John Fund asserted on The Wall Street Journal's editorial page that Giuliani had done this dozens of times on the campaign trail.

Well, now Rudy seems to have stopped taking calls from Judi during campaign events. But has he replaced the phone-call interruptions with fake interruptions in which he hears the ring of a phone that belongs to somebody else -- presumably a plant -- and he jokes about it?

It sure looks that way. Here's The New York Times this past Saturday:

...As Mr. Giuliani was being introduced on Friday to a breakfast for real estate brokers and builders here [in Columbia, South Carolina], the man introducing him made the explicit point that Mr. Giuliani was not carrying a cellphone to the lectern.

Then, as Mr. Giuliani reached the conclusion of his speech, a very loud cellphone being carried by a television camera operator broke through the silence of the room. As the camera operator struggled to turn off the ring, Mr. Giuliani stopped and smiled.

"You can answer that cellphone," he said. "I'm not going to answer it." ...

Here's Monday's Washington Post:

"I'm not going to answer that cellphone."

-- Rudy Giuliani, as an errant phone went off during his speech at a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser at Cafe Milano Saturday morning.

(Presumably that's D.C.'s Cafe Milano.)

And here's The American Spectator's AmSpec Blog a couple of hours ago, reporting on Giuliani's speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition:

Also worth noting is that during his speech, a cell phone rang, and Giuliani said, "I'm not going to anwer that!"

(That last one was also confirmed by National Review's Campaign Spot.)

How many times is he going to do this before someone points out that he's still using a cellphone to interrupt his speeches?