US president Donald Trump has suggested Rudy Giuliani, the aggressive new face free sex video of his legal team, needs to "get his facts straight" about the hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election.

Former New York City mayor Mr Giuliani quickly came up with a new version of events after Mr Trump's intervention.

The president chided Mr Giuliani even as he insisted that "we're not changing any stories" about the 130,000 dollar (£96,000) settlement, which was paid to Ms Daniels to keep her quiet about her allegations of an affair with Mr Trump.

Hours later, Mr Giuliani backed away from his previous suggestion that the October 27 settlement had been made because Mr Trump was in a critical phase of his campaign.

"The payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president's family," Mr Giuliani said in a statement released on Friday.

Stormy Daniels holds a meet-and-greet with patrons during her appearance at the strip club Gossip in Melville, New York (Kevin Hagen/AP)

"It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not."

A day earlier, Mr Giuliani had said on Fox News: "Imagine if that came out on October 15 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton."

Mr Trump said that Mr Giuliani was "a great guy but he just started a day ago", and the former mayor of New York City was still "learning the subject matter".

Mr Giuliani revealed this week that Mr Trump knew about the payment to Ms Daniels made by his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the president had paid Mr Cohen back.

Mr Giuliani insisted the president did not know the specifics of Mr Cohen's arrangement with Ms Daniels until recently, telling Fox & Friends on Thursday that the president did not know all the details until "maybe 10 days ago".

Mr Giuliani has become the face of Donald Trump´s aggressive new legal team. (Evan Vucci,/AP)

He told The New York Times that Mr Trump had repaid Mr Cohen 35,000 dollars (£26,000) a month "out of his personal family account" after the campaign was over.

He said Mr Cohen received 460,000 dollars (£339,000) or 470,000 dollars (£346,000) in all for expenses related to Mr Trump.