Maggie Haberman: Trump Didn’t Want to Give Oval Office Speech and Thinks Trip to Border is Waste of Time

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman dropped some stunning reporting Tuesday night, revealing that President Donald Trump did not want to deliver his highly anticipated Oval Office address and thinks his planned trip to the southern border is a waste of time.

Following Trump’s speech, Haberman discussed her reporting on CNN, and on Twitter linked to a Times story by Peter Baker that reported Trump thinks efforts to cast the border situation as a “humanitarian crisis” are pointless.

Trump didn’t want to give the speech tonight and told TV anchors at lunch today that his planned trip to the border is a waste of time. https://t.co/GFnpFnH8Tt

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 9, 2019

Per the Times:

Yet privately, Mr. Trump dismissed his own new strategy as pointless. In an off-the-record lunch with television anchors hours before the address, he made clear in blunt terms that he was not inclined to give the speech or go to Texas, but was talked into it by advisers, according to two people briefed on the discussion who asked not to be identified sharing details.

Trump, in an off the record meeting with television executives earlier Tuesday, reportedly dismissed his planned trip to the border later this week as merely a photo-op that his aides convinced him to embark on.

“The president really was not that into doing this speech,” Haberman said on CNN. “We didn’t hear a whole lot new.”

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who attended the off the record meeting with Trump, said the president was “way more compelling in person and reading a room than he is reading a teleprompter.”

Haberman described Trump’s speech as a “Hail Mary” as Republicans think they’re losing the shutdown fight — and predicted the president would eventually declare a national emergency to secure funding for the wall.

Watch above, via CNN.