Maggie Haberman Declares ‘Trump Remains the Frontrunner’ Despite ‘Hot Mess’ Midterms and DeSantis Surge
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman declared that former President Donald Trump “remains the frontrunner” despite the “hot mess” she says he made of the midterms for Republicans.
Republicans have been dumping on Trump with regularity after Tuesday’s midterm Election Night results, which were widely been seen as a Trump-fueled disappointment for Republicans, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis won his reelection in a landslide and took an ostentatious victory lap that certainly caught Trump’s attention, as evidenced by his subsequent attacks on his potential rival.
Haberman has been reporting about Trump’s rage at his declining political fortunes, but as his 2024 announcement looms, still says he’s the man to beat.
On Tuesday’s edition of NYT‘s The Daily podcast with host Michael Barbaro, Haberman gave Trump a pretty thorough roasting about the midterms, telling Barbaro “the midterms did not go at all the way Republicans thought they were going to. They were a hot mess. And a major reason that they were a hot mess is Donald Trump.”
But despite the political obituaries, and DeSantis leading in post-midterm polls, Haberman went on to say that Trump remains the frontrunner in the GOP field:
MICHAEL BARBARO: So it would be fair to say that from the moment Donald Trump enters this race tonight at Mar a Lago, he is the clear front-runner.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: That is correct.
MICHAEL BARBARO: You say that without any ambiguity.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Until I see evidence that somebody is able to beat him among voters, Trump remains the frontrunner.
MICHAEL BARBARO: So if, Maggie, we step back for a second and you’re a Republican leader, elected official, and you turn on your TV, 8:55 Tuesday night, and you watch Donald Trump make this announcement, you have to find yourself in a very peculiar place because you’re watching this guy who already lost the White House in 2020. And then loses the midterm elections with his endorsements — running for president in 2024, pretty much on the same set of issues that didn’t do well in those elections, and dominate the airwaves for the next two years. And so you might be forgiven for thinking that your party, and your party’s voters in particular, are dooming you to repeat what we just saw a few days ago, which is to have an extreme-sounding candidate win a nomination pretty easily and then likely go on to have those policies rejected by a general election electorate. And there’s nothing you can really do about it.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Yes. And they have some blame in that, Michael, because they could have spoken out more forcefully at various points, and some of them did, but most of them did not. And particular moments when that could have come were his two impeachment trials, especially the second one, which was after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
MICHAEL BARBARO: Right.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: And if these senators had wanted Trump not to run again, they could have voted to convict. But instead they decided not to take an action that would have imperiled them with their voters, many of whom like Donald Trump.
Watch above via NYT‘s The Daily podcast.
