Maggie Haberman Says Trump Was ‘Riled Up’ in Bonkers Oval Scene Until ‘White Billionaire’ Calmed Him Down

CNN commentator and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman pointedly told Anderson Cooper that President Donald Trump was “riled up” during a trainwreck Oval Office visit until a “White billionaire” calmed him down.

A bilateral meeting in the Oval Office between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa quickly descended into chaos Wednesday as Trump brawled with reporters, forced Ramaphosa to watch a White Genocide propaganda video, and bitterly argued with him about it.

On Wednesday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper asked Haberman for her insights on the scene. The veteran Trumpologist made several cutting observations, including that Trump took an “angry tone” with Black officials but calmed down when billionaire businessman Johann Rupert was speaking to him:

ANDERSON COOPER: So, Maggie is there — I mean, was this — this clearly was planned out, clearly he had this film ready, not sure exactly where it came from. Do you know how long this was in the making for?

MAGGIE HABERMAN: I think quite a while, Anderson, although I don’t know the specifics on how long this video has been in the works, but certainly the confrontation that Trump initiated in the Oval Office has been on his mind and some of his aides mind for some time.

Now, that video, as you noted, not just, you know, played lights dimmed, but the White House Twitter account or X account, I believe, pushed it out almost immediately after this meeting.

So this is something that Trump wants attention on, and I’m sure he’s very happy that there is a lot of news coverage of it now. But regardless of what his desire is, as you said, the facts of what he was lecturing the South African President about sitting there in the Oval Office just are not the case. It does not, as you say, mean that there are not murders taking place of some White farmers and that that, you know, it is always a tragedy when somebody is murdered but the crime rate. And people were saying this to him in the meeting. Crime is bad across the board, it’s not just White farmers, it’s also — there’s also rapes, there’s also murders, there’s robberies and that is what they were hoping to have the attention on, not what Trump wanted to talk about.

COOPER: It’s remarkable to me that, you know, the South African delegation brought South African golfers hoping that that would somehow, you know, make the President give him something to talk about or make him comfortable. I guess there was a billionaire, White South African billionaire there who tried to impress upon the President the that there is not a genocide going on there. It didn’t seem to ultimately obviously have the effect. Where does this go from here? I mean there was — there were other meetings and Elon Musk was in the office. It was also interesting to hear the President at one point say, Elon Musk wanted this.

HABERMAN: Right, I mean, look, we’ve seen Elon Musk talking about this on X for some time. President Trump was talking about this with people in his first term. He would talk about it with aides in a number of meetings. It just didn’t become the topic that it has now or the cause that it has now for him. You are correct that despite the fact that he had a pretty lecturing and angry tone with a lot of the Black officials who were talking, it was when that that White billionaire executive was talking to him.

That was the first moment that Trump really calmed down. Trump had gotten very riled up at the very beginning of the questions being asked. When he was asked about the Qatari jet that the Pentagon is accepting as a — to be converted to a new Air Force One, and he just sort of was off to the races after that.

That was the one time that he got calmer. But you’re right, he clearly didn’t accept what he was being told, which was just factual information. We are seeing him increasingly trying to say that something, and he has a long history of saying things that are not true. But in this case and in recent days, on other matters, he is saying things such as the idea that Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador, that he actually had MS-13 tattooed those letters and numbers on his hand, he did not.

Trump held up a doctored picture that was used, in this case, he is using a video that the President of South Africa is saying, you know, what is this? This is not anything I’ve ever seen and Trump would not accept it.

Watch above via Anderson Cooper 360.