WATCH: Maggie Haberman Cracks Up Packed Book Event With Trump Story She Left Out of Her Book
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman chafed at fellow CNNer Kaitlan Collins over her description of Haberman’s “relationship” to former President Donald Trump.
Haberman has been making the rounds to promote the release of her controversial but much-buzzed-about book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.
On Friday, that tour brought her to a packed book event at Washington, DC’s Politics and Prose bookstore, moderated by Collins. Toward the end of their in-depth and well-received chat, Haberman repeatedly and strongly rejected the idea that she has a relationship, special or otherwise, with Trump:
KAITLAN COLLINS: I know we only have 5 minutes left. I have two more questions for you. Some of the best and most revealing parts, I feel like, when it comes to movies are the bloopers at the end and being able to see what it was really like for them to film them. Is there anything that you didn’t include in this book that you wished you had or that didn’t really fit or that didn’t match the serious tone of it?
MAGGIE HABERMAN: The answer is an emphatic yes. I will tell you two stories. In most cases, it was stuff that I couldn’t, either couldn’t confirm enough that I felt comfortable. In some cases, it just didn’t sort of move. I mean, you think when you’re going to get a book, I don’t know how I’m going to fill it. And then you’re like, Oh my God, took out this and this and this. It’s already a really long book. So at a certain point you can’t keep having the same version of an anecdote over and over again. I heard two stories after after I had finished the book that I would have included if if I could have.
And one is H.W. Bush out, newly out of office maybe a year or two, is at JFK Airport. He’s getting ready to go to a speech overseas. And he’s reading a newspaper, possibly a newspaper I work for. And and someone comes over to him and says, “Excuse me, Mr. President, Donald Trump is here and he’s wondering if you’d like to meet him.” (Laughter) And and Bush sort of…
KAITLAN COLLINS: Ran over?
(Laughter)
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Pulls the paper down and says no, and then goes back to, and thus began a decades-long warmth toward the Bushes.
(Laughter)
KAITLAN COLLINS: So that’s why he hates the Bushes.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: That’s why he hates the bushes. So that’s that’s one.
The second story was a less funny one about Trump throwing things on several occasions.
Watch above via Politics and Prose.
