Maggie Haberman Says Trump Appears To Have Checked Out: ‘He’s Not Behaving Like Somebody Who Cares’

New York Times reporter and CNN commentator Maggie Haberman said President Donald Trump does not seem to care if Republicans retain control of Congress.

Haberman and her Times colleague Jonathan Swan joined Wednesday’s edition of The Source on CNN, where they discussed their new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.

Host Kaitlan Collins pointed to one passage in the book in which the authors wrote, “To the extent that he still cared about polling at all, he is seeing far fewer polls than during his first term. His advisors knew he was not receptive to being briefed on harsh realities in his second term, unlike his first, he was willing to take breathtaking risks, risks that could throw not only his presidency but the Republican Party and the entire world into chaos and carnage. More than ever before as president, he was operating on pure gut instinct.”

Collins asked Haberman, “Do you think that’s what he’s doing now. And do you think it matters if that gut instinct hurts Republicans who are on the ballot?

“Yes, I do think that what we are seeing right now is very in line,” Haberman replied. “On the one hand, yes, it’s similar to what we saw in term one, just in terms of sort of a sense for his party and some of his own staff of being erratic, but is definitely consistent with trusting his gut more than ever.”

Haberman went on to refer to a bipartisan housing bill Trump is refusing. On Wednesday, the president canceled a signing ceremony for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which aims to lower housing costs and increase the supply of homes. The president said his signing the legislation is contingent on the Senate passing the SAVE Act, a voter registration law. She said:

We got our hands on some polling memos, some confidential polling memos inside the Trump team. And one was from December when his own pollster circulated a memo. And it was after Trump had done an affordability speech or what was supposed to be an affordability speech, where instead he called affordability a “con job” and started suggesting, again, Democrats were responsible for coming up with this term and that this was not fair to him, that it used the term, and I’m paraphrasing here, but it was that the White House and the GOP, if they wanted to make gains in the midterms and not suffer, they needed to be, quote, unquote, “honest” with voters about the affordability crisis and try to find a way to deal with it.

This bill was supposed to deal with that. And the president just wasn’t interested. So does the president care? He’s not behaving like somebody who cares. Maybe he will start to at some point, but he is not right now. And I’m not sure whether he particularly believes he will suffer consequences, again, this is something else we talk about in the book if the House and even possibly the Senate flip.

Earlier in the day, Trump met with Republican senators, including Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who was reportedly “yelling” at the president.

Watch above via CNN.

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