Maggie Haberman Says ‘Trump Could Not Find a Single Person’ Who Backed DeSantis for Secretary of Defense
Maggie Haberman said President-elect Donald Trump doubled down on his nomination of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense because no one in his orbit thought it would be a good idea to choose Florida Governor Ron DeSantis instead.
DeSantis unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination this year.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was considering withdrawing Hegseth’s nomination and picking DeSantis. At the time, Haberman called the idea “mind-boggling.”
The nomination of Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has been marred by an accusation of rape that he denies, as well as serial infidelity, and smelling of alcohol at work. The report that Trump was considering DeSantis surprised many, as the governor repeatedly attacked Trump on the campaign trail.
On Friday night, she appeared on CNN’s AC360, where guest host John Berman asked about Haberman’s previous reporting about Trump tiring of the negative press surrounding Hegseth. That bad press had raised concerns among a handful of Republican senators. In a confirmation vote, Hegseth can afford no more than three Republican defections – assuming all Democrats vote against him.
“You reporting a while back that President-elect Trump had grown tired of hearing all the negative stories about him and was poised to move on,” he said. “But what’s changed his mind?”
Haberman replied:
I think it’s still true that he was tired and is tired of negative stories. And what changed was a couple of things. One was… Trump could not find a single person in his orbit, or even really outside of it, who liked this idea of making Ron DeSantis – the governor of Florida – the Defense secretary choice. And it was not, you know, ‘We’re going to drop Hegseth, and we’re going to look for a bunch of other people.’ It was Hegseth or DeSantis at that point. And so, Trump was persuaded also after a call from Pete Hegseth to let Hegseth go out and see if he could fight his way past some of these stories.
She went on to say that Trump agreed, after which Hegseth sat for an interview with Megyn Kelly.
“And you saw this movement, most significantly, John, this conservative now MAGA movement really, really activated online
on digital ads, making a target, specifically of Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa to try to get her to a ‘yes.'”
Last week, Haberman said DeSantis seemed an unlikely choice “because you will just hear a replay of all of these things that DeSantis said about Trump in their primary.”
Watch above via CNN.
