Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman Answers Whether or Not She Thinks Trump is a Racist
Nicolle Wallace asked New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who has reported extensively on former President Donald Trump, if she believes Trump is a racist.
The conversation on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House kicked off on Wednesday with Wallace asking Haberman what is motivating Trump to stand behind embattled Senate candidate Herschel Walker in Georgia.
Does Trump just “want the Hershel Walkers to win to prove this point. Does he want more damaged Republicans in the party?” asked Wallace of the reporter who Trump once said is like his “psychiatrist.”
“He wants to show that nothing matters,” responded Haberman, whose new book Confidence Man came out Tuesday. Haberman added:
And one of his goals and I write about this is he believes that everyone is just like him. Everything is a transaction. Everything can be exchanged. Everything can be reduced to a deal. There are no red lines. And so to show that there are no red lines always makes him happy.
“The first page of the prologue opens up with an extraordinary, extraordinarily illuminating anecdote about covering him on questions of race. And I want to ask you, do you think he’s a racist?” Wallace then asked.
“I think he says and does racist things over a very long period of time. I don’t I don’t know how else you would define it,” Haberman replied, adding:
I think that somebody who has been incorporating racial paranoia into his public persona since the 1980s, who took out an ad in related to the Central Park Five case where there were teenagers who were charged in that case, and they were all teenagers of color. And he called for bringing back the death penalty.
And he still won’t apologize, even though for doing that and insists he was right, even though there is proof now that their confessions were coerced by officials. So you go from there through the White House. I you know, he repeatedly says racist things and then says he was taken out of context. But at a certain point, I’m not sure how much benefit of the doubt people are supposed to give.
“Well, in your anecdote and maybe just tell us the story. I mean, when he’s caught, when his racism is revealed, all he wants to know is, in the case of the story you tell. What does he need to say to get out of that news cycle?” Wallace follows up.
“So, this was a moment in the campaign. It was May 5th of 2016 and it was actually the day of the Indiana primary. Now, this was not the first time that David Duke, you know, the notorious anti-Semite, had been celebrating Donald Trump. And he had previously been very slow to disavow David Duke,” Haberman replies, adding:
And I write about how, you know, one of his advisers had urged him to do so earlier and he said, ‘We don’t have to do it right away. A lot of those people vote.’ In this instance, David Duke was condemning the, quote unquote, Jewish extremists who he said were after Trump and I had emailed the campaign looking for a comment and Trump called me back and I expected I would hear from an aide. And he said he was there with his two Jewish lawyers and he read a statement which was anti-Semitism has no place in our society which should be united, not divided.
“And that was only said and there was a pause. And I said, ‘That’s it.’ And he said, ‘What do you need me to say?’ And that to me is just the defining ethos or one of the defining ethos of his approach to life. He says what he has to say to get through 10 minutes of time,” Haberman concluded.
Watch the full clip above via MSNBC
