Maggie Haberman and Kaitlan Collins Pour Cold Water on Trump Appeal Win: $175M Still ‘Going To Hurt Him’

New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman and anchor Kaitlan Collins pointed out that former President Donald Trump’s reduced $175M fraud appeal bond may be seen as a win — but will still hurt Trump financially.

Monday was a mixed day for Trump as the hearing in the Stormy Daniels hush money case resulted in a denial of Trump’s attempts to delay the trial, but during the hearing the New York appeals court ruled he could have an additional ten days to post a reduced amount of $175 million to proceed with his appeal of the $460 million-plus fraud judgment hanging over his head.

Haberman was a guest on Monday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, during which she and Collins noted that despite being good news, the ruling still leaves Trump in potentially dire financial straits as he tries to come up with the bond and compete with President Joe Biden’s superior war chest:

COLLINS: But on his other claim he’s been making that he wanted to use this money, to fund his presidential campaign. I mean, he has not — he’d not made one utterance of that–

HABERMAN: Right.

COLLINS: –before Friday.

HABERMAN: No, he posted this on Truth Social. And what was incredible about it was that he posted the idea that, I had all — I have all this cash, and I was going to use it to fund my campaign. But now, I have to pay this judgment.

And he has not funded his campaign since 2016. And even then, he only partially funded. He still raised donations in 2020. He raised a significant amount of money, as a sitting president. There has been no indication he was going to self-fund. He’s not paying for his own lawyers, right now. He is using donations from small-dollar donors, to pay for his lawyers, and to pay for the lawyers of other people. So, that was a pretty clear straw-man.

Now, if he suddenly decides he’s going to put a lot of money into his campaign, then we’ll all be surprised. He is at a huge disparity with President Biden, in terms of fundraising. But I don’t expect that’s where this is going.

COLLINS: On what we’re hearing, about that they think that they can cover the $175 million–

HABERMAN: Yes, I’ve heard something similar.

COLLINS: But that it’ll hurt his — his — what he does have in cash.

HABERMAN: Yes, he doesn’t have endless operating cash at his company. It’s not clear to me if we’re talking about actual cash, or if we’re talking about securities that he would have to liquidate. I don’t know what the tax implications are. I do think that he will be able to do this more easily. But 10 days, if he seeks a bond, is not a lot of time.

And to your point, if he puts it up in cash? Look, they are looking at this to see — and others would have smarter takes on this than I will. I’m not a lawyer. But they are looking at this to see if this means that the appeals court, in New York, will ultimately reduce the judgment overall. And that’s not going to happen for several months, where they make a decision one way or the other. It’s still going to hurt him in the short-term.

Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.