Maggie Haberman Defends NYT Coverage After Hannity Blasts New Report on Trump’s ‘Failure’ on Coronavirus

By Josh FeldmanApr 12th, 2020, 2:37 pm
 

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Fox News’ Sean Hannity went after New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman Sunday morning, following a massively in-depth report from the Times headlined “He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus.” Haberman was one of six reporters with bylines on the piece.

The Times reported:

Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.

The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials. It was a problem, he said, that had come out of nowhere and could not have been foreseen.

Hannity came to the president’s defense and swiped back at Haberman on Twitter, saying, “You should Thank .@Potus for the Travel Ban(s) put in place while you and .@Nytimes were fixated on impeachment and advising people to travel to China.”

He called the Times “corrupt and abusively biased” and invoked a recent column in the paper:

Haberman responded, defending the paper’s coverage and tweeting, “Weird. Six bylines on our story about how the president handled the growing threat of the coronavirus but just one he’s focused on. Something there but I can’t put my finger on it…”

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Josh Feldman - Senior Editor

Josh Feldman is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Email him here: josh@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter: @feldmaniac