Maggie Haberman Says Shocking Trump Attacks Are ‘Because He Can’ — Because ‘Nobody Is Stopping Him’
CNN commentator and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman said President Donald Trump’s shocking attacks on the likes of The Associated Press and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are the result of a lack of “checks and balances.”
Trump has been waging a campaign against the Associated Press for ignoring his demand they alter their editorial guidance by referring to The Gulf of Mexico as The Gulf of America. He also flew into a rage at Zelensky Wednesday and referred to him as “a dictator” after Zelensky made public comments about “misinformation” that Trump has been repeating.
On Thursday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Haberman gave host Anderson Cooper some insight into Trump’s behavior, laying the blame on the fact that “there is really nobody stopping him from the checks and balances perspective”:
COOPER: He’s also gotten pretty much the nominees he wanted through Congress.
HABERMAN: Yes, I mean, Congress has done extremely little to push back in any real respect. And by Congress, I really mean the Congressional Republicans and Senate Republicans.
There was a moment where it looked as if Pete Hegseth would be in trouble for Defense Secretary, and that was where the Trump team, with a lot of allies in the broader both MAGA movement and historical conservative movement, moved in to really aggressively make basically an example of Senator Joni Ernst if she did not come on board.
And so, that is his approach to a number of things, is making examples of specific people. And you can see that on a number of fronts, whether it is with media coverage, with this fight with the Associated Press, or whether it is, you know, on foreign policy with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That is how he is approaching this term, because he can because there is really nobody stopping him from the checks and balances perspective.
COOPER: I am fascinated by this deal he wants to take half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
HABERMAN: So his approach to foreign policy is almost always trade based and economic based. He has a very mercantilist perspective toward everything. And so, yes, he looks at it, as, you know, the U.S. should be repaid for what he thinks it should not have spent on Ukraine defense but the approach that the U.S. has taken to suggest that this is why Ukraine should come to the table.
That was a phrase that was said in the briefing room today over and over again, make Ukraine come to the table. There’s two separate tables. There’s one table that the U.S. is having with Russia, and then there’s a different table that the U.S. is having with Ukraine. And Ukraine is at a pretty big disadvantage at that table.
COOPER: What do you hear from people in the White House from around? I mean, are they happy with what the President is doing?
HABERMAN: It depends on who you talk to. I mean, most people within the administration are overall happy with what Trump is doing. There are a number of people, both inside and outside the administration, who were less than thrilled with him, saying that that Ukraine started the war.
You know, there are certain remarks that he has made related to Russia in terms of what are clearly concessions that doesn’t thrill everybody. But in general, you know, what you hear people say is this is what he ran on. He didn’t explicitly run on doing things this way in terms of stopping the war.
He did run on stopping the war, and he made clear that he was a foreign aid skeptic. So in that perspective — from that perspective, people shouldn’t be surprised. But there are things that, you know, some in his administration wish he was doing differently and some are having trouble, you know, explaining about what the broader aim is.
Watch above via Anderson Cooper 360.
