Maggie Haberman Chafes When Kaitlan Collins Suggests She Has Special ‘Relationship’ With Trump

New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman chafed at fellow CNNer Kaitlan Collins over her description of Haberman’s “relationship” to former President Donald Trump.

Haberman has been making the rounds to promote the release of her controversial but much-buzzed-about book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.

On Friday, that tour brought her to a packed book event at Washington, DC’s Politics and Prose bookstore, moderated by Collins. Toward the end of their in-depth and well-received chat, Haberman repeatedly and strongly rejected the idea that she has a relationship, special or otherwise, with Trump:

KAITLAN COLLINS: How has your relationship to and with Trump? How does that come through in your reporting? Because you have a relationship with him like very few other people do.

MAGGIE HABERMAN: So I actually I disagree with you there. I think he’s a subject who cover. I covered Hillary Clinton. I covered Mike Bloomberg. I covered Rudy Giuliani in his final term in office at city hall and then his presidential campaign and then versions of him in the last several years. I covered at more of a remove. Presidents Clinton, Obama, W. Now he just interprets coverage differently. I don’t, I just, the word relationship I think is not the right one.

KAITLAN COLLINS: Well, relationship to, I think, I think he thinks of you in a certain singular way that separates you from other reporters.

MAGGIE HABERMAN: I just don’t think that’s true. I don’t. I don’t! I mean, I think he’s obsessed with the Times, and I think that’s that’s a lot of it.

KAITLAN COLLINS: I think some Times reporters would disagree with you. Times reporters who wish they had a book.

MAGGIE HABERMAN: (Laughs) Lots of times reporters with a book, we’re doing okay.

In other interviews, Haberman has pooh-poohed the significance of a quote from the book in which Trump says he views Haberman as his “psychiatrist.”

Watch above via Politics and Prose.