Maggie Haberman Says Trump Bombshell From Woodward Book Not Backed Up By Her Sources: ‘Spoke To 20 People’
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman told CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins that none of her 20-odd sources knew of ex-President Donald Trump making calls to Vladimir Putin after leaving office.
According to Bob Woodward’s upcoming book War, “there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021.”
During a wild event for the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump made what many view as a de facto admission that the story is true, saying he wouldn’t confirm the calls but “if I did, it’s a smart thing.”
On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Haberman said her 20 sources knew nothing of such calls and that Trump had denied speaking to Putin when she asked him in 2021 — but also said she didn’t necessarily believe him:
COLLINS: My inside source tonight is CNN Political Analyst, and Senior Political Correspondent for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman.
I mean, that was a dodge of whether or not he has spoken with him. How do you interpret that? Does that — I mean, to me, it sounds like they definitely have spoken. But I wonder how you — how you hear when he doesn’t answer.
MAGGIE HABERMAN, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No, I don’t take it as that at all. But I take it as the fact that he wants people to think it might have happened.
And I think he wants to not offend Vladimir Putin by saying openly, No, I wouldn’t do that, or to look weak as if he wouldn’t be in touch with an adversary who is fighting against Ukraine, while the U.S. is funding Ukraine’s opposition.
But I don’t think that it means that he has done it. We talked to — to be clear, doesn’t mean he didn’t.
COLLINS: Yes.
HABERMAN: But we talked to roughly 20 people, who should have had some visibility into this, and none of them knew about it.
It’s certainly possible that it’s happening on some kind of covert channel, or has. It’s certainly possible that Trump suggested to people that he had talked to Putin in the past, and didn’t. All of these are within the realm of possibility.
But I don’t take that as yes, he absolutely did, because he often leaves these things open, so that he’s not ruling something out.
COLLINS: But that’s interesting. Even, you spoke to 20 people, who, generally, you would think would know, if these calls had happened?
HABERMAN: Yes. And they didn’t.
COLLINS: And they weren’t sure?
HABERMAN: And they — they were not aware of this. Yes, they did not say, definitively this couldn’t have happened. But that they weren’t aware of them. And it’s a lot of people.
COLLINS: And it’s pretty — I mean, you couldn’t imagine a situation, where another former President has, like, spoken to a world leader, and his close staff and aides doesn’t know about it?
HABERMAN: No. Although Trump does things so unusually. He’s not staffed at every minute of the day.
COLLINS: Yes.
HABERMAN: And at least back in the past — in the past, when he left office, and he went to Mar-a-Lago, it was a really tiny staff around him. And so, all kinds of things could have happened.
I asked him in an interview in September of 2021 if he had spoken to Putin. And he said, No. But that doesn’t mean that he hadn’t either. I just, I don’t know that I take that dodge as evidence that he did.
Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.
