Following Wednesday’s news that Hope Hicks was leaving the White House, there was a great deal of speculation—on media of all types—that the departure of the White House communications director was related to her appearance before the House Intelligence Committee the previous day where Hicks confessed to telling “white lies” at Trump’s command. Or that the increasing pressure from the investigations of Robert Mueller, who brought Hicks in for nearly 20 hours of talks and is likely to call for her again, made the Trump White House an untenable place to work.
But even bringing up these questions appeared to irritate New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. In a series of tweets, Haberman launched a series of claims that Hicks’s departure had nothing to do with any of the ongoing turmoil surrounding Trump, or any connection to the Russia investigation. It was simply a personal decision, something where Hicks had decided she had “done all she could” with her position in the White House—an astounding statement considering that Hicks had been in the communications director role for only six months.
Haberman’s insistence that no one else knew what they were talking about culminated in some jaw-dropping hubris when she was, rather gently, chided for dismissing everyone’s concerns.
To which Haberman replied ...
In other words, Maggie Haberman just fingered Josh Marshall as a source of “fake news.”
It’s very easy to read into this that Haberman was one of Hicks’ “very small number of people” and that her assurance on this was personal. In fact, Haberman seemed to take speculation over Hicks’ departure very personally, which suggests that not only might Haberman shared a friendship with Hicks, but that Hicks—who was present at Haberman’s lengthy interviews—might have been Haberman’s real connection to Trump. And for a reporter whose reputation has been primarily built around those rambling Trump interviews, losing her Trump whisperer might be a reason to be … a bit concerned.
Haberman is a capable, second-generation Times reporter who spent most of her career moving between the Big Apple’s lesser papers before landing at the grey lady just as Donald Trump was launching his campaign. She became known during the campaign for articles that seemed to be much tougher on Hillary Clinton than she was when dealing with Trump, and for a tone that seemed to blur editorializing and reporting.
Since then, Haberman has become famous for her seeming ability to lure Trump into extended interviews where, despite his oft-voiced disdain for her employer, he opines at length on a variety of topics. Those interviews have often provided headlines and have been widely cited—including at Daily Kos.
But Haberman’s articles on those interviews have often demonstrated a willingness to rewrite Trump’s rambling statements into apparently logical responses in a way that goes far beyond the usual bounds of cleaning up an interview. When full transcripts have been released, her accounts of these interviews have often seem as much like translations as transcriptions, and her own questions on these occasions are notable mostly for feeding Trump safe platforms from which to launch extended screeds with few attempts to challenge or follow-up. Supporters have defended this approach as being similar to dealing with a skittish horse: If actually pressed on his lies, misstatements, distortions, and nonsensical statements, Trump might refuse to say more. It’s a dictum that seems to have been adopted by other reporters at the Times. But while feeding his ego may generate a large number of words from Trump, the value of these words is questionable.
But Haberman does seem to have learned something from her time with Donald Trump: how to accuse other people of “fake news.”
Meanwhile, Josh Marshall notes that he’s praised Haberman multiple times for great reporting, and that his intention was simply to look at the timing of what was going on. Even if Hicks had let slip to a select audience the idea that “she was going to leave soon,” that doesn’t mean what’s happened in the last few weeks hasn’t provided enough straw to break the backs of a whole herd of camels.