New York Times correspondent, best-selling author, and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman has stated that she’s been told Trump is “especially rattled” by the photographic evidence against him, and roasted Trump’s post-arraignment speech as “very low energy” via CNN.
Trump delivered a speech from his Bedminster club Tuesday night, hours after his arrest and arraignment on 37 counts related to violations of the Espionage Act.
Haberman is considered an expert on Trump with deep experience reporting on the subject and a network of Trumpworld sources that give her up-to-the-minute insights. She called in to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Tuesday night and described the scene live at Trump’s Bedminster resort.
Along the way, she also dropped a few nuggets from off of the Trumpworld grapevine, including Trump’s reaction to the trove revealed when the indictment was unsealed:
“COLLINS: Maggie, obviously, you heard the former President’s speech. We did not take it here, live. What did you make of what he told his supporters, compared to how he was acting, when he was here, in Florida, earlier today?
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It’s interesting, Kaitlan.
There were two things that were striking about this speech.
Number one is that he’s going through, at least for part of it, a pretty dry recitation, of what you’re going to hear, from him and his team, which is his claims, and a misstatement of the Presidential Records Act that he was entitled to keep these documents that no one else has been prosecuted, for doing what he did. Prosecutors obviously said that he took things that were among the nation’s most secretive, classified materials. That’s one thing that was striking.
But the other that was striking is his delivery. He made such a show, in Miami, of being seen, at the restaurant, Versailles, which is something of a landmark, in Miami, and mingling with people, and talking to people.
Very low energy, tonight, very flat delivery, and spent no time, hanging out with the crowd, or sort of basking in their glow, afterwards. He turned on his heel, and walked back inside his club, at Bedminster.
And so, I think these are — this is going to be the reality going forward. It’s going to be him, defending himself, and offering up this claim that he had the right to do what he did, which again, prosecutors say, is not true. But it’s mixed with real anger, at the situation, with vengeance (ph).
COLLINS: And Maggie, what does that say to you about given — I mean, you know Trump better than almost anyone else, as you’ve reported on him, at length, than any other reporter I should note.
What does it say to you about how he’s actually viewing this privately compared to that bravado, and bluster, we saw, at the restaurant, here, in Miami?
HABERMAN: What I hear, Kaitlan, as it goes, it goes up and down. But there are times, where he is incredibly angry.
I heard that he was really mad, for the 90 minutes after that he found out, roughly around 7 PM, on Thursday night that he had been indicted. And then, he got it together, went to dinner with DJ.
I heard he was very angry the next day. When he saw the indictment, he was especially rattled, by the photographs that were in, the doc, in the indictment. He actually referenced the photographs, some of them anyway, from the stage, tonight, behind the podium.
But then, he has moments of almost a buoyancy (ph). And it’s hard for people around him to tell what’s genuine versus him trying to keep up, as you said, the bravado. More than the bravado, it’s also just a facade that everything is fine, because that’s so much of how he fights back against them.”
Haberman went on to describe the president and his speech as “deflated.”
