The New York Times defended its White House correspondent Maggie Haberman on Friday, saying that her work as a journalist has “stood the test of time” after President Trump accused her of being a “third rate reporter.”
“Maggie Haberman is a trusted journalist whose reporting has stood the test of time,” the newspaper’s communications team tweeted Friday. “As President Trump’s campaign said today, Maggie is ‘one of the most powerful and respected political reporters in the country.”
The conflict between Trump and the news outlet began earlier on Friday when Trump retweeted a post from Greg Price, a social media associate for The Daily Caller, criticizing Haberman for not including a full quote from Trump regarding the president’s relationship with governors during the coronavirus outbreak.
“‘I want them to be appreciative,’ the president says of governors who are criticizing the federal response,” Haberman tweeted.
Price fired back, tweeting, “Why don’t you use the full quote you hack: ‘I want them to be appreciative. We’ve done a great job. And I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about Mike Pence, the task force, I’m talking about FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers.'”
In response to the president’s tweet, Haberman said Trump’s statement toward governors was a political error that would result in future negative political attack ads.
“The president knows his quote yesterday about wanting states to be appreciative of the feds, with implication that’s how you get help, was a political error that is likely to show up in ads attacking him in MI and elsewhere. Some of this is to try to get reporters not to use it,” she tweeted.