CNN commentator and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman questioned the decision by former President Donald Trump to make a big show of his civil trial appeal in New York on Friday.
Trump is appealing after a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. Though his presence was not required, he showed up in court and afterward ranted at the press for 49 minutes, calling the case “a hoax,” “a scam,” and “a witch hunt.” The former president has also been found liable for defaming Carroll and owes her more than $90 million.
Hours later, Haberman appeared on CNN’s The Source, where Kaitlan Collins asked for her reaction.
“I don’t know of anyone who was recommending that he do this,” Haberman said. “It’s also worth noting he didn’t have to be in court today. He chose to go to this hearing. And I understand it. He has made it very clear he wants to be at legal proceedings connected to him. That is invariably going to draw attention to this news conference and he didn’t take questions from us as… All this is going to do is call more attention to that as well at a moment when he is trailing badly with women in polls.”
Haberman went on to say that Trump shining a spotlight on the Carroll case may not necessarily hurt him since, after all, he easily won the GOP primary. However, she noted Trump is now running in a general election.
“And it wasn’t just that he called attention to them he laid them out in graphic detail,” she added. “He talked about allegations that frankly, I suspect much of the public doesn’t remember anymore, but if they were tuning in, they will.”
“Yeah, it kind of seemed like what your opponent would be [saying] two months out from the election” Collins replied.
“I’m sure they will be after that press conference,” Haberman responded, adding that Trump’s remarks on Friday gave Vice President Kamala Harris some potential fodder for campaign ads:
He thinks that he is his own best defender both in a courtroom and on television, and he likes to be in front of cameras. There are times when that aligns with good politics for him. And then there are times when it does not…
Now, this may not matter because there’s so much baked in with him and it’s very hard to imagine how many actual undecided voters there are. I think there are people who are leaning in one direction or another and may say that they’re undecided, but they’re really persuadable. This is not generally a lot of information that you would put out there and he just gave the Harris team a bunch of soundbites to use in ads.
Watch above via CNN.
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