President Donald Trump bragged on Twitter about how successful his visits to El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio on Wednesday were, but apparently his own aides thought the whole situation was a mess.
“Does the White House think this visit went well, Maggie?” CNN host John Berman asked New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Thursday.
“No, they don’t,” Haberman replied. “Most people, while they would, I suspect, not say it publicly, will privately admit that yesterday was something of a debacle, that these were not the headlines they wanted to see.”
“They wanted him to go in and behave differently,” she continued. “The goal was for him to go in and get out while making as little news as possible.”
Haberman said that Trump “couldn’t stop watching” the news on Wednesday, which caused him to lash out at Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley (D), 2020 Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke, and various TV reporters on the same day he was supposed to focus on comforting the victims of the weekend’s deadly mass shootings and their families.
Watch Haberman below:
JUST NOW: WH insiders “will privately admit this was something of a debacle, these are not the headlines they wanted to see.”@maggieNYT on insider reaction to @realDonaldTrump trip to Dayton and El Paso.@NewDay pic.twitter.com/WxVTo6HGRv
— John Berman (@JohnBerman) August 8, 2019
