President Donald Trump’s political advisers know exactly how much his Iran war has cost him with the MAGA base and Republican voters, but Trump himself is another matter, New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman said Thursday.
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Appearing on MS NOW’s “The Moment with Katy Tur,” Haberman was asked whether the White House grasps the war’s political fallout.
“This is anecdotal. I was down the shore for the Fourth of July. I did not see one Trump flag, which is shocking. Not one,” Tur said. “Do they understand how people have reacted, how the MAGA base, Republican voters, have reacted to this war?”
Haberman gave an eyebrow-raising response.
“They, his political advisors, absolutely understand. He absorbing it, I think, is a different issue. And one of the things that has been so radically different about this term, among many, many others from term one, is he’s so much less responsive to domestic politics.”
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Haberman noted Trump’s team is “very well aware” of the political problems facing the president, with the war cutting against his campaign vow to avoid new conflicts, even though he was always more hawkish on Iran than elsewhere. The advisers are deeply concerned, she said, while Trump has paid the fallout far less attention than his own staff has. One aide, she added, privately said the White House needed the story “off the front pages by September.”
“They are very aware and concerned. He is not as focused on it as they are,” Haberman concluded.
The account tracks the reporting in Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s book “Regime Change,” which describes a pre-war internal debate centered on whether his base — long told Trump was antiwar — would feel betrayed. That betrayal has since spilled into the open, with once-loyal figures such as former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) turning on the renewed strikes.
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