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The New York Times came to the defense of one of its top reporters on Friday after President Trump described her as “a third rate reporter.”
“Maggie Haberman is a trusted journalist whose reporting has stood the test of time. As President Trump’s campaign said today, Maggie is ‘one of the most powerful and respected political reporters in the country,'” The Times tweeted Friday.
It responded directly to Trump’s tweet calling Haberman a “third rate reporter who has nothing going. A Fake News ‘journalist.'”
Trump had reposted a tweet criticizing Haberman for not using Trump’s full quote from when he responded to governors critical of his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Haberman also defended herself on Twitter, pointing out that journalists paraphrase and argued that it was wrongly criticized in order to get Trump’s attention.
NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER CLASHES WITH CNN ANCHOR OVER TRUMP CHECK STORY
“Because in journalism, sometimes we paraphrase the rest,” she told Greg Price, who had called her a “hack.”
“I said he was talking about criticism of the federal response, not him. The rest of the quote was about the federal response,” Haberman said.
This was just the latest attack Trump has lobbed at both the media and individual reporters. Trump previously attacked Haberman in 2018, arguing that she was a “flunkie” of former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
She had apparently angered the president with an article she wrote about his allegedly abusive relationship with personal attorney Michael Cohen.
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He had tweeted: “The New York Times and a third rate reporter named Maggie Haberman, known as a Crooked H flunkie who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with, are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip.'”
He also accused The Times of using non-existent sources and predicted that Cohen wouldn’t turn on him. Cohen eventually became one of the president’s staunchest critics and accused him of partaking in a “criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws.”
