The White House tried to spin why Trump is skipping the 25th anniversary of 9/11 in New York. Maggie Haberman wasn’t having it.
Trump spent this week attacking Haberman personally over reporting she stood by
completely, that part of why he’s avoiding the Ground Zero ceremony is because the site has barred political speeches since 2012. Speaking on MS NOW’s The Weekend, Haberman laid out exactly how the Times handled it. “We went to the White House. We were quite transparent with them about what we were reporting,” she said. “The White House did not say anything, pushing back on what we were reporting. And then 24 hours later, the president started attacking the piece.”
The White House’s actual defense, once it finally showed up, was that Trump is skipping New York simply because JD Vance will be there instead, and the two can’t be in the same place at once. Haberman dismantled that claim directly.
“It’s not because Vance is going to New York. That plan changed,” she said. “Trump was going to New York. That was everybody’s understanding. And then he wasn’t.”
She also pointed out that Trump attended the same ceremony in 2024,
shortly after surviving an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, undercutting any suggestion that security concerns alone explain skipping the 25th anniversary.
Trump’s response to accurate reporting wasn’t a factual rebuttal. It was a Truth Social tirade calling Haberman a “fake reporter” and “unattractive.” Haberman didn’t take the bait. She just laid out the timeline, calmly, and let the contradiction speak for itself.
A denial that shows up a full day after a story breaks, and only after the president gets personally offended, isn’t really a denial. It’s a tell.
