'Nancy has a lot of cards to play': NYT reporter tells CNN how Pelosi will run circles around Trump

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN on Thursday that President Donald Trump may not know what he's getting into as he prepares for a long battle with incoming Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

While discussing the president's plan to wait out the Democrats and force them to cave on his demands for border wall funding, Haberman said that Pelosi had very little incentive to cut a deal.

"The problem for the president is Nancy Pelosi has a lot of cards to play," she said. "Why would she give in?"

Later in the interview, Haberman elaborated to say that Pelosi at the moment had the wind at her back given her party's 40-seat gain in the House of Representatives this past fall.

"She has a lot more power right now than she has had at any point in many years," she said. "And Democrats are not eager to hand the president something where he can say, 'Look, I got this done.'"

Haberman went on to explain that Pelosi has deployed a strategy of making Trump sound "weak" by mocking him for supposedly being so desperate for a wall that he'd accept funding for a beaded curtain across the Southern border.

"She is showing him that she is not someone who is going to be pushed around," she said.

Watch the video below.