'That is a lie': NYT's Maggie Haberman pummels Trump's claims on taking coronavirus seriously from the start

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Wednesday delivered a scathing indictment of President Donald Trump's leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, which has been marked by frequent misstatements and outright lies.

While appearing on CNN, Haberman tore apart Trump's claim that he had taken the coronavirus crisis very seriously right from the beginning.

"He wasn't taking this particularly seriously," Haberman said. "He didn't want officials to talk about it publicly for fear of rattling the markets. He was angry when people who had been affected on cruise ships ended up brought back to the U.S. for quarantine... For him to go out and claim that he treated this as if it was a pandemic the whole time, that is a lie, it's not true."

Haberman also hammered Trump for not understanding the full scope of the problem and for keeping major government agencies on the sidelines for weeks.

"He doesn't take most of these departments or agencies particularly seriously unless they were -- unless it deals with immigration or law enforcement," she said. "If you are not initiating a strong response, and you are outsourcing this solely to health professionals, you're not going to mobilize major portions of the government in order to be able respond to this. Candidly, it's inexcusable that it took this long."

Watch the video below.