A prominent New York Times reporter said President Donald Trump seems to be struggling with the killing of MAGA ally Charlie Kirk, and acknowledged that fellow ally Steve Bannon was right about one big thing.
Maggie Haberman joined CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins on her show, "The Source," to discuss the fallout of Kirk's killingon Wednesday at an event at Utah Valley University.
Collins played clips of Trump and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R), in which Trump said "radicals on the left" are "vicious" and "horrible," while Cox used his speech to urge Americans to "find an off ramp" rather than point fingers at "the other side."
"I mean, the contrast there is evident," said Collins.
I think it depends on when somebody catches him as to exactly what he is going to say," said Haberman.
She noted that Trump and his circle were very close to Kirk.
"President Trump faced two assassination attempts, one near miss last year. And so all of that is a lot of the context for how people in the White House and the president are responding to this. I think that he is struggling with this in terms of how to deal with it," she said.
She added: "I think that we have seen moments when President Trump has, over time, episodically, been calmer and more of a traditional leader at various points in term one. I think that he is never going to be the person who is going to be sort of the clearest talker about this. I don’t think you’re ever going to hear him say something like what Governor Cox said. I think that he is saying what he thinks, and he is who he is. And I think that people knew that before they voted for him."
Haberman noted that Kirk was as "close as a sibling" to many in Trump's orbit.
That includes Donald Trump Jr., who said Kirk was like a brother.
Later in the segment, Haberman was asked about MAGA allies criticizing FBI Director Kash Patel's handling of the manhunt for Kirk's shooter.
Collins played a clip of Steve Bannon bashing Patel.
"I don’t know why Kash flew out there — you know, thousands of miles — to give us, hey, working partnerships and our great partnership in Utah. Okay, I got that. No offense to the law enforcement guys and the future of this. The public assumes that you’re working together as partnerships. Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a left-wing, Antifa-affiliated or aligned person. Okay, we want to find out about him. We want more details about him," Bannon said in the clip.
While authorities haven't mentioned anything about Antifa, Collins asked Haberman her thoughts on Patel's unusual actions. Patel flew to Utah and shared "confusing messages" about a suspect in custody and a person of interest, which contradicted what other authorities were saying.
"You have somebody like an FBI director who is very online, who comes from an online world and is pretty new to law enforcement from this side. And there is a lot of frustration among Republicans that I have heard, and with administration officials, that there was such a lag time in capturing this person who, as we said earlier, was not caught by law enforcement directly or by their work," she said.
Haberman added, "A lot of time lapsed between the shooting and the first claim that there was somebody in custody, which was all over the internet. And then that wasn’t the person. Then Kash Patel posted on X, 'We have the person in custody.' And then two hours later it was actually, 'That person is released.' There is a reason that things like that don’t happen. There is also a reason—Steve Bannon is correct — that usually you see the FBI director kind of head down, trying to figure out what's what, not flying around this way."
