President Donald Trump's abrupt about-face this week to support sending more weapons to Ukraine after months of trying to coax Russia's Vladimir Putin into a "deal" to end the war, left New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who has covered the president for years, taken aback in a Tuesday evening interview on CNN.
"Do you think the president has changed his tune on Vladimir Putin?" asked Anderson Cooper. "Is this just the latest chapter in this relationship?"
"The only change in tune is the one you are hearing out loud, Anderson, and that's what he's saying in the moment today, but he has been building toward this for the last couple of weeks," said Haberman. "Remember, he said, I think it was around Memorial Day weekend, that he was considering sanctions on Russia, new sanctions on Russia. He did not go ahead with those and instead, he continued to try to see if there was some other way to get Putin back to the table. It's clear that he has decided that there isn't, absent this sort of more public presentation."
"My sense ... is that he wanted to say these things," said Haberman. "He wanted to condemn Putin, but he condemned him much more fully than we've heard him do at any point in the last 10 years, and certainly than I expected him to do in a Cabinet meeting today. Whether that just brings Putin back to the table, we'll see."
"But it's also important to remember, Anderson, this is happening right after the president said he was going to resume sending munitions to Ukraine," she added. "It is very clear that in suggesting that he might not continue to arm Ukraine, forget about the pause of the last two weeks, even prior to that, when the president has been a skeptic about aid to Ukraine, then you are leaving yourself with no leverage against Putin in trying to forge a deal here. He seems to have finally seen that."
Haberman then weighed in on the most bizarre aspect of the whole thing, which is that Trump claimed in the Cabinet meeting that he didn't even know who ordered the pause on munitions shipments to Ukraine.
"I feel like there's still so many unanswered questions about exactly what happened here," said Haberman. "We have heard various versions of it. I know that CNN reported earlier that this was coming from DOD ... I think more will be revealed here. If the Pentagon did do this on its own, it's pretty astonishing."
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