criminals. members of the press, what the [ bleep ]. hold on a second. it s these questions that you know the answers to. i mean, connect the dots about what he s been doing in this country. noah, wtf, man. did you get that right? i m not the biggest beto o rourke fan, but i think he s got it right in this case. when he happens to read from a tell prompter once and says something that s not crazy treat it like, the president acted for presidential today. it s crazy. he has repeatedly done racist stuff day after day, month after month, year after year and you have to call him out on it. can we agree that it s absurd to the extent new york times has done a lot of top aggressive reporting and holding donald trump to account? the idea they re in the pocket of big trump is self-evidently
all right, thanks so much, erica. joining me now is maggie haberman, white house correspondent for the new york times and cnn political analyst. maggie, i know it s a risky proposition but i want to read you a new york times headline from the article you wrote this morning. one of them, it says trump uses a day of healing to deepen the nation s divisions. that was really on display the last 24 hours, a dizzying array of complaints and grievances from the president while he was visiting with first responders in these two cities. what s your assessment? john, i think this is only surprising if people haven t been paying attention for not just the last 2 1/2 years but 4 years. we have seen repeatedly where there is a national crisis, he gives a speech off a tell prompter and then he undercuts his own words either before it or after it. he gave an address on monday where he did talk about white supremacy, and he did disavow
nationalism and white supremacy sims and the manifesto the shooter wrote in el paso. talking about expanding domestic terrorism laws, it s not difficult to see how that could be cast highlighting the president s rhetoric and separate from the fact the president can t talk about these things or struggles to talk about these things when he s not on a tell prompter. until we see the president make an approach like that, we won t see them entertain things. i wouldn t be surprise if we saw presidential candidates talk about this or talk about how this is one of the reasons we need to get the president out of office because this is something we can immediately talk about doing given a rise in white
this morning. that s right. so striking about watching his speech yesterday was at this point in his presidency, anyone following him closely understands president trump can stand up and read words from a tell prompter, although he did have that toledo flub, it s worth noting. he can deliver a speech. we have this version of himself, the scripted version, the version aides want to portray in these moments, offering a repudiation of trump in other forms. himself on twitter, rallies, general behavior, the way he spoke during the campaign and often follows a pattern that emerges today, he will give the scripted thing sometimes looks like a hostage video and unhappy with the coverage and forced into it and begin again to lash out at twitter and reallies and other comments and sort of say a bit of everything, but the truest version of himself often,
any mention of assault weapons or is this going to be the president s path? reporter: this morning president trump suggested tying the background checks to reform after the shooting in texas that targeted immigrants. what he didn t indicate in his tweets this morning is whether he supported legislation passed in the house earlier this year requiring background checks that the white house threatened to veto. president trump also has yet to address white nationalism and the gunman in el paso targeting hispanics and immigrants. trump has warned of an invasion of undocumented at the southern border, and some of that was in the manifesto by the gunman. president trump has yet to acknowledge his rhetoric. we re going to learn more about president trump s plan when he addresses the nation any moment now. white house officials tell me the president is expected to introduce preliminary policy ideas in what will be prepared remarks from the tell prompter.