News/Commentary

Maggie Haberman claims George H.W. Bush airport snub is why Trump ‘hates the Bushes’

October 10, 2022 | | Print Article

Fawning adoration has superseded the once-held desire of journalists to uncover the facts and report them without bias.

New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman provided a masterful display of this as she recounted a laundered story of an alleged encounter between former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump to a salivating audience that she admitted could not be confirmed for her book already criticized as “pure fiction.”

With the release of Haberman’s book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America” has come a promotional tour that brought the CNN analyst to Washington, D.C. Appearing at the bookstore Politics and Prose, CNN’s chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins asked the author if there was anything that had been left out of the book.

Responding with an “emphatic yes,” Haberman proceeded to muddy the waters as to whether what she was about to say was unconfirmed hearsay or merely learned too late to include to tell an unsubstantiated, roughly three-decade-old tale about Bush hiding behind a newspaper instead of speaking with Trump.

”H. W. Bush—newly out of office maybe a year or two, is at JFK Airport. He’s getting ready to go to a speech overseas and he’s reading a newspaper, possibly a newspaper I work for,” she began.

“And someone comes over to him and says, ‘Excuse me, Mr. President, Donald Trump is here and he’s wondering if you’d like to meet him,’” the story continued to laughter from the attendees evidently because Haberman framed the hearsay to promote a narcissistic view of Trump.

”Bush pulls the paper down and says ‘no,’ and then goes back to—and thus began a decades-long warmth toward the Bushes,” she attempted to joke of what she then claimed as the reason, “That’s why he hates the Bushes. So that’s one.”

According to the Daily Mail, Haberman couldn’t even get her retelling of this hole-filled story correct as Mark Updegrove had previously made the claim in his 2017 book “The Last Republicans” where the supposed encounter had taken place at Logan Airport in Boston.

What’s more, the implication was that Bush 41 and Trump had never crossed paths before, but the businessman had in fact met then-Vice President Bush at a 1988 campaign event at New York’s Waldorf Astoria.

As Trump had argued to mark the release of Haberman’s book, her writing contained “pure fiction” and it was an example of “Another Fake book…supposedly very boring and stale…In it she tells many made up stories, with zero fact checking or confirmation by anyone who know, like me.”

Of course, anyone opposed to Trump is a friend to corporate media and, as they did with the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), CNN has used the testimony of RINOs to detract from the favorability that Trump has with the base. The network once quoted Bush as saying of Trump, “I don’t like him. I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s a blowhard. And I’m not too excited about him being a leader.”

Despite those claims, Trump was still invited to attend the 41st president’s funeral upon his passing in 2019.

Kevin Haggerty
Latest posts by Kevin Haggerty (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles