Maggie Haberman Calls Out Trump’s Military Parade Amid DOGE Cuts: ‘A Messaging’ And ‘Reality Problem’
CNN commentator and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman called President Donald Trump’s planned military parade both a “messaging” and “reality problem” after all the attention around so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts.
Trump’s parade is estimated to cost upwards of $92 million, which some observers have floated as a ripe target for DOGE’s ostensible cost-cutting mission.
Haberman was a guest on Tuesday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins with guest anchor Jim Sciutto, who brought up the expense and the link to DOGE cuts.
The scribe told Sciutto that Trump doesn’t spend a “whole lot of time trying to rationalize” the apparent conflict, but it is a “problem”:
SCIUTTO: I want to begin, as I began the last time we tried this. Is it just a coincidence that this will take place not just on the Army’s 250th birthday, but President Trump’s own 79th birthday?
HABERMAN: It’s literally a coincidence that those two dates exist simultaneously.
But Jim, as you correctly noted before, President Trump has wanted a military parade for some time. He wanted it even before he went to that Bastille Day Parade in 2017. It was a foreign trip that I was on. And I was in the stands, as he was sitting, watching this parade. And it was quite vivid, how captivated he was by it. He has always fancied displays of military might. And it’s not surprising.
It’s also not surprising that the fact that this has gotten so big has met some criticism.
SCIUTTO: I mean, and listen, when he talks about leaders, the first thing he mentions is strength.
HABERMAN: Right.
SCIUTTO: Whether that’s Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin or the former al Qaeda leader of Syria.
HABERMAN: Right.
SCIUTTO: Is that what explains his fascination with parades, big military parades?
HABERMAN: Certainly part of it. I mean, remember, he is somebody who went to a military academy as a younger man through high school. He has always been fascinated by the military.
But you are correct that he identifies, a willingness to use force, or an ability to use force, with what animates a good leader, and what makes a good leader, and so, and he has often talked about that. And the fact that displaying military strength, in his mind, conveys some sense of strength, is not a coincidence, in terms of this parade.
It is going to cost a lot of money. There is the question of damage to the streets of Washington. But it is also coming under a celebration of America’s 250th year. And that is, I think, part of why some people might not be as opposed.
SCIUTTO: So, to your point, it’s going to cost a lot of money, tens of millions of dollars.
HABERMAN: Yes.
SCIUTTO: This, of course, follows what is still an ongoing attempt to cut the federal government, firing a lot of workers, the work of DOGE, taking the chainsaw to it.
HABERMAN: Yes.
SCIUTTO: How does the President reconcile those two things? Does he reconcile those two things?
HABERMAN: I don’t — yes, I don’t think he spends a whole lot of time trying to rationalize how these things don’t fit together, Jim. But you are correct that one involves spending a lot of money, at the same time that they are laying off workers, that they are cutting programs, that they are cutting programs that are vital to people’s health, to children’s health. And so, this is a messaging problem that he may or may not face.
There is also a reality problem for programs and jobs being cut. He usually deals with these kinds of things once he arrives at them. So we’ll see.
Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.
