‘Wow’: Maggie Haberman Surprises CNN’s Abby Phillip When Asked If Melania Will Be At Biden-Trump Debate

CNN commentator and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman surprised anchor Abby Phillip with her prediction about whether Melania Trump would accompany former President Donald Trump to the CNN debate with President Joe Biden.

One consistent feature of recent political coverage — especially of the Stormy Daniels hush money trial in which Trump was found “guilty” on all 34 felony counts — has been the absence of Melania Trump at key moments.

But the debate is not a gut-churning hush money trial.

On Wednesday night’s edition of CNN NewsNight, Phillip asked Haberman — whom she called “one of the best-sourced reporters and a longtime Trump watcher and biographer” — if she expects Melania to show in a quick but telling moment:

PHILLIP: Yes, I’m sure it’s something also they’re preparing him to deal with from coming from Trump. They have also landed or I wonder if you hear that they have landed on answers to questions about the January 6th insurrection. That’s something that reportedly they’ve been trying to come up with some kind of Goldilocks solution to in debate prep. Have they?

HABERMAN: They have been talking about how they’re going to answer various questions related not just to the attack by a pro-Trump mob on the Capitol building during the certification of President Biden’s Electoral College win, but also how to address questions about the former president’s months of election lies, in which he claimed that the 2020 race was stolen from him, how they’re going to answer questions where President Biden is going to describe Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. [22:05:19]

And so they had been workshopping answers to those kinds of things.

I mean, among the things that they had looked at, and this was about two weeks ago, was talking about the supposed internet censorship or efforts to regulate social media by the government. That involves the suit that was tossed by the Supreme Court today. So, I think they’re still trying to figure out how to answer some of those questions.

PHILLIP: That’s very interesting. So, what about Trump’s family? Do you expect to see Melania Trump at the debate tomorrow night?

HABERMAN: I do not. It’s possible that will change, but I do not expect to see her now.

PHILLIP: Wow!

What do you hear about Trump’s thinking about the vice presidential choice that he faces? I mean, I think it’s not hard to miss that they are everywhere this week. This week seems to be kind of an intense ramping up of their presence on the airwaves in their tryouts to be his running mate. Many of them will be here in Atlanta. Is he close to a decision? Could it come in the coming days?

HABERMAN: I think it will definitionally come in the coming days you know, simply because he’s going to hit the hard deadline of when he has to nominate somebody. He has been clearly not in a huge hurry to make this decision or make this announcement.

I will say, he hadn’t said it at this point in 2016 either what he was going to do. He waited until a little closer to the convention. He’s got a couple of, you know, benchmark dates coming up, Abby, one of which is his sentencing on July 11th. And so I think that there is — in the Manhattan criminal case, I think there is going to be some activity around or before that, most likely.

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.

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