Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter who was the subject of President Donald Trump’s intense Twitter barbs this weekend, appeared on CNN’s New Day to respond Monday morning.

Trump took issue with a report Haberman penned describing Trump’s longtime mistreatment of his personal lawyer, whose home and office were raided by the FBI last week. Despite Cohen’s professed loyalty to the president, the Times reported that Trump’s legal team fears he might “flip.”

As a result, Trump derided her as a “third rate reporter named Maggie Habberman [sic]” who is “known as a Crooked H flunkie who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with.”

“This is a topic…that is hitting a nerve with him,” Haberman explained on New Day. “He and his lawyers are very anxious about the Southern District investigation into Michael Cohen.”

“The story was really not about destroying their relationship,” Haberman explained. “The president has destroyed their relationship pretty handily on his own over a very long period of time and that what is the story was about.”

“He is abusive, according to almost everyone I speak to, to most people in his orbit and family is not excepted from that. But he is particularly abusive to Cohen over the years. And the question becomes does, that come back to haunt him?”

Watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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