NYT's Maggie Haberman Says Trump Is 'Struggling' With Messaging Around Charlie Kirk's Death

The president blamed "the radical left" in an Oval Office address on Wednesday, mere hours after the conservative activist was killed.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Friday said President Donald Trump is “struggling” with the death of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was fatally shot Wednesday at Utah Valley University. She also tried to add some context to the president’s divisive rhetoric.

Trump on Thursday blamed left-leaning “lunatics” for the shooting, but also urged his supporters to respond to the tensions with “nonviolence.” On CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins,” Haberman was asked to explain the contrast between those statements.

“I think it depends on when somebody catches him as to exactly what he is going to say,” Haberman said Friday. “I think that a lot of his folks are, look — you know this, Kaitlin — so many people around President Trump were very close to Charlie Kirk.”

She went on to note that Trump himself was close to Kirk, whose conservative nonprofit advocacy group, Turning Point USA, has established hundreds of college campus charters across the country. Kirk was also friends with Donald Trump Jr.

“And President Trump faced two assassination attempts, one near-miss last year,” said Haberman, providing “context for how people in the White House and the president are responding to this. I think that he is struggling with this in terms of how to deal with this.”