Maggie Haberman defends NYT coverage of Trump’s abysmal coronavirus response after Fox News’ Sean Hannity rails against paper's reporting

Fox News’ Sean Hannity recently appeared traumatized by a New York Times piece that described how badly the president dropped the ball during the coronavirus pandemic — and he has been attacking Times reporter Maggie Haberman for the report.

Published on April 11, the article that triggered Hannity was headlined “He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus.” The article offered elaborate details on all the warnings that Trump, in January and February, was given from health and intel officials about COVID-19’s destructive potential — warnings Trump didn’t act on.

Haberman was one of six Times reporters who worked on the article: the others were Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes, Michael D. Shear and Mark Mazzetti. But Hannity singled Haberman out in a barrage of April 12 tweets, never actually refuting the solid, in-depth reporting in the Times article.

“Hey .@maggieNYT,” Hannity wrote. “@Nytimes You should Thank .@Potus for the Travel Ban(s) put in place while you and .@Nytimes were fixated on impeachment and advising people to travel to China. #NYTimesEpicFail.”

In a separate tweet, the Fox News host posted, “.@maggieNYT .@Nytimes it was your paper telling people it is safe to travel to China and your paper called Coronavirus "Trump Virus; If You Are Feeling Awful, You Know Who To Blame. #NYTimesEpicFail.”

Hannity also insulted Haberman over some things that had nothing to do with coronavirus: “.@maggieNYT .@Nytimes you and that dying paper of yours is useless. 1- Russian Collusion-Wrong. 2- Ukraine Impeachment you ignore Joe/Hunter. 3-Premeditated fraud on the Fisa Court with HRC’s dirty Russian dossier— you were MIA.” And Haberman responded to that one, posting, “Hunter Biden story was first reported in (checks notes) the New York Times.”

Haberman, in a separate tweet, pointed out that of the six reporters who worked on the Times article, she was the one Hannity singled out. “Weird. Six bylines on our story about how the president handled the growing threat of the coronavirus but just one he’s focused on,” Haberman wrote. “Something there but I can’t put my finger on it.”