IN (PARTIAL) DEFENSE OF MAGGIE HABERMAN

Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, who broke the story of Hope Hicks's impending resignation, is taking a lot of flak for this tweet:

Hope Hicks departure is NOT about yesterday's hearing, per multiple sources. She had planned it before, had been thinking about it for months. She had informed a very small number of people prior to Hill hearing that she planned to leave.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 28, 2018

Some responses:

Oh man, I don't want to be critical. But I can't believe that Haberman is actually going with this claim that Hicks departure is unrelated to yesterday, that she'd been thinking of leaving for some time and there's 'no perfect time.'

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 28, 2018

No one is suggesting that’s not what they’re saying, just that it isn’t credible. It was NYT reporting that broke the story of this very individual admitting to telling self-serving falsehoods just yesterday. https://t.co/4Zw0CIADj0

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 28, 2018

But April Ryan -- a reporter who can't be accused of being cozy with the president -- offered a defense of Haberman yesterday:

Yes during Rob Porter scandal she gave a tentative resignation. They gladly accepted it yesterday https://t.co/PQLbKlAlLA

— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) March 1, 2018

What’s a tentative resignation?

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 1, 2018

Ask Jeff Sessions

— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) March 1, 2018

Right exactly!

— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) March 1, 2018

Olivia Nuzzi summarizes what led up to that:

A silly tabloid story about Hicks dating another member of the White House staff, Rob Porter, quickly transformed into a serious tabloid story about allegations of physical abuse against Porter from both of his ex-wives. As the White House struggled to get its story straight (an ongoing struggle), Hicks was quickly identified as the reason for initial statements that leapt to Porter’s defense....

Various reports claimed Trump believed her judgment was compromised by her relationship, that she’d put the interests of her boyfriend over his own.

Is Nuzzi (whose piece is titled "The White House Didn’t Break Hope Hicks Overnight") also falling for spin? I think this rings true. Putting the interests of anyone else above those of Trump is, to Trump, the worst possible offense. So it seems quite possible that Hicks made up her mind to leave after that dressing-down from her boss, took steps to do so, and informed others in the White House. She may have decided to leave then and planned to do so at a moment when there was no apparent proximate cause for her departure, but then (as others have reported) she was chewed out by Trump after it emerged that she'd informed the House Intelligence Committee that she tells white lies on Trump's behalf, and so she decided she didn't care what people believed about the cause and effect -- she just wanted out.

The word "months" in Haberman's tweet is distracting. Haberman says that Hicks "had been thinking about [leaving] for months," but also says that "She had planned it before" yesterday. Those passages are in the same sentence, but Haberman doesn't say that the "before" when Hicks began planning to quit was "months ago." The Porter scandal was less than a month ago, but that's still "before."

Maybe you don't buy any of this. But Trump's narcissism makes me believe April Ryan, and thus, to some extent, Haberman.