CNN host Jake Tapper on Thursday asked Haberman, who’s also an analyst for the news network, what the fight was “really all about.”

“I can’t profess to understand exactly why they’re leaning … hard on this,” she said. “Obviously, you saw the first lady say something because she was partly what the joke was about. People don’t have to like every single joke. People can actually find jokes distasteful or find them unfunny or unfair or what have you. But this is free speech. And that is the essence of what Trump claimed to be fighting for in 2024 after saying that the censorious left had cracked down on conservatives too much. And now he is using the apparatus of government to go after a network over this joke.”

“He was still entitled to say that, whatever anybody thought,” Haberman said.