CNN's John Berman asked Times reporter Maggie Haberman if the White House was ready for a Democratic House after the mid-term elections.
She pointed out there was a difference between what White House staff will figure out, and what Trump is going to do.
"You have seen an early discussion of this, Democrats and some of the White House were looking at what can they work on together to make the White House not look terrible and make the Democrats look like all they are doing is attacking, and I think it will be hard for the House Freedom Caucus and the president's base," she said.
"At the end of the day, the Democratic base is not going to go for that, so I think what you have next is the president saying to people, this is good for me, I have a dysfunctional congress, which is what they assume will ultimately be what it looks like, but just in terms of getting anything done, including possibly a budget, he believes that a divided government could be useful for him, whether that reality is the case."
"Just in terms of having another target -- "
"Yeah, something to run against. when you are the party in power, it can be hard to find somebody, as we have seen repeatedly, as he yelled about a Republican-controlled Congress as if they have nothing to do with him. You can expect there's going to be a rather broad menu of investigations that are going by House Committees if they are led by the Democrats, one of which you can assume will be in the Judiciary, where that goes we don't know but they know they will face a large number of subpoenas if Democrats take control of the House, and that's not a surprise to anybody. I don't think they are prepared for that reality, honestly," she concluded.
"'They' meaning the president and some others, and it's going to be very, very ugly."
