Donald Trump is flailing this campaign because he has no strategy — only a “white grievance” message that is dramatically out of step with America today, New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman said Monday.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked Haberman if “stoking racial division” has “now become part of the president’s re-election strategy?”

Haberman responded: “I want to reject two things that you just said … One is ‘now become,’ and the other is ‘strategy.’ This isn’t a strategy. This is what the president prefers doing and what he wants to talk about — and what he has consistently talked about for several years, in fact, several decades.”

But Trump’s message stands out now because it’s “so out of step with where the rest of the country is in this movement,” Haberman added. She called anti-racism protests that have swept the nation “one of the biggest civil rights movements in decades … against systemic racism in policing [and] in other areas of American life.”

Trump is instead “choosing to talk about the Confederate flag, he is choosing to demand an apology from the one Black NASCAR driver,” she added.

On Monday, Trump called on NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace to apologise for what the US president falsely described as a “hoax” involving a noose in Wallace’s racetrack garage. The FBI determined last month that the rope had been hanging on the garage door since last year to pull down the door — before Wallace was using the stall — and was not a racist message, but also never said the noose was planted as part of a hoax.

Trump has recently called the message “Black Lives Matter” a “symbol of hate” and anti-racism protesters “angry mobs.”

“He is playing into white grievance politics that did get him elected in 2016 … he thinks this will help him again. This is a very different election,” Haberman said.

Hear Haberman’s comments in the video up top.