The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman on Tuesday picked apart former president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump’s increasingly verbose answers to questions, which he has repeatedly tried to spin as a speaking technique called “weaving.”
Haberman told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that “we’re used to him having a discursive speaking style, but it has become increasingly verbose, incoherent and lengthy.”
Trump’s speeches “were much shorter when he was in power” but can now last as long as 90 minutes, Haberman noted. ‘His assistants have been trying to get them down for a while. But no, I think mentioning the ‘fabric’ is PR to try to explain why he talks this way.”
Haberman, who has reported on Trump for years and expressed his anger several times, suggested elsewhere during the discussion that Trump now sometimes seems “like he has no context” and “like he just shows up and behaves in different ways.”
She attributed it partly to Trump’s age.
Trump turned 78 in June and became the oldest presidential candidate ever in July after President Joe Biden abandoned his re-election campaign and endorsed his vice president, now-Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
“I think he’s older,” Haberman said of Trump. “I think there’s less of a filter than there used to be, and that’s what happens as people get older.”
Sources close to Trump also said he “seemed somewhat different” since the July attempt on his life and Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, Haberman added.