Courtesy of CNN.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times’ reporter Maggie Haberman yesterday picked apart  Donald Trump’s increasingly rambling answers to questions, which he has repeatedly tried to spin as a speaking tactic called the “weave.”

Haberman told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that “we are used to seeing him have a discursive speaking style but it has gotten more rambling, it has gotten more incoherent and it’s gotten longer.”

Trump’s speeches “were much shorter when he was in office” but now can stretch to 90 minutes long, Haberman noted. “His aides have been working to try to get them down for a while. But no, I think calling it the ‘weave’ is PR to try to explain why he’s talking this way.”

Haberman, who has reported on Trump for years and drawn his fury on multiple occasions, elsewhere during the discussion suggested Trump sometimes now seems “like he’s devoid of context” and “like he’s just sort of showing up and behaving in various ways.”

She put it partly down to Trump’s age.

Trump turned 78 in June and in July became the oldest ever presidential nominee after President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection campaign and endorsed his vice president, now-Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

“I think he’s older,” Haberman said of Trump. “I think there’s less of a filter than there used to be which is what happens when people get older.”

Sources close to Trump also say he’s “seemed somewhat different” since the attempt on his life in July and Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, Haberman added.

See the exchange with Kaitlin Collins below.  The discussion of the weave takes place at about the 3:20 mark.

Tony

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