By Lauren Irwin - 10/16/24

Senior political correspondent Maggie Haberman said she believes former President Trump has gotten “more incoherent” as he wages his third White House campaign.

“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,” Haberman, a New York Times reporter and CNN analyst, said Tuesday night on CNN’s “The Source.”

CNN host Kaitlan Collins played video from Trump’s interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait in Chicago earlier in the day. The former president was pressed multiple times for not answering a question about a potential Google monopoly, and instead provided answers about international affairs and the military.

At one point, Trump described his roundabout answers as “the weave,” saying “as long as you end up in the right location at the end.”

When pressed on whether Google should be broken up, Trump responded with an answer about the Justice Department lawsuit in Virginia over voter rolls.

“The question is about Google, President Trump,” Micklethwait said.

In her appearance on CNN highlighted by Mediaite, Haberman noted that in recent weeks, Trump has gone on the offense against his Vice President Harris along with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz , questioning their mental acuity in particular.

The Harris-Walz campaign targeted Trump’s interview with Micklethwait, saying the former president “rambled on and on” and appeared to be “angry and unfocused.”

Democrats have sought to target Trump’s long speeches by noting some rally attendees leaving events early.

“If you look back at the speech lengths from a couple of years ago, they were much shorter when he was in office. Now, they are 75 minutes, 90 minutes,” Haberman said Tuesday. “His aides have been working to try to get them down for a while.”

Haberman said she thinks Trump calling his speech patterns “the weave” is just “PR to try to explain why he’s talking this way.”

Trump previously spoke about “the weave” on a podcast last week.

“I do a thing called ‘the weave,'” Trump said. “And there are those that are fair that say, ‘This guy is so genius.’ And then others would say, ‘Oh, he rambled.’ I don’t ramble.”