President Donald Trump hurled a series of insults at New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman on Saturday and boasted about his physical and mental condition, just hours after the journalist referred to the president’s health as a “black box.”
“Maggot Hagerman has covered me incorrectly for ten years,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, reprising a pejorative nickname for Haberman. “Her book is a joke! 90% of it is Fake News.”
His remarks then turned more menacing.
“She has made a living off her bad reporting, and will pay the price when our Multi Billion Dollar Lawsuit against The Failing New York Times gets to Court, which should not be that long,” he wrote.
Truth Social/@realDonaldTrump
He claimed he doesn’t “mind” bad press if it’s correct, but he does mind “Fake Reporting.” After interjecting that “Maggot is a loser!” he added that if she “ever wrote the true story” about him, it “would actually be quite boring, but loaded with lots of SUCCESS.”
Earlier that day, Haberman had appeared on MS Now’s “The Weekend,” where host Jonathan Capehart asked her about Trump’s “mental acuity.”
“His health is like a black box inside that administration much more than almost any other issue,” Haberman replied. “And if there is an area of failure in the reporting for us, it was this, and trying to ― not mental, per se, but just his health, how he is, why he has gone to Walter Reed [hospital] several times and they have released less and less information.”
Watch the remarks that appear to have set Trump off below:
The journalist emphasized she did not “feel equipped to answer” the question of Trump’s “mental acuity,” but added that it’s reasonable to ask questions about Trump’s age.
“I think that people can very legitimately question whether 80-year-old people should be president,” she said.
In his post, Trump noted that he “just finished a perfect physical at Walter Reed.” The White House told HuffPost he was referring to the physical he completed in May. He also once again bragged about having “aced” a cognitive test — an exam given to check for signs of dementia.
“Got every question right,” he wrote. “Few people in Washington, D.C., could do so, including Maggot and her flunky associate, Jonathan Swan. I would be willing to bet they couldn’t get 50% of the questions right.”
