Maggie Haberman questions wisdom of electing 80-year-olds as Trump toils to stay awake

New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman declined to render a clinical verdict this week on whether President Donald Trump is in cognitive decline, but she drew a pointed distinction between the president's age, which she said plainly shows, and the behavior critics call erratic, which she insisted is nothing new.

Haberman, co-author of the bestselling "Regime Change," sat down on The Jim Acosta Show, where Acosta asked point-blank: "Maggie, do you think that he's all there?"

Her answer was hedged and deliberately incomplete.

"I have no indication that he's, I mean, obviously that I'm not a doctor and we don't see him as often as we used to," she said, before running through the physical questions trailing the 80-year-old president.

Haberman cited hand bruising that has persisted for close to two years, an aspirin regimen she said is unusually large based on what she has read from experts, swelling ankles, and the episodes of eye closure at public events — "either sleeping or transcendental meditation or God knows what."

She acknowledged watching Trump sleep during his 2024 criminal trial and flagged the shrinking transparency around his health, including more frequent Walter Reed trips and a physical conducted by 22 specialists the White House would not explain.

"These are all valid questions for a president," she said.

But she offered a counterweight that she and co-author Jonathan Swan spent an hour fact-checking their book with Trump and detected nothing amiss.

"I did not notice a difference, but again, we only see what we see," she demurred.

Pressed on whether Trump is simply as erratic as ever, Haberman refused the clinical frame but held firm on the behavior.

"He is exactly who he has always been," she said. "Do I think that he's 80 and that shows? Yes, I do. But that's a different question." The cognition debate, she added, "tends to be clinical about him. And I am not equipped to answer that" — leaving, in her words, "a legitimate conversation out there about whether 80-year-olds are wise to keep electing."