Maggie Haberman: Trump Too Old To Run Again But Allies Will Try To Help Him ‘Stay In Power’
CNN commentator and New York Times White House Correspondent Maggie Haberman said she believes President Donald Trump is too old to run for a third term, but also that allies will try to help him “stay in power” somehow.
Haberman sat for a new Vanity Fair interview conducted by Natalie Korach, roughly timed with the release of a new edition of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America — a new paperback edition with an updated afterword by the scribe.
Korach wrapped up the interview by asking for her insights on Trump’s flirtation with ending constitutional term limits for the president. Trump has been floating the idea of blowing off term limits for years, and one Republican has already introduced an amendment to allow it.
Haberman said that while you can’t take anything Trump says too lightly or too seriously, she doesn’t believe he’d try to run again for a number of reasons, including his age.
But she also left open the possibility that his allies will “try to find a way to help him stay in power”:
On a closing note, Trump has refused to quiet chatter of possibly even running for a third term.
More than quiet, I think he’s been encouraging. He clearly enjoys knowing that it bothers Democrats that he says this, that there is a troll aspect. But the thing with all of his trolls is they start out that way, like Canada as a 51st state, and then he socializes them. They take on a life of their own, or he breathes more of a life into them.
I think the attorney general said this is not real at one point, but what does that mean for three and a half years from now? I don’t believe that he is running for a third term, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that he is going to be 80 next year. So that makes me skeptical. But do I think that allies might continue to try to find a way to help him stay in power? That’s always possible, and we’ve seen that before.
The paperback for Confidence Man dropped Tuesday.
