Maggie Haberman claimed in a Sunday podcast interview that President Donald Trump’s well-documented affinity for attractive men and classic masculinity at first alarmed people in his administration.
“Talk Easy” host Sam Fragoso asked the New York Times journalist and author of “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” point blank if the president’s fascination with male looks goes any further than objectification.
“You report that Donald Trump has called men a number of names in this administration — ‘straight out of central casting.’ He’s called them handsome, beautiful,” Fragoso said. “He’s fawned over how well-endowed the golfer Arnold Palmer was … Does Donald Trump celebrate Pride after June?”
“I don’t know that Donald Trump has ever celebrated pride, period,” Haberman deadpanned. “But he certainly has a fixation and fascination with male looks.”
The New York Times’ White House correspondent added that this affinity for men has escalated in his second term as president, but was initially a cause for concern in 2016.
“This was something that startled a lot of people in his administration in Term One, and he has become much more overt about it. Certainly in the campaign and now,” she said.
Watch the full “Talk Easy” interview below:
Fragoso specifically asked about the president’s apparent infatuation with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Trump has invited the mayor to his Oval Office but has also called the Democratic socialist a “hardcore communist bastard.”
“On Mamdani, I mean, look. He certainly talks about women’s looks a lot, too,” Haberman responded. “But yes, Mamdani is generally viewed as a young, handsome man, which I think the president, uh, has a type on that front.”
Haberman’s latest book, co-written with her Times colleague Jonathan Swan, chronicles the first year of Trump’s second term as president and how the current administration differs from the first.
Watch the full exchange above.
