As the war in Iran stretches into its third week, Donald Trump shifted his focus to waging an online battle against New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who he labeled “another sleazebag writer” in a written attack via Truth Social.
“Maggot Hagerman, just another SLEAZEBAG writer for The Failing New York Times, insists on writing false stories about me, even though she fully knows and understands that the exact opposite of anything she says is usually the truth,” Trump wrote in a Saturday post.
“In any event, I’m thinking of adding Maggot, and some of her “associates,” into my Florida based Lawsuit against The Times which, very happily, seems to be proceeding nicely. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT,” the president concluded.
Trump refiled his $15 billion lawsuit against The Times in October 2025. It was initially rejected by a federal judge due to its length.
“As we said when this was first filed and again after the judge’s ruling to strike it: this lawsuit has no merit,” a spokesperson for The New York Times said at the time. “Nothing has changed today. This is merely an attempt to stifle independent reporting and generate PR attention, but The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics.”
It’s not entirely clear what prompted the attack on Haberman. She contributed to a March 15 article for The Times that described the president’s goals in Iran as “dauntingly ambitious” and the country as “a weakened enemy that has nevertheless proved adept at extracting a fast-rising economic price for the United States.” Haberman does not share a byline on that article.
Prior to that, she wrote about the ousting of Kristi Noem on March 5. Haberman also described Trump’s legal pursuit of former FBI Director James Comey as “vindictive prosecution” in September 2025.
“I think that most defense lawyers would probably use that post in some kind of a legal filing trying to get this case thrown out, be it arguing … a vindictive prosecution argument which, it’s not often successful to make that claim, but there can be other arguments against the evidence,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper at the time.
“And I think, you know, that post plus the fact that there were prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia who put in a memo that they didn’t think that the case was strong enough to take to trial, that they thought that it was too weak to try to win a conviction on. All of that could raise red flags,” she added.
The attack on Haberman adds to the president’s growing list of insults about female reporters.
