But, if he does, what do you think a second Donald Trump presidency term would look like? Todays press culture thrusts reporters onstage, parsing their judgments and perspectives as part of a ceaseless Twitter meta-drama about journalistic integrity. She's former transportation secretary. In late April, Haberman spoke on (yet another) panel, this one at the 92nd Street Y, with her colleague Alex Burns. Just as he didn't back down after being accused of sexual assault, she says he is unlikely to walk away from this fight or resign. For his first term, Haberman has said, he wanted to campaign more than he wanted to be elected; now he wants to be elected without all the travails of campaigning. To cover Trump is almost definitionally to repeat yourself: its a clich-ridden beat, strewn with familiar caveats and rehearsals of his rehearsals of what people are saying. In the book, Trump tells Haberman that he makes the same point over and over to drum it into your beautiful brain. Haberman told me that she does it because she has to. From Eisenhower to Biden, questions of age have persisted. Trump responded, jokingly, "Really? And I think that the people who he would put into key jobs would be very alarming to a number of people across Washington. (Nancy worked on projects for Trump's business but says she never met him.). She covered his real estate business when she was a New York tabloid reporter before moving to Politico and later The Times. As the 2024 race gears up, the Confidence Man and his chronicler have become each others context, bound together and propelled by desires that both are and arent their own. "But I also know he can't allow himself to ever quit." Amazingly detailed scenes here, including Jeffrey Clark, whose devices were recently seized by federal officials, holding court at an event in the spring The former President is not what he seems, she said, but hes not nothing. 2023 Getty Images. While the president and the reporter couldn't seem more differentTrump, the flamboyant tycoon and Manhattan establishment aspirant known for his devil- may-care mendacity; and Haberman, a political insider known for her straight-shooting truth tellingthe points at which their histories and personalities converge are revealing about both the media and the president himself. "This is the book Trump fears most.". He is who he is and he's not going to change. Her multitasking and compartmentalizing, which the press has covered tirelessly, almost seem like necessary steps in the quarantining of orderindividual and psychic as well as shared and politicalfrom chaos. I do not want you to come away with that impression. CNN, for whom she is a political analyst, called. "This is a president who is always selling. Perhaps he glimpsed himself as if in a mirror. Haberman says her mirth had to do with the ridiculousness of talking momentum so early in the campaign; Trump took it as her mocking his chances of winning the Republican nomination. She was a fixture on cable news, her face framed by eyeglasses that Trump, who shares her aptitude for pithy description, accused of being smudged.. The quick-hit rhythm that Trump and Haberman were both fine-tuning teed them up perfectly for today's Twitter-paced news environment. She stared. She said that she had never approved of anything Trump had doneevaluating him is not her job. According to Hutchinson, Passantinos phone rangit was the Times reporter Maggie Haberman. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. ", Trump has also sent her his famous press clippings with Sharpie notes on them, mostly with criticisms, but at least once with praise. She says they were talking about infrastructure when, "out of nowhere," he raised the This Week laugh. 14-Day Free Returns. How does he see the truth? She glanced at it, then apologized. "She is literally always doing four things," says her friend and former New York Post colleague Annie Karni. What Trump tries to do, Haberman told me, is create realities for himself and everyone else. But his conjuring is notshe searched for the right wordfriendly; theres a malevolence to it. That must have been a long time ago. "I do not think he is enjoying the job particularly, and that is based on reporting," she says. He noticed right away that Haberman had talent. Mostly, copy kids at the Post did errands and administrative work, but once a week they would be named "Josephine reporter" or "Joe reporter" of the day and sent out to learn the ropes. She was accused of skewing her coverage in exchange for access (a claim she rejects)these allegations sometimes came from the same critics who bristled at her papers studious impartiality. "The news was something my dad did." Subscribe to Here's the Deal, our politics newsletter. Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent who joined The New York Times in 2015 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trumps advisers and their connections to Russia. By Kenneth P. Vogel,Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt. "Can I join you guys? Read Maggie Haberman", "New York Times Staffing Up For 2016 Election With Maggie Haberman Hire", "How Tabloids Helped NY Times' Maggie Haberman Ace Trump White House", "Maggie Haberman leaves huge hole at Politico, moves to New York Times", "Politico's Senior Political Reporter Maggie Haberman Joins New York Times", "The leakiest White House I've ever covered", "Maggie Haberman Hits Back In Twitter Spat With 'Trump Adviser' Sean Hannity", "Biden 'is planning to run again' in 2024", "The Trump Presidency Is Ending. Yes, I can! A reader wondering whether to be surprised by such carelessness, such corruption, gets her answer: yes and no. Donald Trump reading The New York Times at his Greenwich, Connecticut home in 1987. Trumps performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates. Haberman, for her part, has been on the Trump beat for decades. The Getty Images design is a trademark of Getty Images. It would look like him. 1996 - 2023 NewsHour Productions LLC. The former President once told her that he found air travel spooky.. Maggie Haberman / New York Times: DeSantis to Visit Early Primary States, Selling His Florida Record . It narrates how he and his siblings cut off medical funding for his brothers infant grandson, who was born with a disorder that led to cerebral palsy, in order to punish some of his relatives during an estate dispute. Washington, D.C.,s power players, a wider swath of whom than wishes to admit it has Habermans number saved, grew habituated to her presence, if not exactly thrilled by it. "What do they thinkthat it's going in a secret newspaper?". I can't think of anyone whose behavior in typical U.S. political fashion he admires right now. And, again, I could name many others. Haberman heard rumors of colleagues fielding calls from the magnate during which hed dangle gossip items. There was a lot of duking it out, she said. "I'm wearing a sweatshirt, and my hair is in a bun," she told the producer. [1] In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. "Can I come back?" [19], In 2022, Haberman published a book on the Trump presidency called Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. The former presidents lawyers cited executive privilege, a tactic they have used with other ex-Trump aides. "[18], She has been credited with becoming "the highest-profile reporter" to cover Trump's campaign and presidency, as well as "the most-cited journalist in the Mueller report". When Haberman demurs, politely but without apology, he is momentarily stumped. Haberman has spent a good part of the past seven years immersed in Trumps deranged fantasia of American life. Premium Access. And it's just hard to know how much is that vs. he's convinced himself of this. Access the best of Getty Images with our simple subscription plan. She doesn't see any climactic resolution to the Trump saga coming anytime soon. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. "That's all I care about." "She grew up in an environment where journalism that was as accurate as humanly possible was practically a religion," he says. I just have totems, she said, hoarsely, because her press tour had already begun and she was losing her voice. I just want to go back to the psychiatrist line. [4], Haberman's career began in 1996 when she was hired by the New York Post. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/maggie-habermans-new-book-confidence-man-details-trumps-rise-to-prominence, Donald Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in Mar-a-Lago dispute, Rex Tillerson testifies at corruption trial of Trump adviser, Trumps embrace of QAnon raising concerns about future political violence, How Trump may have violated the Presidential Records Act, "confidence man: the making of donald trump and the breaking of america". Lyndon Johnson gave preference to Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Walter Lippmann, and Lippmann had once gone so far as to secretly write part of a speech for Johnsonand then write a story praising the speech. And this is one of the things that makes establishing a baseline of discernible truth around him so incredibly hard. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. We know he does this. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Parts of Confidence Man seem to wrestle with its authors role in amplifying Trumps lies. Habermans Trump is also the Page Six demimondaine who flashed his grin on Sex and the City (Donald Trump, you just dont get more New York than that, Carrie mused) and the developer who perennially stiffed his contractors and enraged the Fifth Avenue lite by destroying two iconic friezes. Passantino, her lawyer at the time, was in a taxi with her on the way to a restaurant. When Trump gave an undisciplined press conference a few weeks into his presidency, the DC press and pols were comparing it to late-stage Nixon, Thrush says. I think his niece is right. "Speak of the devil," she said into the phone. When I asked her about these conceptual scoops, she corrected me: Theyre contextual scoops. Context is key to Habermans project. [2] They have three children and live in Brooklyn. I would argue he is now occupying the most expensive and valuable real estate in the country. Haberman was learning the same arthow to "punch through" in a daily news cycle, as New York Times political reporter and frequent collaborator Alexander Burns puts it. Is there anyone in political life he truly admires? Highlights from the week in culture, every Saturday. I just wanted to make the point that we were engaged in some revisionist history. Donald Trumps support in the citys wealthy political circles is waning, as 2024 rivals and potential candidates, including Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, make the rounds. Meanwhile, Trump, still revelling in his defeat of Hillary Clinton, cast her as another antagonist, the embodiment of the Failing New York Times. She and the President invited doppelgnger comparisons: the flashy fabulist and the buttoned-down institutionalist locked in each others sights. Collect, curate and comment on your files. Haberman and Thrush again, with their colleague Matthew Rosenberg. She wore an iteration of her usual uniform: black pants, black jacket, reddish-pink blouse, and an air of bone-crushing fatigue. She almost never turns her phone off. [20][21] A Guardian review of the book describes her as "the New York Times' Trump whisperer", and describes the book as "much more than 600 pages of context, scoop and drama.it gives Trump and those close to him plenty of voice and rope. Once, in July 2015, she did laugh, on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, at something Democratic congressman Keith Ellison said about Trump having "momentum" going into the primaries. Haberman is famously formidable. The phone buzzed again. "She's got it with her at all times," says her husband, Dareh Gregorian. A new era of strength competitions is testing the limits of the human body. At the annual conference this week, conservative celebrities like Mike Lindell and Kari Lake will attend, as will Donald Trump, but many possible 2024 rivals are skipping it. By the time Trump formally announced his candidacy in June 2015 and Haberman was assigned to his campaign, she'd been reporting on him for a decade. What erodes that is very dangerous." Hutchinson asked her counsel not to take the call. Some of his aides laughed. I think, to quote someone who knew him years ago who said this to me a couple of months back, a second Trump presidency would be very heavily driven by spite. Her coverage is often grounded in statements about Trumps characterthat he thrives on chaos but loves routine, or that he stirs up infighting among his cronies. I mean, how does he take in facts? Glass ceiling: Tishby, an Israeli native who now calls Los Angeles home, joined the podcast to discuss her new book . I care about getting it right. Maggie Haberman, political corespondent for The New York Times, reporting at a Bernie Sanders rally at Hunter's Point South Park in New York, April 18, 2016. Do you think, at his core, that he is racist? "I love being with her," he says. The one who has undoubtedly spent more time covering him than any other is New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, who has been covering Mr. Trump since the 1990s. I mean, we know it is not true. She was, however, one of the most relentless and consistent. Her measured stance infuriates Trump's detractors, who harangue her on Twitter for "normalizing" the president. Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? And while there are still hard feelings toward the Times from Hillary Clinton operatives and votersthey complain that the paper obsessed over Clinton's e-mail scandal but failed to give commensurate ink to Trump's ties to Russia and potential conflicts of interest, among other subjectsmultiple people I spoke to who worked for Clinton are careful to draw a distinction between Haberman and the institution of the Times. No one suggests her male colleagues are "wooing" Trump. 75 and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a private school in the Bronx. She believes in the power of breaking incremental newsnot holding every-thing back for a long read. And she clearly knows the family dynamic and knows him and all of these family stories very, very well, better than anyone. Pictures of the incident show Haberman talking nonstop as an uncharacteristically silent Koch stares at her, slightly astonished. This article appears in the July 2017 issue of ELLE.. [15] Haberman was criticized for applying a double standard in her reporting about the scandals involving the two presidential candidates of the 2016 election. "Short fiction, always somewhat curiously resembling my own life," she says. You don't even know where she isshe could be anywhere. He's tweeted, at various points, that she's "third-rate," "sad," and "totally in the Hillary circle of bias," and he almost exclusively refers to the Times as "failing" and "fake news." The scene underscores a question that has shadowed Haberman for the past several years. I think that theres a misunderstanding among certain aspects of our readership about what it is we do, she said. As Twitter blew up as Trump compounded the backlash against Comey's dismissal with an incredible series of missteps, Haberman shot out an exasperated tweet of her own: "What is amazing is capacity of people who watched the campaign to be surprised by what they are seeing. There's a malevolence around how he does this a lot of the time, but he treats facts as if they are things that can be either discarded or invented or created or augmented, but facts are an ongoing, fluid thing with him. Ashley Parker, now a Washington Post White House correspondent but then one of Haberman's colleagues at the Times, says Haberman confirmed the tip and wrote the story on her phone during the graduation. He is very aware that, if you repeat something over and over again, it can turn it into something real. But it gives her added credibility when she argues, as she did when Trump fired Comey, that one of Trump's aberrant moves is a big deal. You know, he plopped himself down on Fifth Avenue"a reference to the 58-story Trump Tower"and he still was not treated seriously by New York's business elite. What he needs his attention. All rights reserved. [3] She is a 1991 graduate of Ethical Culture Fieldston School, followed by Sarah Lawrence College where she obtained a bachelor's degree in 1995. The man with the orange hair is making a scene. Whereas most of the country knows Trump foremost as a reality-TV star from his time on The Apprentice, Haberman remembers that he was a New York institution before he became a national figure. Hicks echoed Conway, e-mailing me a few days later that Haberman was "a true professional. Is she, in fact, friendly to Trumps people? Feeling is also not her job. In the weeks before John Wayne Gacys scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate. ", Haberman's bullshit detector is appreciated by partisans on both sides: Even if they can't spin her, they know the other side won't be able to spin her either. Haberman was not the only reporter to see the underlying logic in the daily bedlam emanating from Washington. As we were talking, her phone buzzed. So, what exactly is in his heart, I think, becomes irrelevant. [9], Haberman was hired by The New York Times in early 2015 as a political correspondent for the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. An essay by Toni Morrison: The Work You Do, the Person You Are.. We encounter all the usual suspects: Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway and Paul Manafort and Hope Hicks. Throughout our conversation, she gave practiced, useful answers that slipped easily into anecdote, and she continually steered the topic away from herself. It was like watching someone juggle fire while standing on a tightrope. "In the beginning, you're going to a lot of crime scenes. I first met Maggie Haberman in 2014. "I have respect for you, sir, but you have called me to thank me about my coverage over the past year and a half at different points," she told him. " She's like my psychiatrist . Why it matters: Destroying records that should be preserved is potentially illegal. "Maggie's whole career has been about grabbing people by the lapels," Burns says. She wrote fiction. Donald Trump will be basking in affection from activists at CPAC on Saturday. Ad Choices. Millions of high-quality images, video, and music options are waiting for you. And I think, sometimes, he seems less clear. One attendee chastised another for looking at her phone, saying that its light was distracting, as though we were all at a cliffhanger movie. I dont want this out there, she remembers saying. She's e-mailed me from the NYPD tow pounda place she said she'd already visited twice that month. The Manhattan district attorneys office is scrutinizing the former presidents role in the hush money payment to a porn star. And so it is easy for people to convince him that something is true, when it is not. Like, floating in the sky.". Haberman, who's known for her extensive contacts in Trump's circle, revealed behind-the-scenes details of Trump's political career in her book, such as that Trump considered refusing to leave the. How an unemployed blogger confirmed that Syria had used chemical weapons. Many of the juiciest Trump pieces have been broken by her: That story about him spending his evenings alone in a bathrobe, watching cable news? Trump, Haberman writes, was usually selling, saying whatever he had to in order to survive life in ten-minute increments. He was interested primarily in money, dominance, power, bullying, and himself. In Herman Melvilles novel The Confidence-Man, from 1857, the title character is a shapeshifter who remakes himself in the image of others desires. (The Police Athletic League, a cause beloved by the former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, profited handsomely from his shamelessness, Haberman writes.) In a December 19th front-page article, she portrayed the candidate as a shrunken presence on the political landscape. Yet, if a single overarching lesson emerges from the body of work that Haberman has assembled over the past half decade, its that the press and the American public discount Trump at our peril. Boards are the best place to save images and video clips. The books thesisTrumps gonna Trumpis pointedly unglamorous, in keeping with Habermans deflationary assessments of Trumps character. A lot of people would let it go, but Haberman signals to the hostess. Well, we know that he I mean, and you have written this. Tap into Getty Images' global scale, data-driven insights, and network of more than 340,000 creators to create content exclusively for your brand. And, early on, he figured out how to neutralize threats by hiring them, as when he lured Anthony Gliedman, the housing commissioner who denied his request for a tax break on Trump Tower, and whom Trump subsequently threatened and sued, to come work for him several years later. 2023 Cond Nast. He has called you, essentially, like his psychiatrist, whether you agree with that term or not. She said that this notion is just not realistic: in a climate of partisan absolutism, distrust of the media, and the coarsening of norms, the context around the news itself has shifted. Over time, however, as Haberman did not get beat, did not get beat, he realized she was for real. The tabloid playbook, which Haberman memorized and which Trump enacted, reflected a sense that journalists and subjects could feed off one another, that the whole enterprise might be boiled down to eyes and, eventually, wallets. "The Triborough and Empire State view of Trump is very different from the national view of Trump," she points out. Questions about her process elicited similarly guarded answers. She catches herself. "If you're going to come at her," says a Democratic operative, "you've got to come correct. "There has been a very protracted shocked stage in Washington, and I think people have to move past that. The audience was, as always, hanging on her every word, hungry to have her translate Trump into someone they could understand. The book is frank about Trumps cruelty. "It's like she's in the building, but she's not even in the city. Maggie Haberman, thank you so much for joining us. A lot of Rudy Giuliani. This book is her most sustained attempt to pin him down. A word I didnt use in the book, she told me, but that a lot of people whove worked for [Trump] use, is nihilist. In Confidence Man, Haberman writes that Trump is often simply, purely opaque, permitting people to read meaning and depth into every action, no matter how empty they may be.. I don't know if you're familiar with the children's book "Harold and the Purple Crayon," but it's about a child named Harold who literally has a purple crayon, and he draws a whole world at night one night. [10], Her reporting style as a member of the White House staff of the Times features in the Liz Garbus documentary series The Fourth Estate. Maggie Haberman's forthcoming book about former President Trump will report that White House residence staff periodically found wads of paper clogging a toilet and believed the former president, a notorious destroyer of Oval Office documents, was the flusher. I think he has a long pattern of racist behavior going back to when he was in New York City. However, contrary to the hopes of her campaign, subsequent stories by Haberman about Clinton were much more critical of her than they had hoped for. He learned showmanship from the former mayor Ed Koch, the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and the McCarthyite lawyer Roy Cohnwhose singular talent, the book notes, was for emotional terrorism. From the remnants of Brooklyns Democratic machine he extracted lessons about the power that might be gained from pitting ethnic groups against one another. One communications staffer after another told me that they appreciate the fact that she never blindsides them. This purple frame wouldn't be complete without the intricate temple detail, a distinct touch to help you stand out from the crowd. And he makes that very clear. But effective salesmanship must be based in credibilityan area in which his administration has suffered significant set-backs in recent days. Yes, Haberman does a decent job laying out the business life of DJT, as seen thru her decidedly inhospitable glasses. Significantly, she was accumulating sources who were close to Trump, who knew when he was angry and what he watched on TV and how he could only sleep well in his own bed. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. I don't believe that he learned how to be president more astutely. Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent who joined The New York Times in 2015 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump's advisers and .