So it must be that were doing it wrong. I noted that the idea of silver-bullet journalismof the one article that levels the Trump White Houseis deeply bewitching. People wanted her to provide a normative framing for what was going on, the professor and media commentator Daniel Drezner said. We know he does this. He clearly, in my reporting and I describe this in the first few days after the November 2020 election, he seemed aware that he had lost in his conversations with a number of aides. ", While speaking on a New York Times Women in the World panel at Lincoln Center in April to a very Trump-unfriendly crowd (Nikki Haley, Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, was booed during her interview with Greta Van Susteren before Haberman came onstage), she kept repeating basic facts about Trumpthat he has been on both sides of most issues, that he's influenced by the last person he spoke toand getting huge laughs from the audience. I mean, what what how does he do this? One colleague says she didn't realize there was a limit to how many Gchats you could have going at one time until she saw Haberman hit the maximum. "Can I join you guys? I just wanted to make the point that we were engaged in some revisionist history. She's e-mailed me from the NYPD tow pounda place she said she'd already visited twice that month. It was like watching someone juggle fire while standing on a tightrope. Greenfield said there are journalists who have been tight with presidents before; he cited Chalmers Roberts, a Washington Post reporter who'd been close to Kennedy and, later in life, admitted he'd compromised himself by giving Kennedy overly favorable coverage. Even those of us who had covered Trump for years struggled with how to handle the gush of falsehoods that dotted his sentences. But, in person, Haberman appeared nonplussed when I asked how she negotiates the gray areas in which her duty to break news aligns uncomfortably with Trumps interests. Yes, Haberman does a decent job laying out the business life of DJT, as seen thru her decidedly inhospitable glasses. Friends and colleagues say this is her standard operating procedure. he asks, uncertainly. She previously worked as a political reporter for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and Politico. "I'm actually not trying to be funny," Haberman said, correcting them, and, when they continued to laugh, insisting, "Again, I'm not doing a comedy line. This article appears in the July 2017 issue of ELLE.. You're going to see if people were killed," Marques says. These days, in her profession, the truth is a demanding god. "In the beginning, you're going to a lot of crime scenes. The books thesisTrumps gonna Trumpis pointedly unglamorous, in keeping with Habermans deflationary assessments of Trumps character. "This is a very precarious moment, in terms of what anyone can believe in. What he needs his attention. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. He is who he is and he's not going to change. "And so he will take this chair and say to you, 'This is actually a table.' [13] In March 2016 Haberman, along with New York Times reporter David E. Sanger, questioned Trump in an interview, "Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views," during which he "agreed with a suggestion that his ideas might be summed up as 'America First'". It was Haberman he dialed. I don't believe that he learned how to be president more astutely. And I spoke with her about it this afternoon. "This is the book Trump fears most.". 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. 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 . 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. They range from an extraordinarily intimate account of a "sour and dark" Trump berating his staff as "incompetent" to the revelation that Trump called Comey a "nutjob" in an Oval Office meeting with the Russians the day after his dismissal, telling them that Comey's ouster had relieved the pressure of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and his campaign. [15] Haberman was criticized for applying a double standard in her reporting about the scandals involving the two presidential candidates of the 2016 election. The aides and advisers who spoke to Haberman for the book - she writes that she interviewed more than 250 people - offer a damning portrait of a commander in chief who was uninterested in. Maggie Haberman / New York Times: DeSantis to Visit Early Primary States, Selling His Florida Record . "I'm really not surprised. Search instead in. He was telling people he wasn't going to leave. But he and Haberman say it reminds them of New York politics; they see Trump's presidency more as a "national mayoraltyit's got that scale, it has that informality," Thrush says. Her tweets frequently numbered more than a hundred and forty in twenty-four hours. 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. Her son didn't have school after the ceremony, so Haberman brought him with her to a politics meeting at the Times. NEW YORK Late one recent afternoon, Maggie Haberman pulled into a parking spot in the lot at Gargiulo's, the old-time Italian restaurant in Coney Island where Donald Trump's father used to . After Trump rose to political prominence, Haberman became a player in the theatre of the Trump era: an avatar of journalisms promise, but also of its shortcomings. Haberman, one of the main conduits of Oval Office drama, came under particular fire for her handling of anonymous sources. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. [3], Last edited on 16 February 2023, at 19:13, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Aldo Beckman Award for Journalistic Excellence, "Weddings/Celebrations: Maggie Haberman, Dareh Gregorian", "Wanna Know What Donald Trump Is Really Thinking? He is elated. This would be a profound shift in the shape of the federal government. This article appears in the July 2017 issue of ELLE. Dont worry, Passantino allegedly reassured her. Rosenhas taken issue with Habermans characterization of Trump as a master of media manipulation: If you are a man, and you bite a dog, he wrote, that does not make you a master of anything. But Haberman, who tends to predict that Trump will express his worst impulses and cause maximum damage, told me she believed that he is more often underestimated than overestimated. Habermans dark hair was blown out and she wore a forest-green blouse and pink lipstick. She says she does most of her work from her car, shuttling her kids around, dashing between the office in Times Square and her apartment. Maggie Haberman, Author, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America": It's a really good question, Judy. Grow your brand authentically by sharing brand content with the internets creators. Haberman jumped to Politico in 2010, where she covered him full-bore for the first time; he was then flirting with the idea of joining the 2012 Republican primary and beginning to spread the lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. "[22] The book debuted at number one on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending October 8, 2022. Adds Haberman, "Some Ed Koch. My job, she said, is to provide as much information on a topic as possible that is significant and relevant and related to events. What a President does, she noted, will always get coverage. "The Triborough and Empire State view of Trump is very different from the national view of Trump," she points out. I think that's what a second President Trump presidency would look like. It's titled "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.". Is there anyone in political life he truly admires? Lately he's gone digital (sort of): He'll write the note on the clip, and then have White House Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks take a picture of the note and e-mail it to her. Trump frequently complains about Haberman's coverage. I'm having a hard time remembering it." And, finally, Maggie Haberman, you have said that he may have backed himself into a corner when it comes to whether he's going to run for president again, and, for that reason, he may do it. For a moment, it seems he might be coming over to tell off the reporter. 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. Both she and her subject navigate the public sphere as if they have something to prove. Haberman joined Judy Woodruff to discuss the book. By Shane Goldmacher,Michael C. Bender and Maggie Haberman. Its the gesture of a writer who knows that her unsentimental view of the President anchors her credibility. And it's just hard to know how much is that vs. he's convinced himself of this. [5] In 1999, the Post assigned her to cover City Hall, where she became "hooked" on political reporting. He's tall with an athletic build and a military-style cut to his orange hair. Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? "Maggie doesn't camouflage. And this is one of the things that makes establishing a baseline of discernible truth around him so incredibly hard. But no matter what Haberman writes about Trump, he has never frozen her out. None of this is to say that the Habermans and Trumps were showing up at the same dinner parties, but Manhattan can be a provincial place, among a certain inside crowd. She previously covered the Trump administration and continues to cover Donald Trump and politics in Washington. I dont want this out there, she remembers saying. ", When I tell Haberman what her colleagues say about her, she shrugs, like she's being complimented for breathing. She wrote fiction. Like, floating in the sky.". "This is a president who is always selling. Haberman and Thrush again, with their colleague Matthew Rosenberg. 24/7 Customer . I mentioned her well-documented fear of flying. It was simply desperation for a job other than bartending that led her to newspapers. Hope you'll take a moment to order CONFIDENCE MAN here. 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. He confesses that he is drawn to her, like a moth to a flame. "I do not think he is enjoying the job particularly, and that is based on reporting," she says. She's so well-sourced and so well-connected that she doesn't need to," Karni says. Some passages unfold as groans of exhaustion: For all the intrigue that is part of the Trump mythos, Haberman writes, the irony, say those who have known him for years, is that he has had only a handful of moves throughout his entire adult life. Part of the work of Confidence Man is to source and taxonomize each of these moves, and to identify when Trump is drawing on any one of them. He was constantly looking for a relationship with him in the past and kept it going out of office still, this admiration. Or is she simply good at her joba job that requires her, at times, to win the trust of the untrustworthy? 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. And Haberman, like Trump, knows how to spin: Confidence Man makes a show of refusing Trumps enticements. 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. Ventura headset in 2024, smart glasses with a display and a "neural interface" smartwatch in 2025, and AR glasses in 2027 . That must have been a long time ago. People have a right to feel however they feel, she said, dismissing the subject. Its the crashing. Trump, apparently, does not get fazed by planes: on Air Force One, Haberman said, hed sometimes continue talking during rocky landings, while reporters slid around on their seats. When I speak to him, it's because he's trying to sell me," Haberman tells the audience at the 92nd Street Y. 14-Day Free Returns. [14], In October 2016, one month before Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election, a stolen document released by WikiLeaks outlined how Clinton's campaign could induce Haberman to place sympathetic stories in Politico.