Its the gesture of a writer who knows that her unsentimental view of the President anchors her credibility. She sees herself as a demystifier. . I do not want you to come away with that impression. But, no, I think that, of political of U.S. political leaders who are alive right now, I'm very hard-pressed to point to a single person who he really admires, unless they're fighting for him. 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. She was a correspondent for Politico with roots in city tabloids, and while I didn't know much about politics or the media, I knew that when she reported. Perhaps he glimpsed himself as if in a mirror. The man is, it appears, too drunk to be able to discern if she's flirting or annoyed. She was texting, taking calls, e-mailing, and Gchatting with colleagues and sources. Her measured stance infuriates Trump's detractors, who harangue her on Twitter for "normalizing" the president. "I love being with her," he says. 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. 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. Through it all, she never missed a beat in our conversation. Clyde and Nancy met at the tabloid New York PostClyde was a metro reporter there, and Nancy was a "copy boy" (what the Post called its entry-level cub reporters back then). Yet her emphasis on her own unspecialness feels more canny than sincere, animated by the need to convey that she is immune to Trumps games. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, Among the revelations in the recently released materials from the January 6th committee was an account of a conversation that took place in May, 2022, between the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and the former White House ethics attorney Stefan Passantino. ", [youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMj21lPeAEk&t=345s[/youtube], It was at City Hall that she met Thrush, who was working at the New York tabloid Newsday. Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump circa 1997, Jeff Greenfield interviews Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns at the 92nd Street Y. Wanna Know What Donald Trump Is Really Thinking? All Rights Reserved. A number of news reporters have tried and are still trying to understand former President Donald Trump and his influence on our nation's politics today. Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? I just have totems, she said, hoarsely, because her press tour had already begun and she was losing her voice. Trump is 70. A lot of Rudy Giuliani. . So, what exactly is in his heart, I think, becomes irrelevant. As she regards the man with the orange hair, it's like watching a predator decide whether or not to go in for the kill. Haberman, one of the main conduits of Oval Office drama, came under particular fire for her handling of anonymous sources. Its possible that all of the jurors votes recommended against indictment, but it isnt sounding like it. Judy Woodruff: A number of news reporters have tried and are still trying to understand former President Donald Trump and his influence on our nation's politics today. "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America" by Maggie Haberman (Penguin Press), in Hardcover, Large Print, eBook and Audio formats, available October 4 via Amazon . "You can change her mind," Madden says. How an unemployed blogger confirmed that Syria had used chemical weapons. 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. Not true, says Risa Heller, a spokesperson for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner: "She speaks to 100 people a day." 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. Throughout our conversation, she gave practiced, useful answers that slipped easily into anecdote, and she continually steered the topic away from herself. I first met Maggie Haberman in 2014. [4], Haberman's career began in 1996 when she was hired by the New York Post. The shift by Mr. Lowell, one of Washingtons best-known scandal lawyers, highlights the blurry lines between self-promotion, access to power and the right to legal representation. Habermans particular way of contextualizing often seems intended to puncture or undermine. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Subscribe to Heres the Deal, our politics Would she tell the man to "stop screaming"? She was on her phone. "I used to really cringe at the way my colleagues would talk to spokespeople," she said. But Confidence Man is among the first to seriously consider its subjects backstory, how he sprang from the overlapping scenes of New York real estate, city government, and media celebrity. Include your name, the article headline, and your message. To some, she upheld the tradition that Woodward and Bernstein built; others condemned her failure to criticize Trumps behavior more vocally. 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. Well be fine.. What Did We Learn About the Georgia Grand Jurys Findings? She never hedges her angle to try to protect her access, only to give politicians an unwelcome surprise when they read the story in the morninga practice some journalists follow that Haberman calls "the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. She is a native New Yorker, a competitive advantage given her subject. "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. You're going to see if people were killed," Marques says. She leaves it hanging for a momentpanic flashes across his facebut then gives him a bump. He is behaving in a racist way. The man with the orange hair is making a scene. He is who he is and he's not going to change. Both she and her subject navigate the public sphere as if they have something to prove. Maggie Haberman, thank you so much for joining us. Former President Donald Trump said reporter Maggie Haberman was like his "psychiatrist" during one of their interviews, according to Haberman's new book. Glass ceiling: Tishby, an Israeli native who now calls Los Angeles home, joined the podcast to discuss her new book . The Getty Images design is a trademark of Getty Images. Haberman sees herself as a demystifier. 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. She was thinking aloud about her scheduleshe doesn't keep an actual calendar, not on paper, not on her phone; it's all in her head. She's former transportation secretary. And she clearly knows the family dynamic and knows him and all of these family stories very, very well, better than anyone. The media personality Keith Olbermann and the opinion columnist Michael J. Stern, among others, charged her with failing to immediately report vital knowledge uncovered over the course of her book researchmost significantly, that Trump had told aides that he wasnt leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue after the election. "Part of it was for her son graduating kindergarten, and part of it was for Maggie for breaking this awesome scoop. 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. She covered his real estate business when she was a New York tabloid reporter before moving to Politico and later The Times. 24/7 Customer . When Haberman demurs, politely but without apology, he is momentarily stumped. Greenfield introduced Haberman by saying that he couldn't remember a reporter having established a relationship with a president quite like hers with Trump. Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. Maggie Haberman is a tireless, keen-eyed example. She was, however, one of the most relentless and consistent. "There has been a very protracted shocked stage in Washington, and I think people have to move past that. Friends and colleagues say this is her standard operating procedure. He's hitting on her. "On more than one occasion, somebody would fly out of their desk and [announce something] that the New York Times was about to post, or a story the Times was working on, or some random bit of gossip, and then somebody else would pop their head up and say, 'Oh, did Maggie just tell you that?' Stu Marques, then metro editor of the paper, hired Haberman and oversaw her early training. He said that to me in one of our interviews. She wrote fiction. "Every moment cannot be, 'Wow! He noticed right away that Haberman had talent. How Should an Older President Think About a Second Term? This would be a profound shift in the shape of the federal government. And Haberman stresses the racism that has permeated Trumps image since he and his father were sued for housing discrimination in the seventies. Guy Cecil has led Priorities USA since 2015 and will leave at the end of March, as outside political groups begin to make plans for the 2024 races. His behavior is really what matters on this front. Why it matters: Destroying records that should be preserved is potentially illegal. Haberman has what can only be described as a wildly expressive poker face: her slender, Clara Bow-ish eyebrows lifting, her tired eyes widening behind her smudged glasses, a tiny pinpoint of a mole on her upper lip emphasizing the thin line she's pressed her mouth into, the dimple in her chin appearing and disappearing as her jaw muscles shift. The profiles sometimes suggest that she is addicted to her job, yet it might be equally accurate to say that she is enthralled by it: she made an initial choice and then lost the agency to decide. Well, we know that he I mean, and you have written this. In her work, Trumps actions dont appear special or mysterious; they emerge as a clear consequence of his background. 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. "What do they thinkthat it's going in a secret newspaper?". These days, in her profession, the truth is a demanding god. "It's like she's in the building, but she's not even in the city. 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. She was part of a team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for coverage of the Trump administrations handling of the coronavirus. [twitter ]https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/553574601733992449?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fblogs%2Ferik-wemple%2Fwp%2F2015%2F01%2F09%2Fmaggie-haberman-leaves-huge-hole-at-politico-moves-to-new-york-times%2F[/twitter], It's why he deals with her, Haberman says: "Longevity, just being around him a long time, is something he values." Kellyanne Conway defended Haberman last April in an interview, calling her "a very hard-working, honest journalist who happens to be a very good person." But he is one of the things he said to me in one of our interviews was the he uses repetition in interviews to beat something into and I quote "my beautiful brain.". Maggie Haberman during a screening of The Fourth Estate at TheTimesCenter on May 9, 2018, in New York City. I also think he's extremely suggestible and I think he's extremely paranoid. These words were spoken in 2008 by an unlikely film critic named Donald Trump. (One of her refrains is I was shocked but not surprised.) She mounts a similar argument about Trump in her recent book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. The book presents Trump as a bullshit artist whose grand theme is his own greatness. "But I also know he can't allow himself to ever quit." Haberman, for her part, has become a front-page fixture and a Fourth Estate folk hero. Haberman pressed her point: "It was two months ago. And laugh at him. And since President Trump fired FBI director James Comey, Haberman has been on the frontlines of the nonstop news bombshells that have been lobbed, bylining or credited with a reporting assist on around two dozen stories in two weeks. Haberman and Thrush again, with their colleague Matthew Rosenberg. Are you doing an interview?" There are briefing-room tantrums, incredulous generals, and off-color mutterings. 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. ", Haberman has reached the point in her career where sources are now chasing her, instead of the other way aroundlying to her risks banishment and access to her news-promulgating prowess. Trump frequently complains about Haberman's coverage. He is elated. 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. I mean, we know it is not true. The books thesisTrumps gonna Trumpis pointedly unglamorous, in keeping with Habermans deflationary assessments of Trumps character. Ppl don't change." "Short fiction, always somewhat curiously resembling my own life," she says. ", When I tell Haberman what her colleagues say about her, she shrugs, like she's being complimented for breathing. For Confidence Man, Haberman interviewed Trump three times. According to Hutchinson, Passantinos phone rangit was the Times reporter Maggie Haberman. Confidence Man, which synthesizes years of reporting on Trump and his milieu, is, in some ways, a standard-issue Trump book. [12], Haberman frequently broke news about the Trump campaign and administration. ", 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. 14-Day Free Returns. A reader wondering whether to be surprised by such carelessness, such corruption, gets her answer: yes and no. No one suggests her male colleagues are "wooing" Trump. Hope you'll take a moment to order CONFIDENCE MAN here. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. He draws buildings. 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. (But, she says, Melissa McCarthy's Sean Spicer portrayal more accurately captures him.) On this week's episode of Jewish Insider 's "Limited Liability Podcast, " hosts Jarrod Bernstein and Rich Goldberg are joined by both actress, producer and author Noa Tishby and New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman. [28], Journalists and authors criticized Haberman for allegedly choosing to withhold information about Donald Trump for the sake of her book, despite being aware of it ahead of the January 6 United States Capitol attack, although they presented no evidence of when she had learned of Trump's statements. "No, that's not all I care about. He mentioned Nixon unprompted in one of our interviews. "She came into the Page One conference room, and there was this huge round of applause," Parker says. But I do think he figured out personnel, which is often what he's focused on. Haberman, for her part, has been on the Trump beat for decades. The instant #1 New York Times bestseller. "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. 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 . Designed with adjustable nose pads for a custom fit. 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. "Part of the reason" Haberman is so read in the Times "is because she is writing about Donald Trump. This article appears in the July 2017 issue of ELLE.. He gives off a hint of reality TVwith his mirages, his come-ons, his brazenness, his feintsand a dash of the Devil. "This is the book Trump fears most.". I mentioned her well-documented fear of flying. [15] Haberman was criticized for applying a double standard in her reporting about the scandals involving the two presidential candidates of the 2016 election. 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. She previously worked as a political reporter for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and Politico. As his star climbed, she served as one of his most diligent chroniclers: in 2016, her byline appeared on five hundred and ninety-nine articles; more recently, she has averaged about an article a day. Plus: each Wednesday, exclusively for subscribers, the best books of the week. "If you're going to come at her," says a Democratic operative, "you've got to come correct. Last June, Haberman got the tip that Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had been fired while she was sitting in the audience at her son's kindergarten graduation. Haberman was not the only reporter to see the underlying logic in the daily bedlam emanating from Washington. "This place is so loud I want to put a bullet in my brain," she had said, matter-of-factly, when we first sat down for a late dinner, observing that so much hard-partying energy on a weeknight seemed more NYC than DC. 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'm not sure the objective facts will let him do that this time. . Adds Haberman, "Some Ed Koch. 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. 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. From Eisenhower to Biden, questions of age have persisted. "The Triborough and Empire State view of Trump is very different from the national view of Trump," she points out. Feeling is also not her job. Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, stops midsentence to stare at his back as he gesticulates broadly and shouts at his dinner companions over the already considerable din at BLT Steak in Washington, DC, downstairs from the offices of the Times' bureau. Photograph by Jeanette Spicer for The New Yorker, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Thats what people have really struggled to understand., Articles about Haberman like to say that the mother of three, who will turn fifty this October, desperately needs a break. But, if he does, what do you think a second Donald Trump presidency term would look like? ", 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. She's perfectly willing to walk like a redcoat into the middle of the field and let everyone know she's there because she's going to get [her story]," says Kevin Madden, a Republican communications veteran who has worked for John Boehner, George W. Bush, and Mitt Romney. And I think that the people who he would put into key jobs would be very alarming to a number of people across Washington. She believes in the power of breaking incremental newsnot holding every-thing back for a long read. he says, holding out his fist. What is he at his core, what does he care about? 2023 Cond Nast. Slate called her Trump's "snake charmer"; New Yorker editor in chief David Remnick recently likened Trump to her "ardent, twisted suitor." ", Haberman is careful, even in the current free-for-all, to avoid the snide attitude many of the New York intelligentsia have taken toward Trump and his administration. As an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence, Haberman studied creative writing and child psychology. 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. Her. I think he has a long pattern of racist behavior going back to when he was in New York City. But, for all Habermans reticence, she maintains a combative Twitter presence, and is quick to press her case in replies when she believes that shes been mischaracterized. She wore an iteration of her usual uniform: black pants, black jacket, reddish-pink blouse, and an air of bone-crushing fatigue. "This is a president who is always selling. "Can I join you guys? Prosecutors have asked a federal judge to set aside any claims of executive privilege that former Vice President Mike Pence might raise to avoid answering questions. Her daughter was home sick from school with a fever. WeSmirch Celebrity news and gossip The publication of Confidence Man reignited controversies over Habermans ethics. 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. And we clearly saw it continue in the White House, be it attacking Elijah Cummings in Baltimore, a city that is part of the United States, and Trump was supposed to be the president for all of the United States, whether he was attacking congresswomen of color, whether he was getting into various condemnations, or lack thereof, I should say, of white supremacists, whether he was flirting with the QAnon conspiracy theory. 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 . "So much of his approach is bending others to the way he sees things," she says. [1] In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. We see many compliments in your future with Maggie, a rectangular frame with a metal construction and vibrant violet hue. I think, sometimes, he does. Haberman heard rumors of colleagues fielding calls from the magnate during which hed dangle gossip items. But who he is is also why he won and why he tripled down after Access Hollywood," the political crisis which Haberman says is probably the yardstick Trump is using to measure his response to the current situation. Oct 9, 2022. He admires autocrats in other countries. 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. The former presidents lawyers cited executive privilege, a tactic they have used with other ex-Trump aides. Boards are the best place to save images and video clips. ", Haberman is growing weary of the DC establishment's seeming inability to metabolize the president's personality. Instead, Habermans Times articles adhered to the journalistic conventions that the press critic Jay Rosen has labelled the view from nowhere. Rife with ostentatious neutrality, the pieces were seen to grant Trump and his circle undue legitimacy. The book is frank about Trumps cruelty. "And it's not just any mayoralty; it's a late-'80s, early '90s New York mayoralty." Her son didn't have school after the ceremony, so Haberman brought him with her to a politics meeting at the Times. Maggie Haberman / New York Times: DeSantis to Visit Early Primary States, Selling His Florida Record . ", "I don't know if the scale was 1 out of 100 or 1 out of 10," Haberman tells me the day after that interview, "and, by the way, the goal is not to be thanked for coverage, to be clear. Is she, in fact, friendly to Trumps people? 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. But she also acknowledges Trumps seductiveness, recognizing that he was mesmerizing to watch, his speech fast and cocky and self-assured, with the ability to be both funny and cutting, both charming and derisive, often in the same sentence. Trumps gestures, Haberman insisted, have a metaphysical hollowness. The first two years of the Trump presidency were a boom time for political books, and one of the boomiest was the deal announced in September 2017 in which the New York Times' star White House reporters, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush . He draws roads. She commutes to DC several times a week from her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and three young children. Dont worry, Passantino allegedly reassured her. "Maggie doesn't camouflage. I'm quoting now Mary Trump, his niece, who, among other things, said that she thinks he is he has what she calls narcissistic personality disorder. In the midst of his second divorce, from Marla Maples, Trump was a maestro of controlling his tabloid image, calling in tidbits about himself. By Kenneth P. Vogel,Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt. And I want to start with, I think, the question a question that is all about what keeps him in the news, and that is his denial of the result of the 2020 election, insisting that he actually won.