Confidence Man, which synthesizes years of reporting on Trump and his milieu, is, in some ways, a standard-issue Trump book. 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. "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 . . Passantino, her lawyer at the time, was in a taxi with her on the way to a restaurant. He mentioned Nixon unprompted in one of our interviews. "She is literally always doing four things," says her friend and former New York Post colleague Annie Karni. Haberman reported and wrote it with her frequent collaborator, Glenn Thrush. Haberman, for her part, has been on the Trump beat for decades. 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. Haberman, one of the main conduits of Oval Office drama, came under particular fire for her handling of anonymous sources. Haberman and Thrush again, with their colleague Matthew Rosenberg. She says they were talking about infrastructure when, "out of nowhere," he raised the This Week laugh. Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, stops midsentence to . How does he see the truth? "I'm really not surprised. Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. "This is the book Trump fears most.". Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. "I do not think he is enjoying the job particularly, and that is based on reporting," she says. (But, she says, Melissa McCarthy's Sean Spicer portrayal more accurately captures him.) ", .css-5rg4gn{display:block;font-family:NeueHaasUnica,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0.3125rem;margin-top:0;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-5rg4gn:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-5rg4gn{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.3;letter-spacing:-0.02em;margin:0.75rem 0 0;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-5rg4gn{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.3;letter-spacing:0.02rem;margin:0.9375rem 0 0;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-5rg4gn{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.4;margin:0.9375rem 0 0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-5rg4gn{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.4;}}The First Day Back Was Agonizing, Monterey Park Has Been a Safe Haven for My Family, How to Help Victims of the Turkey-Syria Earthquake, Iranians Are Fighting and Dying for Their Rights, This Black History Month, Im Angry as Hell, Jacinda Ardern Showed Moms How to Speak Up, My Chronic Illness Led Me to Get an Abortion, How Barnard Students Fought for Abortion Pills. 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. Access the best of Getty Images with our simple subscription plan. Todays press culture thrusts reporters onstage, parsing their judgments and perspectives as part of a ceaseless Twitter meta-drama about journalistic integrity. "If you're going to come at her," says a Democratic operative, "you've got to come correct. Her new book, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America," chronicles where he came from and how his experiences in New York City impact our nation's politics today. Haberman told me that she believed a number of people from the Trump era remain newsworthy, either because they illuminate something about Trump himself or because they are the subjects of or witnesses in investigations. "What you're seeing with Maggie Haberman is, you're watching one of the greatest people to ever do this job, giving a maximum effort. 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. [2] They have three children and live in Brooklyn. Can you believe what he just did?' Her tweets frequently numbered more than a hundred and forty in twenty-four hours. Thank you. He is very aware that, if you repeat something over and over again, it can turn it into something real. He gives off a hint of reality TVwith his mirages, his come-ons, his brazenness, his feintsand a dash of the Devil. Haberman's father, Clyde, is a Pulitzer Prizewinning New York Times reporter, and her mother, Nancy, is a publicity powerhouse at Rubensteina communications firm founded by Howard Rubenstein, whose famous spinning prowess Trump availed himself of during various of his divorce and business contretemps. ", Her father, Clyde, says he likes to think that honest journalism is "hardwired" into her. As for the breaking part, Haberman is more . By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. 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. 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.". 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. 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. And I'm like, This is total bullshit, this is not a real person, nobody is this way," Thrush recalls. She finds the framing of her relationship with the president in romantic terms "facile." 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. (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. James Carville wanted her to come to Louisiana to talk to a class, but her kids were about to go on school vacation. The book is frank about Trumps cruelty. [15] Haberman was criticized for applying a double standard in her reporting about the scandals involving the two presidential candidates of the 2016 election. "You can change her mind," Madden says. [9], Haberman was hired by The New York Times in early 2015 as a political correspondent for the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. I was shaped by understanding what sold in a tabloid, Haberman told me. [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. 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. For the next decade, she worked for both the Post and the other tab in town, the New York Daily News, covering Hillary Clinton's senate campaign, Michael Bloomberg's mayoralty, and Clinton's first presidential campaign. Her son didn't have school after the ceremony, so Haberman brought him with her to a politics meeting at the Times. Maggie Haberman Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images And, as I write, it was meant to flatter and it's a meaningless lie. There is also the question of what prolonged exposure to Trumpa man who profanes and corrupts everything he toucheshas done to Haberman herself. maggie haberman glasses - yummichic.com Both she and her subject navigate the public sphere as if they have something to prove. 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. Adds Haberman, "Some Ed Koch. "I didn't care for that metaphor," Haberman says. . "The difference is, Maggie is in no sense carrying water for Trump," Greenfield said. Haberman graduated in 1996 from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied creative writing and psychology. She suggested a colleague to go on TV in her stead. But my question to you is, what do you think he cares about the most or whom? But his campaign is preparing for an ugly, protracted primary fight for the nomination. 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. ", Trump has also sent her his famous press clippings with Sharpie notes on them, mostly with criticisms, but at least once with praise. Through it all, she never missed a beat in our conversation. She is a native New Yorker, a competitive advantage given her subject. Like the president she covers, Haberman, 43, is a born-and-bred New Yorker and slightly ill at ease in Washington. 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. The subjects may have primed her for the task of deciphering Trump; her classmates, she said, talked a lot about magical thinking. Her first job in journalism was at the Post, which sent her to crime scenes, trials, hospitals (to document V.I.P. Her daughter was home sick from school with a fever. "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?' The man with the orange hair is making a scene. He confesses that he is drawn to her, like a moth to a flame. She's out with a new book. "Maggie's whole career has been about grabbing people by the lapels," Burns says. The media writ large was unprepared to cover a political candidate who lied as freely as Trump did, on matters big and small, Haberman reflects, adding that the word lie presumes knowledge of a speakers motivations. Ppl don't change." 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. 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. 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. Sister Sites: Techmeme Tech news essentials. ", And this is the aspect of the job that Haberman tries to focus on in the midst of the storm of distractions his administration provides: holding him to the truth. A few minutes later, here he comes. "We were pretty demanding in terms of getting quotes, good-quality ones"which, in tabloid terms, means they have to be memorable and true"and getting them fast." Maggie Rectangle Purple Glasses for Women | Eyebuydirect "She's got it with her at all times," says her husband, Dareh Gregorian. These words were spoken in 2008 by an unlikely film critic named Donald Trump. 75 and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a private school in the Bronx. "[22] The book debuted at number one on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending October 8, 2022. He's called him a weakling. 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. Yes, I can! Maggie grew up on the Upper West Side, attending P.S. Since 2015, Habermans career has revolved around the most untrustworthy man in national politics. "Can I join you guys? The New York Times reporter may be the greatest political reporter working today. 2023 Cond Nast. He was constantly looking for a relationship with him in the past and kept it going out of office still, this admiration. And, for all Habermans success in demystifying Trump, at times she seems to vest him with eerie power. All rights reserved. ", 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. President Xi Jinping of China, he has been praising repeatedly since he left office. Showing Editorial results for maggie haberman. 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. What HBOs Chernobyl got right, and what it got terribly wrong. Trump Said NYT's Maggie Haberman Is Like His 'Psychiatrist': Book NEW --> Declassified after-action reports support U.S. military commanders who said Biden team was indecisive during the Afghanistan crisis The White House said Friday that no such reports exist. And so it is easy for people to convince him that something is true, when it is not. 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. Intense is one of the words friends and colleagues most often use to describe her. 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." After Trump rose to political prominence,. It was a story about Mar-a-Lago." She was, however, one of the most relentless and consistent. Mediagazer Must-read media news. During Rudy Giulianis second mayoral term, Haberman covered City Hall, a notoriously cutthroat beat. Haberman was not the only reporter to see the underlying logic in the daily bedlam emanating from Washington. The appointment of a special counsel Robert Mueller last week "took some of the air out of his tires" but he is still spoiling for a fight, Haberman says. No one suggests her male colleagues are "wooing" Trump. Subscribe to Here's the Deal, our politics newsletter. In the epilogue, Haberman describes a post-Presidential interview in which Trump cracked to his aides, I love being with her, shes like my psychiatrist. The next sentence reflexively brushes his statement aside, insisting, It was a meaningless line, almost certainly intended to flatter. Habermans point is that Trump rarely changes from context to context; he treats everyone like his psychiatrist. Why it matters: Destroying records that should be preserved is potentially illegal. CNN political analyst Maggie Haberman weighs in on the statements made to CNN by Emily Kohrs, the foreperson of the Atlanta-based grand jury that investigated former President Donald Trump's . According to Hutchinson, Passantinos phone rangit was the Times reporter Maggie Haberman. 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. (Nancy worked on projects for Trump's business but says she never met him.). An essay by Toni Morrison: The Work You Do, the Person You Are.. There are briefing-room tantrums, incredulous generals, and off-color mutterings. [1] In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Designed with adjustable nose pads for a custom fit. Questions about her process elicited similarly guarded answers. He treats everyone like they're his psychiatrist, because he's working everything out in real time. Most recently, just in the last few days, he put out a statement about Elaine Chao, the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell. Maggie Haberman, Author, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America": It's a really good question, Judy. When I speak to him, it's because he's trying to sell me," Haberman tells the audience at the 92nd Street Y. 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 was also on her laptop. " She's like my psychiatrist . 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. Glass ceiling: Tishby, an Israeli native who now calls Los Angeles home, joined the podcast to discuss her new book . I reflexively tense up; she doesn't flinch. ", "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. She doesn't see any climactic resolution to the Trump saga coming anytime soon. "Speak of the devil," she said into the phone. It was simply desperation for a job other than bartending that led her to newspapers. But, if he does, what do you think a second Donald Trump presidency term would look like? 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. Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Brea Yes, Haberman does a decent job laying out the business life of DJT, as seen thru her decidedly inhospitable glasses. Trump is growing visibly with his speech and delivering some adlibs, she wrote on the site, echoing her observation, in Confidence Man, that in the eighties news outlets treated him as if he were born anew with every story. (At one point in our conversation, she told me that he regenerates.) As Trumps political missteps and legal woes pile up, Haberman appears to be relaxing her vigil. His behavior is really what matters on this front. The publication of Confidence Man reignited controversies over Habermans ethics.