Journalists have become part of the story in the Trump administration, enablers and heroes of a nonstop political and constitutional soap opera, and last year Haberman was the most widely read journalist at the Times, according to its analytics. He mentioned Nixon unprompted in one of our interviews. A few minutes later, here he comes. "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?' "My enduring image of her is, she's standing outside the [press] van, she has a cigarette already lit in one hand, she's lighting a second one because she's forgotten that she has the first one lit, right? "Maggie's whole career has been about grabbing people by the lapels," Burns says. The former presidents lawyers cited executive privilege, a tactic they have used with other ex-Trump aides. 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. She says they were talking about infrastructure when, "out of nowhere," he raised the This Week laugh. "She is literally always doing four things," says her friend and former New York Post colleague Annie Karni. Perhaps he glimpsed himself as if in a mirror. The former President is not what he seems, she said, but hes not nothing. By Damon Winter/The New York Times . ", 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. She's called me as she was drivingswearing and running latebetween an errand at the American Girl doll store and a dinner party. And somewhat in connection with that, there's a long list of people he's belittled, people who've been loyal to him, like Lindsey Graham, Senator Graham, Kevin McCarthy. How Maggie Haberman Covers Trump Without Losing Her Mind Over time, however, as Haberman did not get beat, did not get beat, he realized she was for real. The tale concerns a boy named Harold who goes for a walk in the evening and draws things from his imagination, including an entire city, with his enchanted crayon. 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. No one suggests her male colleagues are "wooing" Trump. "You can offer perspective, you can offer insight, you can offer details, but they've got to be locked down. I just wanted to make the point that we were engaged in some revisionist history. Cruelty, pettiness and real estate: in Confidence Man, Maggie Haberman For a moment, it seems he might be coming over to tell off the reporter. He was telling people he wasn't going to leave. And I think, sometimes, he seems less clear. I think that theres a misunderstanding among certain aspects of our readership about what it is we do, she said. All rights reserved. Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, stops midsentence to . This article appears in the July 2017 issue of ELLE.. I first met Maggie Haberman in 2014. What Did We Learn About the Georgia Grand Jurys Findings? "Part of it was for her son graduating kindergarten, and part of it was for Maggie for breaking this awesome scoop. Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman: 9780593297346 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books. ", 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. Haberman had her first byline in 1980, when she was seven years old, writing for the Daily News kids' page about a meeting she had with then-mayor Ed Koch. [1] In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Haberman pressed her point: "It was two months ago. Is Trump-Whisperer Maggie Haberman Changing - Vanity Fair 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." Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. A lot of Rudy Giuliani. 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. Ventura headset in 2024, smart glasses with a display and a "neural interface" smartwatch in 2025, and AR glasses in 2027 . Would she tell the man to "stop screaming"? The New York Times reporter may be the greatest political reporter working today. Maggie Haberman, Author, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America": It's a really good question, Judy. Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, has been covering Donald Trump since the 1990s. Habermans assessment was grimmer. [11], According to an analysis by British digital strategist Rob Blackie, Haberman was one of the most commonly followed political writers among Biden administration staff on Twitter. Theyre outraged by what were covering, and they dont understand why its not having the effect it should. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Haberman described how delighted he was when the New York Post headlined a piece about him with a possibly erroneous quote from Marla Maples: Best Sex Ive Ever Had. She would repeat versions of these same answers and stories at her book event later that evening. "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 So Is Maggie Haberman's Wild Ride", "Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views", "EXCLUSIVE: New Email Leak Reveals Clinton Campaign's Cozy Press Relationship", "Nate Silver and Maggie Haberman Duke it Out on Twitter Over Clinton Email Coverage", "Why the medias coverage of Hillary Clinton's emails still matters", "New York Times reporter just demonstrated some astonishing false equivalency", "Maggie Haberman and the never-ending Trump story", "Exclusive: 'I'm just not going to leave': New book reveals Trump vowed to stay in White House", "Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down Trump", "Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction - Best Sellers", "CovCath students file 5 lawsuits over Lincoln Memorial incident", "NY Times' Maggie Haberman Criticized for Saving Trump Quote About Not Leaving White House for Her Book", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maggie_Haberman&oldid=1139756504, This page was last edited on 16 February 2023, at 19:13. "What do they thinkthat it's going in a secret newspaper?". [6] Haberman worked for the Post's rival newspaper, the New York Daily News, for three and a half years in the early 2000s,[6] where she continued to cover City Hall. "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 . ", 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. And, for all Habermans success in demystifying Trump, at times she seems to vest him with eerie power. 24/7 Customer . 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. Habermans particular way of contextualizing often seems intended to puncture or undermine. 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. 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. Haberman is famously formidable. We encounter all the usual suspects: Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway and Paul Manafort and Hope Hicks. Sister Sites: Techmeme Tech news essentials. Adds Haberman, "Some Ed Koch. 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. Thank you. Subscribe to Here's the Deal, our politics newsletter. You are considered the reporter who goes back longer with Donald Trump than anyone else and who understands him better than any other reporter. [9], Haberman was hired by The New York Times in early 2015 as a political correspondent for the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. 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. [5] In 1999, the Post assigned her to cover City Hall, where she became "hooked" on political reporting. The publication of Confidence Man reignited controversies over Habermans ethics. Maggie Haberman during a screening of The Fourth Estate at TheTimesCenter on May 9, 2018, in New York City. 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. He has called you, essentially, like his psychiatrist, whether you agree with that term or not. The book is frank about Trumps cruelty. "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. 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. [4], Haberman's career began in 1996 when she was hired by the New York Post. 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. 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. A lot of people would let it go, but Haberman signals to the hostess. I know a lot of people have been waiting to see this. 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. 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. Trump Might Not See Out 2024 Presidential Bid: Maggie Haberman Clyde covered Trump very sporadically in the 1980s and '90s. Slate called her Trump's "snake charmer"; New Yorker editor in chief David Remnick recently likened Trump to her "ardent, twisted suitor." "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. I care about getting it right. 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. I would argue he is now occupying the most expensive and valuable real estate in the country. I mean, what what how does he do this? To some, she upheld the tradition that Woodward and Bernstein built; others condemned her failure to criticize Trumps behavior more vocally. 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. Trumps insistence on taking unnecessary flights kind of goes to what he will sublimate in the service of something else, Haberman said. "You can change her mind," Madden says. "Haven't you joined us already?" Maggie Haberman Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images He is elated. He is behaving in a racist way. Do you think, at his core, that he is racist? Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. "There has been a very protracted shocked stage in Washington, and I think people have to move past that. [19] She has also been accused "from certain corners of the left as a supposed water carrier for the 45th president". Collect, curate and comment on your files. 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. I also think he's extremely suggestible and I think he's extremely paranoid. 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. CNN, for whom she is a political analyst, called. 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. It was a story about Mar-a-Lago." 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. Maggie Haberman - Wikipedia ", 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. [8] She became a political analyst for CNN in 2014. "I'm wearing a sweatshirt, and my hair is in a bun," she told the producer. Search instead in. 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. Taylor Lorenz now at Washington Post fights Maggie Haberman - Intelligencer Hope you'll take a moment to order CONFIDENCE MAN here. ", [youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPME4VCNmyc&t=79s[/youtube]. 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." 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. Haberman was not the only reporter to see the underlying logic in the daily bedlam emanating from Washington. When Haberman interviewed Trump in the Oval Office this April, he was making his usual complaint about how unfair her coverage is. 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.. She was the dominant Trump reporter on the campaign, and she didn't travel with him. Further introspection on the subject of stifling her emotions did not seem to interest her, perhaps because she sees no alternative. She was, however, one of the most relentless and consistent. "This is a very precarious moment, in terms of what anyone can believe in. she says she told him. 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. Maggie Haberman on Trump: 'He's become a Charles Foster Kane character 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. Maggie Haberman Opens the Door to Trump Sitting Out 2024 - Mediaite "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. He admires autocrats in other countries. "When we as a culture can't agree on a simple, basic fact setthat is very scary. "The difference is, Maggie is in no sense carrying water for Trump," Greenfield said. Haberman says she'd had no interest in journalism up to this point. When I asked her about these conceptual scoops, she corrected me: Theyre contextual scoops. Context is key to Habermans project. And it's just hard to know how much is that vs. he's convinced himself of this. In the midst of his second divorce, from Marla Maples, Trump was a maestro of controlling his tabloid image, calling in tidbits about himself. Boards are the best place to save images and video clips. Toward the end of our meeting, Haberman told me that she is superstitious. Access the best of Getty Images with our simple subscription plan. 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. Maggie Haberman on Twitter 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. Is she, in fact, friendly to Trumps people? People wanted her to provide a normative framing for what was going on, the professor and media commentator Daniel Drezner said. Haberman heard rumors of colleagues fielding calls from the magnate during which hed dangle gossip items. When Haberman demurs, politely but without apology, he is momentarily stumped. Confidence Man, which synthesizes years of reporting on Trump and his milieu, is, in some ways, a standard-issue Trump book. How Should an Older President Think About a Second Term? I mean, does he just create a different factual universe? Trump conceded this was true and the story was about an "8. I care about telling a thorough story. 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? They're going to lose [their access] anyway," she says. Over the years, she has honed a stable interpretation of Trump, evoking not a strongman but a showman, an egomaniac with shrewd instincts and bad opinions. And, again, I could name many others. "I do not think he is enjoying the job particularly, and that is based on reporting," she says. He "kind of chuckled" and replied, "It's like therapy. I'm having a hard time remembering it." Habermans own confidence man, though overexposed, can seem similarly elusive. 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 . At first Thrush didn't like her, mistaking her voraciousness for shtick. Trump frequently complains about Haberman's coverage. She previously worked as a political reporter for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and Politico. And laugh at him. " The next time Haberman wrote about him was in 2009"Terror Tent Down at Camp Trump" was the headlinewhen Trump allowed Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi to pitch a Bedouin-style tent on the lawn of his estate in Bedford, New York.). I don't think he figured the office out. He views the truth as something that's transactional. With a tentative tour that would include stops in Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire, the Florida governor is paving the way for a presidential run. She suggested a colleague to go on TV in her stead. One attendee chastised another for looking at her phone, saying that its light was distracting, as though we were all at a cliffhanger movie. Maggie Haberman, thank you so much for joining us. [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. Hutchinson had just finished her third deposition with the committee. Sensitive subject, but we know there are a number of incidents that happened during his presidency that led people to say he is racist. This article appears in the July 2017 issue of ELLE. "Speak of the devil," she said into the phone. We discussed Trumps romance with the media. This would be a profound shift in the shape of the federal government. He gives off a hint of reality TVwith his mirages, his come-ons, his brazenness, his feintsand a dash of the Devil. "Every moment cannot be, 'Wow! He noticed right away that Haberman had talent. I think, sometimes, he does. One communications staffer after another told me that they appreciate the fact that she never blindsides them. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. 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. "This is a president who is always selling. The Manhattan district attorneys office is scrutinizing the former presidents role in the hush money payment to a porn star. 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.. [7] According to one commentator, Haberman "formed a potent journalistic tag team with Glenn Thrush". As for the breaking part, Haberman is more . Greenfield introduced Haberman by saying that he couldn't remember a reporter having established a relationship with a president quite like hers with Trump. 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. 14-Day Free Returns. 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,.