[19] She has also been accused "from certain corners of the left as a supposed water carrier for the 45th president". The Manhattan district attorneys office is scrutinizing the former presidents role in the hush money payment to a porn star. "There has been a very protracted shocked stage in Washington, and I think people have to move past that. The former President once told her that he found air travel spooky.. Habermans dark hair was blown out and she wore a forest-green blouse and pink lipstick. "This is a symbiotic relationship," says an administration official. She suggested a colleague to go on TV in her stead. Because she enjoyed good access to him on the campaign trail and during his presidency she has been called a "Trump. For a moment, it seems he might be coming over to tell off the reporter. You are considered the reporter who goes back longer with Donald Trump than anyone else and who understands him better than any other reporter. (Both her brother, Zach, and her husband, Dareh Gregorian, work at the New York Daily News.). The New York Times reporter may be the greatest political reporter working today. By 1999, Marques put Haberman on the City Hall beat, where she covered then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump friend. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. [2] Haberman returned to the Post to cover the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and other political races. 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. 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. 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. This past November, by the end of the candidates meandering, hour-long campaign announcement, she had tweeted about the speech more than twenty times. 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. penguinrandomhouse.com. And Haberman stresses the racism that has permeated Trumps image since he and his father were sued for housing discrimination in the seventies. Grow your brand authentically by sharing brand content with the internets creators. And thank you for having me to talk about the book. Maggie grew up on the Upper West Side, attending P.S. 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. The instant #1 New York Times bestseller. She says they were talking about infrastructure when, "out of nowhere," he raised the This Week laugh. "This is the book Trump fears most.". births and plastic surgeries), and the funerals of firefighters and civic luminaries. [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? And I think that the people who he would put into key jobs would be very alarming to a number of people across Washington. Hutchinson had just finished her third deposition with the committee. It was a story about Mar-a-Lago." It was Haberman he dialed. People wanted her to provide a normative framing for what was going on, the professor and media commentator Daniel Drezner said. ", 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. Subscribe to Here's the Deal, our politics newsletter. 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. "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 . "Part of it was for her son graduating kindergarten, and part of it was for Maggie for breaking this awesome scoop. [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." James Carville wanted her to come to Louisiana to talk to a class, but her kids were about to go on school vacation. 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. She turned the phone over. I think that theres a misunderstanding among certain aspects of our readership about what it is we do, she said. ", It makes her both an enticing challenge and a nettlesome problem for a president who does not let the truth get in the way of a good story. There's that Felix Sater character, who was arrested and, I think, did time, for shoving a broken Martini glass in someone's face . 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 then, by the second week, something had just switched, and he was insisting that he had won. 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 . Born to a publicist and a newspaperman, she grew up in the kind of privileged Manhattan set that Trump spent his early days envying. One attendee chastised another for looking at her phone, saying that its light was distracting, as though we were all at a cliffhanger movie. Yes, Haberman does a decent job laying out the business life of DJT, as seen thru her decidedly inhospitable glasses. "She came into the Page One conference room, and there was this huge round of applause," Parker says. 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. There was a lot of duking it out, she said. In a statement to The Wrap's Andi Ortiz, a Times spokesperson said, "Maggie Haberman took leave from The Times to write her book. A few minutes later, here he comes. CNN, for whom she is a political analyst, called. 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. Haberman, for her part, has become a front-page fixture and a Fourth Estate folk hero. What he needs his attention. 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. How do you explain it? Maggie Haberman, Author, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America": It's a really good question, Judy. We encounter all the usual suspects: Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway and Paul Manafort and Hope Hicks. "[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". He views the truth as something that's transactional. 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. As her book tour began, in October, Haberman and I met for an interview in Washington. "The news was something my dad did." Can you believe what he just did?' 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. There is also the question of what prolonged exposure to Trumpa man who profanes and corrupts everything he toucheshas done to Haberman herself. 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,. 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. I care about getting it right. "What do they thinkthat it's going in a secret newspaper?". 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. Todays press culture thrusts reporters onstage, parsing their judgments and perspectives as part of a ceaseless Twitter meta-drama about journalistic integrity. He is very aware that, if you repeat something over and over again, it can turn it into something real. 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). These words were spoken in 2008 by an unlikely film critic named Donald Trump. 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. 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 man is, it appears, too drunk to be able to discern if she's flirting or annoyed. President Xi Jinping of China, he has been praising repeatedly since he left office. She doesn't see any climactic resolution to the Trump saga coming anytime soon. 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. To some, she upheld the tradition that Woodward and Bernstein built; others condemned her failure to criticize Trumps behavior more vocally. Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? She wrote about Donald Trump for those publications and rose to prominence covering his campaign, presidency, and post-presidency for the Times. "You're going to bring this up every time, aren't you?" COVID-19 at Three: Who Got the Pandemic Right? She is not a fan of SNL's impression of Kellyanne Conway as a psychopathic fame whore. 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. [19], In 2022, Haberman published a book on the Trump presidency called Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. And she's got a BlackBerry and a flip phone going at the same time. Because otherwise you're just never going to be able to cover him," she says. The man with the orange hair is making a scene. [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. Haberman heard rumors of colleagues fielding calls from the magnate during which hed dangle gossip items. He noticed right away that Haberman had talent. On this evening, she is recovering from the flu and has been up for the better part of two days, racing back and forth on Amtrak between her family and an Oval Office interview with the president, and speaking engagements at New York's Lincoln Center and DC's Newseum. And that's going to mean certain situations are fraught. 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. She is a native New Yorker, a competitive advantage given her subject. Portions of the electorate learned to associate her with distressing updates about the country. And this is one of the things that makes establishing a baseline of discernible truth around him so incredibly hard. Friends and colleagues say this is her standard operating procedure. The Times hired her to cover the 2016 election five months before Donald Trump declared his first Presidential campaign. Toward the end of our meeting, Haberman told me that she is superstitious. He's tall with an athletic build and a military-style cut to his orange hair. In interviews, she has often invoked the childrens book Harold and the Purple Crayon to illustrate Trumps peculiar blurring of fact and fantasy. And he makes that very clear. Thank you. He draws roads. 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. "She grew up in an environment where journalism that was as accurate as humanly possible was practically a religion," he says. The former presidents lawyers cited executive privilege, a tactic they have used with other ex-Trump aides. But no matter what Haberman writes about Trump, he has never frozen her out. Sensitive subject, but we know there are a number of incidents that happened during his presidency that led people to say he is racist. She sees herself as a demystifier. ", The 1980s and '90s New York in which Haberman was raised is the same milieu in which Trump began his crusade to sand down his Queens edges and gild the Manhattan skyline. [7] According to one commentator, Haberman "formed a potent journalistic tag team with Glenn Thrush". "I'm wearing a sweatshirt, and my hair is in a bun," she told the producer. 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. She glanced at it, then apologized. It was like watching someone juggle fire while standing on a tightrope. ", Trump has also sent her his famous press clippings with Sharpie notes on them, mostly with criticisms, but at least once with praise. What Did We Learn About the Georgia Grand Jurys Findings? A characteristic article, which she co-wrote in July of 2017, emphasized that Donald Trump, Jr.,s huddle with a Kremlin-linked lawyer proved unusual for a political campaign but consistent with the haphazard approach the Trump operation, and the White House, have taken in vetting people they deal with. It was a quintessential Haberman balancing act, which underlined both the meetings extraordinary nature (for Washington) and the mundane pattern that it fit (for the Trumps). She tried to get work in magazines, but she ended up bartending at Cleopatra's Needle, a jazz club on the Upper West Side frequented by Columbia University students, before eventually landing a job at the Post as a "copy kid" (the new politically correct term at the paper). Both she and her subject navigate the public sphere as if they have something to prove. he asks, pointing at the recorder between us. She was the dominant Trump reporter on the campaign, and she didn't travel with him. Parts of Confidence Man seem to wrestle with its authors role in amplifying Trumps lies. How an unemployed blogger confirmed that Syria had used chemical weapons. 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. 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 used that metaphor to describe him in 2017. And it's very hard to know now whether he really believes this or whether it is just something he is saying. She'll wake up in the middle of the night and, instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, pick up her phone and start working. By Shane Goldmacher,Michael C. Bender and Maggie Haberman. Habermans particular way of contextualizing often seems intended to puncture or undermine. "She's got it with her at all times," says her husband, Dareh Gregorian. Habermans assessment was grimmer. 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. 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 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. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. [1] In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. In her work, Trumps actions dont appear special or mysterious; they emerge as a clear consequence of his background. He has called you, essentially, like his psychiatrist, whether you agree with that term or not. "Short fiction, always somewhat curiously resembling my own life," she says. In late April, Haberman spoke on (yet another) panel, this one at the 92nd Street Y, with her colleague Alex Burns. He admires autocrats in other countries. He's called him a weakling. And probably because her mother is a publicist, she doesn't view Trump's press flacks, or flacks in general, as the enemy. But that's what he said. [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. "I love being with her," he says. 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." 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. "So much of his approach is bending others to the way he sees things," she says. I think his niece is right. ", [youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPME4VCNmyc&t=79s[/youtube]. 24/7 Customer . I was somewhat surprised to see that, Haberman said when I asked her about the conversation, characterizing her call as routine. Shortly after Hutchinsons deposition, she notes, the Times published a story on the January 6th committees progress that included the news that at least one witness was willing to testify that Trump had approved of rioters chanting Hang Mike Pence and that Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, had burned documents in a fireplace. Its the gesture of a writer who knows that her unsentimental view of the President anchors her credibility. A new era of strength competitions is testing the limits of the human body. he yelps like a sixth grader sent our way on a dare, and dashes off. What is he at his core, what does he care about? [4], Haberman's career began in 1996 when she was hired by the New York Post. Stu Marques, then metro editor of the paper, hired Haberman and oversaw her early training. He gives off a hint of reality TVwith his mirages, his come-ons, his brazenness, his feintsand a dash of the Devil. Like Kane in Orson Welles's masterpiece, Trump was a swaggering . 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. I just want to go back to the psychiatrist line. She commutes to DC several times a week from her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and three young children. He said that to me in one of our interviews. Trump wants what she can give him access toa kind of status he's always craved in a newspaper that, she says, "holds an enormously large place in his imagination."