During Rudy Giulianis second mayoral term, Haberman covered City Hall, a notoriously cutthroat beat. She almost never turns her phone off. 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. 'Confidence Man,' Maggie Haberman's Book on Trump: Review - The New WeSmirch Celebrity news and gossip And he makes that very clear. 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? 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. [7] In 2010, Haberman was hired by Politico as a senior reporter. Are you doing an interview?" But he and Haberman say it reminds them of New York politics; they see Trump's presidency more as a "national mayoraltyit's got that scale, it has that informality," Thrush says. "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 . A lot of Rudy Giuliani. 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. 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. Both she and her subject navigate the public sphere as if they have something to prove. In the weeks before John Wayne Gacys scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate. "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. For a moment, it seems he might be coming over to tell off the reporter. It would look like him. She commutes to DC several times a week from her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and three young children. That [Trump] is unconcerned by that, I think, is the big issue," she says. And I spoke with her about it this afternoon. Daily Kickoff: Maggie Haberman, Noa Tishby join JI's podcast + The new You are considered the reporter who goes back longer with Donald Trump than anyone else and who understands him better than any other reporter. In the midst of his second divorce, from Marla Maples, Trump was a maestro of controlling his tabloid image, calling in tidbits about himself. Intense is one of the words friends and colleagues most often use to describe her. 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). He gives off a hint of reality TVwith his mirages, his come-ons, his brazenness, his feintsand a dash of the Devil. "She's like Michael Corleone," Thrush says, "sucked into the family business." "His whole thing has always been to be accepted among the New York elites, whom he sort of preemptively sneers atthat thing that people do when they are not really sure if they will be completely validated, where they push away people whose approval they are seeking. You're going to see if people were killed," Marques says. [15] Haberman was criticized for applying a double standard in her reporting about the scandals involving the two presidential candidates of the 2016 election. According to Hutchinson, Passantinos phone rangit was the Times reporter Maggie Haberman. 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. In hindsight, Haberman was building a reservoir of knowledge and contacts that would make her probably the best-sourced reporter of the 2016 campaign. She finds the framing of her relationship with the president in romantic terms "facile." 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. ", While speaking on a New York Times Women in the World panel at Lincoln Center in April to a very Trump-unfriendly crowd (Nikki Haley, Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, was booed during her interview with Greta Van Susteren before Haberman came onstage), she kept repeating basic facts about Trumpthat he has been on both sides of most issues, that he's influenced by the last person he spoke toand getting huge laughs from the audience. I care about telling a thorough story. 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. "Can I join you guys? People have a right to feel however they feel, she said, dismissing the subject. The quick-hit rhythm that Trump and Haberman were both fine-tuning teed them up perfectly for today's Twitter-paced news environment. He stands looking down at her, swaying a little, slightly walleyed, but he still has a big-man swagger. These words were spoken in 2008 by an unlikely film critic named Donald Trump. But, if he does, what do you think a second Donald Trump presidency term would look like? 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. She wrote about Donald Trump for those publications and rose to prominence covering his campaign, presidency, and post-presidency for the Times. She wore an iteration of her usual uniform: black pants, black jacket, reddish-pink blouse, and an air of bone-crushing fatigue. Her daughter was home sick from school with a fever. Taylor Lorenz now at Washington Post fights Maggie Haberman - Intelligencer Ppl don't change." However, contrary to the hopes of her campaign, subsequent stories by Haberman about Clinton were much more critical of her than they had hoped for. 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. We know he does this. She has worked for the trifecta of local dailies The Post, The Daily News and, most. The aides and advisers who spoke to Haberman for the book - she writes that she interviewed more than 250 people - offer a damning portrait of a commander in chief who was uninterested in. "Can I come back?" Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. I mean, how does he take in facts? I first met Maggie Haberman in 2014. Is she, in fact, friendly to Trumps people? In a statement to The Wrap's Andi Ortiz, a Times spokesperson said, "Maggie Haberman took leave from The Times to write her book. Maggie Haberman during a screening of The Fourth Estate at TheTimesCenter on May 9, 2018, in New York City. "This is a president who is always selling. [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. A revelation in Maggie Haberman's new book stirs debate about reporters How do you explain it? Subscribe to Here's the Deal, our politics newsletter. The audience was, as always, hanging on her every word, hungry to have her translate Trump into someone they could understand. He said that to me in one of our interviews. 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. But effective salesmanship must be based in credibilityan area in which his administration has suffered significant set-backs in recent days. She glanced at it, then apologized. For Confidence Man, Haberman interviewed Trump three times. She's "wickedly competitive," says Gregg Birnbaum, the former Post editor (now senior political editor at NBC News Digital) whom Haberman credits with drilling into her head, "Do not get beat, do not get beat. One colleague says she didn't realize there was a limit to how many Gchats you could have going at one time until she saw Haberman hit the maximum. Haberman once said in an interview that she talked to 50 people a day. And, as I write, it was meant to flatter and it's a meaningless lie. They're going to lose [their access] anyway," she says. I think he has a long pattern of racist behavior going back to when he was in New York City. Maggie Haberman - Wikipedia 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. he yelps like a sixth grader sent our way on a dare, and dashes off. People wanted her to provide a normative framing for what was going on, the professor and media commentator Daniel Drezner said. Her son didn't have school after the ceremony, so Haberman brought him with her to a politics meeting at the Times. Premium Access. he asks, pointing at the recorder between us. She was wearing an evil-eye bracelet. "I'm wearing a sweatshirt, and my hair is in a bun," she told the producer. James Carville wanted her to come to Louisiana to talk to a class, but her kids were about to go on school vacation. President Xi Jinping of China, he has been praising repeatedly since he left office. Her tweets frequently numbered more than a hundred and forty in twenty-four hours. "Part of the reason" Haberman is so read in the Times "is because she is writing about Donald Trump. Like, floating in the sky.". Maggie Haberman's new book 'Confidence Man' details Trump's rise to His behavior is really what matters on this front. That must have been a long time ago. Feeling is also not her job. ", 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. Maggie Haberman - The New York Times And then, by the second week, something had just switched, and he was insisting that he had won. "The Triborough and Empire State view of Trump is very different from the national view of Trump," she points out. I just wanted to make the point that we were engaged in some revisionist history. 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. Trump conceded this was true and the story was about an "8. By Damon Winter/The New York Times . 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. Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. He treats everyone like they're his psychiatrist, because he's working everything out in real time. [2] At that firm, a "publicity powerhouse" whose eponymous founder has been called "the dean of damage control" by Rudy Giuliani, Haberman's mother worked for a client list of influential New Yorkers including Donald Trump. He's tall with an athletic build and a military-style cut to his orange hair. "I'm just trying not to get beat," she says. But it gives her added credibility when she argues, as she did when Trump fired Comey, that one of Trump's aberrant moves is a big deal. Yes, Haberman does a decent job laying out the business life of DJT, as seen thru her decidedly inhospitable glasses. We see many compliments in your future with Maggie, a rectangular frame with a metal construction and vibrant violet hue. Maggie Haberman / New York Times: DeSantis to Visit Early Primary States, Selling His Florida Record . 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. And, again, I could name many others. (The first time she quoted Trump in a piece was in 2006: "Real-estate mogul Donald Trump talked up Clinton as the next president in Florida on Friday night, reportedly saying at a state GOP fund-raiser, 'She's a brilliant woman and she's going to be a very, very formidable candidate. Absolutely I think she can win, especially if the war's still going on.' A reader wondering whether to be surprised by such carelessness, such corruption, gets her answer: yes and no. 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. Maggie Haberman Profile - How Maggie Haberman Covers Donald Trump - ELLE 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. ", "Maggie's magic is that she's the dominant reporter on the [White House] beat, and she doesn't even live in Washington. 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. And it's very hard to know now whether he really believes this or whether it is just something he is saying. 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. Trump frequently complains about Haberman's coverage. Is there anyone in political life he truly admires? All Rights Reserved. "I'm not sure the objective facts will let him do that this time. 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.