He is who he is and he's not going to change. 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 expertise wasn't just Trumpit was the Trump psyche. In those days, the future president was a fixture in Page Six, the Post's gossip column. The books thesisTrumps gonna Trumpis pointedly unglamorous, in keeping with Habermans deflationary assessments of Trumps character. The debate is set for August, in the same city that will host the partys 2024 convention. How does he see the truth? And she clearly knows the family dynamic and knows him and all of these family stories very, very well, better than anyone. President Xi Jinping of China, he has been praising repeatedly since he left office. 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. She said that she had never approved of anything Trump had doneevaluating him is not her job. "I used to really cringe at the way my colleagues would talk to spokespeople," she said. Habermans Trump is also the Page Six demimondaine who flashed his grin on Sex and the City (Donald Trump, you just dont get more New York than that, Carrie mused) and the developer who perennially stiffed his contractors and enraged the Fifth Avenue lite by destroying two iconic friezes. 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. 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. She leaves it hanging for a momentpanic flashes across his facebut then gives him a bump. A lot of people would let it go, but Haberman signals to the hostess. The next day, I called himhe's an old family friend of the Habermans and has known Maggie since she was about three days oldto ask him to elaborate. Rosenhas taken issue with Habermans characterization of Trump as a master of media manipulation: If you are a man, and you bite a dog, he wrote, that does not make you a master of anything. But Haberman, who tends to predict that Trump will express his worst impulses and cause maximum damage, told me she believed that he is more often underestimated than overestimated. And laugh at him. 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. 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. (But, she says, Melissa McCarthy's Sean Spicer portrayal more accurately captures him.) 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. As an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence, Haberman studied creative writing and child psychology. He said that to me in one of our interviews. 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. 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. 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. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. 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. These days, in her profession, the truth is a demanding god. "Okay, wellfist bump?" Brian Fallon, who was a campaign spokesperson for Clinton, says that Haberman was in touch with him and his staff so often that it was like she'd been assigned to cover them. "That's all I care about." he asks, pointing at the recorder between us. After Trump rose to political prominence, Haberman became a player in the theatre of the Trump era: an avatar of journalisms promise, but also of its shortcomings. ", Haberman is growing weary of the DC establishment's seeming inability to metabolize the president's personality. A few minutes later, here he comes. In the weeks before John Wayne Gacys scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate. "And it's not just any mayoralty; it's a late-'80s, early '90s New York mayoralty." Trumps performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates. Parts of Confidence Man seem to wrestle with its authors role in amplifying Trumps lies. The former President is not what he seems, she said, but hes not nothing. I just want to go back to the psychiatrist line. Her reporting, much of it written with other Times staffers, mingled Pulitzer-winning discoveries (Trump told Russian officials that firing James Comey relieved great pressure on him), palace intrigue (John Kelly clashed with Corey Lewandowski), and bathetic details (Trump watching television in his bathrobe). ", 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. Maggie Haberman is a tireless, keen-eyed example. ", "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. People wanted her to provide a normative framing for what was going on, the professor and media commentator Daniel Drezner said. Please check your inbox to confirm. Yes, I can! And it's very hard to know now whether he really believes this or whether it is just something he is saying. At first Thrush didn't like her, mistaking her voraciousness for shtick. And probably because her mother is a publicist, she doesn't view Trump's press flacks, or flacks in general, as the enemy. 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. Adds Haberman, "Some Ed Koch. Questions about her process elicited similarly guarded answers. ", "Maggie's magic is that she's the dominant reporter on the [White House] beat, and she doesn't even live in Washington. Hicks echoed Conway, e-mailing me a few days later that Haberman was "a true professional. He confesses that he is drawn to her, like a moth to a flame. He admires autocrats in other countries. 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. Sensitive subject, but we know there are a number of incidents that happened during his presidency that led people to say he is racist. "You can offer perspective, you can offer insight, you can offer details, but they've got to be locked down. It was Haberman he dialed. At the annual conference this week, conservative celebrities like Mike Lindell and Kari Lake will attend, as will Donald Trump, but many possible 2024 rivals are skipping it. Haberman countered that such soap operas have been happening for years. 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. "Haven't you joined us already?" [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." By 1999, Marques put Haberman on the City Hall beat, where she covered then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump friend. Friends and colleagues say this is her standard operating procedure. Part of what makes Haberman one of Trumps foremost contextualizers is her fluency in the worlds that formed him. He's called him a weakling. Donald Trump will be basking in affection from activists at CPAC on Saturday. This would be a profound shift in the shape of the federal government. Hope you'll take a moment to order CONFIDENCE MAN here. Maggie grew up on the Upper West Side, attending P.S. Habermans particular way of contextualizing often seems intended to puncture or undermine. 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. Plus: each Wednesday, exclusively for subscribers, the best books of the week. 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. 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. . Habermans dark hair was blown out and she wore a forest-green blouse and pink lipstick. He was shaped by how to attract those stories.. "When we as a culture can't agree on a simple, basic fact setthat is very scary. Her daughter was home sick from school with a fever. "You're going to bring this up every time, aren't you?" The book is frank about Trumps cruelty. Slate called her Trump's "snake charmer"; New Yorker editor in chief David Remnick recently likened Trump to her "ardent, twisted suitor." Trump responded, jokingly, "Really? Oct 9, 2022. Maggie Lindsy Haberman (born October 30, 1973) is an American journalist, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and a political analyst for CNN. Include your name, the article headline, and your message. I just have totems, she said, hoarsely, because her press tour had already begun and she was losing her voice. Hutchinson had just finished her third deposition with the committee. Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. "Speak of the devil," she said into the phone. One communications staffer after another told me that they appreciate the fact that she never blindsides them. "The difference is, Maggie is in no sense carrying water for Trump," Greenfield said. 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. "What do they thinkthat it's going in a secret newspaper?". I mean, does he just create a different factual universe? Trump, having tasted the fairy food of the Oval Office, seems similarly stricken, entranced by power and fame that he is unable to forsake. [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. 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. Many of the juiciest Trump pieces have been broken by her: That story about him spending his evenings alone in a bathrobe, watching cable news? It was like watching someone juggle fire while standing on a tightrope. He's tall with an athletic build and a military-style cut to his orange hair. The former presidents lawyers cited executive privilege, a tactic they have used with other ex-Trump aides. 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. Trump frequently complains about Haberman's coverage. "I'm not sure the objective facts will let him do that this time. By Damon Winter/The New York Times . A lot of Rudy Giuliani. 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. During the Trump era, Haberman became an avatar of journalisms promise as well as of its failures. Habermans assessment was grimmer. Haberman and Thrush again, with their colleague Matthew Rosenberg. 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. 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). I do not want you to come away with that impression. 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. "This is a president who is always selling. Maggie Haberman, thank you, the reporter who has known Donald Trump longer than any other. 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. Amazingly detailed scenes here, including Jeffrey Clark, whose devices were recently seized by federal officials, holding court at an event in the spring Haberman and The New York Times supposedly disproportionately covered Hillary Clinton's email controversy with many more articles critical of her than of the numerous scandals involving her competitor Donald Trump, including his sexual misconduct allegations,[16][17] with Taylor Link writing: "The NYT's White House reporter calls the Clinton campaign liars, but was hesitant to use that word with Trump. "Maggie doesn't camouflage. ", 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. "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. 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.". 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. He gives off a hint of reality TVwith his mirages, his come-ons, his brazenness, his feintsand a dash of the Devil. Sean Piccoli,Jonah E. Bromwich,Ben Protess. That must have been a long time ago. The Manhattan district attorneys office is scrutinizing the former presidents role in the hush money payment to a porn star. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. "And yet Trump seems driven to connect with her.". (Nancy worked on projects for Trump's business but says she never met him.). By Shane Goldmacher,Michael C. Bender and Maggie Haberman. "But I also know he can't allow himself to ever quit." "[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". How do you explain it? Perhaps he glimpsed himself as if in a mirror. He draws roads. Haberman once said in an interview that she talked to 50 people a day. [19] She has also been accused "from certain corners of the left as a supposed water carrier for the 45th president". I'm having a hard time remembering it." ", 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. And thank you for having me to talk about the book. 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. 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 . From Eisenhower to Biden, questions of age have persisted. I mentioned her well-documented fear of flying. ", Her father, Clyde, says he likes to think that honest journalism is "hardwired" into her. "I love being with her," he says. Highlights from the week in culture, every Saturday. He clearly, in my reporting and I describe this in the first few days after the November 2020 election, he seemed aware that he had lost in his conversations with a number of aides. The New York Times ' Maggie Haberman raised the possibility that former President Donald Trump might not run for office again despite many political observers considering it a foregone. "Maggie's whole career has been about grabbing people by the lapels," Burns says. ", Trump has also sent her his famous press clippings with Sharpie notes on them, mostly with criticisms, but at least once with praise. ", 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. "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." Premium Access. She was the dominant Trump reporter on the campaign, and she didn't travel with him. "No, that's not all I care about. 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. he asks, uncertainly. She was wearing an evil-eye bracelet. births and plastic surgeries), and the funerals of firefighters and civic luminaries. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. he yelps like a sixth grader sent our way on a dare, and dashes off. And it's just hard to know how much is that vs. he's convinced himself of this. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. 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.. Greenfield said there are journalists who have been tight with presidents before; he cited Chalmers Roberts, a Washington Post reporter who'd been close to Kennedy and, later in life, admitted he'd compromised himself by giving Kennedy overly favorable coverage. Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, stops midsentence to . The man is, it appears, too drunk to be able to discern if she's flirting or annoyed. She was on her phone. Toward the end of our meeting, Haberman told me that she is superstitious. The Times hired her to cover the 2016 election five months before Donald Trump declared his first Presidential campaign. She turned the phone over. Congratulations on the book. 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. [29][21], Haberman married Dareh Ardashes Gregorian, a reporter for the New York Daily News, formerly of the New York Post, and son of Vartan Gregorian, in a November 2003 ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in Manhattan. Haberman has spent a good part of the past seven years immersed in Trumps deranged fantasia of American life. Glass ceiling: Tishby, an Israeli native who now calls Los Angeles home, joined the podcast to discuss her new book . There was a lot of duking it out, she said. She commutes to DC several times a week from her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and three young children. He was telling people he wasn't going to leave. But no matter what Haberman writes about Trump, he has never frozen her out. It's titled "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.". "Can I join you guys? "And so he will take this chair and say to you, 'This is actually a table.' 2023 Cond Nast. 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. 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. You are considered the reporter who goes back longer with Donald Trump than anyone else and who understands him better than any other reporter. "You can change her mind," Madden says. Well be fine.. She says she does most of her work from her car, shuttling her kids around, dashing between the office in Times Square and her apartment. "I do not think he is enjoying the job particularly, and that is based on reporting," she says. 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. What HBOs Chernobyl got right, and what it got terribly wrong. 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. As her book tour began, in October, Haberman and I met for an interview in Washington. Like, Maggies friendly to us. [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. "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 former President once told her that he found air travel spooky.. 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. citymd std testing cost without insurance, bert sorrells obituary, umass medical school salary grade 75,
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