Habermans assessment was grimmer. And she clearly knows the family dynamic and knows him and all of these family stories very, very well, better than anyone. He "kind of chuckled" and replied, "It's like therapy. Some of his aides laughed. That [Trump] is unconcerned by that, I think, is the big issue," she says. [19], In 2022, Haberman published a book on the Trump presidency called Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. 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. In the midst of his second divorce, from Marla Maples, Trump was a maestro of controlling his tabloid image, calling in tidbits about himself. 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. The former President is not what he seems, she said, but hes not nothing. ", [youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPME4VCNmyc&t=79s[/youtube]. 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. "[22] The book debuted at number one on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending October 8, 2022. This article appears in the July 2017 issue of ELLE. As for the breaking part, Haberman is more . During the Trump Presidency, Habermans output and name recognition placed her at the center of debates over how journalists should cover his Administration. He was telling people he wasn't going to leave. When he accused former national security adviser Susan Rice of committing crimes, and defended Fox News' Bill O'Reilly against the sexual harassment claims that would soon end his career at the network? she says she told him. I'm having a hard time remembering it." ", Haberman is growing weary of the DC establishment's seeming inability to metabolize the president's personality. Honestly, the first name that came to mind as you were asking that question was Richard Nixon, with whom who is obviously not alive anymore, with whom he had a huge fascination. 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? "You're going to bring this up every time, aren't you?" Collect, curate and comment on your files. 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. Premium Access. Theyre outraged by what were covering, and they dont understand why its not having the effect it should. "Speak of the devil," she said into the phone. This article appears in the July 2017 issue of ELLE.. [20][21] A Guardian review of the book describes her as "the New York Times' Trump whisperer", and describes the book as "much more than 600 pages of context, scoop and drama.it gives Trump and those close to him plenty of voice and rope. In her work, Trumps actions dont appear special or mysterious; they emerge as a clear consequence of his background. 2023 Getty Images. 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. 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. He draws buildings. As Twitter blew up as Trump compounded the backlash against Comey's dismissal with an incredible series of missteps, Haberman shot out an exasperated tweet of her own: "What is amazing is capacity of people who watched the campaign to be surprised by what they are seeing. I used that metaphor to describe him in 2017. "No, that's not all I care about. [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. Passantino, her lawyer at the time, was in a taxi with her on the way to a restaurant. 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. Haberman, a White House correspondent for . She's former transportation secretary. 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. 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's magic is that she's the dominant reporter on the [White House] beat, and she doesn't even live in Washington. The books thesisTrumps gonna Trumpis pointedly unglamorous, in keeping with Habermans deflationary assessments of Trumps character. The time Trump called the Times to blame the collapse of the Obamacare repeal on the Democrats? But Confidence Man is among the first to seriously consider its subjects backstory, how he sprang from the overlapping scenes of New York real estate, city government, and media celebrity. 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." ", 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. She was texting, taking calls, e-mailing, and Gchatting with colleagues and sources. Haberman has spent a good part of the past seven years immersed in Trumps deranged fantasia of American life. She is a native New Yorker, a competitive advantage given her subject. She previously covered the Trump administration and continues to cover Donald Trump and politics in Washington. [13] In March 2016 Haberman, along with New York Times reporter David E. Sanger, questioned Trump in an interview, "Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views," during which he "agreed with a suggestion that his ideas might be summed up as 'America First'". He has called you, essentially, like his psychiatrist, whether you agree with that term or not. Hicks echoed Conway, e-mailing me a few days later that Haberman was "a true professional. He draws roads. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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. Her daughter was home sick from school with a fever. Maggie Lindsy Haberman (New York, 30 oktober 1973) is een Amerikaans journaliste.. Haberman is Witte Huis-correspondent voor The New York Times en politiek analist voor CNN.Daaraan voorafgaand was zij als politiek verslaggever werkzaam voor Politico en de New York Daily News.. Afkomst en opleiding. "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. [1] In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. penguinrandomhouse.com. Because otherwise you're just never going to be able to cover him," she says. So, what exactly is in his heart, I think, becomes irrelevant. Is there anyone in political life he truly admires? he yelps like a sixth grader sent our way on a dare, and dashes off. I do not want you to come away with that impression. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. That must have been a long time ago. Designed with adjustable nose pads for a custom fit. Glass ceiling: Tishby, an Israeli native who now calls Los Angeles home, joined the podcast to discuss her new book . She is not a fan of SNL's impression of Kellyanne Conway as a psychopathic fame whore. From Eisenhower to Biden, questions of age have persisted. "Can I join you guys? I would argue he is now occupying the most expensive and valuable real estate in the country. I just wanted to make the point that we were engaged in some revisionist history. 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. Slate called her Trump's "snake charmer"; New Yorker editor in chief David Remnick recently likened Trump to her "ardent, twisted suitor." Plus: each Wednesday, exclusively for subscribers, the best books of the week. ", When I tell Haberman what her colleagues say about her, she shrugs, like she's being complimented for breathing. And he makes that very clear. She turned the phone over. 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. 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. You are considered the reporter who goes back longer with Donald Trump than anyone else and who understands him better than any other reporter. Because she enjoyed good access to him on the campaign trail and during his presidency she has been called a "Trump. 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. Some passages unfold as groans of exhaustion: For all the intrigue that is part of the Trump mythos, Haberman writes, the irony, say those who have known him for years, is that he has had only a handful of moves throughout his entire adult life. Part of the work of Confidence Man is to source and taxonomize each of these moves, and to identify when Trump is drawing on any one of them. 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. Access the best of Getty Images with our simple subscription plan.Millions of high-quality images, video, and music options are waiting for you. You know, he plopped himself down on Fifth Avenue"a reference to the 58-story Trump Tower"and he still was not treated seriously by New York's business elite. I know a lot of people have been waiting to see this. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. "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." ", 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. Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. How do you explain it? By Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg and Michael S. Schmidt Published Jan. 31, 2021 Updated June 14, 2022 [4], Haberman's career began in 1996 when she was hired by the New York Post. 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. Greenfield introduced Haberman by saying that he couldn't remember a reporter having established a relationship with a president quite like hers with Trump. This purple frame wouldn't be complete without the intricate temple detail, a distinct touch to help you stand out from the crowd. 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. But effective salesmanship must be based in credibilityan area in which his administration has suffered significant set-backs in recent days. Like the president she covers, Haberman, 43, is a born-and-bred New Yorker and slightly ill at ease in Washington. [23], In 2018, Haberman's reporting on the Trump administration earned the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting (shared with colleagues at the Times and The Washington Post),[24] the individual Aldo Beckman Award for Journalistic Excellence award from the White House Correspondents' Association,[25] and the Front Page Award for Journalist of the Year from the Newswomen's Club of New York. She was the dominant Trump reporter on the campaign, and she didn't travel with him. 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. In a statement to The Wrap's Andi Ortiz, a Times spokesperson said, "Maggie Haberman took leave from The Times to write her book. The quick-hit rhythm that Trump and Haberman were both fine-tuning teed them up perfectly for today's Twitter-paced news environment. 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. "I'm just trying not to get beat," she says. 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 Trumps advisers and their connections to Russia. 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. Pictures of the incident show Haberman talking nonstop as an uncharacteristically silent Koch stares at her, slightly astonished. "The Triborough and Empire State view of Trump is very different from the national view of Trump," she points out. 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. 75 and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a private school in the Bronx. Haberman, who's known for her extensive contacts in Trump's circle, revealed behind-the-scenes details of Trump's political career in her book, such as that Trump considered refusing to leave the. The instant #1 New York Times bestseller. She was wearing an evil-eye bracelet. Through it all, she never missed a beat in our conversation. Dont worry, Passantino allegedly reassured her. Just as he didn't back down after being accused of sexual assault, she says he is unlikely to walk away from this fight or resign. Haberman was born on October 30, 1973, in New York City, the daughter of Clyde Haberman, who became a longtime journalist for The New York Times, and Nancy Haberman (ne Spies), a media communications executive at Rubenstein Associates. ", 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. "There's an enormous personal price that she pays, that people pay when they devote so much of themselves to this," Thrush says. The Manhattan district attorneys office is scrutinizing the former presidents role in the hush money payment to a porn star. "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. "I'm really not surprised. 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. 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. The former presidents lawyers cited executive privilege, a tactic they have used with other ex-Trump aides. These days, in her profession, the truth is a demanding god. And thank you for having me to talk about the book. I mentioned her well-documented fear of flying. Haberman argued that she did not learn this until after Joe Biden took office. Boards are the best place to save images and video clips. 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. When I speak to him, it's because he's trying to sell me," Haberman tells the audience at the 92nd Street Y. She was also on her laptop. When the moderator of the panel, Jeff Greenfield, a veteran reporter and host of PBS's Need to Know, remarks that a Democratic senator told him the Republican senators think Trump is "nuts," Haberman prefaces her response with "I don't know that I'd go with the diagnostic that you used," but then offerswith specific details that are more enlightening and perhaps more damningthat she had lunch with a Republican senator who has been astonished to discover that Trump watches his every move in the media, calling him directly to parse his TV appearances and quotes he's given the print press. [15] Haberman was criticized for applying a double standard in her reporting about the scandals involving the two presidential candidates of the 2016 election. [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. All Rights Reserved. He is very aware that, if you repeat something over and over again, it can turn it into something real. For Confidence Man, Haberman interviewed Trump three times. 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. And that's going to mean certain situations are fraught. Haberman, one of the main conduits of Oval Office drama, came under particular fire for her handling of anonymous sources. By Shane Goldmacher,Michael C. Bender and Maggie Haberman. Like, floating in the sky.". I reflexively tense up; she doesn't flinch. James Carville wanted her to come to Louisiana to talk to a class, but her kids were about to go on school vacation. By 1999, Marques put Haberman on the City Hall beat, where she covered then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump friend. Hope you'll take a moment to order CONFIDENCE MAN here. He gives off a hint of reality TVwith his mirages, his come-ons, his brazenness, his feintsand a dash of the Devil. 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. 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. What HBOs Chernobyl got right, and what it got terribly wrong. 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.. 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. "You can offer perspective, you can offer insight, you can offer details, but they've got to be locked down. Include your name, the article headline, and your message. There are briefing-room tantrums, incredulous generals, and off-color mutterings. 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're going to see if people were killed," Marques says. But I do think he figured out personnel, which is often what he's focused on. Another evil eye was in her pocket. 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. As a woman and a receptacle for liberals disappointed hopes about the capacities of journalism in the MAGA era, Haberman received a tremendous amount of vitriol, Drezner said. "Can I come back?" She almost never turns her phone off. "Part of the reason" Haberman is so read in the Times "is because she is writing about Donald Trump. ", "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. He noticed right away that Haberman had talent. In hindsight, Haberman was building a reservoir of knowledge and contacts that would make her probably the best-sourced reporter of the 2016 campaign. Do you think he knows what's real and what isn't? When Haberman interviewed Trump in the Oval Office this April, he was making his usual complaint about how unfair her coverage is. Lorenz's new classmates at the Post and a few of her old ones at the Times called her out-of-date self-empowerment-via-marketing-lingo "cringey" and basically labeled her a neo-journalism . [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. "Haven't you joined us already?" Haberman says she'd had no interest in journalism up to this point. But his campaign is preparing for an ugly, protracted primary fight for the nomination. (The Police Athletic League, a cause beloved by the former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, profited handsomely from his shamelessness, Haberman writes.) He treats everyone like they're his psychiatrist, because he's working everything out in real time. Search instead in. 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. . CNN, for whom she is a political analyst, called. Since 2015, Habermans career has revolved around the most untrustworthy man in national politics. One communications staffer after another told me that they appreciate the fact that she never blindsides them. ", 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. 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. Sister Sites: Techmeme Tech news essentials. 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. The Getty Images design is a trademark of Getty Images. Questions about her process elicited similarly guarded answers. Throughout our conversation, she gave practiced, useful answers that slipped easily into anecdote, and she continually steered the topic away from herself. Ad Choices. She stared. 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.