By Damon Winter/The New York Times . "The news was something my dad did." And I think, sometimes, he seems less clear. 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. Even those of us who had covered Trump for years struggled with how to handle the gush of falsehoods that dotted his sentences. But, in person, Haberman appeared nonplussed when I asked how she negotiates the gray areas in which her duty to break news aligns uncomfortably with Trumps interests. 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. 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. He has called you, essentially, like his psychiatrist, whether you agree with that term or not. [3] She is a 1991 graduate of Ethical Culture Fieldston School, followed by Sarah Lawrence College where she obtained a bachelor's degree in 1995. Trump frequently complains about Haberman's coverage. When Haberman demurs, politely but without apology, he is momentarily stumped. In the weeks before John Wayne Gacys scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate. "I love being with her," he says. 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. 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. "She grew up in an environment where journalism that was as accurate as humanly possible was practically a religion," he says. By 1999, Marques put Haberman on the City Hall beat, where she covered then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump friend. Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. Through it all, she never missed a beat in our conversation. "Maggie's whole career has been about grabbing people by the lapels," Burns says. She was texting, taking calls, e-mailing, and Gchatting with colleagues and sources. He's called him a weakling. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. ", Trump has also sent her his famous press clippings with Sharpie notes on them, mostly with criticisms, but at least once with praise. 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. [8] She became a political analyst for CNN in 2014. I don't think he figured the office out. "Part of the reason" Haberman is so read in the Times "is because she is writing about Donald Trump. Dont worry, Passantino allegedly reassured her. A reader wondering whether to be surprised by such carelessness, such corruption, gets her answer: yes and no. During the Trump Presidency, Habermans output and name recognition placed her at the center of debates over how journalists should cover his Administration. Ventura headset in 2024, smart glasses with a display and a "neural interface" smartwatch in 2025, and AR glasses in 2027 . The scene underscores a question that has shadowed Haberman for the past several years. Her son didn't have school after the ceremony, so Haberman brought him with her to a politics meeting at the Times. . How Should an Older President Think About a Second Term? [1] In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. I don't believe that he learned how to be president more astutely. Haberman, for her part, has become a front-page fixture and a Fourth Estate folk hero. "In the beginning, you're going to a lot of crime scenes. 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.. I would argue he is now occupying the most expensive and valuable real estate in the country. This article appears in the July 2017 issue of ELLE.. Over time, however, as Haberman did not get beat, did not get beat, he realized she was for real. 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. 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. [2] Haberman returned to the Post to cover the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and other political races. And he makes that very clear. I reflexively tense up; she doesn't flinch. It's titled "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.". 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. (But, she says, Melissa McCarthy's Sean Spicer portrayal more accurately captures him.) "I'm wearing a sweatshirt, and my hair is in a bun," she told the producer. 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. He views the truth as something that's transactional. No one suggests her male colleagues are "wooing" Trump. The man is, it appears, too drunk to be able to discern if she's flirting or annoyed. Do you think, at his core, that he is racist? Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, stops midsentence to . he yelps like a sixth grader sent our way on a dare, and dashes off. There are briefing-room tantrums, incredulous generals, and off-color mutterings. This would be a profound shift in the shape of the federal government. Because he is the same person he was during the campaign.". "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. And, finally, Maggie Haberman, you have said that he may have backed himself into a corner when it comes to whether he's going to run for president again, and, for that reason, he may do it. Trumps performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates. [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." Haberman is famously formidable. Further introspection on the subject of stifling her emotions did not seem to interest her, perhaps because she sees no alternative. How do you explain it? Amazingly detailed scenes here, including Jeffrey Clark, whose devices were recently seized by federal officials, holding court at an event in the spring Yes, I can! 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." [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. 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." People wanted her to provide a normative framing for what was going on, the professor and media commentator Daniel Drezner said. Would she tell the man to "stop screaming"? 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. 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. Subscribe to Heres the Deal, our politics he asks, pointing at the recorder between us. We encounter all the usual suspects: Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway and Paul Manafort and Hope Hicks. But I do think he figured out personnel, which is often what he's focused on. 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? 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. She says they were talking about infrastructure when, "out of nowhere," he raised the This Week laugh. Throughout our conversation, she gave practiced, useful answers that slipped easily into anecdote, and she continually steered the topic away from herself. It made me more able to take a punch. This worlda soap opera of excess and corruption playing non-stop through the New York of the ninetieswas Trumps, too. So, what exactly is in his heart, I think, becomes irrelevant. In those days, the future president was a fixture in Page Six, the Post's gossip column. Haberman did not let it slide. And I think that the people who he would put into key jobs would be very alarming to a number of people across Washington. She's out with a new book. She finds the framing of her relationship with the president in romantic terms "facile." "The Triborough and Empire State view of Trump is very different from the national view of Trump," she points out. 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. The debate is set for August, in the same city that will host the partys 2024 convention. Haberman pressed her point: "It was two months ago. Maggie parries, her face inscrutable. I can't think of anyone whose behavior in typical U.S. political fashion he admires right now. 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. I suggested that, once, reporters could vanish behind their facts. He's tall with an athletic build and a military-style cut to his orange hair. "This is a president who is always selling. Access the best of Getty Images with our simple subscription plan. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. And Haberman, like Trump, knows how to spin: Confidence Man makes a show of refusing Trumps enticements. Her tweets frequently numbered more than a hundred and forty in twenty-four hours. 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. 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 difference is, Maggie is in no sense carrying water for Trump," Greenfield said. She was part of a team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for coverage of the Trump administrations handling of the coronavirus. Do you think he knows what's real and what isn't? It was like watching someone juggle fire while standing on a tightrope. 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. Like, floating in the sky.". And laugh at him. It's obviously not benign. 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. 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). "Speak of the devil," she said into the phone. She's e-mailed me from the NYPD tow pounda place she said she'd already visited twice that month. Trump conceded this was true and the story was about an "8. During Rudy Giulianis second mayoral term, Haberman covered City Hall, a notoriously cutthroat beat. She was thinking aloud about her scheduleshe doesn't keep an actual calendar, not on paper, not on her phone; it's all in her head. ", .css-5rg4gn{display:block;font-family:NeueHaasUnica,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0.3125rem;margin-top:0;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-5rg4gn:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-5rg4gn{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.3;letter-spacing:-0.02em;margin:0.75rem 0 0;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-5rg4gn{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.3;letter-spacing:0.02rem;margin:0.9375rem 0 0;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-5rg4gn{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.4;margin:0.9375rem 0 0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-5rg4gn{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.4;}}The First Day Back Was Agonizing, Monterey Park Has Been a Safe Haven for My Family, How to Help Victims of the Turkey-Syria Earthquake, Iranians Are Fighting and Dying for Their Rights, This Black History Month, Im Angry as Hell, Jacinda Ardern Showed Moms How to Speak Up, My Chronic Illness Led Me to Get an Abortion, How Barnard Students Fought for Abortion Pills. 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). Dhruv Khullar examines what strategies worked to control the virus, and talks to the C.D.C.s director, Rochelle Walensky, about the issue of misinformation. A lot of Rudy Giuliani. "That's all I care about." 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,. 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. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. 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. Is this something he believes to be true, or what? Haberman joined Judy Woodruff to discuss the book. Haberman, for her part, has been on the Trump beat for decades. Haberman sees herself as a demystifier. [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. Lyndon Johnson gave preference to Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Walter Lippmann, and Lippmann had once gone so far as to secretly write part of a speech for Johnsonand then write a story praising the speech. The man with the orange hair is making a scene. It was a story about Mar-a-Lago." "This is the book Trump fears most.". "You're going to bring this up every time, aren't you?" He confesses that he is drawn to her, like a moth to a flame. I think his niece is right. 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.. "I do not think he is enjoying the job particularly, and that is based on reporting," she says. As we were talking, her phone buzzed. "Can I come back?" 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. She wrote fiction. A lot of people would let it go, but Haberman signals to the hostess. 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. There is also the question of what prolonged exposure to Trumpa man who profanes and corrupts everything he toucheshas done to Haberman herself. And that's going to mean certain situations are fraught. I think he has a long pattern of racist behavior going back to when he was in New York City. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, Among the revelations in the recently released materials from the January 6th committee was an account of a conversation that took place in May, 2022, between the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and the former White House ethics attorney Stefan Passantino. And, early on, he figured out how to neutralize threats by hiring them, as when he lured Anthony Gliedman, the housing commissioner who denied his request for a tax break on Trump Tower, and whom Trump subsequently threatened and sued, to come work for him several years later. Grow your brand authentically by sharing brand content with the internets creators. Haberman has spent a good part of the past seven years immersed in Trumps deranged fantasia of American life. You are considered the reporter who goes back longer with Donald Trump than anyone else and who understands him better than any other reporter. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. "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? "You can change her mind," Madden says. Both she and her subject navigate the public sphere as if they have something to prove. According to Hutchinson, Passantinos phone rangit was the Times reporter Maggie Haberman. And, for all Habermans success in demystifying Trump, at times she seems to vest him with eerie power. 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. One communications staffer after another told me that they appreciate the fact that she never blindsides them. Or is she simply good at her joba job that requires her, at times, to win the trust of the untrustworthy? Sean Piccoli,Jonah E. Bromwich,Ben Protess. One attendee chastised another for looking at her phone, saying that its light was distracting, as though we were all at a cliffhanger movie. Hutchinson asked her counsel not to take the call. Because Haberman has known Trump for so long she has been derided as a schill. In her work, Trumps actions dont appear special or mysterious; they emerge as a clear consequence of his background. 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. 14-Day Free Returns. "You're pretty!" Congratulations on the book. 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. Designed with adjustable nose pads for a custom fit. 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. She previously worked as a political reporter for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and Politico. She suggested a colleague to go on TV in her stead. By the time Trump formally announced his candidacy in June 2015 and Haberman was assigned to his campaign, she'd been reporting on him for a decade. The phone buzzed again. She wrote about Donald Trump for those publications and rose to prominence covering his campaign, presidency, and post-presidency for the Times.