"It's like she's in the building, but she's not even in the city. 2023 Getty Images. Over time, however, as Haberman did not get beat, did not get beat, he realized she was for real. 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. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. 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. In late April, Haberman spoke on (yet another) panel, this one at the 92nd Street Y, with her colleague Alex Burns. Parts of Confidence Man seem to wrestle with its authors role in amplifying Trumps lies. Haberman was not the only reporter to see the underlying logic in the daily bedlam emanating from Washington. "You're pretty!" 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. Yes, Haberman does a decent job laying out the business life of DJT, as seen thru her decidedly inhospitable glasses. "This is a symbiotic relationship," says an administration official. Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, has been covering Donald Trump since the 1990s. 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. 1996 - 2023 NewsHour Productions LLC. Habermans own sense of Trumps spooky potency continues to shape her coverage. ", 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. I mean, we know it is not true. How Maggie Haberman Covers Trump Without Losing Her Mind But no matter what Haberman writes about Trump, he has never frozen her out. And I think, sometimes, he seems less clear. Trumps performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates. Because Haberman has known Trump for so long she has been derided as a schill. . "This is a very precarious moment, in terms of what anyone can believe in. " The next time Haberman wrote about him was in 2009"Terror Tent Down at Camp Trump" was the headlinewhen Trump allowed Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi to pitch a Bedouin-style tent on the lawn of his estate in Bedford, New York.). Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? He is elated. Like Kane in Orson Welles's masterpiece, Trump was a swaggering . Haberman, for her part, has been on the Trump beat for decades. Amazingly detailed scenes here, including Jeffrey Clark, whose devices were recently seized by federal officials, holding court at an event in the spring [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. Tweets with replies by Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) / Twitter Hope you'll take a moment to order CONFIDENCE MAN here. Maggie Haberman chose not to make this about another smear campaign against the 45th president of the United States, but rather offer some context that all readers ought to heed. Greenfield introduced Haberman by saying that he couldn't remember a reporter having established a relationship with a president quite like hers with Trump. Well, we know that he I mean, and you have written this. Intense is one of the words friends and colleagues most often use to describe her. 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. He's called him a weakling. "Can I come back?" As an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence, Haberman studied creative writing and child psychology. [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 think his niece is right. I can't think of anyone whose behavior in typical U.S. political fashion he admires right now. This past November, by the end of the candidates meandering, hour-long campaign announcement, she had tweeted about the speech more than twenty times. 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. She is a native New Yorker, a competitive advantage given her subject. ", Trump has also sent her his famous press clippings with Sharpie notes on them, mostly with criticisms, but at least once with praise. On this week's episode of Jewish Insider 's "Limited Liability Podcast, " hosts Jarrod Bernstein and Rich Goldberg are joined by both actress, producer and author Noa Tishby and New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman. "I'm actually not trying to be funny," Haberman said, correcting them, and, when they continued to laugh, insisting, "Again, I'm not doing a comedy line. Haberman, a White House correspondent for . 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. Like, floating in the sky.". 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. What Did We Learn About the Georgia Grand Jurys Findings? She wrote about Donald Trump for those publications and rose to prominence covering his campaign, presidency, and post-presidency for the Times. "Short fiction, always somewhat curiously resembling my own life," 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. She catches herself. [2] They have three children and live in Brooklyn. The Getty Images design is a trademark of Getty Images. He noticed right away that Haberman had talent. Congratulations on the book. 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? She almost never turns her phone off. 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. ", 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. "You're going to bring this up every time, aren't you?" Organize, control, distribute and measure all of your digital content. 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. Trump, having tasted the fairy food of the Oval Office, seems similarly stricken, entranced by power and fame that he is unable to forsake. The quick-hit rhythm that Trump and Haberman were both fine-tuning teed them up perfectly for today's Twitter-paced news environment. "Maggie's whole career has been about grabbing people by the lapels," Burns says. But, if he does, what do you think a second Donald Trump presidency term would look like? I think that theres a misunderstanding among certain aspects of our readership about what it is we do, she said. He treats everyone like they're his psychiatrist, because he's working everything out in real time. 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. My job, she said, is to provide as much information on a topic as possible that is significant and relevant and related to events. What a President does, she noted, will always get coverage. Guy Cecil has led Priorities USA since 2015 and will leave at the end of March, as outside political groups begin to make plans for the 2024 races. Hicks echoed Conway, e-mailing me a few days later that Haberman was "a true professional. 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. Habermans particular way of contextualizing often seems intended to puncture or undermine. [7] According to one commentator, Haberman "formed a potent journalistic tag team with Glenn Thrush". The man with the orange hair is making a scene. As for the breaking part, Haberman is more . Questions about her process elicited similarly guarded answers. "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? Trump Said NYT's Maggie Haberman Is Like His 'Psychiatrist': Book 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. Maggie grew up on the Upper West Side, attending P.S. 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. 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. 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. 2023 Cond Nast. "I do not think he is enjoying the job particularly, and that is based on reporting," she says. I mentioned her well-documented fear of flying. 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. One communications staffer after another told me that they appreciate the fact that she never blindsides them. "Can I join you guys? Trump frequently complains about Haberman's coverage. Significantly, she was accumulating sources who were close to Trump, who knew when he was angry and what he watched on TV and how he could only sleep well in his own bed. "In the beginning, you're going to a lot of crime scenes. It's obviously not benign. "What do they thinkthat it's going in a secret newspaper?". He stands looking down at her, swaying a little, slightly walleyed, but he still has a big-man swagger. Ppl don't change." Oct 9, 2022. Trump is 70. Haberman, for her part, has become a front-page fixture and a Fourth Estate folk hero. Her daughter was home sick from school with a fever. 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. How Should an Older President Think About a Second Term?