"She came into the Page One conference room, and there was this huge round of applause," Parker says. 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. You don't even know where she isshe could be anywhere. 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. Yes, I can! No one suggests her male colleagues are "wooing" Trump. Like the president she covers, Haberman, 43, is a born-and-bred New Yorker and slightly ill at ease in Washington. I used that metaphor to describe him in 2017. You are considered the reporter who goes back longer with Donald Trump than anyone else and who understands him better than any other reporter. And it's very hard to know now whether he really believes this or whether it is just something he is saying. "She is literally always doing four things," says her friend and former New York Post colleague Annie Karni. But who he is is also why he won and why he tripled down after Access Hollywood," the political crisis which Haberman says is probably the yardstick Trump is using to measure his response to the current situation. "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." In the weeks before John Wayne Gacys scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate. "What do they thinkthat it's going in a secret newspaper?". "I'm wearing a sweatshirt, and my hair is in a bun," she told the producer. . The former President once told her that he found air travel spooky.. The debate is set for August, in the same city that will host the partys 2024 convention. "[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". Mediagazer Must-read media news. I can't think of anyone whose behavior in typical U.S. political fashion he admires right now. ", When I tell Haberman what her colleagues say about her, she shrugs, like she's being complimented for breathing. I mean, how does he take in facts? She echoed the same thought to me in email dispatches as she and her colleagues furiously traded scoops with the Washington Post last week. 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. "You're pretty!" And Haberman stresses the racism that has permeated Trumps image since he and his father were sued for housing discrimination in the seventies. I care about getting it right. 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. All Rights Reserved. For his first term, Haberman has said, he wanted to campaign more than he wanted to be elected; now he wants to be elected without all the travails of campaigning. Her expertise wasn't just Trumpit was the Trump psyche. Because she was literally talking to 16 people within our campaign at the same time.". The first time I met Haberman, we were in the airy, modern cafeteria of the New York Times building in Manhattan. 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.". 1996 - 2023 NewsHour Productions LLC. 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. "It's like she's in the building, but she's not even in the city. 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. Portions of the electorate learned to associate her with distressing updates about the country. It's obviously not benign. 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. "And yet Trump seems driven to connect with her.". I don't believe that he learned how to be president more astutely. 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. 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. 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. Are you doing an interview?" I also think he's extremely suggestible and I think he's extremely paranoid. 2023 Cond Nast. Haberman joined Judy Woodruff to discuss the book. What Did We Learn About the Georgia Grand Jurys Findings? Or is she simply good at her joba job that requires her, at times, to win the trust of the untrustworthy? She's out with a new book. The time Trump called the Times to blame the collapse of the Obamacare repeal on the Democrats? Most recently, just in the last few days, he put out a statement about Elaine Chao, the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell. 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. [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. "She grew up in an environment where journalism that was as accurate as humanly possible was practically a religion," he says. "But I also know he can't allow himself to ever quit." Because she enjoyed good access to him on the campaign trail and during his presidency she has been called a "Trump. 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. And probably because her mother is a publicist, she doesn't view Trump's press flacks, or flacks in general, as the enemy. Would she tell the man to "stop screaming"? Part of what makes Haberman one of Trumps foremost contextualizers is her fluency in the worlds that formed him. What he needs his attention. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/maggie-habermans-new-book-confidence-man-details-trumps-rise-to-prominence, Donald Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in Mar-a-Lago dispute, Rex Tillerson testifies at corruption trial of Trump adviser, Trumps embrace of QAnon raising concerns about future political violence, How Trump may have violated the Presidential Records Act, "confidence man: the making of donald trump and the breaking of america". . And then, by the second week, something had just switched, and he was insisting that he had won. And laugh at him. At first Thrush didn't like her, mistaking her voraciousness for shtick. penguinrandomhouse.com. The audience was, as always, hanging on her every word, hungry to have her translate Trump into someone they could understand. ", Her father, Clyde, says he likes to think that honest journalism is "hardwired" into her. What erodes that is very dangerous." 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. "This is the book Trump fears most.". The Getty Images design is a trademark of Getty Images. 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. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. She is not a fan of SNL's impression of Kellyanne Conway as a psychopathic fame whore. The Manhattan district attorneys office is scrutinizing the former presidents role in the hush money payment to a porn star. Hope you'll take a moment to order CONFIDENCE MAN here. Kellyanne Conway defended Haberman last April in an interview, calling her "a very hard-working, honest journalist who happens to be a very good person." Because he is the same person he was during the campaign.". 2023 Getty Images. It narrates how he and his siblings cut off medical funding for his brothers infant grandson, who was born with a disorder that led to cerebral palsy, in order to punish some of his relatives during an estate dispute. "I do not think he is enjoying the job particularly, and that is based on reporting," she says. For the next decade, she worked for both the Post and the other tab in town, the New York Daily News, covering Hillary Clinton's senate campaign, Michael Bloomberg's mayoralty, and Clinton's first presidential campaign. Once, in July 2015, she did laugh, on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, at something Democratic congressman Keith Ellison said about Trump having "momentum" going into the primaries. 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.. He mentioned Nixon unprompted in one of our interviews. ", "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. Because Haberman has known Trump for so long she has been derided as a schill. He confesses that he is drawn to her, like a moth to a flame. One communications staffer after another told me that they appreciate the fact that she never blindsides them. Include your name, the article headline, and your message. Trumps performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates. This would be a profound shift in the shape of the federal government. Her. Her son didn't have school after the ceremony, so Haberman brought him with her to a politics meeting at the Times. In the midst of his second divorce, from Marla Maples, Trump was a maestro of controlling his tabloid image, calling in tidbits about himself. he yelps like a sixth grader sent our way on a dare, and dashes 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. "There has been a very protracted shocked stage in Washington, and I think people have to move past that. 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. 75 and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a private school in the Bronx. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. ", 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. Feeling is also not her job. And she clearly knows the family dynamic and knows him and all of these family stories very, very well, better than anyone. She covered his real estate business when she was a New York tabloid reporter before moving to Politico and later The Times. 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. 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. Haberman and Thrush again, with their colleague Matthew Rosenberg. Maggie Haberman, thank you so much for joining us. 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. 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. 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. 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? Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. "Maggie doesn't camouflage. [1] In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. "I'm just trying not to get beat," she says. During the Trump era, Haberman became an avatar of journalisms promise as well as of its failures. Plus: each Wednesday, exclusively for subscribers, the best books of the week. Its possible that all of the jurors votes recommended against indictment, but it isnt sounding like it. As for the breaking part, Haberman is more . 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. She said that this notion is just not realistic: in a climate of partisan absolutism, distrust of the media, and the coarsening of norms, the context around the news itself has shifted. She's so well-sourced and so well-connected that she doesn't need to," Karni says. 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. But I do think that he needs whatever he doesn't have, and whatever that might be in any given moment. She wrote about Donald Trump for those publications and rose to prominence covering his campaign, presidency, and post-presidency for the Times. [4], Haberman's career began in 1996 when she was hired by the New York Post. " 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.). And she's got a BlackBerry and a flip phone going at the same time. "There's an enormous personal price that she pays, that people pay when they devote so much of themselves to this," Thrush says. 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. He admires autocrats in other countries. He is who he is and he's not going to change. "In the beginning, you're going to a lot of crime scenes. [2] They have three children and live in Brooklyn. Subscribe to Here's the Deal, our politics newsletter. 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 man with the orange hair is making a scene. Donald Trump will be basking in affection from activists at CPAC on Saturday. This past November, by the end of the candidates meandering, hour-long campaign announcement, she had tweeted about the speech more than twenty times. He gives off a hint of reality TVwith his mirages, his come-ons, his brazenness, his feintsand a dash of the Devil. You're going to see if people were killed," Marques says. Millions of high-quality images, video, and music options are waiting for you. Why it matters: Destroying records that should be preserved is potentially illegal. When I asked her about these conceptual scoops, she corrected me: Theyre contextual scoops. Context is key to Habermans project. 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. 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. Through it all, she never missed a beat in our conversation. He is very aware that, if you repeat something over and over again, it can turn it into something real. Her measured stance infuriates Trump's detractors, who harangue her on Twitter for "normalizing" the president. This purple frame wouldn't be complete without the intricate temple detail, a distinct touch to help you stand out from the crowd. 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. Can you believe what he just did?' And, for all Habermans success in demystifying Trump, at times she seems to vest him with eerie power. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. During the Trump Presidency, Habermans output and name recognition placed her at the center of debates over how journalists should cover his Administration. 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. She was the dominant Trump reporter on the campaign, and she didn't travel with him. 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. "I didn't care for that metaphor," Haberman says. "This is a president who is always selling. By Sean Piccoli,Jonah E. Bromwich,Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum. She commutes to DC several times a week from her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and three young children. I just want to go back to the psychiatrist line. Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. I mean, we know it is not true. The quick-hit rhythm that Trump and Haberman were both fine-tuning teed them up perfectly for today's Twitter-paced news environment. The appointment of a special counsel Robert Mueller last week "took some of the air out of his tires" but he is still spoiling for a fight, Haberman says. [9], Haberman was hired by The New York Times in early 2015 as a political correspondent for the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. 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. 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. And he makes that very clear. As a construction tycoon, Trump sought out unsavory accomplices, partnering on one project with a Soviet-born investor whod been convicted for both first-degree assault (shoving a broken margarita glass into a mans face) and fraud (a pump-and-dump penny stock scheme involving the Genovese crime family). He donated heavily to politicians who could grease the wheels of his business machinations. [3], Last edited on 16 February 2023, at 19:13, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Aldo Beckman Award for Journalistic Excellence, "Weddings/Celebrations: Maggie Haberman, Dareh Gregorian", "Wanna Know What Donald Trump Is Really Thinking? The man with the orange hair is making a scene. 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." 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. The book is frank about Trumps cruelty. 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. Since 2015, Habermans career has revolved around the most untrustworthy man in national politics. 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. Access the best of Getty Images with our simple subscription plan.Millions of high-quality images, video, and music options are waiting for you. 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. ", [youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPME4VCNmyc&t=79s[/youtube]. 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. When Trump gave an undisciplined press conference a few weeks into his presidency, the DC press and pols were comparing it to late-stage Nixon, Thrush says. These days, in her profession, the truth is a demanding god. 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. Journalists have become part of the story in the Trump administration, enablers and heroes of a nonstop political and constitutional soap opera, and last year Haberman was the most widely read journalist at the Times, according to its analytics. And I think that the people who he would put into key jobs would be very alarming to a number of people across Washington. 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. Perhaps he glimpsed himself as if in a mirror. Haberman, for her part, has become a front-page fixture and a Fourth Estate folk hero. 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. Habermans own confidence man, though overexposed, can seem similarly elusive. (Both her brother, Zach, and her husband, Dareh Gregorian, work at the New York Daily News.). 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. She doesn't see any climactic resolution to the Trump saga coming anytime soon. "I used to really cringe at the way my colleagues would talk to spokespeople," she said. Haberman pressed her point: "It was two months ago. Do you think, at his core, that he is racist? 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). Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? Both she and her subject navigate the public sphere as if they have something to prove. Boards are the best place to save images and video clips. Sensitive subject, but we know there are a number of incidents that happened during his presidency that led people to say he is racist. She glanced at it, then apologized. Ashley Parker, now a Washington Post White House correspondent but then one of Haberman's colleagues at the Times, says Haberman confirmed the tip and wrote the story on her phone during the graduation. 24/7 Customer . 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. We see many compliments in your future with Maggie, a rectangular frame with a metal construction and vibrant violet hue. (One of her refrains is I was shocked but not surprised.) She mounts a similar argument about Trump in her recent book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. The book presents Trump as a bullshit artist whose grand theme is his own greatness. Read Maggie Haberman", "New York Times Staffing Up For 2016 Election With Maggie Haberman Hire", "How Tabloids Helped NY Times' Maggie Haberman Ace Trump White House", "Maggie Haberman leaves huge hole at Politico, moves to New York Times", "Politico's Senior Political Reporter Maggie Haberman Joins New York Times", "The leakiest White House I've ever covered", "Maggie Haberman Hits Back In Twitter Spat With 'Trump Adviser' Sean Hannity", "Biden 'is planning to run again' in 2024", "The Trump Presidency Is Ending. ", Trump has also sent her his famous press clippings with Sharpie notes on them, mostly with criticisms, but at least once with praise. People wanted her to provide a normative framing for what was going on, the professor and media commentator Daniel Drezner said. "She's like Michael Corleone," Thrush says, "sucked into the family business." 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. This book is her most sustained attempt to pin him down. But I do think he figured out personnel, which is often what he's focused on. 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. Trump responded, jokingly, "Really? 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. The Times hired her to cover the 2016 election five months before Donald Trump declared his first Presidential campaign. She almost never turns her phone off. 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. [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. Ventura headset in 2024, smart glasses with a display and a "neural interface" smartwatch in 2025, and AR glasses in 2027 . Dont worry, Passantino allegedly reassured her. 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. he asks, pointing at the recorder between us. [2] Haberman returned to the Post to cover the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and other political races. Photograph by Jeanette Spicer for The New Yorker, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.