The New York Times reporter may be the greatest political reporter working today.
.. Trump wants what she can give him access to—a kind of status he’s always craved in a newspaper that, she says, “holds an enormously large place in his imagination.” Haberman, for her part, has become a front-page fixture and a Fourth Estate folk hero. “This is a symbiotic relationship,” says an administration official. “Part of the reason” Haberman is so read in the Times “is because she is writing about Donald Trump.”.. Haberman’s father, Clyde, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times reporter, and her mother, Nancy, is a publicity powerhouse at Rubenstein—a communications firm founded by Howard Rubenstein, whose famous spinning prowess Trump availed himself of during various of his divorce and business contretemps. (Nancy worked on projects for Trump’s business but says she never met him.).. 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... In those days, the future president was a fixture in Page Six, the Post‘s gossip column. In the midst of his second divorce, from Marla Maples, Trump was a maestro of controlling his tabloid image, calling in tidbits about himself... 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. She believes in the power of breaking incremental news—not holding every-thing back for a long read. She’s “wickedly competitive,.. At first Thrush didn’t like her, mistaking her voraciousness for shtick. “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? And she’s got a BlackBerry and a flip phone going at the same time. And I’m like, This is total bullshit, this is not a real person, nobody is this way,” Thrush recalls. Over time, however, as Haberman did not get beat, did not get beat, he realized she was for real... In hindsight, Haberman was building a reservoir of knowledge and contacts that would make her probably the best-sourced reporter of the 2016 campaign. 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. Her expertise wasn’t just Trump—it was the Trump psyche... 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. Three years later, she moved to the Times as it beefed up its political staff in advance of the 2016 campaign. 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.
.. 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. “The Triborough and Empire State view of Trump is very different from the national view of Trump,” she points out. “His whole thing has always been to be accepted among the New York elites, whom he sort of preemptively sneers at—that 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.
.. “You’re going to bring this up every time, aren’t you?” she says she told him. He “kind of chuckled” and replied, “It’s like therapy.”
.. Haberman is growing weary of the DC establishment’s seeming inability to metabolize the president’s personality. “There has been a very protracted shocked stage in Washington, and I think people have to move past that. Because otherwise you’re just never going to be able to cover him,” she says. “Every moment cannot be, ‘Wow! Can you believe what he just did?’ Yes, I can! Because he is the same person he was during the campaign.”
Her measured stance infuriates Trump’s detractors, who harangue her on Twitter for “normalizing” the president. 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 is amazing is capacity of people who watched the campaign to be surprised by what they are seeing. Trump is 70. Ppl don’t change.”
.. 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. “I do not think he is enjoying the job particularly, and that is based on reporting,” she says. “But I also know he can’t allow himself to ever quit.”
.. they see Trump’s presidency more as a “national mayoralty…it’s got that scale, it has that informality,” Thrush says. “And it’s not just any mayoralty; it’s a late-’80s, early ’90s New York mayoralty.” Adds Haberman, “Some Ed Koch. A lot of Rudy Giuliani.”
.. One communications staffer after another told me that they appreciate the fact that she never blindsides them. “Maggie doesn’t camouflage. 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],”
.. 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 morning—a practice some journalists follow that Haberman calls “the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. They’re going to lose [their access] anyway,” she says. “What do they think—that it’s going in a secret newspaper?”
.. she doesn’t keep an actual calendar, not on paper, not on her phone; it’s all in her head.
.. Friends and colleagues say this is her standard operating procedure. “She is literally always doing four things,” says her friend and former New York Post colleague Annie Karni. Haberman once said in an interview that she talked to 50 people a day. Not true, says Risa Heller, a spokesperson for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner: “She speaks to 100 people a day.” 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.
.. ‘Oh, did Maggie just tell you that?’ Because she was literally talking to 16 people within our campaign at the same time.”
.. She almost never turns her phone off. “She’s got it with her at all times,” says her husband, Dareh Gregorian. 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.
.. “Maggie’s magic is that she’s the dominant reporter on the [White House] beat, and she doesn’t even live in Washington. She was the dominant Trump reporter on the campaign, and she didn’t travel with him. She’s so well-sourced and so well-connected that she doesn’t need to,”
.. Greenfield introduced Haberman by saying that he couldn’t remember a reporter having established a relationship with a president quite like hers with Trump
.. Lyndon Johnson gave preference to Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Walter Lippmann, and Lippmann had once gone so far as to secretly write part of a speech for Johnson—and then write a story praising the speech.
.. 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.” Hicks echoed Conway, e-mailing me a few days later that Haberman was “a true professional.”
.. Haberman has reached the point in her career where sources are now chasing her, instead of the other way around—lying to her risks banishment and access to her news-promulgating prowess. “If you’re going to come at her,” says a Democratic operative, “you’ve got to come correct.”
.. “This is a president who is always selling. When I speak to him, it’s because he’s trying to sell me,” Haberman tells the audience at the 92nd Street Y.
.. “When we as a culture can’t agree on a simple, basic fact set—that is very scary. That [Trump] is unconcerned by that, I think, is the big issue,”
.. But effective salesmanship must be based in credibility—an area in which his administration has suffered significant set-backs in recent days.
Stephen Bannon’s nationalist call to arms, annotated
President Trump, when he was running, he made a — and this is the other thing that the — the mainstream media or opposition party never caught is that if you want to see the Trump agenda it’s very simple.
It was all in the speeches. He went around to these rallies, but those speeches had a tremendous amount of content in them, right? I happen to believe, and I think many others do, he’s probably the great public speaker in those large arenas since William Jennings Bryan. This was galvanized.
.. And remember, we didn’t have money. Hillary Clinton and these guys had over $2 billion. We had a couple hundred million dollars. It was those rallies and those speeches, all he’s doing right now is, he’s laid out an agenda with those speeches for the promises he made. And our job every day is just to execute on that. It’s to simply get a path to how those get executed.
.. And the mainstream media better understand something, all of those promises are going to be implemented.
.. Whether, you know — and you look at the our — the world — our world order and — and some of the things that are going on that I think are — will be dealt with soon, but the first thing I think is Neil Gorsuch, for a couple things.
Number one, we’re not talking about a change over a four-year period. We’re talking about a change of potentially 40 years of law, number one. But more important than that — more important to that, it established trust. It established that President Trump is a man of his word.
.. President Trump signed an order that puts in place a constant deregulatory form within the federal government. And what it says is, for every regulation presented for passage that Cabinet secretary has to identify two that person would eliminate. And that’s a big deal.
.. And then lastly, immigration: protecting the sovereignty of the United States, putting a wall on the southern border, making sure that criminals are not part of our process. These are all things that 80 percent of Americans agree with, and these are all things that President Trump is doing within 30 days.
.. People are starting to think through a whole raft of amazing and innovative, bilateral relationships — bilateral trading relationships with people that will reposition America in the world as a — as a fair trading nation and start to bring jobs. High-value-added manufacturing jobs back to the United States of America.
.. you’re gonna start to see I think with the defense budget we’re going to talk about next week when we bring the budget out and also with certain things about the plan on ISIS
.. And he brought up the fact that we’re promulgating more laws and regulations that we ever had before. And most of that are from these independent agencies that are just on autopilot.
.. the country was hungry for something far more — far bigger than one story or on-off issue. It was something that people wanted in this country, that was real, something that was going to change the direction that we were heading. And it was President Trump that was the answer.
.. here’s why it’s going to get worse: Because he’s going to continue to press his agenda. And as economic conditions get better, as more jobs get better, they’re going to continue to fight. If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. Every day — every day, it is going to be a fight. And that is what I’m proudest about Donald Trump. All the opportunities he had to waver off this; all the people who have come to him and said, “oh, you’ve got to moderate.”
.. The American Conservative Union, which puts on CPAC, was created after Barry Goldwater lost in 1964, in an effort to take all different kinds of voices from the right in the conservative movement and bring them together.
So there is this question. There are those folks that consider themselves, you know, classical liberals or conservatives or Reagan conservatives. There are other folks that consider themselves libertarians. There are other folks that are part of this new Trump movement. And Trump brought a lot of new people. There’s probably in this — people in this crowd that wouldn’t have been in this crowd before.
So there’s a lot of diversity here. We all know it when we’re at the bar at the end of the day. And can this Trump movement be combined with what’s happening at CPAC and other conservative movements for 50 years? Can this be brought together? And is — this is going to save the country?
.. Peace through strength, deregulation. You think about the economy, the economic boom that was created. And some of it is going to take a little time, I mean, to get the jobs back; to get more money in people’s pockets. Those things are going to happen.
.. You know, I’ve said that there’s a new political order that’s being formed out of this.
.. But I think we — the center core of what we believe, that we’re a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a — and a reason for being.
And I think that is what unites us and I think that is what is going to unite this movement going forward.
.. but also and more importantly, hold us accountable. Hold us accountable to what we promised, hold us accountable for delivering on what we promised.
.. we’re different, but where we’re very similar is that I think that he is very dogged in making sure that every day the promises that President Trump has made are the promises that we’re working on every day, number one.
Number two, he’s incredibly loyal. And number three, which I think is a really important quality as we were working together to see to it that President Trump’s vision is enacted is that, he’s extremely consistent.
.. Different things that come to the president that want to move him off of his agenda and Steve is very consistent and very loyal to the agenda and is a presence that I think is very important to have in the White House
.. But his job is, by far, one of the toughest jobs I’ve ever seen in my life. To make it run every day, and to make the trains, and you only see the surface. What’s going on underneath it, planning what’s three weeks down the road to the — to the degree that we’re planning it, of all these E.O.s and legislation and — you know, whether it’s the tax reform bill, Reince is indefatigable in saying, we’ve got to drive this forward, we’ve got to drive this forward.
.. back in August when we had this campaign where we were outgunned, outmanned, you know, outspent. And it was because President Trump had a message, he had this charisma
How It Happened
by the latest count she won 400,000 more votes than Trump, who got fewer votes than either Mitt Romney or John McCain.
.. Trump won Florida by one; Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 30,000 votes.
.. nearly 10 percent of millennials voted for third-party candidates
.. On the reasonable assumption that by far most of those who voted for the third-party candidates would have otherwise gone for Clinton, Gary Johnson, the odd-duck Libertarian, with 3.2 percent of the popular vote, and Jill Stein, of the Green Party, receiving just 1 percent, damaged and perhaps destroyed Clinton’s chances.
.. A CBS News exit poll found that if those who voted for Johnson or Stein had had to choose only between Clinton and Trump they would have supported Clinton by nearly two to one. It’s not a stretch to conclude that, absent the third-party candidates, Hillary Clinton would have won the election.
.. Hillary Clinton wasn’t giving people a reason to vote for her. “Stronger together” meant what?
.. Bill Clinton worried that the leaders of his wife’s campaign were too fixated on their supposedly fearsome get-out-the-vote drive and were failing to craft a coherent message for her
.. Bill Clinton worried that the leaders of his wife’s campaign were too fixated on their supposedly fearsome get-out-the-vote drive and were failing to craft a coherent message for her
.. The “moral” of the story may be that if you’re going to lie in the course of a public contest, lie so often that people can’t keep up with you
.. she started off being dismissive, and then sarcastic: asked in a press conference if she’d wiped her server she replied, “With a cloth?” And her explanations were often legalistic and evasive
.. she got nearly five million fewer votes than Obama did in 2012—resulted in the lowest voter turnout in twenty years
.. Trump channeled the anger at Washington institutions that particularly the working class felt had failed them, while Clinton came across as the very symbol of those institutions. Though Trump was a wealthy man, his populist message—even the baseball caps—made him seem accessible
.. The Clintons’ greed kept getting them in trouble.
.. white voters, whom Trump won almost across the board: not just among the working class, as expected, but also among college-educated voters, except for college-educated white women, whom Clinton won by a small margin. Among white men overall, Trump dominated, winning 72 percent of non-college-educated ones and 54 percent of those with a college education.
.. For many women voters, culture and class mattered more than gender.
.. David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, by an innovative method he devised: look at how people voted in the 493 counties that have Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores, and in the 184 counties with Whole Foods stores. In 2012 Obama carried 75 percent of the counties that had a Whole Foods and 29 percent of the counties with a Cracker Barrel. But that spread was exceeded this year—in the other direction—with Trump winning 76 percent of counties with Cracker Barrel stores and just 22 percent of counties with Whole Foods.
.. Clinton came across to them as an creature from another, urban, world—a wealthy woman who liked big government and didn’t understand them.
.. He uses a critical word in describing how Trump wins the support of so many of his people: relatable. “People who are drawn to Trump are drawn to him because he’s a little outrageous, he’s a little relatable, and fundamentally he is angry and spiteful and critical of the things that people feel anger and spite toward,”
.. Trump did a good job instilling fear of an America overtaken by immigrants and it didn’t take much imagination to understand his dark prophecies of where, when blacks were also counted, this country was headed. Trump’s presidency won’t be a good time to be poor, especially a black person who is poor. And in Trumpland, with a president who ran a racist campaign, divisions between the races are set to deepen, as already shown in incidents of harassment and violence against minorities since the election.
.. His ideas for education play to those who don’t care for integrated schools
.. I always tell my clients, If you lose, lose big. Then you won’t chew over for the rest of your life what you should have done differently.” The close election is all the harder to shake off
.. Steve Bannon, of Breitbart News, pushes the “alt-right” theme of white supremacy and is believed to have been the guiding spirit behind Trump’s chillingly anti-Semetic final campaign ad, which charged that Clinton associated with three people who happen to be prominent Jews: George Soros (“those who control the levers of power in Washington”); Fed chairman Janet Yellen (“global special interests”); and Lloyd Blankfein (“put money into the pockets of large corporations”). It’s hard to see how it could have been more blatant. These weren’t “dog whistles,” they were dogs barking loudly.
.. Trump has led his followers to expect a lot. He promised to end Obamacare “on day one,” which will be difficult because it was passed by Congress and therefore isn’t his to eliminate.
- Iran deal
- renegotiate trade agreements to get better terms for America
- bring back jobs to the US
.. In probably our most divisive and ugliest election ever, he prevailed in part because he intuited much about the voters’ psyche and he’s an experienced entertainer.
.. He knew how to appeal to the angry and discontented, who saw in him someone who would “shake up Washington” and deliver on his campaign slogan to “Make America great again.”
.. what happens if Trump fails to deliver to his followers? Who, and what, will they turn to next?