Maggie Haberman > Quotes

“Trump seemed to have learned a lesson from his travails: his personal brand mattered more than what was on his balance sheet, the projection of strength and success was more significant than any actual fact set underneath.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“It was as clear a guiding ethos for his life as Trump seemed to have: hate should be a civic good.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“Trump was the only modern president who had never met most of his senior advisers and cabinet appointees before he won the presidency; his three top White House aides—Priebus, Bannon, and Kushner—had never served in government either. He approached the new bureaucracy in much the same way he had a family-run business, demanding that employees sign agreements that would prevent them from ever speaking publicly about the experience. The White House counsel made clear to some staff that the contracts were not enforceable.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“Trump is to business what professional wrestling is to sports: part of it, certainly, but also a cartoonish parody of it.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“When the tide sank, all boats were lowered. Trump had proven that the majority of Washington Republicans who had initially opposed him were exactly as craven as he had said they were, as he bent them to his will because they saw personal opportunity or necessity for survival, even after the Capitol riot.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“Trump rarely sounded as comfortable as he did in the New York studio of bawdy shock jock Howard Stern, sometimes bringing along his children Ivanka and Don Jr. to join him on air as they became more active on The Apprentice. In one exchange, Trump raised no objections when Stern referred to Ivanka Trump as a “piece of ass.” To Stern, Trump talked about how much he loved sex, the number of partners he had at a single time, the way he liked to wander backstage at his beauty pageants while the contestants were getting dressed. “You see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that,” he said of his behavior at the pageants.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“Kelly declined for years after he left to be openly critical of the commander in chief except for occasional remarks amid extreme circumstances. But several people who spoke with him said he described Trump as a “fascist,” uninterested in history or geography, and uniquely unfit for the job of leading a constitutional democracy.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“As the pandemic wore on, Trump consistently lagged Biden, only briefly rising above 45 percent in poll averages during the early pandemic weeks before he began participating in daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings. (At no point during Trump’s presidency did a majority of Americans approve of the job he was doing,”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“realized then and there that if you let people treat you how they want, you’ll be made a fool,” Trump told Blum. “I realized then and there something I would never forget: I don’t want to be made anybody’s sucker.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“If there was a constituency that Trump would move heaven and earth for”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“Giuliani was never paid for his work beyond some expenses, at Trump’s insistence; the former mayor’s associate and radio cohost, Maria Ryan, tried unsuccessfully to set up a large daily fee for Giuliani, who Trump said shouldn’t be paid “a dime” unless there was success, and later sought a consulting fee for herself, as well as for Trump to grant the Presidential Medal of Freedom and, most significantly, a “general pardon” to Giuliani.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“Noem had come to exemplify something central to the Trump presidency: the idea that governing was, above all, a spectacle—a show of strength staged for an audience of one.”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“there was no better counter for a screwup than an outrage.”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“Even as Trump eagerly asked aides to relay information from newspaper headlines, including whether his name was mentioned, he had never shown much interest in books. A cabinet next to his bedside contained a book that Ivana later said she saw him occasionally leafing through: an anthology of Adolf Hitler’s speeches called My New Order. (“It was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew,” Trump claimed when pressed about it by journalist Marie Brenner.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“Over time, Trump wanted the wall to be painted black so that the skin of immigrants trying to scale it would burn when they touched it, with spikes on top, and a moat dug along it. He asked whether border agents could shoot migrants attempting to cross. Some agents, responding to Trump’s demand for “extreme action,” suggested using a machine capable of emitting heat, or loud noises that would damage migrants’ ears. Nielsen resisted these proposals, some of which violated the law.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“The agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter into a residential building the Tren de Aragua members had supposedly taken”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“narcissistic drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse and, this time, took American democracy to the brink.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“Kushner’s initial reaction was the same. He later told an associate that he thought to himself”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“[White House Chief of Staff and Four-Star General John] Kelly shared with [Mick} Mulvaney {who was appointed when Kelly resigned] his view that Trump was the most flawed person he had ever met.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“Trump loyalists quickly began trying to tear down Hutchinson’s credibility. Yet even as some contradicted specific elements in her testimony, she had painted a familiar portrait of Trump, one that dozens of people who worked for his company, political campaigns, and government tried masking over four decades: a narcissistic drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse and, this time, took American democracy to the brink.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“Trump didn’t buy the pessimistic assessments.”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“Esper had not directly criticized the commander in chief, but his predecessor, Jim Mattis, finally delivered the rebuke of Trump he had held in for years. “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis told the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, before invoking “the Nazi slogan for destroying us . . . ‘Divide and Conquer.’ “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort,” Mattis went on. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“A few weeks later”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“At the height of his trade war in April”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“few people took Trump’s ambition to run for president as seriously as he took himself. When I later asked a longtime acquaintance why Trump had finally decided to run after so many prior feints, the person responded without hesitation, “He’s gotten crazier.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“(During the same period, Trump also sent four-figure donations to California attorney general Kamala Harris, a Democrat. Her office ultimately took no action against Trump University even as it went after other for-profit educational entities.)”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“The tariff rate for each country was calculated by taking the 2024 U.S. trade deficit with the specific country, dividing it by the total value of goods the U.S. imported from the country, and then halving the result.”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“Laura Loomer, not long from her victory in thinning out the National Security Council, called the President’s decision “a stain,” and supported her point with a cartoon of the 747 modeled on the Trojan horse, only this time filled with armed jihadis.”
― Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

“News consumers were equally fascinated and horrified, like watching a car wreck where the victims repeatedly tried to hurt themselves more instead of accepting medical help.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

“He is incredibly suggestable, skimming ideas and thoughts and statements from other people and repackaging them as his own; campaign aides once called him a “sophisticated parrot.” He has shown a willingness both to believe anything is true, and to say anything is true. He has a few core ideological impulses, but is often willing to suppress them when it’s useful for another purpose. He makes vague statements that allow people to project what they want onto his words, so two sides of the same issue could claim his support. More often than not, Trump is reacting to something instead of having an active plan, but because he so disorients people, they believe there must be a grander strategy or secret scheme at play. Whatever he’s up to is often part of what he sees as a game, whose rules and objectives make sense only to him.”
― Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America