In a gripping chapter titled "Rising on a Lie," Haberman describes how Trump sorted out themes and gimmicks he might use to take Obama down. She has a witness' eye for much that she relates, as when Trump first came to Washington to flirt with a presidential candidacy in 2011: "When he took the stage, with the Apprentice theme song "For the Love of Money" blaring overhead, the room was packed, a mix of religious activists, libertarian-minded college students, and corporate lobbyists unlikely ever to assemble anywhere else." Haberman helps us understand how his lifelong desire for stardom pushed him to bid for the presidency and how his unorthodox credentials and tactics enabled him to win. Some have called her the "Trump Whisperer" and worse.īut Haberman deploys a deep sense of Trump's origins and career, including his relationships with New York's mayors and powerful Democratic ward bosses such as Meade Esposito. Trying to handle all this as even-handedly as possible has earned her admiration and anger alike. Her persistence and Trump's own love-hate fixation on the Times have long supplied her with unparalleled access to his moods and media manipulation. Haberman covered Trump first as a young reporter for the New York Post, then for New York Daily News, Politico, and finally for the New York Times. Together, they help us understand how Trump has held sway in that party even as his single chaotic term led to the loss of the House and the Senate and the White House –and how he has maintained party dominance even after his abortive attempt to subvert the 2020 election. Draper works with an ensemble of characters who are far less familiar, but offer compelling insight into Trump's surprising rise within the Republican Party. Haberman has one subject, a singular actor who has wrought much of the change in the landscape himself.
They also hint at a future many will fear. Robert Draper's new book on the post-Trump state of Republican politics, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind, has not had nearly as much attention.īut moving swiftly across timeframes and landscapes, both depict a political world that few Americans could have foreseen less than a decade ago. Maggie Haberman's biography Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America has been among the most anticipated accounts of the 45th president's impact on American politics. The genesis of the Trump-era and its ultimate impact on American politics is explored in two new books.
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