Another book on the Con(fidence) Man. Much of the material comes from asses mouth. The remainder from his family and cronies.
Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down Trump
Donald Trump reacts to applause at a Republican dinner in Greenville, North Carolina, in 2021. Photograph: Jonathan Drake/Reuters
The New York Times reporter presents a forensic account of the damage he has done to America
Lloyd Green
Sun 2 Oct 2022 07.00 BSTLast modified on Sun 2 Oct 2022 07.01 BST
Maggie Haberman, the New York Times’ Trump whisperer, delivers. Her latest book is much more than 600 pages of context, scoop and drama. It is a political epic,
tracing Donald Trump’s journey from the streets of Queens to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Elba. There, the 45th president holds court – and broods and plots his return.
Kushner camping tale one of many bizarre scenes in latest Trump book
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Haberman gives Trump and those close to him plenty of voice – and rope. The result is a cacophonous symphony. Confidence Man informs and entertains but is simultaneously absolutely not funny. Trumpworld presents a reptilian tableau – reality TV does Lord of the Flies.
For just one example, Mark Meadows, Trump’s last White House chief of staff, is depicted as erratic and detestable. Then there’s the family. Haberman reports how, after the 2016 election, Melania Trump won a renegotiated pre-nuptial agreement. Haberman also describes Trump repeatedly dumping on his son-in-law,
Jared Kushner. If only he looked like Tom Brady and spoke in a deeper register. If only Ivanka had not converted to Judaism.
The abuse gets absurd – even a kind of baroque. According to Haberman, at one 2020 campaign strategy meeting Trump implied Kushner might be brutally attacked, even raped, if he ever went camping: “Can you imagine Jared and his skinny ass camping? It’d be like something out of Deliverance.”
The reader, however, should not weep for Jared. In Haberman’s telling, he is the kid who was born on third base and mistakes his good fortune with hitting a triple. For his part, Kushner is shown trashing Steve Bannon, the far-right ideologue who was campaign chair and chief White House strategist but was forced out within months.
Haberman catches Kushner gleefully asking a White House visitor: “Did you see I cut Bannon’s balls off?”
To
quote Peter Navarro, like Bannon now a former Trump official under indictment, “nepotism and excrement roll downhill”.
‘I love being with her,’ Trump says. ‘She’s like my psychiatrist.’ Haberman is not flattered or amused
As it happens, Bannon’s testicles grew back. Like Charlie Kushner, Jared’s father, he received a Trump pardon. Bannon also helped propagate the big lie that Trump won the election, stoking the Capitol attack.
These days, Bannon awaits sentencing, convicted of contempt of Congress. He also faces felony fraud charges arising from an alleged border-wall charity scam. In Trump’s universe, there is always a grift.
For Confidence Man, Haberman interviewed Trump three times. He confesses that he is drawn to her, like a moth to a flame.
“I love being with her,” he says. “
She’s like my psychiatrist”.
The daughter of Clyde Haberman,
a legendary New York Times reporter, is not flattered or amused. She sees through her subject.
“The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrists,”
Haberman writes. “All present a chance for him to vent or test reactions or gauge how his statements are playing or discover how he is feeling.”
The New York Times reporter presents a forensic account of the damage he has done to America