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(50,279 posts) Tue Jun 10, 2025, 06:46 AM Tuesday

Donald Trump "Wants to Demonstrate Absolute Power": Maggie Haberman on Covering a Tumultuous Second Term

The New York Times’ stalwart Trump chronicler, who’s out this week with a new afterword to Confidence Man, sees the media learning lessons from the first go-round. “I think that people have managed to figure out and separate the signal from the noise,” she tells VF.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/maggie-haberman-covering-tumultuous-second-trump-term

https://archive.ph/4fXkC

When it comes to Donald Trump, the seemingly final chapter in his political odyssey tends to become a springboard for the next one. No one understands that better than Maggie Haberman, who tells me, “He’s one of the most regenerative public figures I think any of us have ever seen.”

It’s been over two years since the release of Haberman’s sprawling 2022 biography, Confidence Man, which originally concluded with an epilogue chronicling Trump’s stormy exit from the White House and his political exile to Mar-a-Lago. We all know what happened next. What’s different this time around, says Haberman, is how Trump is “pretty untethered” from previous limitations in office.

To meet the moment, Haberman wrote a new afterword for the paperback edition, which Penguin Books is releasing Tuesday. Haberman, who arguably emerged as the most plugged-in reporter during Trump’s first term, now explores how his conviction in a New York hush money trial propelled a MAGA renaissance and fueled his grievance playbook, which is now taking shape through his policy agenda in a second administration.

“The retribution efforts that he is engaged in are clearly deeply animating,” Haberman tells me, adding that he is operating the presidency how he would have wanted to during his first term. “He has never been especially intrigued by governance,” she says. “He is about power. I think you’re seeing that now.”

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