Podcast: Maggie Haberman

Transcript

Listen: The night before this episode posted, The New York Times' star White House reporter Maggie Haberman published a bombshell scoop that President Trump wanted to fire Mueller as early as June of last year.

On our show today, Haberman talks about Trump's obsession with the Russia probe, the challenges of covering the most unusual White House in modern US history, and recalls another time when the president's aides (temporarily) stopped him from firing a high-powered investigator...

TRANSCRIPT: Maggie Haberman

Maggie Haberman:

Everybody thinks that they can manage Trump to some extent, that they can use the relationship to get what they want. He's not manageable. You will only get so far. Then you'll get very angry at one very specific thing, and then you have a choice to make.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer, and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. I'm the host of the weekly show, "GZERO World," on Facebook Watch. In this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show. This week I sit down with Maggie Haberman. She's a White House correspondent for The New York Times and contributor at CNN. Her pieces at The Times are the paper's most read articles. Despite headlines like "Inside Trump's Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation," she remains the one mainstream reporter who President Trump routinely turns to for interviews and scoops. Today I'll ask Maggie about how she reports inside a cutthroat White House rife with alternative facts. Let's get to it.

Announcer:

The GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company. Imagine a bank without teller lines, where your banker knows your name, and its most prized currency is extraordinary client service. Hear directly from First Republic's clients by visiting firstrepublic.com.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm here in the West Village with Maggie Haberman. She is White House correspondent at The New York Times, literally, the metrics will tell you the most read articles that they've put out all year, and contributor for CNN. Maggie, delighted to be here with you today.

Maggie Haberman:

Thanks for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

There's so much to talk about with this administration. But maybe first, how do you cover this Trump White House? How shocking has it been for you to be on the beat, given how different it is from every other administration?

Maggie Haberman:

Technically, this is the first White House I have covered full-time, so my comparisons are from afar, with the Obama White House and the Bush White House and the tail end of the Clinton years. It's obviously very different. It's very different for everybody. I think that Trump represented a shock to the system for all of Washington, its institutions across the board, media, government, lobbying, anything you look at. I think that what remains shocking is his ability to do things that were unheard of, to shatter norms, to disregard conventions, to raise questions about his own activity, the ethics of his White House. I think that the biggest risk is, because it is such a sensory overload for everybody, for everyone in Washington who is either of his party, or Democrats, for journalists, is to not essentially get numb.

Ian Bremmer:

Not to normalize.

Maggie Haberman:

I have a bit of an issue with the word "normalized" because I think it's become used as a pejorative about what I think is fair coverage of him in the media, in many cases. But I think that it is important to make a distinction between... Part of the problem with the coverage with him is that everything is at volume 10 in terms of the media coverage. Not everything deserves a volume 10. Many things do deserve volume seven through 10, however. It's important to maintain perspective so that when something that is truly stunning, shocking, whatever word you want to use, happens, that you can cover it appropriately.

Ian Bremmer:

What do you think has been over covered, for example, something that's really gotten the 10 volume, and we hear it on cable news all the time, that from your perspective, just didn't deserve?

Maggie Haberman:

Any number of tweets, especially early in 2017. Some of the tweets matter a great deal. Some of them don't. All of them are presidential statements. But that doesn't mean that all of them need to be treated with the same level of credulity, the same level of shock, of mouth agape. I think that it took about three months for people in Washington, many of whom did not follow the campaign very closely because they didn't think he would win, to get used to who he is. Who you have seen over the last year, who the world has seen, this was his campaign.

Ian Bremmer:

Absolutely.

Maggie Haberman:

You know this because you actually paid attention to it. We spoke a fair amount during that campaign.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. I remember very well your interview with him that expressed for the first time Trump's foreign policy, when there was no journalist that was going to take that on.

Maggie Haberman:

That's true. My colleague David Sanger and I did it. Sanger mentioned America First, which is a slogan that you had actually been putting in your newsletter to describe what you could best see as Trump's foreign policy, I think for months ahead of that interview.

Ian Bremmer:

I remember you asked him if he would describe himself as isolationist?

Maggie Haberman:

Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

He said no.

Maggie Haberman:

Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

Then he said-

Maggie Haberman:

But. Right.

Ian Bremmer:

America First sounds right.

Maggie Haberman:

He will take two different sides of the same issue, sometimes in the same sentence, and you are left trying to disentangle it and figure out which one is real. Oftentimes, the difficulty for journalists is some people end up rolling the dice and just picking one, and they use that to describe who he is. That doesn't tell the whole picture.

Ian Bremmer:

No. The idea that America First is something that he would embrace and say is a good thing was something I had not necessarily appreciated.

Maggie Haberman:

No. Really, the world owes it to you, Ian. But he claimed that he knew the connotation before Sanger used the phrase.

Ian Bremmer:

Which he clearly did not.

Maggie Haberman:

I was skeptical, too, that he was aware that it had been an American Nazi Party slogan.

Ian Bremmer:

To not go into World War II.

Maggie Haberman:

Correct. But he not only seized on it, he has continued using it, and the main outside group supporting the presidency has called itself America First Policies. So there you go.

Ian Bremmer:

Do you think there is a level of media complicity? Now, again, I'm not talking you. I'm talking broadly because, at some level, all of these tweets are so entertaining. It is the worldwide wrestling model. Trump knows exactly what he's doing.

Maggie Haberman:

I think that you are ascribing much more strategy to what Trump does than actually exists. I think that there is too much coverage of shiny objects across the board. I think there is a ton that is going on at the agency level that is not getting enough attention. Some of that is just resource driven, I think, between the Russia probes, between daily White House coverage, and then what he does. I think that there's not a whole lot of bandwidth. Does he know just broadly that if he throws a bunch of chum out there that not everything gets covered the same? Yes, I think he does know that. But I think that not every single tweet has some grand design behind it. I think it would be good if people across the board could figure out how to cover him a little bit differently. But I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

Ian Bremmer:

We've got some bandwidth right here. What do you think is a big topic or two at the agency level that really deserves more attention?

Maggie Haberman:

Sure. Look, I mean, one of the things that he talks about as a success point for him is the scale back of regulations. That obviously has a lot of critics upset. But if you are a Trump supporter and if you wanted to see greater deregulation, if you did not like a lot of what took place in the Obama years and prior to that, then this makes you happy. So I think that there are actually two sides to that story. EPA has been covered extensively. I think that gets, to some extent, too much coverage.

Ian Bremmer:

Dodd-Frank, a fair amount.

Maggie Haberman:

Dodd-Frank. There's very little coverage of Department of Education, for instance. I think Betsy DeVos is somebody who comes to this with a pretty clear ideology about education. I don't think that there has been enough of a sense of what is happening there. I think there has been a lot of coverage of the scale down of the State Department. But I think there's still a ton that could be done in terms of coverage that we are just not seeing.

Ian Bremmer:

What are the things that worry you, concern you, that might actually change in a more irrevocable way?

Maggie Haberman:

You mean in terms of coverage or in terms of just as a person?

Ian Bremmer:

No. Well, I mean as someone who knows the White House and sees what's happening.

Maggie Haberman:

I think the focus needs to be both on the White House still because I think that it's impossible not to. But I also do think that the agency level is where you need to be looking. I think so far, what we have actually seen is that the system that was set up by the Founding Fathers has actually prevented a fair number of things from happening. The checks and balances system has worked pretty effectively. I do think looking at the agency for major changes that would be hard to undo is where focus should be. I'm saying all of this with the reality that there is a Russia probe going on by a special counsel. We do not know where that is going to go. That could end up changing the dynamic quite a bit.

Ian Bremmer:

In terms of overreaction by Trump, for example, or?

Maggie Haberman:

Right. Or just reaction by Trump. Maybe it isn't an overreaction. I have no idea what Mueller's actually going to do. If Mueller indicts Jared Kushner, that's obviously a hypothetical, I'm just saying as a for instance-

Ian Bremmer:

Of course. Yes.

Maggie Haberman:

... or someone very close to the president or the president himself, that's probably not going to be an overreaction. That'll just be a reaction.

Ian Bremmer:

How much of his time do you think is presently being occupied with just focus, awareness, concern of that?

Maggie Haberman:

I think it occupies an enormous amount of mind share. I think that among the coverage that I think has been very unhelpful is all of the armchair psychoanalyzing of him. I think one of the reasons that the Michael Wolff book so captured the adoration of Trump critics is because Wolff happily goes along with the idea that, yes, Trump has dementia. Ronny Jackson, the White House doctor who was Obama's White House doctor, is very well-respected. He was pretty emphatic on that point. I have to say that, as somebody who has interviewed Trump pretty consistently for six years, seven years now going on, this is the same person. Now, you can look at who he is and say people may have concerns about his behavior. The tweets are obviously what they are. But this is the magic of sight. People who dislike him in both parties and voters who don't like him are seizing on the idea that that represents an endpoint to all of this. "See, if he has dementia, then Congress will act," or "If he has dementia, there'll be a 25th amendment issue." I think a lot of its wishcasting.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, clearly, the dementia issue should be put to bed.

Maggie Haberman:

But I don't think it has been.

Ian Bremmer:

You've got two completely different sets of actors that are in their own bubbles.

Maggie Haberman:

Correct.

Ian Bremmer:

Trump knows that, too.

Maggie Haberman:

I think what he does is I think he's obsessive. I think that he, in times of stress, tends to burrow down on something very tiny and fairly superficial that matters only to him. He has trouble seeing the bigger picture. He tends to view everything through the lens of how it impacts him. If that is your focus and you have all of these inputs as president of the United States and your first perspective is, "But how does this affect me?" that is going to impact your thinking. But that's not the same as dementia.

Ian Bremmer:

Now that he's president, we know the man hasn't changed, but do you think he has a sense that he wants a legacy that is about the country as opposed to just him?

Maggie Haberman:

I think that he really can't separate himself from the institutions. I think that he would like a legacy, but I think he thinks that they are intertwined.

Ian Bremmer:

Do you think he has suitable awareness of both the power he has and the constraints on his power as president?

Maggie Haberman:

No.

Ian Bremmer:

Where do you think that plays out in the most damaging way?

Maggie Haberman:

My colleague, Mike Schmidt, had a fantastic story about how when Trump wanted to fire Comey, he was initially told by a lawyer in the White House Counsel's office that he couldn't do it without cause, which was totally made up because they were afraid that he wouldn't come down on the side of right. I think there is a lot of that kind of thing. I think that he thought that being president was going to be essentially like being a local party boss. He grew up in New York. The '70s and '80s is when he came of age. Local clubhouse leaders were incredibly powerful.

Maggie Haberman:

There have been books written about the corruption that took place around the Ed Koch era, one of which was co-authored by my mentor, Jack Newfield, called "City for Sale." Really, I think if people want to understand Trump, they should read "City for Sale" because that is his view of executive power. He had no familiarity with the federal government. Remember, he was a real estate developer. His main interaction with government was rules and regulations surrounding development. Those rules and regulations for a developer were impediments that needed to be removed.

Ian Bremmer:

Which he did as damnedest on. Yeah.

Maggie Haberman:

Correct. I don't think that perspective has changed as he has moved into the White House.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, it sounds like you don't agree with something Michael Wolff said, which is that, at the end of the day, Trump wanted to win by losing.

Maggie Haberman:

No, that I do think is true. I think that he didn't think he would win. Again, I don't think it's as thought out as Wolff likes to suggest it was. Trump did not think he was going to win. Nobody on the campaign thought he was going to win. I think Bannon and possibly Dave Bossie more than others actually thought there was a path toward the end. But most people thought it was over before it began.

Ian Bremmer:

You and I both read it. I mean, when I read it, I'm nowhere near as close to the White House as you are. My view was I knew most of this stuff. I mean, is there anything that surprised you that came out of it?

Maggie Haberman:

I don't understand why he didn't get a fact-checker for just basic things. Because I think... I mean, the problem with it, a lot of it is conceptually accurate, but there are a bunch of factual inaccuracies. When you are presenting this as an indictment of the president, which Wolff has, I mean, after criticizing other people who were doing rigorous, such as myself, who were doing rigorous orous coverage of the president as too unfair, he then clearly came to at least similar conclusions about some of it and wrote a book about that, and then said in an interview, "I think my book will bring down this presidency." If you're going to say that, there are a lot of journalists who are really trying very hard to get it right. It makes everybody's job harder who's trying to do that, especially because when you have a White House that has disassembled so much as this one-

Ian Bremmer:

And has decided that you are fake news-

Maggie Haberman:

Right. All of us are fake news. Any news they don't like is fake news.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, we've talked a fair amount about Trump. We haven't talked as much about the White House. If Trump hasn't changed very much, how has the White House changed in your view?

Maggie Haberman:

Look, Reince Priebus, I mean, he's been heavily criticized all around for his tenure and fairness to him, he was never empowered. When he was picked, it was always clear that Jared Kushner was going to be the shadow chief of staff no matter what, no matter who had the title, and that was how it played out. Kelly said he was not going to take the job unless he actually had power. So he is empowered, and he has put systems in place. People fear him within the White House. People are scared of him. Kelly has got a bit of a short fuse just like Trump. He's got a bit of a flare for the dramatic sometimes, just like Trump. He early on kept threatening to quit when things were not working the way he wanted them to. He does that less. He denied to me for the record that he ever threatened to quit although I have multiple sources telling me they heard it firsthand.

Maggie Haberman:

It functions more like a typical White House in terms of processes. There are protocols in place that, more often than not, get adhered to, particularly about paper flow to the president, information flow to the president. But the president actively seeks out other information. I think a misconception people had is, "Oh, if you just get him better stuff, he won't tweet like this." No, he will turn on the television because what Trump is looking for isn't information that changes his view.

Ian Bremmer:

It's validation.

Maggie Haberman:

Correct. We had a quote, Glenn Thrush and Peter Baker and I, in a story that we did about how he reads stuff to reinforce his own view.

Ian Bremmer:

But his mind has changed on things. I mean, even when you see on the border wall and the Mexicans paying for the border wall, it feels like there's been evolution there.

Maggie Haberman:

It hasn't changed.

Ian Bremmer:

No?

Maggie Haberman:

I don't think it's an evolution at all. I think it's been this. He has said different things at different times to different people depending on what would help him in front of each audience. I don't think this is a change. I think this is the thing we always see with him, where he takes both sides of the same issue, sometimes in the same sentence, and then just seizes on the one half of that when it's useful to him.

Ian Bremmer:

How do you think Trump is going to respond in six months, a year, two years, when there is an inevitable significant market correction in the United States?

Maggie Haberman:

Well, if he is still in office, he won't-

Ian Bremmer:

Let's assume he will be.

Maggie Haberman:

Yes. He won't respond well. He will blame it on whatever forces are available at the time. It's hard for me to predict that far out. But it'll be a reaction that's angry and not his fault.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, Kelly, do you find is someone that can actually get information to him in a more effective way, or not really, because of what you just said?

Maggie Haberman:

Yes, but I think that Trump still spends eight hours a day without John Kelly by his side. Now, he talks to John Kelly during those hours on the phone, but he is in front of the TV. He's talking to friends. I mean, Kelly can't be a babysitter. I think Kelly was really surprised by how much of the job he had to spend managing up.

Ian Bremmer:

Kelly is now actually truly doing the job and in charge and empowered to do so. Does that necessarily mean that the role that Jared and Ivanka have is diminished?

Maggie Haberman:

Yes. Yeah. I mean, he brushes them back.

Ian Bremmer:

How much of that is also, in your view, just what's coming down with the Mueller investigation, the time they have to spend on that?

Maggie Haberman:

I think that's some of it. I don't think that's all of it, though. I mean, I think it's that they have programmatic views that are not aligned with what the president ran on. And I think she pushes that. Look, I think stylistically she's very similar to her father, but agenda-wise they're not the same.

Ian Bremmer:

They seem, on most issues, quite different.

Maggie Haberman:

On issues, they are different. In terms of approach and style and grievances, I think that they're similar.

Ian Bremmer:

Are you surprised that, given the amount of power that Jared was being given at the beginning, that on actual issues they seem to have come up so empty?

Maggie Haberman:

This is not the first White House or government office that I have seen where people who came in as neophytes believed that the building went up when they got there. That's just not how it works.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, you've said, and I thought that was very interesting, that you thought that Trump's relationship with his children could be transactional.

Maggie Haberman:

Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

How does that dynamic play out in the White House?

Maggie Haberman:

I mean, I don't think it plays out in the White House as much as it just plays out in life. Look, Jared and Ivanka made a decision to go to Washington, I think in part because Jared in particular was really interested in being at the right hand of, and I think that, collectively, Trump's children-

Ian Bremmer:

He enjoyed his role in the campaign.

Maggie Haberman:

He enjoyed his role in the campaign. Collectively, I think the children also see themselves as the guardians of their dad. So she went as the family representative, basically. I just think he has a very difficult relationship. He certainly has a difficult relationship with his oldest son, Don, which has been written about before. Don was the oldest when the divorce happened. He didn't speak to his father for a year. I think that he does not approach fatherhood the way we are used to people approaching fatherhood. I'm not going to be able to explain it well because a lot of it is off-the-record material. But it's just not a conventional relationship.

Ian Bremmer:

Do you think they're going to stick around?

Maggie Haberman:

They are, at the moment, in for a while.

Ian Bremmer:

So if we're looking forward the next few months now, what are the stories that you think we should really be drilling into around the White House? Leaving aside the investigation, which everyone is focusing on, where are the things that you say, "Oh, this could go off the rails, this is going to bite?"

Maggie Haberman:

It's a great question. I mean, I think the two main areas is broadly the senior staff exodus. Who goes? Does Gary Cohn go? Most people believe he will pretty soon. Then extend that out to senior cabinet secretaries. Does Rex Tillerson leave? He had been expected to leave. I think that has now been slowed down. Can they even confirm anybody to replace him? That is another concern that they have. Does Don McGahn, the White House Counsel, leave? Those are things that could really change the matrix there in a substantial way. Senior staff who actually understand Trump are in short supply, so that's a whole other issue. One is just the Trump tweeting. How much more of a degenerative impact does that have on relations around the world, on policy issues, on his discussions with his own Congress?

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, it seemed like all of a sudden Lindsey Graham came out and seemed to be like, "I revere Trump. I know I've said bad things about him in the past, but suddenly he is my best friend. I think he's just wonderful." Lindsey Graham's a pretty smart guy.

Maggie Haberman:

I think he thought, as everybody thinks, that they can manage Trump to some extent, that they can use the relationship to get what they want. He's not manageable. You will only get so far. Then you'll get very angry at one very specific thing, and then you have a choice to make. I mean, this is what happens to everybody. I think that's what's happening. I don't think it's complicated. I think Graham can see where this is going. The perception is not that Trump is helping things. So I guess the question is, do you see them bring in more people who can try to help, and will it even matter, given the mood of the electorate and what, at the moment, and again, there's a long time to go, but is looking like a pretty dire midterm election for the Republicans.

Ian Bremmer:

If those folks go, do you think that they'll be able to find replacements that are remotely as qualified?

Maggie Haberman:

Well, my asterisk on that would be Tillerson, just in the sense that I think being capable in a corporation does not make you capable in a place like the State Department, necessarily.

Ian Bremmer:

Sure. No. Internally, the morale is bad.

Maggie Haberman:

He's got a lot of people who have been disappointed in him. Even some of his most ardent backers are disappointed in him. Cohn, I think it's a different story. Cohn came in with a clear ideology, clearly well-known commodity, but is clearly capable and competent. I think that Trump will not be able to find somebody with his particular curriculum vitae. He might find somebody who can still do the work. I mean, I think that, forgetting about the top tier there, at the deputy level, that's where they're seeing a lot of falloff. Gary Cohn's main deputy, Jeremy Katz-

Ian Bremmer:

Left recently.

Maggie Haberman:

... left recently. That's a real blow. It's gotten very little attention. A lot of other departures like Dina Powell got a lot more attention. Losing Jeremy Katz is a significant loss. They will not find somebody to replace him.

Ian Bremmer:

Have they replaced him yet?

Maggie Haberman:

No. The answer is it will be hard. Now, look, John Kelly had told people that he was fine attriting the staff, essentially. He thought they had too many people. You can't lose everybody.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. I mean, the National Security Council had ballooned immensely-

Maggie Haberman:

Massively.

Ian Bremmer:

... the last few administration-

Maggie Haberman:

Massively.

Ian Bremmer:

... to the point that people were spinning their wheels and killing each other.

Maggie Haberman:

Correct.

Ian Bremmer:

So certainly you can imagine that.

Maggie Haberman:

Absolutely. There are areas where it's absolutely true that pairing down was wise. But there are areas where you do have to fill the holes.

Ian Bremmer:

Let me close just a little bit on the personal side, and by personal, I mean you and the president. Do you think he likes you?

Maggie Haberman:

I think I'm a reporter who has covered him for a long time, who he knows at a paper whose approval he craves. I think that's basically that. I think if I didn't work for The Times, I probably would never talk to him. So I think that there is an overestimation of this.

Ian Bremmer:

So transactional, again.

Maggie Haberman:

Everything is transactional with him. Everything.

Ian Bremmer:

Why does he care?

Maggie Haberman:

About The Times?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. I mean, I understand he wants coverage everywhere, but at the same time, he clearly can't control The Times, and he has a base and media around that base that he watches all the time and that he likes.

Maggie Haberman:

The Times was the avatar of New York elites who didn't approve of him when he was in the outer boroughs as a developer, and he wanted to make an inroad there. Part of it is because he likes seeing if he can do it. He likes challenging himself to see, "Can I get a, quote-unquote, "'good story?'" What he sees as a good story. The problem is that, to him, covering him accurately is covering him unfairly.

Ian Bremmer:

Do you think he's generally liked your coverage?

Maggie Haberman:

No.

Ian Bremmer:

But he's still going to keep trying.

Maggie Haberman:

We'll see, I guess. I don't know.

Ian Bremmer:

You like the job?

Maggie Haberman:

I'm very tired right now. But generally speaking, I love my job. I think what we do is really important.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, I can imagine it's exhausting. But do you feel like as long as this is going on, you've got to stay committed to it?

Maggie Haberman:

Yeah, I do.

Ian Bremmer:

Very good. Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent, New York Times, contributor to CNN, and GZERO guest, delighted to have you.

Maggie Haberman:

Thanks for having me.

Announcer:

The GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company. Imagine a bank without teller lines, where your banker knows your name, and its most prized currency is extraordinary client service. Hear directly from First Republic's clients by visiting firstrepublic.com.