This is the book Trump fears most. - Axios Confidence Man [is] Maggie Haberman's much
anticipated biography of the president she followed more assiduously than any other journalist.
No doubt there are revelations aplenty here. But this is a book more notable for the quality
of its observations about Trump's character than for its newsbreaks. It will be a primary
source about the most vexing president in American history for years to come. - Joe Klein The
New York Times From the Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times reporter who has defined Donald
J. Trump's presidency like no other journalist Confidence Man is a magnificent and disturbing
reckoning that chronicles his life and its meaning from his rise in New York City to his
tortured post-presidency. Few journalists working today have covered Donald Trump more
extensively than Maggie Haberman. And few understand him and his motivations better. Now
demonstrating her majestic command of this story Haberman reveals in full the depth of her
understanding of the 45th president himself and of what the Trump phenomenon means. Interviews
with hundreds of sources and numerous interviews over the years with Trump himself portray a
complicated and often contradictory historical figure. Capable of kindness but relying on
casual cruelty as it suits his purposes. Pugnacious. Insecure. Lonely. Vindictive. Menacing.
Smarter than his critics contend and colder and more calculating than his allies believe. A man
who embedded himself in popular culture galvanizing support for a run for high office that he
began preliminary spadework for 30 years ago to ultimately become a president who pushed
American democracy to the brink. The through-line of Trump's life and his presidency is the
enduring question of what is in it for him or what he needs to say to survive short increments
of time in the pursuit of his own interests. Confidence Man is also inevitably about the
world that produced such a singular character giving rise to his career and becoming his first
stage. It is also about a series of relentlessly transactional relationships. The ones that
shaped him most were with girlfriends and wives with Roy Cohn with George Steinbrenner with
Mike Tyson and Don King and Roger Stone with city and state politicians like Robert Morgenthau
and Rudy Giuliani with business partners with prosecutors with the media and with the
employees who toiled inside what they commonly called amongst themselves the Trump
Disorganization. That world informed the one that Trump tried to recreate while in the White
House. All of Trump's behavior as President had echoes in what came before. In this revelatory
and newsmaking book Haberman brings together the events of his life into a single mesmerizing
work. It is the definitive account of one of the most norms-shattering and consequential eras
in American political history.
