Press: Donald Trump, ‘Confidence Man,’ then and now

Billed by Axios as “the book Donald Trump fears most,” Maggie Haberman’s “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America” debuted last week as No. 1 best-seller on Amazon and the New York Times. At 508 pages, it’s a challenge. But it’s worth the slog: the best book yet on the mystery man who still remains, two years after being rejected for a second term, the most dominant force in American politics. 

The most striking thing about the book is its title. Consider: For the New York Times, Haberman covered Donald Trump full-time for six years. During his four years in the White House, she averaged more than one Trump story a day. She was the Times’s most-read reporter. She’s interviewed Trump dozens of times. He’s called her a “third-rate reporter,” but he gave her three interviews for this book alone — the first one requested by him before she even asked.  

Haberman knows Trump better than any other reporter. Yet, after all that access and all that time, what words did she choose to describe Trump? The “Confidence Man,” which is hardly a compliment. Merriam-Webster defines a confidence man as “a person who tricks other people in order to get their money.” And that, my friends, as Haberman skillfully and exhaustively relates, is Donald Trump in a nutshell. 

Haberman’s great insight, and her book’s central premise, is that you can’t understand Trump unless you track him from the beginning of his professional career, when he, somewhat reluctantly, joined his father’s real estate firm. (He originally wanted to become an actor.) From that point on, she argues, he’s “frozen in time.” Recounting countless episodes from his New York developer days, she concludes: “He was interested primarily in money, dominance, power, bullying and himself. He treated rules and regulations as unnecessary obstacles rather than constraints on his behavior … He sought an endless stream of praise … His thirst for fame seemed to grow each time he tasted more of it.” 

Donald Trump the developer was Donald Trump the president. His M.O. never changed. 

Filing countless, worthless lawsuits? It didn’t start in the White House, it started in Queens, when he sued every reporter, contractor or developer who wouldn’t accede to his demands. Not because he expected to win — just to intimidate them. Or, as he admitted after suing his biographer, Tim O’Brien, “just to make his life miserable.” 

Telling lies? It didn’t start with the size of the crowd at his Inauguration. As a developer, he  allegedly lied about many things, according to Haberman’s and others’ reporting: his net worth, the value of properties, his ties to the mafia, his prowess with women.

Haberman opens her book with a string of lies an 18-year-old Donald Trump  apparently told about the dedication of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, which he attended with this father. 

Haberman reminds us that, essentially, Donald Trump believes in nothing but his own greatness. Everything about him is “transactional.” He was a Republican before joining the Reform Party before becoming a Democrat before becoming a Republican again. He supported abortion rights before he was anti-abortion. He was for universal health care before trying to kill ObamaCare. According to Haberman, he wasn’t even convinced about “building a wall” as a political issue until he saw the enthusiastic response it generated at campaign rallies.

Trump is not the first confidence man we’ve encountered. As chronicled by Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Thomas Mann and others, they’re a peculiarly American phenomenon. The only difference is, to our eternal regret, we elected this confidence man president of the United States. 

Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”