Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman
This is a book review by my husband, Scott Sandmeyer, who purchased this book.
In her new book, released last week by Penguin Press, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman details what undoubtedly will become the most detailed business and political biography of any U.S. President to date. Interviewing over 250 subjects in the documentation of the work, Haberman gives the most complete journal yet of this complex, yet predictable man.
From his first public outing at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge opening by his father Fred Trump’s side in 1964 at age 18, to the stream of city, state, and federal investigations into the various Trump business ventures, and the characters who seem to roam in and out of The Donald’s life, even to this day, the book describes the completely transactional man. He’s conveniently, the victor, or victim, tossing aside loss as victory, except when it is impossible for the media to allow him to do so, so self-absorbed is he in appearances and absent any depth of character.
As a former resident of New Jersey and visitor to the new Trump Tower in the 1980s, I observed a tiny bit of the ostentation that he is famous for, including the larger-than-life talk, and over the top claims about what he alone was capable of, that never quite came to fruition. After seeing Trump Tower, I went to Atlantic City with a friend to an antique show at the convention center and came across the Trump casino, being managed by his first wife Ivana, only to find it empty and not the hub of activity that it was supposed to become. Eventually, it was demolished.
One of the things I like best about the detail of Ms. Haberman’s account is how she was able to build a decades long relationship with so many people surrounding Trump, his family, and those around him even after he went to Washington, D.C. as President.
It is a study in abuse of individuals by a man who plainly does not understand how government at the federal level works, but whom eked out a few positive things during his fraught tenure. Like a caged animal, he abused those closest to him. Untrainable, and unwilling to learn even when approached by those he should have trusted most, and totally paranoid. Many of those who stayed the longest at the highest advisory levels of his administration appeared to have done so because they had something personal to gain from the experience.
That part of the subtitle, “The Breaking of America” is not hyperbole, either. During the George Floyd uprisings across America, and then the Pandemic, Trump’s craving for affection from the people and maintaining an appearance of normality led to a number of cascading events that nearly killed him in office. Much of it related to his fear of hospitals, after catching Covid-19. The administration’s careless response to the pandemic in the early days, coupled with Trump’s typically unmeasured use of language hurt the nation a great deal.
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