Former President Donald Trump and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images, Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for The New York Times
Donald Trump once said New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman was like his “psychiatrist.”
Haberman said that while Trump treats many people like his psychiatrists, “almost no one really knows him.”
Haberman covered Trump’s presidency extensively and interviewed him for her forthcoming book.
Former President Donald Trump said reporter Maggie Haberman was like his “psychiatrist” during one of their interviews, according to Haberman’s new book.
Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, conducted a series of interviews with Trump for her upcoming book, “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.”
“I love being with her, she’s like my psychiatrist,” Trump told his aides during one of their interviews while he gestured to Haberman, according to an excerpt of the book published in The Atlantic.
Haberman wrote that it was an insightful but “meaningless line, almost certainly intended to flatter,” per The Atlantic.
“The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrists—reporters, government aides, and members of Congress, friends and pseudo-friends and rally attendees and White House staff and customers. All present a chance for him to vent or test reactions or gauge how his statements are playing or discover how he is feeling,” Haberman wrote, according to the excerpt.
The Times reporter, who covered Trump’s presidency extensively, also wrote that she was often asked to “decipher” Trump’s actions, “but the truth is, ultimately, almost no one really knows him.”
“He works things out in real time in front of all of us. Along the way, he reoriented an entire country to react to his moods and emotions,” Haberman wrote, per The Atlantic. “Some know him better than others, but he is often simply, purely opaque, permitting people to read meaning and depth into every action, no matter how empty they might be.”