New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who is often called the "Donald Trump whisperer," walked through a range of comments on "The Mishal Husain Show" for Bloomberg News.

While she said she doesn't believe that the U.S. is likely to see someone like Trump again, what he has done to government "is a fundamental re-imagining of the US presidency."

Haberman spoke about the upcoming election and whether Trump traveling around the country to campaign for Republican candidates will help or hurt. Husain asked why Trump hasn't been seen on the campaign trail yet while he's telling crowds to vote like his name is on the ballot. Haberman made it clear that Trump isn't campaigning because his name isn't on the ballot.

"And it's interesting because there was a reason for that for a long time where he would poll somewhat better than the generic Republican brand. I don't think that's the case now, but he said something last year about how he was either proud or honored that Republicans don't do as well when he's not on the ballot," Haberman said.

"He has set up this distance from his own party. And again ... he is viewed as separate from the Republican Party and the brand or the worst of it in terms of how it polls," she added.

Even when Fox host Laura Ingraham asked whether he would be campaigning harder than ever before, Trump answered "no."

The "big test," she said, is whether he will be forced out of what she calls his "unreality bubble" while on the campaign trail. In her book co-written with Jonathan Swan, Haberman said that a story appears about the six people that essentially run the government, noting no one else is invited to those discussions with Trump's top advisors.

"It's hard to break through that unreality bubble with him. Again, this is why being out on the campaign trail will be a big test," Haberman said.

"It's not that he's in a bubble where he's only on Truth Social and he's only watching the markets. He does know about these realities," Haberman explained. "The unreality bubble doesn't mean that he's not aware of actual reality. It just means that he is sticking to his version of reality, but he is briefed. He is told."

"He is briefed on how this is going. He does know what the truth is," said Haberman.

She was asked if he knew just how bad his poll numbers were, and Haberman said he did.

"But again, that's another 'reality is what you make it,' as he projects," she added.

Husain said that if the GOP fails miserably in the election, then it will reflect poorly on him, but Haberman said that Trump doesn't see it that way. So, while he tells his supporters to pretend he's on the ballot, he knows very well that he's not and it's the major reason he doesn't care much.

On issues like AI, Husain questioned why Trump is in such conflict with his own voters.

"I think even more than not registering. I mean, he's made comments that would've been fatal for a politician before about this, that people want to stay poor if they don't want this, everybody should want this," Haberman said. "It goes to the out-of-touch thing that we were talking about. Look, the president believes his own instincts are better than any other data that people give him and any other information."

It's also a reason Trump went into Iran, she said, despite those advising against it. She noted that Trump would love "to cut and run" on Iran, but even that option is off the table.

"He told Tucker Carlson, again, we have this in the book, 'It's going to be okay because it always is.' And in his mind, it always is for him. It's just not always okay for other people, but it certainly is not okay right now, but we'll see," Haberman said.

"The war really was the furthest thing from his mind," she later said.

Another thing that bogged down the administration was the first six months of the "co-presidency" with Elon Musk.

"DOGE just was a failure. It just didn't work. The fact that the GOP Congress has acted like an arm of the executive branch has been pretty shocking in a way I've never seen before in my lifetime," said Haberman. "That is the difference. I talked to Elon Musk for quite a long interview on a stage when he was still running DOGE actually, but not long before he decided that he'd had enough. And I think he really didn't like being asked questions about how that was going because it probably was, I hazard a guess, harder than he imagined it was going to be to make a difference there."

Maggie Haberman, a journalist for The New York Times whose book “Regime Change” offered a detailed insider account of President Donald Trump’s administration, has previously profiled Trump’s hostility to expertise and obsession with remaking Washington D.C. in his image. Now, during an interview on The Media Confidential podcast, she explained how Trump has created a press environment in which many of the journalists who interrogate him are sycophants.

“It used to be that when it was groups of reporters covering the president, they would be able to have each other’s back,” Haberman said during the appearance. ”If somebody asked a tough question, you would know that the person next to you is going to follow it up or ask a version of it.”

Haberman added, “Now it’s you ask a tough question, a rigorous question, and the president filibusters for four minutes and then the next question is, ‘Sir, how are you so handsome?’ from one of these influencers, or ‘Sir, is it hard that the media is so unfair to you?’”

She concluded that this was “very much by this White House’s design.” As a result of their decision to stock their press pool with sympathetic far right journalists, they have created a “massive challenge” for everyone who could be considered a real journalist — that is, willing to ask tough questions of powerful people.

“It’s to everybody’s detriment, because many people rely on us for this coverage and he’s doing very real sit-down interviews and press conferences,” Haberman argued.

Haberman’s reporting here is similar to when she pointed out that Trump’s tendency to take advice from whoever is around him has caused him to become very erratic from a policymaking standpoint. He prefers people who praise him, and can then be manipulated by them — but this depends on proximity to the president, who rarely leaves the seeming sanctuary of the White House and the reporters who frequently go there.

"[Secretary of State] Rubio did tell people that he felt the need to be around Trump because, as you say, this is a very tiny group of people making decisions and you could be at the top level of a major Cabinet agency and have no idea what is happening if you are not in the room with him," Haberman said. "So, that is how Rubio has functioned. I don't know whether Trump will sour on him."

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman was the one who blew the whistle on President Donald Trump's relationship with his aide, Natalie Harp, who was among those included in her book about the White House staff.

Haberman said that, according to those she's spoken to in Trump's world, Harp "doesn't do much outside of work. She works constantly for him."

She explained that it's a "huge amount of value" to Trump, who often relies on aides to make him feel better.

"I described her the other day as, as you know, a binky, for lack of a better way of putting it, a comfort blanket," said Haberman. "There are men who have played that role for him too. One of them would be Boris Epstein, about whom, you know, his legal adviser, you know, of whom the president describes him as his psychiatrist."

Haberman quoted Trump saying, "Sometimes you just want somebody to tell you everything is going to be okay. That is a lot of what the president values."

CNN host Wolf Blitzer mentioned national security concerns about Harp and the clearance issues. It was reported by MS NOW's Jake Traylor and Jacqueline Alemany, on Wednesday, that it took Harp over a year to handle her clearance paperwork. The reasons for it were unknown, but the president personally intervened on Harp's behalf.

"So, our understanding is that she does have a security clearance. We haven't independently corroborated that she was delayed on her SF-86 forms to get a longer-term one," said Haberman. "She came in ... with a temporary clearance, the way that most other people working in the White House did."

She noted that most people know that Trump speaks via a cell phone that "everybody has the number," including world leaders.

"That includes a bunch of people. And, you know, we don't quite know exactly how secure that phone is. I think the bigger issue that people have had about concerns is just her level of, of, you know, intense devotion to him. And that was what became a question for the Secret Service."

She went on to mention that the White House appears to be realizing that they made things worse by "elevat[ing] attention around Natalie Harp by bushing back on Jon Ossoff and going further than what Ossoff had said about their relationship themselves."

Ossoff mentioned that all Trump wanted to do was "build his ballroom and fly around with Natalie." GOP apologists and MAGA allies quickly began talking about an affair and claiming Ossoff was "insinuating" something.

"But there's also, you know, the way a president's world functions and, you know, this who is around him, who helps provide him with information that is going to be of interest and importance in any administration," Haberman said. "She's a government employee. It should not be a surprise."

CNN White House reporter Alayna Treene echoed the comments, saying that some in the White House now admit "that some of those more aggressive posts defending Harp actually had the adverse effect of drawing more attention to this relationship and dragging this story out."

With the United States' 2026 midterms less than three months away, U.S. voters, according to polls, are especially worried about the economy, inflation and the Iran war. Yet President Donald Trump, according to author and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, is heavily focused on something that isn't a high priority for voters: makeover and renovation projects for Washington, DC. And she explained Trump's reasons for that focus during an interview with Axios' Mike Allen.

Haberman and fellow journalist Jonathan Swan takes an in-depth look at Trump's second presidency in their new book, "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" — which Haberman has been promoting in a long list of media appearances. Talking to Axios, Haberman explained why makeover projects in D.C. are so important to the president when voters are worried about the economy and the war.

Haberman told Allen, "He is spending a huge amount of energy, mental and otherwise, on these renovation projects, beautification projects around Washington, and then monuments to self. (There) is no precedent in U.S. history of a sitting president devising such endeavors in their own name…. What interests him are things that you can see and touch."

In March, Haberman and Swan interviewed Trump in the White House for their book. And she emphasized, during her Axios interview, that the makeover projects in D.C. were a higher priority for him than the Iran war — which had been launched in late February.

Haberman told Allen, "It was very clear what his mind was on while we were there. And what it was not really on was the war…. He didn't really want to talk about that. He didn't really want to talk about policy specifics. He wanted to describe himself as winning. And he wanted to show us how he had remade Washington."

Trump has been pursuing a variety of makeover and renovation projects in and around Washington D.C., with proposals ranging from a White House ballroom to a "triumphal arch" near Arlington National Cemetery. Another priority for Trump is putting his brand on the Kennedy Center.

Haberman told Swan, "You would think that on the 17th day of the war, that he would have maps of the Middle East or maps of troop deployments — who knows. He picks up these pictures, and (they're) of maple trees. And he says: 'I am choosing maple trees for the White House. I am good at picking trees.' I'm paraphrasing here, but that is pretty much what he said. Under that were designs of the ballroom. And he starts talking to us about the columns and how some of the columns are evocative of Rome. And then on the other side, the columns are evocative of Athens. And he's happy that they are a little bit either wider or more spaced apart or both than the columns at the Supreme Court. And that was like the first 15 minutes of this hour that we had."

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan spoke at The Atlantic Festival Thursday, where the former detailed her predictions about President Donald Trump's presidency if Democrats take over one or both houses of Congress.

In a discussion about pardons and members of the administration breaking laws, court rulings, or orders, Haberman said that one thing that Steven Miller learned is that if the president declares an emergency, he can do whatever he wants. That combined with "an utterly compliant House GOP and slightly less so but fairly compliant Republican Senate" is how Trump has accomplished what he has.

Aside from the "emergency powers" efforts, another option is for Congress to hand over its power.

"And so, not to get too hyper local here, but there are many ways in which this government reminds me of like 1970s New York," Haberman said. "And the reason I say that is that that is Donald Trump's, you know, sort of, model of executive power."

She said that he's known for talking about the former Brooklyn Democratic Party boss, Meade Esposito, from the 1960s and 1970s. It's similar to his compliments for Xi Jinping, who he said "rules with an iron fist." That has become a kind of model for Trump.

"His own political lieutenants use it about how they have maintained control over Congress," said Haberman. "And one of the reasons that corruption was so rampant in the 60s and 70s in machine politics in New York City is because the party bosses controlled anybody who would investigate. They picked the judges. They picked the DAs."

"So, if you have control of anybody who might investigate you or raise questions, it isn't just about saying yes. It's about every check in society that we are used to. That creates an entirely different form of government," she explained.

Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta acknowledged that those involved in news and politics have become "a bit desensitized" after two years of watching it. However, "if we saw it unfolding elsewhere in the world, I think we would have a term for it. We would certainly be describing it more colorfully than we in the American press are accustomed to describing our own government."

But unlike in other countries, there's a time limit on Trump, Alberta said, calling the president a "lame duck." It prompted him to wonder how Trump is handling something like that and whether he'll be willing to stand down so JD Vance can step up.

Swan said that in their recent book they describe a scene in which Rupert Murdoch comes to the White House and has dinner with Vance and Marco Rubio along with a few other typical far-right appointees. In the event, Trump begins a conversation asking about Vance and Rubio for 2028, which Swan called "a beauty pageant, essentially."

Trump knows full well that Murdoch can't stand Vance and worked to stop Trump from appointing Vance. Murdoch said, "JD has the potential to be great." When asked about Rubio, Murdoch said: "Marco is brilliant."

"And it's this savage moment," Swan said. "It just foretells what the next two years are going to be like."

So, the way he's grappling with being a "lame duck," Swan said, is that he's simply refusing to be one. So, the idea that it will be a smooth path to a 2028 nomination and candidacy, "is contradicted by every piece of evidence we have about the way Trump behaves."

Haberman predicted, "This is not going to look like any kind of congressional flip that we’ve seen before in a lame-duck presidency, in terms of oversight."

She said that Trump believes he's immune from any federal prosecution and he's "talked about pardons very openly."

Trump knows that he is immune from federal prosecution. Um, he has talked about pardons very openly. We spoke to a number of people during the reporting of the book who are counting on their pardons. So, I expect that will be sweeping. We've never seen a government just not respond to subpoenas in Congress across the board."

At the same time, a contempt referral goes to Trump's government for prosecution.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

President Donald Trump and his shrinking administration are increasingly acting in "survival mode," reporter Maggie Haberman explained on MS NOW, with one of his latest outbursts showing just how much he no longer cares about his MAGA base.

Haberman is a longtime reporter and author best known for her close coverage of Trump and his political career, including her explosive new exposé of his second term, Regime Change. On Tuesday morning, she appeared on MS NOW's Morning Joe and was pressed about several new developments surrounding the president, including his recent statement lashing out against his voters for opposing data centers. Hatred for these AI-focused building projects has become remarkably consistent across partisan lines, leaving Trump in a tough bind given his efforts to court the AI industry to his side.

"The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign," Trump posted to Truth Social on Monday.

When asked about the comment, Haberman invoked a notable quote from former President George W. Bush, who once joked to a group of wealthy donors that they were his base. Now, she added, "the tech leaders have become Trump's base in many ways," noting the parade of "just one tech leader after another, coming and paying tribute to the president" early on in his second term.

"And he has gotten very enmeshed in that," Haberman said. "He did become, pretty quick overnight, an evangelist for AI after being really concerned about it. But now, yes, you have a scenario where he is saying things that most people who voted for him, a number of people who voted for him, are very loud that they don't want. And there's just — his information ecosystem is very small."

Haberman was also pressed about the odd circumstances surrounding the GOP's midterm convention, a first-of-its-kind event set to take place September 9-10 in Dallas. Many observers have noted that these events will be taking place on the same nights as major opening games for the new NFL season, likely drawing significant attention away from them. Haberman chalked this error up to Trump's increasingly small inner circle being more focused on "survival mode" and not being able to see the bigger picture.

"That was an error that some people around him privately acknowledged was something they had not been paying attention to," Haberman explained. "But again, it speaks to how small his circle is. It speaks to how tiny this group of people, who are not just making decisions in the government, but who are advising him politically, is; they're not looking at broader pictures like this. They are in survival mode. And again, that's fine for themselves. But you have all of these members of Congress, you have senators who are complaining privately. Some are fine doing this, some do not want to. They don't want to come off the trail. They don't want to give instant ad copy to democrats of their, you know, faces of them sitting in this crowd while the president says whatever he's going to say."

During a Monday morning appearance on MS NOW, author and journalist Maggie Haberman revealed that President Donald Trump's own team pleaded with him to address voter anxieties, but he has so far seemed content to ignore them as the midterms approach.

Haberman, fresh off the success of her Trump administration exposé, Regime Change, appeared as a guest during the latest edition of Morning Joe, where host Joe Scarborough pressed her about the president's evident disinterest in engaging with voter concerns, even as polling indicates that his approval numbers are cratering even in the traditionally conservative South.

"What I don't get is you look at those numbers in the Deep South, -31 in Georgia, -25 in North Carolina, that's just for a guy from the Deep South, that's staggering to me that he's that low, even -22 in Texas. I didn't think I would ever see that," Scarborough said. "And yet the president seems so oddly disinterested. He's, as you said a couple of weeks ago, he's focused on construction projects and vengeance. He never got out and campaigned for the big, beautiful bill, as republicans called it. He doesn't talk about affordability without mocking and ridiculing it. The thing that I mean right now, my big question is why is he so disengaged from the fact there's an election coming up?"

In response, Haberman discussed a piece of internal polling that she and co-author Jonathan Swan obtained while writing their book. Conducted by Trump's "main pollster" Tony Fabrizio, and circulated to many of his advisers, which "was very clear on where the voters are on the economy."

"And it was... a warning that Republicans and the president need to be honest, 'HONEST' in all caps, about where things are," Haberman explained. "It's the end of August. I don't think that the president has really turned that honest view around."

Haberman added that, for all he likes to tout economic success, discussion about the economy "bores" Trump, which is a well-known fact about him by those who have worked around him during his time in Washington, D.C. Now, despite the looming midterm disaster waiting for Republicans, Trump is more interested in doing the things he wants to do, rather than what he ought to do.

"This politicking, domestic politicking bores him," she added. "It was more interesting to him when it was rallies that were about him. It was more interesting to him when he was fighting for what he would say was survival, when he was very realistically facing prison time during the first campaign, if he did not win, which he was open about with people in private conversations. And now this is the part where he wants to do what he wants to do. You know, you and I both know, Joe, that often the question with him that people will ask is, why does he do X, Y, Z? And the answer is often because he can."

Haberman continued: "He has told people, and we wrote about this in the book, that he is proud Republicans don't do as well when he's not on the ballot. He doesn't want to get impeached again. They don't want a lot of oversight. He's not looking at this the way they did in 2018 or 2019. In 2018, he was sort of indifferent to the fact that Democrats were probably going to take the House and what that could mean for him. He has made very clear he's going to pardon any number of people who have come within a certain number of feet of the Oval Office. I don't expect we are going to see this government comply with subpoenas in any meaningful way. And so the intensity of it for him is very different than it is, you know, for other people in his government who don't necessarily have the same protections."

President Donald Trump and his team have been on the hunt for a leak, but it isn't going very well. Asawin Suebsaeng at Zeteo wrote on Tuesday that the leak hunt has been stalled "for a hilarious reason."

Describing the Trump administration as a "fascist-‘Office Space’" environment, Suebsaeng described the constant backbiting from a “den of snitches, ‘freaks,’ and paranoid tyrants.”

The constant paranoia and "snitching" has only grown worse in the last year, Suebsaeng wrote.

According tot he report, Trump is particularly upset about leaks from April reports that he's grown frustrated by a new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Among the reports in the book is the characterization that Trump’s increasing volatility is causing him to make "reckless" decisions, particularly when it comes to the war with Iran.

“The leak hunt is a big deal right now,” one administration official said in April. Another source told Zeteo that staff in the administration were warned by a superior that “if you talked to Jonathan or Maggie [you] better be good at covering your tracks.”

The hunt for the leaks has continued over the past several weeks.

"By May, the president was so livid and paranoid about the leaks that he pushed his Justice Department to seriously consider raiding the homes of reporters, or just jailing them until they sold out their anonymous sources," the Zeteo writer said.

As of the beginning of June, the probe appears to have stalled, according to the site's sources. The reason, which Suebsaeng found to be hilarious, is that the list of possible people is too long.

“We started making a list of likely suspects, and it got too long,” a Trump administration official told Zeteo.

"I cannot possibly pretend that it isn’t hysterically funny how Trump has put himself in a position where it’s very hard for him to find the leakers because the senior personnel he tapped to be the leak-hunters-in-chief are also the ones who’ve been doing the leaking," wrote Suebsaeng. "Good help is hard to find!"

Two senior officials, one currently in the administration and one previously from the Trump White House, answered "of course" when asked if they've leaked. They felt they had cover because the information they had would be known to anyone at their level.

“It’s one of the worst-kept secrets at the White House,” the current official said. “I’m not ratting myself out; that would be ridiculous.”

A different advisor described the leak hunt as akin to the scene in the movie "Reservoir Dogs" in which characters point loaded guns at each other, ensuring their mutual destruction.

Asked about the matter, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle attacked the website, its founder and the reporter.

The new expose, "Regime Change," will be out later this month.

President Donald Trump's recent Air Force One switch fiasco has seemingly revealed much about the things he prioritizes from his staff, according to reporter Maggie Haberman, based on the choices he made about who joined him on the secret flight.

Haberman is a journalist and author who has extensively covered Trump's time in national politics, including the bombshell recent book about his destructive second term, Regime Change, which she co-wrote with Jonathan Swan. This week, she sat for an interview with Jessica Yellin, the founder of News Not Noise, and during the start of the conversation, she pressed Haberman about the implications of the staffers that Trump chose to come with him on a secret military flight out of Turkey last month.

As Yellin established in the discussion, Trump opted to be accompanied by his close personal assistant Natalie Harp, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, top aide Walt Nauta and Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with the press pool, notably remained on the legacy Air Force One model that Trump snuck out of amid fears of an attack by Iran.

Digging into the particular connection each person on the secret flight had to Trump, two likely reasons for their inclusions emerged: personal support and social media.

"In terms of the personal aides that Trump brought with him, it isn't surprising," Haberman explained. "In the sense that Walt Nauta, he is now the head of Oval Office Advance. He was also Trump's indicted co-conspirator in the Mar-a-Lago documents case by special counsel Jack Smith."

She continued: "Natalie Harp is with him in almost every meeting. She is the person who sits alongside the wall in the Oval Office, she goes and gets him printouts, as she did when Jonathan and I were in the Oval Office for a fact-checking interview for this book. And Dan Scavino is another longtime source of support. One throughline for Harp and Scavino is that they operate his social media feed, and so I could see a world where he wanted them there to help him with that."

Haberman was also quick to note that there might have been a simple practical reason for Rubio, and numerous other top-ranking officials, staying behind on the older Air Force One model. As Haberman noted, it would be reasonable to imagine concerns about too many leading figures in the administration being in one place, raising the possible damage that could be done by one attack.

President Donald Trump has a pick for White House counsel: Will Scharf, who has been serving as White House staff secretary since 2025. And according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Scharf has his work cut out for him — as Trump has a history of being "very hard" on his White House counsels.

During a Monday morning, August 10 appearance on journalist Peter Alexander's new show on MS NOW, Haberman noted that Scharf is very much a Trump loyalist. But she also argued that he could run into problems as White House counsel because he "has limits on what he will do."

Along with journalist Jonathan Swan, Haberman wrote the 2026 book "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" — which takes an in-depth look at Trump's second presidency. During her appearances on MS NOW and CNN, Haberman has been stressing that Trump is much more brazen during his second presidency than he was during his first."

Talking to Alexander, Haberman emphasized that although Scharf is on board with Trump more often than not, his willingness to buck the president on occasion could prove problematic for him.

When Alexander described Scharf as an "ultimate loyalist" to Trump, Haberman responded, "He is, but he also has some limits, Peter, on what he will do. One of the things we wrote about in the book, Jonathan and I did, is two issues where Will Scharf drew a line over the course of the last year and a half — where he got concerned about what could entangle this administration in legal fights that they might not be prepared for. One was about when to invoke the Insurrection Act, which is, you know, a loaded weapon on the shelf, as is the idea of suspending habeas corpus rights for undocumented migrants."

Haberman continued, "You know, the right to due process under habeas corpus is an idea that predates the Magna Carta. It's enshrined in the Constitution. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld it very broadly. There was an episode that we wrote about where the president and (Trump White House adviser) Stephen Miller were really aggressively discussing, possibly just broadly, suspending these rights. But in general, Will Scharf is, as you say, he is somebody who generally believes in pretty expansive executive power. He was part of the president's team that fought for the immunity ruling at the Supreme Court, which has allowed President Trump, in President Trump's mind, to plow through all kinds of limits this term."

Appointed to White House counsel, effective September 1, Scharf replaces Trump ally David Warrington — who is returning to the private sector. Scharf has been a strong supporter of Trump's proposed White House ballroom, helping secure approval for the $400 million project.