New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman learned a lot about Donald Trump over the course of three interviews in 2021. In a preview for her new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, published in the Atlantic, she writes that the former-president thinks COVID is “not good” and that he was offended by comparisons to ex-New Jersey governor Chris Christie (“I was compared to him? Why? I didn’t know I had that big of a weight problem”).
Trump also called Haberman his “psychiatrist,” which she writes was a “meaningless line, almost certainly intended to flatter.” She was not flattered, but Trump’s familiarity with his interviewer — and the fact that history has proven, time and time again, that he can say whatever he wants with no repercussions — led to a “jarring” confession.
At one point, Trump made a candid admission that was as jarring as it was ultimately unsurprising. “The question I get asked more than any other question: ‘If you had it to do again, would you have done it?’” Trump said of running for president. “The answer is, yeah, I think so. Because here’s the way I look at it. I have so many rich friends and nobody knows who they are.”
In a “later interview about what he’d liked about the job,” Haberman writes, “he replied, ‘Getting things done,’ and listed a few accomplishments,” but it’s telling that Trump’s immediate response to his favorite thing about being president is all the rich jerks he met along the way. Does he know he could have hung out with these rich ghouls at, like, Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse instead of the White House, and saved everyone a lot of stress? Probably would have been more fun, too.
(Via the Atlantic)