{"id":23789,"date":"2022-10-16T12:33:10","date_gmt":"2022-10-16T19:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=23789"},"modified":"2022-10-16T12:33:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-16T19:33:12","slug":"whats-the-key-to-understanding-donald-j-trump-start-with-queens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/10\/16\/whats-the-key-to-understanding-donald-j-trump-start-with-queens\/","title":{"rendered":"WHAT\u2019S THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING DONALD J. TRUMP? START WITH QUEENS."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/10\/16\/books\/review\/16Klein-02\/merlin_114742079_ad631295-e7b1-4493-8fdf-93bf4c218978-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption>Credit\u2026Damon Winter\/The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>NONFICTION<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cConfidence Man,\u201d Maggie Haberman\u2019s biography of the former president, argues that it\u2019s essential to grasp New York\u2019s steamy, histrionic folkways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Credit\u2026Damon Winter\/The New York TimesBUY BOOK&nbsp;\u25be<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By&nbsp;Joe Klein<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Sept. 28, 2022 (NYTimes.com)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>CONFIDENCE MAN: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America<\/strong>, by Maggie Haberman<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Donald Trump is too much with us. We are stalled, rubbernecking the endless carnage of his road rage. There have been far too many books about him, with far too many \u201crevelations.\u201d After a while, the revelations melt into an indistinguishable muck; his boorish narcissism, a bludgeon. And so it\u2019s hard to assess the news value of \u201cConfidence Man,\u201d Maggie Haberman\u2019s much anticipated biography of the president she followed more assiduously than any other journalist. No doubt, there are revelations aplenty here. But this is a book more notable for the quality of its observations about Trump\u2019s character than for its newsbreaks. It will be a primary source about the most vexing president in American history for years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Haberman is famously formidable. She is a native New Yorker, a competitive advantage given her subject. She has worked for the trifecta of local dailies \u2014 The Post, The Daily News and, most notably, The Times (plus a stint at Politico). She was awarded a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for her work with The Times. The only other journalist who can match her access to a recent president is Lou Cannon, who spent much of a lifetime covering Ronald Reagan, a far less enervating task than Haberman\u2019s. Trump has called her \u201ca crooked H[illary] flunky\u201d and \u201can unprofessional hack\u201d while giving her endless interviews, including three for this book. She is an exemplar of her craft, relentless, judicious and even-keeled, giving credit, where due, to her colleagues and fellow biographers, while admitting and adjusting her occasional mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/10\/04\/books\/04HABERMAN-COVER\/04HABERMAN-COVER-articleLarge-v5.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Haberman\u2019s thesis is that you can\u2019t really understand Donald Trump unless you\u2019re familiar with the steamy, histrionic folkways of New York\u2019s political and construction tribes. She devotes nearly half her book to his life before the presidency. \u201cThe dynamics that defined New York City in the 1980s stayed with Trump for decades,\u201d Haberman writes. \u201cHe often seemed frozen in time there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Haberman\u2019s Trump is very much a child of Queens, although of an exotic sort \u2014 a white Protestant. I, too, am a child of Queens, and Trump\u2019s use of phrases like \u201cthe Blacks\u201d and \u201cthe gays\u201d brings back memories of my grandmother denigrating \u201cthe Irish\u201d who lived next door. Outer-borough bigotry was endemic, but it tended to be casual, not profound. Ethnic street fights were followed by interethnic marriages; they still are. And always, for all of us \u2014 and even for a rich kid like Trump \u2014 there was the allure of Manhattan, a place far more glamorous than our humble turf. If we could make it there\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI can invite anyone for dinner,\u201d Trump said after his inauguration in 2017. But he remained an outer-borough brat, intimidated by elites. As president, he threw tantrums when he thought people were lecturing or talking down to him. In an infamous meeting with the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon, \u201cTrump knew that he was being told something he did not fully comprehend,\u201d Haberman writes, \u201cand instead of acknowledging that, he shouted down the teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/10\/16\/books\/review\/16Klein-01\/merlin_137612709_2d24acad-0fa5-4527-ab82-ee57f2eeafe4-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Trump at his Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal, in 1990.\"\/><figcaption>Trump at his Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal, in 1990.Credit\u2026Angel Franco\/The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump was schooled by media-obsessed bullies and assorted wiseguys like Roy Cohn, Rudy Giuliani, George Steinbrenner, various Cuomos and the irrepressible mayor Ed Koch. Cohn taught this lesson: \u201cI bring out the worst in my enemies. That\u2019s how I get them to defeat themselves.\u201d Other lessons were learned the hard way: When Trump tried to threaten Richard Ravitch of New York\u2019s Urban Development Corporation, telling him, \u201cIf you don\u2019t give me the tax abatement, I\u2019m gonna have you fired,\u201d Ravitch ordered him to get \u201cout of here before I count to three or I\u2019m going to have you arrested.\u201d And it\u2019s not hard to discern Ed Koch\u2019s influence on the future president\u2019s later Twitter style: When Trump asked for another tax break, Koch replied, \u201cPiggy, piggy, piggy.\u201d Haberman notes, deftly, the similarities between Trump and the Rev. Al Sharpton, which went well beyond tonsorial excess. Indeed, Sharpton expressed admiration for Trump\u2019s manner: \u201cIf Trump had been born Black, he would have been [the boxing promoter] Don King. \u2026 Because both of them \u2014 everything was transactional.\u201d Trump learned from Sharpton, who backed the Black teenager Tawana Brawley even when evidence mounted that her story of a racist attack was a fabrication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a more profound sense, Trump was a creature of his times. He traversed the commercial arc of the past 40 years \u2014 moving from (failed) business mogul to celebrity to \u201cbrand,\u201d just as American free enterprise moved from the production of steel, to casino games on Wall Street, to celebrity \u201cinfluencers\u201d on reality TV. He wasn\u2019t a very good businessman, but he played one on \u201cThe Apprentice,\u201d which was how most Americans met him. An Iowa man explained his reason for supporting Trump: \u201cI watched him run his business.\u201d In fact, there is a perverse truth to that. Trump found his true calling when he started selling his name to foreigners who wanted to put it on buildings. He peddled products like Trump wine and Trump Steaks, and scams like Trump University, to a gullible public seeking gilt by association. \u201cHis personal brand mattered more than what was on his balance sheet,\u201d Haberman writes. It sure beat working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The fantasy of decisiveness \u2014 his big line was \u201cYou\u2019re fired!\u201d \u2014 added to his political appeal, but that was phony, too. Haberman reports numerous occasions when Trump lacked the stomach to sack staffers face to face. At one point, he tried to lure Vice President Mike Pence\u2019s top aide, Nick Ayers, to become his own chief of staff \u2014 but only if Ayers agreed to tell the incumbent, Gen. John Kelly, that Trump wanted him gone. Ayers refused to play. So Trump resorted to an old New York modus, backstabbing and rumor-mongering and humiliation, to get Kelly to resign. Trump \u201cenjoyed the chaos of [his staff] fighting with one another,\u201d Haberman writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were two other significant New York lessons. One was that the press \u2014 especially the tabloids and TV news, and, later, social media \u2014 could be overwhelmed by brazen performance art. Trump managed to gin&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1990\/02\/13\/nyregion\/trump-the-divorce-case-the-accusations-are-flying.html\">his divorce from his first wife, Ivana,<\/a>&nbsp;into a war between competing gossip columnists, Liz Smith and Cindy Adams. He played the tabloids like a pipe organ: The divorce was on the front page of The Daily News for 12 straight days, \u201ca car wreck where the victims repeatedly tried to hurt themselves more instead of accepting medical help,\u201d Haberman writes. Trump eventually came to understand that he could use his own raw, outer-borough resentments to feed the public\u2019s latent anger against the politically correct snootiness of the establishment media. When he cried, \u201cFake news,\u201d they believed him. During the 2016 presidential campaign, I continually interviewed people who loved Trump because \u201che sounds like us.\u201d And somehow, in a miracle of salesmanship, the way Trump\u2019s supporters saw him became identical with the way he hoped to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was amazed by this. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they\u2019d still support him, he said. But the relationship was symbiotic and subtle. One of the many services Haberman performs in \u201cConfidence Man\u201d is to set out the process by which Trump came to his outrageous positions \u2014 like the ugly notion that Barack Obama wasn\u2019t born here, and the insinuation that most immigrants coming across the southern border were violent criminals. He didn\u2019t just blurt out these thoughts; he was nudged into them by the reactions of his most extreme supporters. Even his desire to build a wall at the Mexican border came gradually: Only when he began to see it as a crowd-pleasing construction project \u2014 like his triumphant restoration of New York\u2019s Wollman Rink \u2014 did the idea achieve pride of place in his campaign pitch. It becomes clear, as Haberman builds her case, that Trump wasn\u2019t just a grotesque, a lucky nincompoop, but a genius \u2014 though not a particularly \u201cstable\u201d one \u2014 when it came to reading the terrain of the digital-age media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The final New York lesson was, perhaps, the most significant: He learned how to stay one step ahead of the sheriff. This was, and remains, his greatest skill. There were numerous ways to do it. The most obvious was political influence. Trump made generous campaign donations to Giuliani and the old-money Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau. They, in turn, never got around to investigating him despite a strong whiff of ordure emanating from his dealings with Mafia-controlled construction unions and casino thugs. (Later, Haberman writes, Trump accepted a $20 million Super PAC contribution from the billionaire Sheldon Adelson to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump understood that the best defense was, at times, to be offensive. He threatened to out the publisher Malcolm Forbes, a closeted gay man, if he ran a negative story. He threatened lawsuits left and right. He lost occasionally: His corporations went bankrupt; he settled a fraud case with the Securities and Exchange Commission; he paid a variety of paltry fines. But he always managed to muddy the waters when he lost, claiming victory or threatening still more lawsuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most important, he developed a very precise sense of what the traffic would bear. He knew he could stiff his lawyers and the small businesspeople who were his subcontractors. \u201cDo you know how much publicity these people get for having me as a client?\u201d And, for all the sloppiness in the rest of his life, he deployed words with a litigator\u2019s precision \u2014 even if it sounded the opposite.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/09\/25\/us\/politics\/ukraine-phone-call-transcript.html\">Just think of his \u201cperfect\u201d phone call with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a>. It was, in fact, a master class in veiled intimidation: \u201cThe United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.\u201d Just think of his instructions to the Proud Boys, a mixed \u201cStand back and stand by.\u201d Just think of his speech on Jan. 6: He never said directly, \u201cGo down to the Capitol and try to overthrow the government.\u201d He always gave himself room to duck and cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We can hope that Trump is an aberration, not an avatar, but that would probably be delusional. He has created a brutish new standard for American politics, and put a terrible dent in our democracy. Maggie Haberman has been there for it all. The story she tells is unbearably painful because Trump\u2019s success is a reflection of our national failure to take ourselves seriously. We will be very lucky, indeed, if he doesn\u2019t prove our downfall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>CONFIDENCE MAN: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America |<\/strong>&nbsp;By Maggie Haberman | Illustrated | 597 pp. | Penguin Press | $32<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joe Klein is the author of seven books, including \u201cPrimary Colors,\u201d \u201cWoody Guthrie: A Life\u201d and \u201cCharlie Mike.\u201d<\/em>\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115014792127-Copyright-notice\">\u00a9&nbsp;2022&nbsp;The New York Times Company<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>(Submitted by Michael Kelly)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NONFICTION \u201cConfidence Man,\u201d Maggie Haberman\u2019s biography of the former president, argues that it\u2019s essential to grasp New York\u2019s steamy, histrionic folkways. Credit\u2026Damon Winter\/The New York TimesBUY BOOK&nbsp;\u25be When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. By&nbsp;Joe Klein Sept. 28, 2022 (NYTimes.com) CONFIDENCE MAN:&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/10\/16\/whats-the-key-to-understanding-donald-j-trump-start-with-queens\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23789"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23790,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23789\/revisions\/23790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}