Maggie Haberman’s new book: Trump nearly fired Jared and Ivanka via tweet

Washington
CNN
 — 

Then-President Donald Trump nearly fired his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner from the White House via tweet, according to a new book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

Trump raised the prospect of firing Ivanka Trump and Kushner, who were both senior White House aides, during meetings with then-chief of staff John Kelly and then-White House counsel Don McGahn, Haberman writes. At one point, he was about to tweet that his daughter and son-in-law were leaving the White House – but he was stopped by Kelly, who told Trump he had to speak with them directly first.

Trump never had such a conversation – one of numerous instances where he avoided interpersonal conflict – and Ivanka Trump and Kushner remained at the White House throughout Trump’s presidency. Still, Trump often diminished Kushner, mocking him as effete, Haberman writes.

“He sounds like a child,” Trump said after Kushner spoke publicly in 2017 following his congressional testimony, according to the book.

In “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” Haberman chronicles the chaos of the Trump White House, with new details about how Trump resisted denouncing White supremacists and made light of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s declining health before her death in 2020 gave him a third justice on the Supreme Court.

But Haberman’s book, which was obtained by CNN ahead of its release on Tuesday, goes beyond the trials and tribulations of the Trump administration to document how Trump’s initial rise in the New York real estate and political world of the 1970s and ’80s permanently shaped his worldview – and by extension, his presidency.

“To fully reckon with Donald Trump, his presidency and political future, people need to know where he comes from,” writes Haberman, a CNN political analyst.

The book is littered with examples dating back decades that document Trump’s obsession with looks, his fixation on racial issues, his gravitation toward strongmen and his willingness to shift his beliefs to fit the moment. Trump tried to recreate the country to mimic New York’s five boroughs, Haberman writes, imagining a presidency that functioned like he was one of the city’s powerful Democratic Party bosses in control of everything.

The aides and advisers who spoke to Haberman for the book – she writes that she interviewed more than 250 people – offer a damning portrait of a commander in chief who was uninterested in learning the details of the job, who expected complete loyalty from those around him and who was most concerned with dominance, power and himself.

Haberman reports campaign aides once called Trump a “sophisticated parrot.” Trump lashed out at his top generals during an infamous meeting in the “tank,” the Pentagon’s secure conference room, because he was being told something he didn’t comprehend. “Instead of acknowledging that, he shouted down the teachers,” Haberman writes.

Kelly, his former chief of staff, is said to have described Trump as a “fascist” – uniquely unfit for the job of leading a constitutional democracy, according to Haberman, citing several who spoke to the retired Marine general.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said of the book: “While coastal elites obsess over boring books chock-full of anonymously-sourced mistruths, America is a nation in decline. President Trump is focused on saving America, and there’s nothing the fake news can do about it.”

Earlier this year, Haberman’s reporting for her book revealed that Trump’s staff found documents flushed down the toilet, on top of numerous reports that Trump had a habit of ripping up presidential papers in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The former President’s handling of documents has taken on new significance following the FBI’s search of his Florida residence and the revelation he took highly classified documents there upon leaving the White House.

Haberman interviewed Trump three times after he left the White House for the book in 2021, including in one instance in which he lied about sending his correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the National Archives, saying he had taken “nothing of great urgency” from the White House. (The Kim letters were among the items the Archives realized were missing in 2021.)

Trump’s cavalier handling of classified material led to distrust between the then-President and the intelligence community, Haberman writes, such as when Trump tweeted out a sensitive picture of damage at an Iranian facility in 2019.

He protested after officials tried to make changes to the image. “If you take out the classification that’s the sexy part,” Trump said, according to Haberman, who wrote that some saw nefarious ends in Trump’s behavior, while others “believed he was operating with the emotional development of a 12-year-old, using the intelligence data to get attention for himself.”

Haberman depicts all the organizations Trump has run – his businesses, his campaign and the White House – as dysfunctional and staffed by people who often disdained one another. His company executives referred to Trump’s company as the “Trump Disorganization,” according to the book, which includes examples of several unusual and eyebrow-raising business practices.

That dysfunction spilled into Trump’s campaign and ultimately the White House, where Trump churned through aides and Cabinet secretaries alike, dismissing the advice offered by his own staff.

When then-candidate Trump was under pressure in 2016 to denounce White supremacists like David Duke who were supporting his campaign, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was dispatched to urge Trump to be more forceful distancing himself. Trump was heard responding to Christie on the phone that he would get to it – but it didn’t have to happen too quickly, Haberman writes.

“A lot of these people vote,” Trump told Christie, before ending the call.

Following the 2017 White supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, when Trump claimed there were good people on “both sides,” Trump’s then-chief economic adviser Gary Cohn prepared a letter of resignation. Trump appealed for Cohn to stay. “If you leave, you’re committing treason,” Trump said, according to Haberman.

Cohn agreed to stay through the administration’s efforts to pass its signature tax overhaul later that year. As Cohn left the Oval Office, Kelly whispered to him: “If I were you I’d have shoved that paper up his f**king ass,” Haberman writes.

According to the book, several Cabinet officials believed Trump had issues with female leaders. He disliked former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and described her in a meeting as “that bitch,” Haberman writes.

Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper believed Trump’s push to withdraw US troops from Germany was purely out of personal spite, according to the author.

The book shows Trump’s failure to grasp basic policy concepts, such as Trump suggesting in an interview with Haberman that the Senate’s minority party could block legislation by skipping votes. “The vice president’s vote doesn’t count. It doesn’t count. You might want to check this,” Trump said.

When the House introduced articles of impeachment against Trump for the first time in 2019, Trump reacted with a familiar refrain, according to the book: “I’ll just sue Congress. They can’t do this to me.”

In the final year of his presidency, Trump tried to wish away the topic of coronavirus, Haberman writes, minimizing it publicly out of an apparent belief that things only existed if they were discussed openly.

Before Ginsburg’s death in 2020 created a last-minute Supreme Court vacancy that Trump filled just ahead of the presidential election, Haberman writes that Trump would make light of the justice’s deteriorating health.

Trump would clasp his hands and look skyward, Haberman writes. “Please God. Please…