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When Ted Kennedy was running for president in 1980, he was famously tripped up by that one little question: “Why do you want to be president?”
Donald Trump has wanted to be president for decades, and has now had his wish fulfilled for more than five and a half (non-consecutive) years. To hear Maggie Haberman tell it, Trump’s answer to that question wouldn’t be all that complicated.
“The things that make him happiest, really, are things that he can feel and touch, and then things that are, in his mind, hopefully irreversible physical testaments to himself,” Haberman told me.
Haberman estimated that 70% (!) of Trump’s brainpower these days is spent on renovation projects, from the White House ballroom to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
That is a remarkable statement: Trump is president of the United States, leader of the free world, commander-in-chief of the planet’s greatest fighting force. He has powers, to change the country and people’s lives, that most of us could never dream of. And his attention is predominantly focused on interior design and architecture, according to Haberman, a White House correspondent for the New York Times who is widely considered to be the reporter who knows him best.
What about things like inflation, or health care, or tech policy? “He finds the economy boring. It’s not what he wants to talk about,” Haberman told me.
“Policy is about other people,” she said. “Monuments, in his mind, are him.”
Haberman, who has covered Trump since she was working for the New York tabloids and he was a frequent character in them, is the author of “Confidence Man,” the best book for understanding his rise in the worlds of both business and politics (and the throughlines that connect them), and co-author of the new book “Regime Change,” the most comprehensive book yet on Trump’s second term in office.
“Regime Change” is packed with richly reported anecdotes that flesh out the themes Haberman and I discussed in our interview, the latest installment of the Wake Up To Politics Book Club.
There is the scene of him sitting down with the four top congressional leaders — on the eve of a government shutdown — and repeatedly diverting the meeting to dig through a bowl of candy and pull out “Trump 2028” hats. There is the time that the head of the Smithsonian Institution, Lonnie Bunch, came to the White House to try to defuse the president’s recent criticism of the museums. But when Bunch got there, Trump never said a negative word, instead taking Bunch on a tour of the White House, meticulously “noting which artworks were correctly framed and which were not.”
At one point, waiting with Mike Johnson as July 4th festivities were about to begin, Trump treats the House speaker to “his own indoor version of a light show,” using a laser pointer to show which presidential portraits in the Oval Office were made with “good oil paint” and which ones with “cheat paint.” At another, Trump suddenly pauses a conversation to phone Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. What urgent matter did the president have to discuss with his French counterpart?
“Emmanuel? Emmanuel?” Trump said, according to Haberman and her co-author Jonathan Swan, a fellow Times reporter. “I’m building a big arch, Emmanuel. I’m trying to figure out if I need a viewing deck. Your arch—do you have—do you have a viewing platform?”
Haberman is careful with her words. She is the farthest thing from a partisan cheerleader — for either side — and she is unflinchingly fair in her coverage. Her liberal critics sometimes bemoan that she does not editorialize more (she “normalizes” or “sanewashes” Trump, they will allege), but the truth is, her assessments of the president are all the more biting because they are so matter-of-fact, and stripped of any partisan outrage or reaction.
Reading how Trump is described in “Regime Change” — picking Cabinet secretaries based off looks, or dropping bombs on Iran in 2025 because of the “nonstop adulation” Israel was receiving on Fox News for its attacks against Tehran, or acting sympathetically towards Mexico because he “liked the way [its president, Claudia Sheinbaum’s] voice sounded” — I couldn’t help but walk away with the impression that Haberman views Trump as, fundamentally, a simple person.
She admitted there was something to that. Trump is “shrewder and more calculating than people realize,” Haberman said. “But in terms of the things that either animate him or will compel him to take actions, those tend to be fairly simple.”
In our conversation, Haberman gave me an inside perspective on what is truly animating Trump at this point in his political life — and what isn’t. On their own, many of the things she told me would make for shocking assessments of an American president:
That he “really doesn’t” care whether his political party controls Congress after the midterm elections.
That he went to war with another country, destabilizing the U.S. economy and foreign policy, in no small part to get revenge for threats made against him personally.
That he now regrets launching the war, one of his most significant presidential decisions, in the first place.
Taken together, they paint an extraordinary picture of how the president thinks and how he operates.
Perhaps the most striking thing to me about Trump’s conception of the presidency, in Haberman’s account at least, is how backwards it all is.
Most presidents are forgotten. But some are remembered as great leaders, the type we carve into mountains and build statues of. To get there, though, presidents typically have to do things: win a war, or create a lasting legislative program, like the New Deal or the Great Society or Reaganomics. On the basic level, that sort of recognition requires some sort of policy agenda and showing of achievement.
Trump is trying to skip a step. He doesn’t spend his time on policy — Policy is about other people, after all — and instead focuses on erecting monuments he hopes to be remembered by, not realizing that impactful policies are actually how presidents typically reach such hallowed status. Why do great things to then get monuments for you, when the monuments could simply be your great things? It’s a cheat code to a legacy, in his view, without any of the work involved.
But the truth is, Lincoln isn’t remembered because he has the Lincoln Memorial, and Washington isn’t remembered because he has an obelisk. It’s the other way around. They have those monuments because they did things worth remembering.
If only for no other reason than self-interest, and his own legacy, Trump would probably be better off spending his time focused on policy, in order to advance the sort of agenda that might land him in the pantheon of presidential greatness. There are likely aides around him who have recognized this, too, but “Regime Change” depicts a group of courtiers terrified to contradict the president or offer adverse opinions.
It’s sad, really. Trump spent years working to return to the Oval Office — and now that he got there, he has spent the whole time obsessed with how he will be remembered, without even trying to do any of the things that could potentially burnish a lasting presidential legacy. “Buildings can outlive him,” Haberman told me. “I don’t think it’s that complicated, I really don’t.” But is the Kennedy Center really the main thing people think of when they think of JFK?
Towards the end of our conversation, Haberman told me that I was making a common mistake, “trying to apply a framework for all of this that does not fit for Donald Trump.”
Perhaps. But my bet is that this more traditional framework for presidential legacies will win out in the end. Policy may be for other people, but “other people” are also who write history books, and who get to pass judgement on Trumpism at the ballot box. When all is said and done, Trump might end up wishing he spent a little bit more time on policy and not so much on architecture.
You can watch my interview with Haberman above, touching on how Trump views everything from China to Iran to the Supreme Court to a potential House Democratic majority.
The beginning is available for everyone; like all “Book Club” installments, the full thing is available to paid subscribers. This is the type of extra content that you get with a paid subscription. If you haven’t subscribed already, I think you’ll find this to be a fascinating conversation and I hope you consider upgrading.
A full transcript is available below for paid subscribers. As always, thank you for your support, which allows me to bring you conversations like this one.
