The Trump years aren't over, whether he returns to the Oval Office or not, says author

The Sunday Magazine17:31Why Maggie Haberman believes Donald Trump will run again

Maggie Haberman says that Donald Trump's impact on American politics will be long lasting, whether he gets back into the Oval Office or not.

The New York Times reporter covered Trump during his term as president, and is the author of the new book Confidence Man: The making of Donald Trump and the breaking of America. The book tells the story of how Donald Trump became the person who was elected president in 2016. 

Even since Trump's defeat during the 2020 election, the former president has remained in headlines. Trump has been subpoenaed by the U.S. House Jan. 6 committee looking into the attack at the Capitol.

He still refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, and has hinted at possibly running for president again in 2024. 

The Sunday Magazine guest host David Common spoke with Maggie Haberman about her new book, and what the future might hold for Trump. Here's part of that conversation.

This book is so much about recent history, but I have to start — just because you are perhaps the best chronicler of Donald Trump — looking a little bit to the future. Do you think he's going to run again? 

I think he's backed himself into a corner where he has to. I think it's going to be very hard for him not to run at this point. That doesn't mean that I think his heart is in it, at least at this point. It doesn't mean that I think he's really excited about it. 

That could change if he declares and is out on the road more. But I think that, based on the investigations and based on his desire to hold the media's gaze, I think he has created a situation where he has to. 

He continues to hold enormous sway over the Republican Party and Republican voters. It would seem to me that if he runs, he would stand a very good chance of being elected. 

There's no question that he remains the dominant force in the Republican Party, which is the other reason I think would be hard for him to walk away. 

You never say never. You have no idea who else will be in the race. But if the primaries were held today, he would have a very strong chance of being the nominee. 

Your book tells stories from Trump's early days and how those formative years made him the president that he became. How does that backstory help explain what we saw during Trump's four years in the White House? 

Trump was raised in this era in New York City that was driven very heavily by racial tribalism, where his family's business, and aspects of the media, and aspects of politics, were impacted by corruption and certainly transactionalism. 

And all of that, combined with his very domineering father, helped shape how he views the world and who he is. And he exported a lot of that to Washington. It had a huge impact on his presidency and sort of how he expected Washington was going to function. And there's been a real trickle down effect on the Republican Party from that. 

So I try to show how much of his presidency was foretold years earlier, because we are talking about somebody who was fundamentally incapable of change. 

I think a lot of people thought when he was first elected, perhaps the presidency will force him to to moderate, to be more presidential. And that didn't happen. Is it fair to say that instead of the presidency changing him, he changed the presidency? 

I think he changed the presidency for the time that he was in the White House. I don't know that he changed the presidency permanently. I do think that he showed how much of the U.S. system is based on norms and not laws.

There's no law requiring U.S. presidents to release their tax returns. It's just that presidents, with the rare exception, since Nixon have done so. Trump didn't do that. I have reported in the book that Trump directed his vice-president to stay at his property, which is literally Trump verbally directing taxpayer dollars to his own pocket. This is just unheard of. 

And I don't know what will end up happening. But in terms of whether whether this this has an impact on others … I do think you could see candidates realizing they can get away with being less transparent than they were in the past. 

We've heard reports that [Trump is] terrified of your book and what's in it. And yet he sat down with you for three interviews when you were writing it. Why does he give you the time? 

He sat down with almost everybody who was writing a book — he just can't help himself — including Michael Wolff, who did a pretty damning portrait in Fire and Fury, which was the first of the Trump White House oeuvre. So it's just who he is. He loves to believe that he can sell whoever is in front of him. 

Have you heard from him since the book came out? 

I have not. 

There's great fascination with, not just the next presidential cycle, but where America is heading. What do you think the state of contemporary politics in the United States tells you about what America is becoming or has become? 

It's a good question. And actually, I do explore this some in the book. Trump did not create this moment that we're in, but he certainly fuelled and capitalized on it and benefited from it. 

I think we're in a moment where all of politics in this country are defined by who you hate and who hates you back. And I just don't know how long that's sustainable.- Maggie Haberman

And I think we're in a moment where all of politics in this country are defined by who you hate and who hates you back. And I just don't know how long that's sustainable. 

We obviously saw what the result of some of that is on Jan. 6, 2021. I don't think things have calmed down since then. If anything, elements in our politics have become much more hyper-charged. 

If we look at the real possibility that Donald Trump will run again and could win again, do you think that whether he runs, whether he wins, that we will ever enter a post-Trump age? 

Well, there will definitionally be a post-Trump age. Of what that looks like and when and how much of an impact he leaves, I don't know. 

He capitalized on aspects of the Tea Party fury in this country, which was, 2010, 2011. And he rebranded it as something different because the aspects of nativism and protectionism were not part of the Tea Party. And so that was his contribution. 

How lasting that is, I don't know. There are ways in which he has changed the political discussion that relate to behaviour, and that's the one that obviously stands out. But there are ways that he has changed the discussion related to policy. And we're still seeing that. 

We're seeing that in Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, sending flights of migrants in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where they have no family, no systems, no supports, and officials are surprised to receive them. This was something Trump talked about in office. 

The fact that the Biden administration kept these tariffs in place after the Trump administration ended, that's a part of it. There is not going to be some clean break from Trump. I think there will be lingering effects of him in politics for a long time.

Produced by Peter Mitton. This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.