Bookshelf — Confidence Man, Maggie Haberman

If you felt you weren’t warned about Trump before, you’ve no excuse not to be now

What most surprised me in this thorough, readable biography of the narcissistic, bullying charlatan who captured the White House and then held the nation hostage for four years is how surprising I found his political success at the time. Had I been paying attention, as Maggie Haberman had through most of her career as a reporter in New York City and then in Washington, D.C., I would have seen Donald Trump coming — and so might have enough others to thwart his rapacious intentions.

It seems almost redundant to use the word revelatory to describe any book about Trump because he himself is an open book. As Haberman writes, he treats everyone he knows as “a chance for him to vent or test reactions or gauge how his statements are playing or discover how he is feeling. He works things out in real time in front of all of us.” However, Confidence Man is filled with revelations, at least for those us who never saw an episode of “The Apprentice”:

• The decades-long ties between Trump and the political puppeteers he employed as president such as Roger Stone and Paul Manafort (both convicted, both pardoned).
• Trump’s lifelong habit of deliberately exploiting hate and controversy: “I bring out the worst in my enemies and that’s how I get them to defeat themselves.” And: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. I want them to suffer.” Thus answering the question: Is he the way he is by…