- Trump asked his aides to get the NYT reporter Maggie Haberman's phone records, Politico reported.
- Trump has long been fixated with Haberman and once called her his "psychiatrist."
Former President Donald Trump asked his advisors to get the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman's phone records.
That's according to Politico, which published a lengthy profile of Haberman ahead of the release of her book, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America."
Trump has long been fixated on Haberman and frequently skewers her in public. On Friday, he called Haberman's forthcoming book "boring and stale," adding that she was a "failing" reporter who tells "made up stories."
But in private, Politico reported, Trump reveres Haberman.
"I love being with her," he once told two aides, according to Politico. "She's like my psychiatrist."
"I've never seen a psychiatrist," he added. "But if I did, I'm sure it would not be as good as this, right?
Haberman, for her part, has been on the Trump beat for decades. She covered his real estate business when she was a New York tabloid reporter before moving to Politico and later The Times. Her father, Clyde, is a longtime journalist at The Times, and her mother, Nancy, is a public relations executive in New York.
When Trump mounted his first presidential run in 2015, Haberman asked her editors if she could cover his campaign, according to the Showtime documentary, "The Fourth Estate."
Politico reported that Haberman didn't ask Trump for the first interview for her forthcoming book; instead, he approached her.
"He recognizes her genetic code," Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump aide, told Politico.
Haberman's book is slated for release on October 4. But some snippets have already been published, including that Trump privately asked then-President Barack Obama how he kept his approval ratings high; that he called then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel a "bitch"; that he told his former personal defense lawyer Rudy Giuliani to "go wild" and "do anything you want" to overturn the 2020 election results; and that he nearly fired his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner via tweet.
After Trump criticized Haberman on his social media website Truth Social on Friday, Haberman tweeted out a photo of what appear to be his handwritten answers to her questions about her upcoming book.
—Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 30, 2022