Confidence Trick

One of the interesting offshoots of the deeply depressing story of Donald Trump is his relationship with the reporter Maggie Haberman. that’s nothing like as sordid as he might like it to be, since she gets on with her professional work of reporting what he’s doing - and has done for years. He’ fascinated by her, occasionally lurching into outrage and insults, but also regularly coming back for more, in the belief that maybe he can charm her into being on his side.

It hasn’t worked. Her 500-page study of his rise to power, Confidence Man, is a thorough journalistic job, immaculately researched and resourced, and without a glimmer of personal bias. She carefully records whosaid what and whowrote what, and is toughly self-critical of herself on the occasions when she got it wrong. Anything further than Trump’s own style would be hard to imagine.

So the evidence is all there, about how he tricked and lied, deceived and backtracked, powered by his own inexhaustible vanity and constant need for admiration and support. Nobody reading his could imagine that he was fit to be in charge of a company, let alone a country - and yet reports still come in of influential Republicans deciding hat yes, he’s the man to represent them in the next presidential election. It’s the kind of thing to give democracy a bad name.