Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America is a 2022 book by Maggie Haberman. It covers the career of Donald Trump and his presidency. Content. The first half of the book covers Trump's career before his candidacy for the presidency. Sean Wilentz observes that the book "places special emphasis on Trump's ascent in a late 1970s and 1980s New York demimonde of hustlers, mobsters, political bosses, compliant prosecutors and tabloid scandalmongers." The book covers Trump's close relationships with figures of that era including Ed Koch, George Steinbrenner, Roger Stone, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, Rudy Giuliani, Robert Morgenthau and especially his mentor, Roy Cohn. According to Joe Klein, Haberman describes how "Trump managed to gin his divorce from his first wife, Ivana, into a war between competing gossip columnists, Liz Smith and Cindy Adams," leading to coverage in the New York Daily News for 12 days straight. Haberman portrays Trump as president as childlike, easily influenced by flattery, obsessed with trivialities, unwilling to engage with the details, and dismissive of advice. Accordingly the executive branch was "subject to the president's whims and moods, his ideas about friends and enemies", and that he "reoriented an entire country to react to his moods and emotions". Haberman concludes that Trump is "a narcissistic drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse". Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.