Haberman: 70% of Trump's brain on monuments
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The New York Times' Maggie Haberman tells me 70% of President Trump's mindshare ("maybe plus or minus 5%") goes to his gilding, construction, renovation, renaming and tribute projects.
- "He is spending a huge amount of energy, mental and otherwise, on these renovation projects, beautification projects around Washington, and then monuments to self," Haberman told me for Axios' "Behind the Curtain" video series. "[T]here is no precedent in U.S. history of a sitting president devising such endeavors in their own name."
Why it matters: That mental map by Haberman — co-author with Jonathan Swan of "Regime Change," which has sold 600,000 copies and on Wednesday hit seven weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list — is a Rosetta Stone to what motivates and fascinates Trump.
- "What interests him are things that you can see and touch," she told Axios.
The backstory: Haberman had earlier made the 70% estimate about Trump's mindshare during an interview with her Times colleague Ezra Klein, saying that it's "a legacy thing."
- Maggie and I worked together in the early years of Politico. Her relentless reporting has made the New York City native a top expert on how Trump thinks. So I asked her to unpack her eye-opening stat:
Zoom in: Haberman and Swan visited Trump in the Oval Office in March for an hourlong interview for the book, which is now in eight printings and is the nonfiction bestseller of the year.
- "It was very clear," Haberman recalled, "what his mind was on while we were there. And what it was not really on was the war," which he'd launched just over two weeks earlier.
- "He didn't really want to talk about that. He didn't really want to talk about policy specifics. He wanted to describe himself as winning. And he wanted to show us how he had remade Washington."
Behind the scenes: "You would think that on the 17th day of the war that he would have maps of the Middle East or maps of troop deployments — who knows," Haberman continued. "He picks up these pictures, and [they're] of maple trees. And he says: 'I am choosing maple trees for the White House. I am good at picking trees.' I'm paraphrasing here, but that is pretty much what he said."
- "Under that were designs of the ballroom. And he starts talking to us about the columns and how some of the columns are evocative of Rome. And then on the other side, the columns are evocative of Athens. And he's happy that they are a little bit either wider or more spaced apart or both than the columns at the Supreme Court. And that was like the first 15 minutes of this hour that we had."
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