Maggie, Woodward & The Never-Ending Trump Glut

Maggie Haberman speaks during an event in 2012
Maggie Haberman speaks during an event in 2012 (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for New York Magazine)
Julia Ioffe
July 16, 2021

As Election Day approached in the fall of 2020, Wall Street Journal White House Correspondent Michael Bender wasn’t sure how to feel. On the one hand, after five years of all Trump everything, he was wrung dry. On the other, he had a book about Trump to write. It was his first book and he had gotten a small advance so he wasn’t counting on a blockbuster, but every writer wants their book to succeed, especially if it’s their first. “Personally, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to happen,” Bender told me when I asked him if he had ever considered what a Trump loss would mean for his career. “If, like most Americans, I were voting with my pocketbook, I would vote Trump to win because that’s job security and he’s a great story. But I was just so exhausted.”