Hey everybody. This is Glenn Thrush with the Off Message podcast. An apology. I kind of disappeared on you guys for a couple of weeks. Let's just say we were recovering after the election and kind of regrouping and thinking

about the kind of things that we wanted to talk about. I'm just going to cut to the chase here.

My guest this week is one of my oldest and dearest friends and a longtime journalistic collaborator

with myself, Maggie Haberman, who was, I think, distinguished herself greatly with her coverage of Donald Trump during

the 2016 campaign. I believe she is the best political reporter currently working in the country

and somebody who I've learned an awful lot from. But more importantly than that, I don't think

there is a reporter who has covered Trump, who has had more

personal interaction with him over the course of this election, or more of a profound understanding

of how this guy governs, how he deals with the media, how he makes decisions, and most importantly,

what really makes him tick. And the thing that's interesting about

Maggie here, and this is where her and I do share a common experience vis-a-vis Trump and vis-vis

this entire election, is that her experience really dates back almost two decades with Trump

from her earliest days as a tabloid reporter working on the New York Post

and dealing with him as a celebrity. That is the foundation of Trump's relationship with the media

and his relationship with the public. And Maggie and I first met when we were covering,

I believe it was Mayor Giuliani, the end of Mayor Giuliani's term in City Hall.

I was working for Newsday, and she was working for the New York Post.

And I think really the interesting insight in this, and this was just one of the best conversations I have to say that I've had with any guest.

One of the really interesting insights for people who are not from New York is the notion of how Trump was shaped by the tabloid media environment in New York.

You cannot emphasize this enough.

It's ironic, by the way, that tabloids are collapsing as we speak. The New York Daily News, the great tabloid of my youth,

Jimmy Breslin's paper, great working class tabloid. The thing I really aspired to as a kid is laying

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