this is bbc news. the headlines: authorities in seoul say north korea has fired another two ballistic missiles that have landed in the japanese sea. this comes after the un held an emergency meeting to discuss regional tensions. pyongyang says the launches are "counter action measures" against recent us—south korean military drills. aid agencies have warned that hundreds of thousands of people in somalia face starvation unless aid deliveries are urgently stepped up. the worst drought in decades has forced many people from their homes. many of those who remain are cut off from potential help by a long—running islamist insurgency.

united states has criticised the opec plus, to cut production. the president called shortsighted. move pushed up prices to three—week eyes. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk with me, zeinab badawi. as my guest today. maggie haberman has covered trump's rise in new york city to his presidential campaign, presidency, and difficult period after leaving office. now this pulitzer prize winning journalist, who is a new york times star reporter, has published a new book about him called confidence man. her book has been making headlines, but has also brought criticisms, with accusations that she has withheld information about trump that was relevant to ongoing investigations

about his actions. has she put profits before principles? and what is the responsibility of a good journalist? maggie haberman in new york, welcome to hardtalk. now, you've been covering donald trump since the �*90s, more than anybody else, perhaps, yet you say that he still remains a bit of an enigma for you. how is that possible? it's an interesting question, and thank you for having me. i think he's an enigma for almost everybody. i think that he is a man of a handful of moves,

and you can identify what those moves are, and you see him use them over and over again, but it can be tricky to figure out which ones. and i think the biggest issue, and i write about this, is people want to read into his actions and read meaning into his actions. they're often pretty empty and they're often aboutjust surviving from one minute to the next. and exactly why he's doing something can sometimes be hard to figure out until later. he is not strategic, he is much more calculating than people realise. all right, i mean, how far do you think the fact that you grew up in new york city, same kind of area as he, your parents indeed met on the new york post. so did that sort of shared environment help you understand him better? i think there's no question that understanding the milieu in new york that he came from, because it's the world that i came from, certainly helped me see certain patterns and trends, and how he was taking, as a candidate, the lessons that he learned in new york over many decades about tabloid media, about the construction industry, about the real estate industry, about the political

system in a city that was really dominated by machine politics for decades, and how he tried to export that to washington and bring new york city rules and new york city tabloid rules to dc. and it has left a real mark on the republican party and on our politics in the country going forward. and you've been trying to throw a lot of light on all this. but, i mean, back in the day, in 2016, when you were in a crowded field of reporters on the new york times, you were trying to find your lane, you were assigned to covering donald trump, seen very much as an outsider, unlikely to get the republican nomination for president. but did you at the time get a sense that he would make history? it's a great question, and i write about this. you know, i took it pretty seriously when he was sort of running for president in 2011. he was seriously considering a campaign, or at least more seriously than i think people realised from the outset. he was making certain moves that you would make

as a prospective candidate and, zeinab, he was getting a real reaction from voters. it was clear that he was tapping into something, but then he didn't announce. and by the time we got to 2015 when he did declare, i didn't want to write about it until he actually announced. they came to me, his folks, trying to get me to do a story, and i didn't want to do it because i felt as if we had all gone through this act with him before. and i didn't want to just give him headlines if he wasn't actually going to announce. now, that was, in hindsight, not the greatest call, but it was a defendable one. but by the time we got to 2016, it was clear that he was having an effect with voters — that was happening in spite of how many scandals he was facing, in spite of the fact that there was just a rolling sense of controversy around him all the time. i did think at points that he had a shot at winning. it wasn't every day that i thought that and it wasn't every month, but there was certainly a staying power that he had. and there were voters who just

had long—standing concerns about hillary clinton, going back decades, that fed a lot into their perceptions of her. all right, so you got close to him, you built up, you know, a reputation for covering him a great deal. you've now published a lot of what you know in your new book, confidence man, which is making waves, it's just out. and it starts with donald trump when he was 18 years of age, you cover his journey through the new york business world, and the aftermath of his 2020 loss tojoe biden in the presidential election. you had three set interviews with him for the book, although you've talked to him on numerous occasions. are you still talking to him, by the way? i haven't spoken to him since that last interview, which was in september of 2021. he was very angry about reporting that i put out, that i — was from research for this book much earlier this year, in february, about how he had a habit of flushing documents that he had ripped up down toilets, and how this had become a habit that a handful of people knew

about in the white house. that's one of the many colourful stories that you cover in your book. you're quite right, he does not like the book. i mean, he's described you as a "third—rate reporter" and a "terrible, dishonest reporter". instead of maggie, he refers to you as "maggot". but he's also said, "i love being with her. she's like my psychiatrist." so it's very puzzling. what's your relationship been like with him? so, he's a subject who i cover, just like i've covered a number of politicians before. i covered donald trump, i covered hillary clinton, before that i covered mike bloomberg, the former new york city mayor. i covered rudy giuliani when he was a presidential candidate and a mayor. i covered, more to remove, bill clinton and barack obama when they were presidents. i covered governors in new york state. he's just simply someone who i've covered a lot and very intensely, you know, and he is someone who, like every person i cover, sometimes, you know, gets very angry at what i write.

most people don't express it the way he does. but, i mean, trump really is more than that. i appreciate that you obviously have covered all the other candidates and figures that you mentioned, but you have yourself said that covering trump, "it's my curse and my salvation." so why did you say that, what do you mean? i was talking about work, i wasn't talking about trump. the way that i approach myjob is the curse and the salvation, which is that i throw all my energy into it. all right, but you have blown a great deal of energy into just covering trump. i mean, you've courted your sources around him very assiduously — to the extent thatjonathan swan, white house correspondent for axios, the online news site, says, "it was the most competitive beat in american journalism, and maggie was, by any objective measure, the dominant reporter." i mean, you really were relentless in hunting down stories and getting scoops. the implication is you wouldn't

let anything or anybody stand in your way. i appreciate that, and i appreciatejonathan�*s very kind words. look, it was a very competitive beat. covering the white house is always very competitive. it was very different in this white house. and i think one important difference here in terms of covering him versus covering other politicians — and i think this gets a bit of what you're asking — he seeks to be in the news in a way that almost no other politician i've ever covered really did. even bill clinton, who had a level of neediness that a lot of his aides would talk about, wasn't like this. rudy giuliani loved being in the media when he was the mayor of new york city. he would sometimes hold three, you know, gaggles with reporters a day, and i remember having to run around and cover those. this was just next level. and so the level of competition, combined with the investigations that trump was under, combined with the controversies that he was not only courting but fostering, meant that we were all working very hard. i did work hard. you know, it was a lot of energy. you know, covering him requires a lot of energy, and i think a lot

of reporters had it. and, i mean, are you proud of that, or did it put a lot of intolerable pressure on you to find scoops? because new york times' michael schmidt says, "maggie was part of breaking some of the most significant investigative stories of the trump presidency." i mean, you were the go—to person for what's happening in the trump white house. you were the one who apparently knew everything. that's very flattering, thank you. but, i mean, ithink that it was... i think the situation required that we all throw a lot of energy into it — i know i certainly did. but i really think that the white house press corps that was covering that administration, i think everybody was quite worn out by the end. people are always worn out by the end of an administration, i think this one was a little different. you were worn out, were you, by it all? i mean, it was fatiguing and it was relentless. i mean, you know, you used the word "relentless" about the approach to reporting. just the beat itself was relentless.

and i will give you a for instance. when it looked as if, you know — you get these set breaks, these expected set breaks in news coverage. and so one is after an election, there's going to be a break because things will slow down in the transition. but there was no break in the transition because donald trump was hunting for ways to stay in office and thwart the results of the election. then there was the capitol riot onjanuary 6, 2021, and its aftermath. then there was an impeachment trial, and then there was trump continuing to foster questions about the election. so there's just never a natural break with him. well, i'll come to some of the cases that you've raised there, but this book that you've written has been billed as the book that trump fears the most. and there are many colourful examples of what president trump did and said. i'lljust give some examples. you mentioned the flushing official white house documents down the white house toilet. trump, you say, weighed up bombing drug labs in mexico. he was scared of dying from covid—19, which, of course, he got. you said he wanted to be taken

out of hospital after he had recovered from it in a wheelchair, and would take his shirt off saying superman logo on it. you mention how he thought that ethnic minority staffers at the white house, a white house meeting were waiters. i mean, there were so many things that you've mentioned in the book. what was the most striking story for you or the most striking aspect? the most interesting thing i learned during the course of reporting for this book was that he had been telling people that he wasn't going to leave the white house. and on one level, it's not entirely surprising, given that we saw how set he was on remaining in power. but that he was actually saying it to people out loud, i think really speaks to what an early warning sign there was, by the second week after the election in november 2020, that something was going awry here. and a lot of people, you know, were avoiding the oval office, the staff who did hear him say things like this tried to avoid engaging with him, hoping he was going to move on from it. it really speaks

to the mind—set. so you're talking there about trump's refusal to accept his defeat and also the numerous efforts that we've now learned to overturn the election result, which led to those very well—documented january 6th, 2021 attacks on the us capitol by pro—trump rioters. you write in your book that trump said when he learned of his defeat, "i'm just not going to leave. how can you leave when you won an election?" this was new information, wasn't it, maggie haberman? and we have ongoing investigations — the us house of representatives, justice department investigation into his refusal to cede power after the election. why did you not make this revelation available sooner? when i learn of information and it's confirmed and reportable, my goal is always to get it into publication as quickly as possible. books are a different process, they take time. i wanted to paint a fuller picture, and it's a process of going back and revisiting scenes and interviewing sources, and that often

reveals new information. and that was the process with this book, as it so often is, you know, and i think they are really key, these books, to helping establish the historical record. but you have received criticisms for not making this information available before the publication of your book. for example, the usa today columnist michael stern says, "journalists who write books have a conflict of interest when they withhold valuable information so they can include it in their book." i mean, were you putting profits before principles and putting your book, wanting this revelation, again, before principles? as i said, books take time. they take a while to go back and learn new information. i turned to this project in earnest after the second impeachment trial, after trump had left the white house.

and it was a process of learning new information throughout. and you don't feel any regret? i mean, what do you say to your critics? i understand what they're saying. i stand by what ijust said about the process of writing a book, and how it worked. cos there are even calls on social media now for people not to buy your book as a kind of protest. i mean, i give you one example — a lawyerfrom oregon, amie wexler, says, "why didn't maggie haberman report on this in realtime? don't buy her book, don't reward this behaviour." are you worried about that kind of comment? i think people are entitled to their views, and they will react and make assumptions about when information was learned and how. and, you know, they're perfectly entitled to do that. all right, but it goes to the heart of what we expect from journalists. i tell you what edward wasserman, professor at uc berkeley school ofjournalism, says. he says, "journalists need to answer this question — what exactly is my duty to the public i'm supposed to serve?" so as a journalist, rather than the author of a book, what do you think your duty is to the public? the book is part ofjournalism. the book is a work ofjournalism. and, you know, the conversation that i had — and i talk about this with people

recently, there was one person who i knew had spoken for a bunch of these books that had been published during the white house years who had revealed something to one of the authors that i had been trying to find out, and i had been unable to, for the paper. and i asked this person in frustration, "why do people talk for books, and why wouldn't you tell me this?" and the person said, "there's no immediacy. it's not coming out right away." people are willing to say things for recording for history in books that they sometimes are not, and to reveal information that they are not, for the daily report. and so i hope people will understand that. if they don't, i fully get that too. but, you know, books are part ofjournalism. they're not antithetical to it. it taps into a wider debate, doesn't it, about the state of the american media? and i tell you what steve schmidt, who's a strategist who worked for republican campaigns and he's co—founder

of the lincoln project, which campaigns against trump. and he said on twitter on 12 september, "there is a profound crisis in the american media because there has been a collapse of trust between news organisations and the public. " i mean, does he have a point in, arguably, this one case that we've been discussing about you not making that information that you learned about the january 6th riot and what trump said in real time, has it contributed to that in any way, that breakdown in trust? i've addressed this a few times. this is information that i learned during the course of reporting a book that i had turned to after the second impeachment trial. so this would not have been possible to have reported in real time. if i had information, if i had known it then, i would have published it then. i don't know how much more clearly i can say it. all right. and another thing i want to put to you is that, you know, there has been a bit of misinformation, disinformation that's come out of donald trump's white house, or indeed from him. how do you feel about sometimes

ventilating such issues? some of the statements or stands he took on covid, for instance, he was very sceptical about the need for covid measures. i think we covered that pretty aggressively in realtime, so... and i think we were pretty clear that he was not taking covid seriously. in fact, there was a piece that i wrote that was part of a package that was a finalist for a pulitzer, back in april of 2020, about how trump could have seen this coming. we revealed that there were memos internally in the white house informing him and informing other staff ofjust how problematic this virus was going to be, the need for equipment that was coming. so i think that this was pretty well—covered. and i think people could see in real time on television that he was not taking this seriously — he was talking at one of his covid briefings about, you know, people injecting cleansers into their bodies. i don't think it was unclear to people that he was not treating this particularly serious. all right, let me flip it around now, flip the lens around and say to you that, you know, the new york times is seen as a kind of liberal establishment newspaper.

and there are conservative journalists such as megyn kelly, who says this. "the media, more than any group, devoted themselves to bringing down trump's presidency. they saw everything he did through a negative lens, conspiratorial lens." is there any merit in her criticisms, in your view? one of the things that i write about in the book, and i talk about this in the context of the mueller investigation, is there were people who were making claims — and these were elected officials who were making claims that there was evidence there that had not yet revealed itself, that was going to be even more damning, that was known publicly. when the special counsel investigating trump issued his report about possible conspiracy between russian officials and the trump campaign in 2016, you know, he laid out a series of events that corroborated the real—time reporting, but it made very clear that there was not some new, you know, smoking gun that had not been uncovered. and so i think that's something that folks point to a lot. i think that the nature of the trump presidency, a sitting president who was under investigation for what he was under investigation for — bill clinton was obviously

under investigation over and over again, but in this particular instance, this involved foreign actors. this involved a president who was wealthier than any president we've ever had, who had personal business ties, i think that was part of what sparked all these various investigations. i think that there is a cacophony of coverage, and i think it is incumbent upon all of us in the media always to go back and see what we could do differently and have done better and could have done better. and i'm sure this will continue to come up. you mentioned the russian controversy. you say in your book, "i was curious when trump said he had kept in touch with other world leaders since leaving office. i asked whether that included russia's vladimir putin and china's xijinping, and he said no." briefly, what else did he say to you about other world leaders? that really was it. and we didn't delve into a lengthy discussion about other world leaders, because he really didn't

have an affinity for other world leaders. and i write about this, that he would talk about how he gets along better with the "strong ones", quote—unquote, and that he doesn't know why that is. you know, he was so dismissive of alliances and he was so dismissive, particularly, of european leaders. there's a meeting that he has, that i write about, with theresa may, which was just a bizarre situation. it culminated in him grabbing her hand as they were coming down some stairs, and she ended up calling her husband in order to warn him that, you know, a man had grabbed her hand so that he wasn't seeing it on television. you know, he really prefers talking about authoritarians. you mentioned theresa may, former british prime minister — but kimjong—un, leader of north korea, he kept the letters, didn't he, that they'd exchanged? he did, and that was not clear at the time. i had a conversation with him that's in the book where i ask on a lark, "did you keep memento documents?" because he was known, zeinab, in the white house for taking letters, these letters with kimjong—un, and waving them around at people and waving them at, you know, visiting dignitaries, waving them at reporters. so i asked if he'd kept anything and he said,

"nothing of great urgency, no." so that didn't really lay out on anything. but then he volunteered, "we have..." either "we have" or "we had the kju letters." and that was a little jarring to me. and i said, "you were able to take those with you?" and he didn't answer. he kept talking and i said either "huh" or "wow". and he registered my surprise and then backtracked and said, "no, i think those are in the archives." it was learned a few months later that, in fact, those... he had them. ..were not back in the archives — that's right. and he had them and the archives had been trying to get hold of them for a while. and it turned out there were more than 100 other additional classified — or not — an additional 100 documents. "kju," of course, is kimjong—un. very quickly, because we don't have much time, we must touch on the... you talk about those documents, but we know about when he left the white house, he flew back home to florida with thousands of classified documents belonging to the government and his failure to give them back, there's an ongoing department ofjustice investigation.

briefly, what did he say to you about that when you asked him? i didn't ask him about, "do you have classified documents?" the only question i asked him was, "did you keep memento documents?" which i just discussed. so he didn't talk to you about the mar—a—lago? and then, you also... had i known that he had classified documents, i would have published that. sure, and then, very quickly, again, there's an ongoing new york civil suit against him, saying that he inflated his — or alleging that he inflated his net worth in order to get loans and all the rest of it. family deny that they've done any wrongdoing, but you say that perhaps his finances are not as robust as he tries to make out? this has been a constant with him, is that his finances are not as robust as he tries to make it out. and he has a very long history of describing his worth, you know, differently, depending on the minute and depending on who he's talking to. what that civil suit did was collected a bunch of those incidents, and then a few more, and present a case that he has been painting a fraudulent picture to prospective lenders for a while. whether that suit goes forward,

whether it means anything, we will see. it was not a surprise it was filed. they've refuted all that, of course, trump and his family deny all of this. very quickly, we've got the midterms in november this year and a presidential election in 202a. is he waiting to see how the republicans perform in the midterm elections? will he run for the white house again, and will he win? i think he has backed himself into a corner where he has to run. i think among other things, running affords him some cudgel to use against these investigations, and the prospect of presidential armour as protection against indictment. whether he will win, who knows? but he certainly remains formidable in the republican party. and do you think that candidates in the midterms who are allied to him will do better than those who've kept a distance? a good question. i think in some cases, yes, and in some cases, decidedly, no. maggie haberman in new york, thank you very much indeed for coming on hardtalk. thank you.

hello. it stays windy for the rest of the week. there will be a brief lull at the start of the weekend — we'll take a look at that in a moment. first of all, let's deal with thursday's weather — and, well, there'll be some sunshine to be had, there'll be some showers, though, and it will remain blustery — you can see the isobars close together on the pressure chart here. this one weak weather front will be the focus for some thicker cloud in places, weatherfronts pushing back in towards the northwest, as it will be turning wetter again later in the day, especially western scotland. much cooler start to the day than it was on wednesday morning, 5—10 degrees cooler in wales and england.

a lot of sunshine here to begin the day. showers across parts of scotland, northern ireland, north—west england — in fact, a cloudy zone from north wales running across parts of the midlands and northern england will have some showery outbreaks of rain around. south wales, south—west england, you may catch a shower — most won't. east anglia and the southeast, dry, plenty of sunshine. parts of eastern scotland will stay dry and mostly sunny, as well. these are average wind speeds across northern areas — you may well see some gusts up to 50 mph or so. and as for temperatures, well, there's some warmth if you get that sunshine and/or out of the breeze, particularly across the eastern side of england. as i mentioned, it will be turning wetter across western scotland to end the day, as the weather fronts i showed you earlier start to move in. so, parts of scotland and northern ireland overnight and into friday morning will see some outbreaks of rain moving in. to the south of that may catch a shower — most places won't — a touch milder by friday morning. this area of rain accompanied by some gusty winds. the rain, quite heavy briefly, will continue moving southwards through england and wales on friday, and not reaching the southeast until close to dark, if not after in places. ahead of it, though, there will be a few showers,

behind it, sunshine and showers feeling cooler, and fresher once again behind it. and this is why there's a lull at the start of the weekend — a ridge of high pressure moving in, something quieter before further weather fronts head in from the atlantic, for part two of the weekend on sunday. this is how saturday is shaping up — still a few showers around, mostly towards north—west scotland. for many places, a sunny start, some clouds going to build. there'll be further sunny spells. most places will stay dry, and the winds are lighter than they've been. daytime highs will be a touch lower than they've been, especially in england and wales. northern and western areas see further rain moving in on sunday, though southern and eastern england could well stay dry for another day. and another quieter period briefly on monday.

it in their book."

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. washington accuses beijing and moscow of protecting north korea from tougher un sanctions after pyongyang fires two new missiles into the sea of japan. french fuel stations run dry as strike action over pay and conditions puts 60% of the nation's oil refineries out of action. translation: the french are beginning to see the consequences at the pumps, we are seeing a shortage of diesel and petrol at all service stations. the decision by the world's major oil producers to cut production is described as "short—sighted" after oil prices are pushed to a three—week high.