MAGGIE DURANTY



It’s the Money, Honey.


Nancy Haberman, Maggie’s mother, works for the PR firm, Rubenstein, which was founded by Howard Rubenstein – a PR legend, who was once called “the dean of damage control” by Rudy Giuliani.


At Rubenstein, Nancy Haberman is no coffee girl. Her bio lists her as Executive Vice President, and gives her history as "Rubenstein, Home with kids for six years, Harper and Row Publishers, New York Post." Later in her bio, it states, "Has a family of journalists. And the kids she was home with now have kids of their own." Nancy’s area of expertise: "Traditional media, i.e. print, radio, and broadcast. Big emphasis on New York media. General interest stories, medical, breaking news, nonprofits, education… Lends media support to other people’s clients with her relationships established over 30 years."


Although Nancy claims she’s never “met” Donald Trump, she has admitted to doing PR for him (because, it would be impossible to deny).


As for her PR firm’s history with Trump? Well, that’s a deeper dive.


Howard Rubenstein’s work history with the Trump family began early with Fred Trump. Then in 1990, when Donald and Ivana were going through their divorce, Rubenstein took on Donald’s personal PR – doing the dirty work of spinning that nasty mess into something that wouldn’t tarnish Donald’s name and brand irreparably. Because that’s the real nature of PR, isn't it? The Brand.


PR specialists, like Rubenstein and his EVP Nancy Haberman, work the media to the benefit of their clients. If there’s a damaging story about to drop, they’re the ones who get the call from the media outlet. They’re the ones who give a statement on behalf of their client. They’re the ones who SPIN. That’s their art.


But it doesn’t end there. To be great at PR, one must also obfuscate. Set up counter-narratives in other outlets. Drop dirt on the opponent, if the story is a bad business deal or nasty divorce. Thwart the narrative in order to reshape it in the image that you’re trying to project. If you read what Howard has to say about his operations, you learn there are weekly staff meetings – where top executives (like Nancy) share everything going on with their clients and come up with strategies for the spin. It’s a group effort.


PR is NOT journalism. It is whataboutism.


At its core, PR is the work of apologists. And they have as much, if not more power to drop stories into MSM outlets than the journalists who are on the payroll. With the Rubenstein firm, the art and power of their business is unmatched. It also holds every secret of Donald and Fred Trump.


We were all prepared to go out with this piece in early December, 2017. Then, we hit a proverbial oil well. In an old NYTimes article (ah, the irony) on one of Donald’s projects, the Wollman Ice Rink, we found Rubenstein’s name again. Here, he’s mentioned as repping Donald not for his divorce but for his business. This prompted a deeper look at Rubenstein’s work for Donald and the Trump “empire.” What we discovered is a history that reaches back to Fred Trump’s earliest projects, the NY mafia, and Sam Rubenstein – a crime reporter for the Herald, PR moonlighter for NY clients, and Howard’s father.


We also learned about the oft-told fables of the entire Rubenstein family: including, how Howard got his start, and how his sons would later join the family business. We found links to the Lauders and ostensibly to Arthur Finkelstein - a GOP strategist, who apprenticed under Roy Cohn and worked with both Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.


This dig definitely delivered - so much so that we are still sorting through it all. Rest assured, we will bring you everything that we find.


But for now - for the purposes of understanding the powerful influence Howard Rubenstein’s firm has over the media and journalism, let’s focus on more recent events.


Today, Howard no longer officially works for Donald. That baton – at least for Trump’s business brand, has been passed on to his son Richard’s PR firm. Howard and Donald do, however, maintain a 'mutually beneficial relationship'. When Howard was asked recently to comment on Trump, he certainly had nothing bad to say. PR gonna PR. Right, Nancy?


But the Rubenstein firms’ ties and access to the Trump administration don’t stop with the Trumps. JARED KUSHNER is another high-profile Rubenstein client. And Jared’s relationship with Howard appears far more intimate.


Jared is reportedly so close to Rubenstein, that it was Howard who Jared turned to when his father, Charles Kushner, was sent to federal prison (convicted in 2005 for illegal campaign donations, witness tampering, and tax evasion). That sounds like a close relationship, doesn’t it?



Kushner & Rubenstein



Howard Rubenstein and Jared Kushner June 14, 2007



Howard also played a pivotal role in another Kushner family milestone, when he advised Jared’s purchase of The Observer newspaper in 2006. A few months later, The Observer did a friendly puff piece titled ‘The Rubenstein Family’.


But let’s move on to what this is really all about: The Money.


How much in fees do you suppose Rubenstein’s firm made off of those two families: the Trumps and the Kushners? We bet it was a tidy sum. That money goes into many people’s pockets. It does things, like… pay for the EVP’s kids to go to private schools.


It also comes with a certain privilege. Access.


So, Maggie Haberman has a powerful parent, who’s connected to all the inside dirt on Donald Trump, his family, his business, Jared Kushner, Jared’s family, Jared’s business, and Nancy is paid to spin all this dirt into PR gold. We’d call that… access.


But Maggie’s “job” is JOURNALISM, not PR. Journalistic objectivity requires detachment. It requires cold, hard facts. The kind of PR Maggie would have to do for real estate developers connected to the mafia, and/or sons who visit fathers in the federal penitentiary, is not the best look for the NYTimes – arguably the world’s most prestigious journalism brand. But it is the PR relationships that give Maggie her access. And if she doesn’t do the bidding of the spin masters – the bidding of their clients, she loses her access to them.


Maggie would no longer be, as Vanity Fair described her, the “Trump Whisperer.” If she lost this “gift”, what would happen to her exclusive book deal? After all, the subject of the book is Donald Trump himself.


What to do? What to do?


We got it! Obfuscate the reasons for Maggie’s access to the President, then let her do her spin to get the exclusives. Keep. The. Access.


This is the trade-off in which the NYTimes is well-versed. It is pure Duranty.


So, since the NYTimes is not willing to reveal the family financial ties their star reporter has with the President and his family, how do they present Maggie Haberman?


On July 30, 2017, Maggie’s fellow NY Times White House Correspondent, Glenn Thrush, tweeted a Politico article and mentioned his earlier tweets with Maggie about Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.


@ABlackTweeter responded, “I suspect Maggie and Ivanka ran in the same circles. It'll all come out eventually. Whatever the case, the Javanka love is very Milleresque.”


Thrush tried to put an everywoman spin on Maggie, and dismiss @ABlackTweeter’s insight by tweeting, “Yeah Ivanka is totally driving a 10 year old minivan that's full of month old goldfish crackers and parking tickets.”



No mention, of course, of Nancy’s employer Rubenstein and his close ties to the Trump-Kushner clan. And, no mention at all of the prestigious, upper west side, ultra-expensive private school Maggie attended. Or the elite college, where she got her degree. No. Maggie’s just a soccer mom with a van. Nothing to see here. Maybe if Glenn gets stuck in his harassment exile, he can go shill for a Rubenstein PR firm. He’s already got this doozy for his resume.


In fact, it was such a doozy, that we went digging a little more. What we found was a Glenn-Maggie cooperation on Twitter in the form of another Duranty legacy tactic: GASLIGHTING. Gaslighting is psychological manipulation through the spin of information. The goal is to make victims question or doubt their perceptions of reality. It is a strategic assault on facts.


Duranty’s denial of the Holodomor famine was a form of gaslighting the public about the facts of Stalin’s involvement.


Apparently, the facts of both Maggie’s and the Rubensteins’ connections and history with our President and his businesses warranted a full-on gaslighting assault.


See for yourself:



To Glenn’s initial tweet, Maggie responded, “Oh also – this person ‘works’ for her as much as I work for you because we have same employer.”


She then proceeds to list Rubenstein’s connections to Murdoch, the Kushners, the Trumps, and Murdoch’s New York Post – where, notably, both she and her mother once worked.


This tweet storm was initiated as a response to a far-right blog’s, Big League Politics, story that H.R. McMaster’s deputy’s husband worked for Nancy Haberman at Rubenstein (August, 2017). It insinuated that McMaster was leaking to the press via this connection.


The topic of Maggie’s mother’s employment and Maggie’s access to the administration had been broached, so Glenn and Maggie proceeded to gaslight Twitter with the more concerning Rubenstein connections. Note the tone – snarky and dismissive, as if to say, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”


Tone is everything with this type of artful, PR spin. Maggie knows her mom’s craft well.


***


On her mother’s connections alone, Haberman has an “in” with the President and his family of which her colleagues cannot compete. Just like Jared and Ivanka, Maggie is a beneficiary of nepotism. And it has thrust her right to the front page.


But there’s more than just Nancy.


Maggie’s access-spinning-nepotism-conflicts include her Father-In-Law, Vartan Gregorian - President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.


The Carnegie Corporation is the main funder of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of which Carnegie Moscow Center is a regional affiliate. Though once critical of autocracy, the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank, now spouts the Putin party line.


This is especially important as it concerns the Congressional bill related to sanctions on Russia, the Magnitsky Act, which is thoroughly despised by Vladimir Putin himself. In an op-ed posted on Carnegie’s website, the latest round of sanctions are described as causing conflict between the US and Russia, as well as the US and the rest of Europe.


Alexander Baunov, the author of the Carnegie piece, believes the latest round of US sanctions resemble “a second round of punishment for the same alleged crime.” He goes on to say, “Moscow suspects that it is being punished both for actions long in the past and for an election result which it influenced only indirectly.” Whether you agree or disagree, these statements have a decidedly pro-Kremlin slant to them.


There is no doubt that Russia interfered in the US election directly, as the American intelligence community has made clear repeatedly. Outside of Russia itself, there are few people who believe otherwise. One of them is Donald Trump, who has yet to say a bad word about Vladimir Putin.


What drives Carnegie’s pro-Kremlin line? Is it money, or is it truly a shared ideology? Like with Duranty, it’s difficult to know for sure. Regardless, Carnegie’s relationship with the Kremlin is a problem the same way Nancy’s company’s relationship with Trump and Kushner is a problem.


These conflicts are much too close to home for Maggie Haberman to maintain any semblance of journalistic objectivity.


And they offer an explanation on her obsequious coverage of the Trump and Kushner families both throughout the election and the Trump presidency.





CITIZEN JOURNALISTS CONSORTIUM