Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter and CNN analyst, is being hotly discussed as she released her anticipated new book Confidence Man, which details her time coving the Donald Trump White House.

Some of the reveals included several instances of racist behavior by the ex-President, that he nearly fired Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner via Tweet, and that he flushed documents down the toilet in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

She also painted a picture of the Trump White House as extremely dysfunctional, with several top aides concerned about the President’s mental health behind closed doors.

While many of the reveals of the book have been shocking, it is also discouraging to see a journalist sitting on information for years to release it in a book. It reads as little more than a cold and calculated move to spike book sales, when the important part should be getting the most crucial information out to people who don’t know it.

It’s understandable that Haberman may have been dealing with legal conflicts and was certainly fielding pushback from the Trump camp, and could have disclosed information privately to law enforcement as well. But these revelations still could have had much more impact if they came out when Trump was actually in office or soon afterwards.

Legendary reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein make the case for why you need to be publishing as you go in their legendary investigative reporting on Watergate. Yes, these two eventually published the extend of their findings in the book All The President’s Men, but they were breaking scoops about the Watergate break-in just two days after it happened in June 1972.

Because of Bernstein and Woodward’s reporting, Richard Nixon was held accountable and forced to resign from the Presidency in disgrace. We’ll unfortunately never know if with different timing, that would have been possible with the information Haberman had.

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