The Times’s Two Star Trump Reporters Were Rivals Until They Bonded Over A Bris

Gray Lady Guy: Glenn Thrush with his wife, Diane Webber. Image by Courtesy of Diane Webber

By Aiden Pink April 13, 2017

The most high-profile New York Times reporting duo covering the Trump White House were once fierce rivals in New York’s high-stakes City Hall tabloid culture — until they bonded over the surprise discovery that they’re both Jewish.

Maggie Haberman, then with the New York Post, and Glenn Thrush, then with Newsday, refused to speak to each other when covering the Giuliani administration, according to a recent profile in The Daily Beast.

Thrush recounted in a podcast last year that their first conversation came after Thrush mentioned to another reporter that he was Jewish.

“Since when are you Jewish?” Haberman asked.

“Since they cut my foreskin off when I was a baby,” Thrush responded.

Today, the two reporters, who have together published numerous scoops uncovering White House deliberations and scored exclusive interviews with the president, treat each other like family.

“I think there is a real shared brain between us,” Haberman told The Daily Beast. “He’s like my other sibling. I have a brother, but if I had another brother, it would be Glenn.”

“It’s the most natural collaboration I’ve ever had in my career,” Thrush added. “Sometimes it’s a little hard to figure out where she starts and I end.”

Aiden Pink is the Deputy News Editor for the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO