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With a sharp eye for the backstory, Haberman places special emphasis on Trump’s ascent in a late 1970s and 1980s New York demimonde of hustlers, mobsters, political bosses, compliant prosecutors and tabloid scandalmongers.

Even as right-wing media tried to brand the Obama presidency as the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States, a cottage-industry of scandalmongers had already popped up to attack future Democratic nominees.

As far as the neighborhood scandalmongers are concerned, however, she’s been spotted talking to him in the street once or twice and must therefore already be his mistress.

It didn’t matter, as some scandalmongers discovered, that sculptor John Wilson had used a Bostonian - indeed, a Yankee! - as the model for Sam.

Thomas Jefferson — both eloquent founder and appalling political hack — weaponized the pamphlet, commissioning scandalmonger James Callender to write a hit job on Alexander Hamilton.