He's a hack who was going to leave and cover Israel, but was called back to cover Trump because he has a lot of Republican sources… aka he just publishes whatever they tell him and claims it's true because they said it was true.

This is one of the reasons so many people think Trump-Russia was a hoax even though he obviously actually did it and both the Mueller report and the Republican Senate investigation said he did it.

He's also part of the NYT's gang of terminal both-sides/horse race political reporters, I believe to the point of not voting because he doesn't want to take a side.