Trump 2.0 promises a trove of hard-hitting accounts of Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States. For Trump 1.0 – which ended with his 2020 electoral defeat to Joe Biden – extraordinary books by the best American journalists flooded bookstores in the US and around the world. These included The Divider: Trump in the White House by The New York Times’ journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, and Peril by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and CBS’ Robert Costa. Woodward also authored two solo accounts, Rage and Fear: Trump in the White House, while Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, also from the Post, contributed A Very Stable Genius.
These volumes provided shock-and-awe accounts of a presidential term of chaos and tumult, especially Trump’s wars with his staff and generals, as well as the events that led to his two impeachments for abuse of power. America’s democracy is still haunted by Trump’s impeachment for summoning his fiercest supporters to storm the Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 election.
Maggie Haberman has been covering Trump for more than two decades. Jonathan Swan, a native son of Australia, was a journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald before he set out for Washington with Axios and now The New York Times. Swan won an Emmy for his video interview with Trump, where he fact-checked Trump’s words and actions in real time.
Regime Change is the first of what will be a second wave of chronicling Trump’s return to power. Trump has evolved in this second term. Trump’s greatest asset is power. He covets attaining, and revels in wielding, absolute power.
In a stunning coda to their reporting, Haberman and Swan interview Trump. Trump discussed his standing in the pantheon of history’s most powerful leaders. Contrasting himself with Napoleon, Hitler, Mao and Stalin, Trump saw their power as local, not global. What mattered most to Trump, they report, “is that they had huge power – and that he had more”.
Trump understood that if his second term had been concurrent with the first, he never would have the power he wields now. This is what the authors want us to apprehend. With his presidency on the line in the midterm elections because of his war of choice with Iran, a struggling economy, and his record-low polling numbers, the greatest threat to Trump is how he completes his term – how he exercises that power.
The other huge asset Haberman and Swan bring to this book is that they want the reader to appreciate that it will be historians who will render the crucial verdicts on Trump. Echoing the legendary words of Philip Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, they write, “This is, therefore, our best attempt at a first draft of the remarkable history we are all living through.” They have kept the faith in journalism.
Regime Change is a blockbuster because of the scope and depth of their reporting and the care they have taken to record the truth. The beating heart is the astonishing clout of the quotes. There are amazing direct quotes from key players within the most classified settings – including the White House Situation Room – as well as from the most unreachable figures. They have Barron Trump talking to his father, one year after a bullet struck Trump, about the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. “This is what happens when you go out there,” Barron says to his dad. “This is what happened.” Trump replies: “Calm down, honey, calm down.”
We get the full Trump from his second inauguration and all the ensuing events to his decision, taken with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to launch war against Iran. We see Trump loving the giants of big tech grovelling before him, the TV star quality of his choices for the cabinet and his demand that Ukraine pay back the money the US spent on the war. The book details his determination to imprison the prosecutors who brought Trump to trials; the raw and dangerous exercise of power by Stephen Miller over immigration, deportations and crime; and the fights between Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that almost came to fisticuffs. There’s the use of authoritarian power to shake down the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University, and television networks for their alleged crimes, respectively, of woke culture, antisemitism, and freedom of the press.
And more: the unprecedented pressure Trump placed on Jay Powell to resign as chair of the Federal Reserve; the fantastically shocking memes and horrifying posts devised by Trump and his team over digital platforms; Trump’s courting of Rupert Murdoch even after Trump sues The Wall Street Journal for billions in damages for their reporting on Trump and Epstein. There are trade and tariff wars with China, and he says President Xi’s promised that “China won’t invade Taiwan while I am president.” Trump added, “Could be lying.”
The reader is slimed by the revolting use of language in the White House, the chronically incessant use of the F-word to drive home anger. We peek at scenes of a president applying superglue to affix more gold touches in the Oval Office and enjoying late-night slob snacking.
There are two stunning, lengthy accounts of crises Trump has faced: how Trump’s advisers debated how to handle the Jeffrey Epstein saga, and the relationship between Netanyahu and Trump and their strikes on Iran. The raw and bitter tensions have only recently come fully to light between Trump and Netanyahu, but they were a constant throughout both campaigns against Iran. And a final spoiler alert: allegations regarding Trump enjoying a young woman’s nipples were discussed in the Situation Room. A world first.
Regime Change is on top with the best books ever written on a president in the White House. “I’m tired of winning and winning and winning and just getting bad f—ing press. It’s about time you tell the truth. Okay?” That is precisely what Haberman and Swan have done, Mr President.
Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan is published by Simon & Schuster ($37).
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Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.
