US president Donald Trump is the subject of hundreds of books but 'Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump' may be one of the most consequential ones published.
**If you haven't read the book yet and plan to do so, there are some spoilers in this review. **
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have produced a work that is Watergate-worthy in an era where that doesn't mean as much as it used to.
US vice president JD Vance recently claimed the Watergate scandal, which ultimately led to the resignation of president Richard Nixon, would be a "12-hour news story" in today. He's probably right, but that does not reflect well on the Trump adminisration, and the work of these New York Times journalists does not either.
Facing very different, but just as difficult circumstances as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did all thos years ago, Haberman and Swan have revealed the innerworkings of a dysfunctional adminstration that does not follow any accepted domestic or international law.
Based on hundreds of interviews with White House sources, unseen documents and recordings, and one remarkable interview with president Trump, Regime Change is a fine work that will go down as the first draft of au unprecedented chapter in American history.
The book goes behind the scenes of many stories that have shocked people in Trump's second administration. His campaign of retribution against political allies is laid bare, as is the unprecedented pressure he put on attorney general Pam Bondi, and his fury at her failure to secure indictments against his enemies.
Haberman and Swan argue “the most mercurial man ever to occupy the White House” has altered the "very nature" of the American presidency.
One scene from the White House Situation Room where the likes of Vance, Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles, and Bondi attempted to formulate a strategy on the Epstein files is probably Pulitzer-worthy in itself.
The aggressive deportation drive led by ICE and Trump aide Stephen Miller is also a theme of the book. Miller's power in the Trump administration, and obsession with deportations, is described as is his unique hold on Trump.
Towards the end of the book, the authors describe an interview with Trump in which he took joy with a quote that compared him to Adolf Hitler.
"What was revealing was not really that Trump agreed with the thesis, but the way he inhabited it: the evident pleasure he took in the company of Mao, Hitler and Stalin, masters of state control through murder, torture and detention – and the untroubled ease with which he accepted a place among men who had reshaped the world through conquest and fear. He drew no distinction between those who built and those who destroyed, between those who liberated and those who enslaved."
This is why I can't have friends.
While we have touched on some of the big issues revealed in Haberman and Swan's reporting, they also give an insight into the fragile ego and apparent loneliness of the world's most powerful man.
His break with billionaire Elon Musk over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was well-publicised, but one scene shows his sadness at the breakdown of the bizarre alliance with the Tesla CEO.
"When the president saw Musk's post, he looked at it for several beats, an expression close to pensive crossing his face. 'They always leave me,' he finally said. 'They always do this. This is why I can't have friends'"