Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan spent months burrowing into one of the most secretive White Houses in modern history to produce Regime Change, their sweeping account of Donald Trump's second term. The result is a book filled with vivid Situation Room scenes, internal power struggles, and Trump's own unguarded confessions. But getting there meant battling an administration that treats information like a closely guarded state secret.
"This is a tiny group of people running the government," Swan said, describing the reporting challenge. "They're actually incredibly good at keeping secrets." The pair, both reporters for The New York Times, encountered walls at nearly every turn. Documents were hoarded in cluttered White House quarters. Aides stayed silent about their boss. Access to the innermost decision-making circles was nearly nonexistent.
Yet the book delivers extraordinary detail. Haberman and Swan describe Trump shuffling through corridors, sleeping in meetings, his hands bruised and ankles swollen. They captured scenes of the president found in the Oval Office trying to glue gold appliques over the fireplace. They documented how the administration makes war without telling key officials. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the two officials who would manage the economic fallout from a major conflict, learned about the Iran war in the Situation Room the day before it happened. They hadn't been in the meetings that led to the decision.
The reporting on one subject proved nearly impossible: Trump's health. "His health has always been a very specific lockbox for him, going back decades," Haberman explained. "Illness freaks him out. He perceives illness as weakness." The White House confirms he saw doctors but refuses to name them or disclose what they treated. That information drought stretches back years. "2018, I think, was the last time we got real information," Haberman said. During COVID in 2020, the administration wasn't honest about how sick Trump became. "We've never really known the extent of that, or any after-effects."
The secrecy extends to some of the highest-stakes decisions. Swan pointed to the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran signed recently to end the war. "One of the most important documents you could possibly imagine," he called it. "Almost no one inside the US government had seen that document until it was publicly announced." Senior people across the State Department and Pentagon were kept in the dark. Parts of the intelligence community were essentially monitoring the talks like a foreign government, unaware what was being decided.
When sources did prove accessible, they proved Trump himself. In the book's concluding interview, Trump shared an anecdote in which "a historian" told him he resembled Alexander the Great, the Caesars, William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Tamerlane, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Joseph Stalin. The "historian" turned out to be Gary Player's caddie.
Some material that made it into the book caused immediate friction. After The Times published an excerpt dealing with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, the White House grew concerned about how reporters had obtained the information. Haberman and Swan declined to reveal their sourcing methods. But they did acknowledge the toll the work took. "We really nearly killed ourselves during this book," Haberman said. "We are enormously proud of it."
The authors were careful about what didn't make the final manuscript. Substantial material was left out because it couldn't be confirmed. Their focus remained on a specific thread: Trump's return to power, his unprecedented use of presidential authority, and how a small circle of aides prepared for and executed his agenda. Haberman brings particular insight from her years covering Trump in New York, the foundation for her earlier book Confidence Man. She traces his obsession with reshaping Washington back to his formative experience taking over the Wollman Rink in Central Park in 1986, a project he completed after years of delays. Now he's channeling that same drive into the reflecting pool, the ballroom, and an arch. "He never really got over the fact that his name was being torn off buildings in New York," she noted.
Swan and Haberman push back against comparisons to Woodward and Bernstein, the Post reporters who brought down Nixon. Regime Change reads more like a first draft of history, capturing the texture and detail of a moment still unfolding. Some initiatives have proven effective. Others, like the Iran talks, grind on. Trump's approval ratings have fallen. The nation remains fractured. The grand renovation projects face delays and scandal.
Author James Rodriguez: "The book captures something real about how power actually flows in this White House, but the fact that it took this much effort to get this much detail says everything about what Trump has built."
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