President Trump's second term operates under a fundamentally different logic than his first, according to a forthcoming book by journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. "Regime Change," arriving Tuesday, centers on two core shifts: Trump's vastly expanded appetite for executive power and the role his time out of office played in hardening that resolve.
The transformation extends beyond personnel or messaging. Haberman and Swan document a presidency where Trump's inner circle no longer functions as a brake on his instincts. During his first term, aides openly worried about his behavior and many viewed him as a danger to the government itself. That skepticism has evaporated.
"There's none of that now," Haberman said during an appearance on MSNBC's "The Last Word" Monday night. "They believe there is something almost mystical about him, that he can hear frequencies that maybe they can't."
Swan pointed to Trump's willingness to take enormous geopolitical risks that would have seemed unthinkable just years earlier. "He wants to be the capital G, Great Man of history," Swan explained. "He wants to reshape the world."
The contrast is stark when comparing specific decisions. Swan highlighted how Trump's second-term calculations differ on major flashpoints: the potential conflict with Iran, moves against Venezuela, and launching a trade war with major economies. "I don't think he would have gone to war in Iran in the same circumstances in Term 1," Swan said. "But he's in a different mindset, and he's untethered from all of those domestic political considerations of the first term."
Behind closed doors, some advisors privately expressed concern about the trajectory. According to the book, certain Trump aides confided that they wished he worried more about the dangers he was courting and his declining poll numbers. That feedback appears to have minimal impact.
The authors found that Trump sees fewer polls than during his first term and his advisors recognize he resists being briefed on unwelcome information. In this second iteration, he operates almost entirely on instinct, willing to accept risks that could destabilize not just his presidency but the Republican Party and global stability itself. The 46-minute interview between Haberman, Swan, and Lawrence O'Donnell gave the first substantial public window into the book's central argument.
Author James Rodriguez: "The portrait here is of a president who learned his lesson from Term 1, but not the lesson his aides hoped for, and that distinction matters enormously."
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