A gold-colored merchandise embossed with the phrase “President” sits on the Resolute desk within the Oval Workplace of the White Home on Nov. 10, 2025.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
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Jacquelyn Martin/AP
The New York Occasions journalist Jonathan Swan has spent the previous 11 years masking President Trump via three political campaigns, his first, and now second, time period in workplace and the continuing conflict with Iran. Swan says except for the COVID-19 pandemic, he cannot bear in mind a time the place Trump seemed “as caught as he seems to be proper now.”
“It is fairly clear he realizes that this conflict [with Iran] has not gone effectively, has not performed out the best way that Netanyahu pitched him or that Trump himself thought [it] would play out,” Swan says. “Trump is somebody who is of course given to hubris, however I believe we noticed a really excessive model of that with this conflict.”
Swan and his co-author Maggie Haberman spoke with greater than 1,000 sources for his or her new e-book, Regime Change: Contained in the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. The e-book paints an image of an unrestrained president remaking the American authorities and its worldwide relations in profound methods.
Swan notes that the president, who sat for an interview for the e-book, has been notably fixated on changing into a “nice man of historical past” throughout his second time period. Throughout one interview, Trump confirmed Swan and Haberman a doc that in contrast him to infamous historic figures like Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan.
“[The list had] nothing to do with morality, all nearly pure energy projection. And Trump was relishing being of their firm,” Swan says. “Maggie and I talked about it afterwards, and it actually occurred to us that while you have a look at it via that lens, his second time period makes much more sense.”
Swan says the president’s fixation on energy is mirrored in his choices to go to conflict in Iran and implement regime change in Venezuela. However he additionally sees it manifested in Trump’s White Home decor, which leans on what Swan calls the president’s “interior Louis XIV” type.
“He is gilded virtually each nook of the Oval Workplace,” Sway says. “The historical past of the Oval Workplace within the White Home has been of modesty in terms of design and ornament, reflecting the truth that America is a republic, not a monarchy. Trump has no use for that historical past.”
In a submit on Fact Social, Trump referred to Regime Change as “principally made up, Pretend Information, largely fiction, as have been many of the issues [Haberman] has written about me for thus a few years.”
Interview highlights
On how Trump’s second time period differs from his first
This time period is unrecognizable from time period one. And I nonetheless suppose lots of people view [this] administration and authorities via the lens of the primary time period. It simply could not be extra totally different. One of many methods wherein it is totally different is the crew round him.
I bear in mind in time period one masking Trump, and you’ll have so many conversations with senior officers, together with senior nationwide safety officers, and the overwhelming impression that you’d obtain from speaking to those folks was, A, they thought they have been working for somebody who was harmful. They usually noticed their very own roles as defending the nation and the world from the person who they have been ostensibly working for. These kinds of folks do not exist anymore on this administration. …
At a senior stage, it is actually a gaggle of people that imagine in him, are loyal to him, in some circumstances went via the marketing campaign with him. A lot of them have been radicalized on the marketing campaign via the investigations and the efforts to prosecute Donald Trump. A lot of them acquired some subpoenas themselves and considered the stakes of the 2024 election as not a lot about coverage, however about staying out of jail.
So that is the mindset of Trump and his interior circle. And it is created a scenario the place there’s little or no friction between a Donald Trump concept that may’ve simply leapt straight from his inner monologue out of his mouth, with no filter, to an effort to make it precise American coverage and execution.
On Trump’s assembly typeÂ
Conferences haven’t any starting, center or finish. There’s virtually no delineation. And what typically finally ends up taking place is it is basically one assembly that simply rolls all through the afternoon with totally different folks becoming a member of and leaving. And Trump [is] engaged or not engaged, individuals who haven’t any enterprise being within the assembly typically becoming a member of, whether or not it is a professional wrestler, or a crypto investor, or overseas any person from a golf monarchy, or a CEO. …
The New York Occasions journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan are the authors of Regime Change: Contained in the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.
Doug Mills/The New York Occasions
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Doug Mills/The New York Occasions
The conversations are non-linear. Trump will get fascinated about one factor that has nothing to do with the subject and that may derail a gathering. We have now a scene within the e-book the place he is having a dialog, a really small assembly, which is extremely labeled a couple of protection program, and this man is available in, simply walks into the Oval, salt of the earth, sort of nation trying man, and he is holding stone samples for the Rose Backyard … and the 2 go off and kind of begin conferring, searching the window, speaking in regards to the paving and the stone and this and that, will get on the cellphone with one other contractor. And earlier than time’s up, the assembly’s ended, they have not really resolved the difficulty they have been going to resolve.
On the upper stage of secrecy in Trump’s second time period
When there are points that Trump actually cares about, or his crew needs to maintain secret, they are often extremely secretive, to the purpose of nice frustration throughout the federal government. And in terms of the weightiest points just like the planning of going to conflict with Iran, we discovered that very, very senior folks within the authorities have been, A, fully reduce out of the loop and, B, had no concept about what was being mentioned within the Oval Workplace.
On Trump’s deal with adorning the White Home
I traveled with President Trump to the Center East, palace after palace. And it was actually instructive to look at him with these Center Jap rulers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the United Emirates. He was simply in a state of absolute pleasure, going from one palace to the subsequent, admiring the marble, most rarefied shows of state wealth on Earth. And that is basically what he is making an attempt to create on the White Home. … He is constructing this grand ballroom. He appeared to virtually be competing with Melania as to who had had the higher bed room. They’ve separate bedrooms and he was taking objects that she had positioned within the middle corridor of the residence and placing them in his bed room.
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On the problem of interviewing Trump
An interview with Trump requires an infinite quantity of preparation if you wish to hope to return out of it with any stage of success. He is a extremely troublesome interview… He is an awesome presence and you’re confronted with a kind of tidal wave of phrases. Lots of the phrases and the sentences are indifferent from actuality or fully false. And you need to make judgments in actual time about what you let go. You’ll be able to’t fact-check every thing. You simply cannot. You’ll be able to decide your moments.
I see my function in each interview because the consultant of the folks in that chair. You are the one who’s fortunate sufficient to be sitting in that chair interviewing the president of the USA. What would common folks need to know and need me to do in that scenario? And I believe that while you’re interviewing a president of the USA, you need to discover the stability between letting them clarify themselves and never chopping in each two seconds, however discovering moments which might be actually vital to puncture the bubble. Trump creates an unreality bubble. It is the best way he operates. … Tucker Carlson really described it publicly as like being below a spell and I actually would not ascribe a supernatural dimension to it, however I do know what he is getting at.
Thea Chaloner and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan tailored it for the net.
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