Unraveling the Enigma of Donald Trump's Second Term: A Deep Dive into the Regime Change Book

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This is our best attempt at a first draft of the remarkable history we are all living through, write Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, White House correspondents for the New York Times, in their introduction to their book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.

Regime Change covers the first year and a half of Trump's second term, ending with the momentous launch of war with Iran. As the authors and others have reported, Tucker Carlson warned the president against this foreign adventure, predicting that it would destroy Trump's presidency. That's the kind of story this is: one where Tucker Carlson plays the voice of reason.

History, as the saying goes, is just one damn thing after another, and never was it more so than during 2025, when an emboldened Trump and a posse of advisers ranging from the hapless to the fanatical visited a series of hair-raising trials on the American public. Can Haberman and Swan be faulted for not making much sense of it, a complaint they seem to anticipate with that line about this being their best attempt at a first draft? Surely not, because it seems like few of the actual players could offer a coherent account of the second Trump administration's purposes. Across nearly 500 pages, Haberman and Swan present a portrait of an impulsive, mercurial boss served by a cast of opportunists with varying agendas, each scrambling to maintain his favor.

They also find the second Trump administration to be less plagued by infighting than the first—although that's not saying much. During his four years in the wilderness, and with the aid of now-White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Trump narrowed his hangers-on to a core group of loyalists who have remained relatively stable. Despite a few volatile outliers—like Elon Musk, who was out of the governance picture within six months—most of these people are utterly dependent on him. Even incompetence turns out to be forgivable, as long as it doesn't make Trump himself look bad or sidelined, mistakes that led to the downfall of both Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem.

By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Simon and Schuster. Slate receives a commission when you purchase items using the links on this page. Thank you for your support.

Unsurprisingly, the second most powerful individual in this new dispensation is Stephen Miller, whose ability to remain on Trump's good side seems almost superhuman. Much of what drove millions of citizens into the streets for the series of 'No Kings' protests—racial profiling, indiscriminate and violent detentions, masked and unaccountable security forces roaming American streets and killing citizens—is Miller's doing.

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and co-author of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, remains a background character in Regime Change, even though his efforts to implement Project 2025 by gutting the civil service and social programs could well turn out to be more transformative than Miller's xenophobia. One of the disadvantages of writing the first draft of history is that the result is highly dependent on who agrees to talk to you.

As for Trump himself, in coolly dispassionate prose, Haberman and Swan describe a president who's only intermittently checked in to affairs of state. His preoccupation with redecorating the White House and Washington, D.C., itself is already well known, although the authors offer some funny tidbits about the president stealing decor that his wife had already picked out for her quarters to install in his own and running around the residence supergluing gilded curlicues and whatnots onto the walls. His reelection satisfied the two main drives of Trump's old age: keeping himself out of prison and proving that he is not a 'loser.'

Just how interested the president is in actually governing the country isn't entirely clear from Regime Change. If Trump's first administration amounted to him reprising the role of himself on The Apprentice, this time around he seems to have fully realized his often-noted resemblance to Anthony, the 6-year-old boy played by Billy Mumy in the legendary 1961 Twilight Zone episode 'It's a Good Life.' He is spoon-fed a diet of positive news and social media posts by his creepily devoted executive assistant, Natalie Harp. He quizzes foreign visitors on the most dangerous animals in their countries and seems to have participated in Israel's mid-2025 bombing of Iran (the one that he claimed had 'obliterated' the nation's nuclear facilities) in part because he was dazzled by such badass Israeli military and intelligence operations as the 2024 pager attack and wanted in on the cool action. His one enduring desire, besides transforming the White House into Caesar's Palace, is to send anyone who ever crossed him to the cornfield. Yet, due to his unfathomable charisma and what Haberman and Swan describe as his 'feral instinct for power,' this overgrown child exerts total control over one of the nation's two major political parties.

But what exactly does it all add up to? Regime Change makes clear that the second Trump administration is less a coherent government than a collection of individuals who have managed to seize power through their proximity to the president. It's a strange, almost Kafkaesque world, in which the line between reality and delusion is constantly blurred. And yet, despite the many absurdities and contradictions of the second Trump administration, Haberman and Swan's book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the current state of American politics.

As one of the few figures in the book who seems to have gotten the better of Trump, at least for a while, was Fed chairman Jerome Powell, following the advice of Republican senators who recommended that he ignore the president's online provocations. 'If you engage,' Powell told his colleagues, 'you're playing his game.' In other words, don't feed the troll, even when he's the leader of the ostensibly free world.

Ultimately, Regime Change is less a definitive account of the second Trump administration than a fascinating exploration of the strange, uncharted territory that it occupies. And it's a sobering reminder of the dangers of unchecked power and the importance of holding those in power accountable. If you're interested in understanding the current state of American politics, Regime Change is a must-read.

The book is a masterclass in investigative journalism, with Haberman and Swan uncovering some astonishing revelations about the inner workings of the Trump administration. From the president's bizarre decision to launch a war with Iran to his obsession with redecorating the White House, Regime Change is a fascinating and often disturbing look at the realities of life in the second Trump administration.

As Haberman and Swan argue, Trump has altered the very nature of the presidency and changed what people living in this country and all over the world think of when they picture the American president. Or perhaps all bets are off. Trump, true to form, tries to pit his vice president and secretary of state against each other, asking visitors like Rupert Murdoch, in both men's presence, who they like best as a candidate in 2028. But neither J.D. Vance nor Marco Rubio possesses the charisma to dazzle followers into perceiving every word spoken against them as a sign of a conspiracy or derangement syndrome.