Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan Say Reporting Explosive New Trump Book ‘Almost Killed Us’
After writing a sweeping and very newsy biography of Donald Trump four years ago, Maggie Haberman didn’t plan to take on another book project — never mind one on the man who has dominated political life (and her own) for the past decade. But after talking with Jonathan Swan, a fellow New York Times reporter deeply sourced in Trumpworld, Haberman and her colleague signed a book deal in 2023. The intention, says Swan, was to capture the “last act of Trump,” and the pair produced (and have since tossed out) reams of reporting on the 2024 election. “It still pains me,” says Swan, but reporting for the book had to “illuminate what we’re living through right now.” And that’s a consequential story: how Trump, with nearly unchecked power and hell-bent on retribution, is trying to remake the presidency and cement his legacy.
In Regime Change, Haberman and Swan meticulously chronicle the first 14 months of Trump’s precedent-shattering second term, from the DOGE-driven gutting of the federal government to the administration’s pressure campaign against cultural institutions, universities, law firms, and the media. The authors reveal conversations in the Oval Office and, shockingly, the Situation Room, where top officials discussed going to war with Iran and containing the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. In the process, they conducted more than 1,000 interviews with a multitude of sources — how many precisely, they won’t say. One source is clear: Donald Trump. In a vivid scene, the president shows the authors a document written by a golf caddy and amateur historian asserting that he is more powerful than any historical figure, from Genghis Khan to Attila the Hun, Mao to Hitler. “He wants to be the Napoleon of this period,” says Swan, “the figure that we see as the capital-G Great man.”
