When President Donald Trump sat down for an interview in March with New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan for his or her new book, he confirmed them a doc arguing he was extra highly effective than a few of the most feared and treacherous leaders in historical past — together with Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.
Trump had been requested by Haberman and Swan about the energy he wielded as president in his second time period and his place in historical past, which prompted him to inform the story of a two-page doc he had acquired from “a historian” throughout an occasion honoring the corridor of fame golfer, Gary Player. Trump proudly requested an aide to fetch a duplicate of the doc, which argued that every of the different leaders, “however fearsome in his day, had no global reach. Their power was local. But (Trump’s) was not.”
Trump proudly confirmed them the letter, Haberman and Swan write, “reciting the names of some of history’s most powerful figures, explaining how each fell short of his own power as US president.”
These leaders “maintained power through fear,” Trump stated, in accordance to the book. “Who would ever do a thing like that? Right?”
But when Swan and Haberman tried to discover the creator, it turned out, he was not a historian, however really Player’s longtime caddy and private confidant. The caddy advised Haberman and Swan that he “had first shared his assessment of Trump’s power with Player and later explained it directly to Trump over golf in Florida.”
Trump posted the document on Truth Social simply after midnight Thursday — an attention-grabbing coincidence that one supply advised NCS might have been an try to get out in from of the book. Trump wrote that the creator was a “presidential historian.”
The anecdote is one in all many placing scenes captured in Haberman and Swan’s new book, “Regime Change,” which was obtained by NCS forward of its launch on Tuesday. The book gives a blunt, behind-the-scenes portrait of the first 14 months of Trump’s second time period, during which the president has wielded his energy with out constraint — typically in a haphazard, improvisational method — to persecute his perceived enemies, rattle world markets and wage battle overseas.
Haberman and Swan seize moments massive and small, together with the administration’s flailing response to the Epstein recordsdata scandal and Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran. Throughout, they illustrate how Trump’s second time period is much more unconstrained than his first, depicting his willingness to break with longstanding norms and providing perception into the president’s typically biting and unvarnished views of fellow world leaders and even members of his personal group.
Based on greater than 1,000 interviews over a three-year interval, Haberman and Swan’s book comprises direct quotes that they clarify come from the particular person talking, somebody who heard them straight or from “contemporaneous notes, recordings, or transcripts.”
They each spoke to Trump a number of occasions over the course of their every day reporting, as well as to their hourlong sit-down with Trump in March.
Here are extra key moments from “Regime Change”:
Haberman and Swan recount a scene in the Oval Office that reveals how invested Trump is in the golden redecorating inside his White House workplace.
One morning, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt walked into the Oval Office and located Trump “clutching a tube of superglue and attempting to affix gold decorations to the marble fireplace mantel,” in accordance to the book.
“As he was known to prefer his own aesthetic handiwork to anyone else’s, the sight of the President squeezing glue onto gilded appliques and mounting them on the wall himself surprised no one in his inner circle,” Haberman and Swan write.
After retaking workplace final yr, Trump rapidly remodeled the look of the Oval Office, adding gold everywhere, together with new gold vermeil collectible figurines on the mantle and medallions on the fire, gold eagles on the aspect tables, gilded Rococo mirrors on the doorways, and, nestled in the pediments above the doorways, diminutive gold cherubs shipped in from Mar-a-Lago.
A ‘con man’ and ‘better than The Apprentice’
Trump’s second-term overseas coverage has been dominated by his choice to go to battle with Iran alongside Israel.
Haberman and Swan seize Trump’s hot-and-cold emotions about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, together with his preliminary hesitation about battle with Iran. They write that Trump advised an Israel skeptic in the early months of his administration that he didn’t need “any part” of a Netanyahu battle with Iran.
Trump advised one other adviser that Netanyahu was a “con man,” in accordance to the authors, who say that it’s one in all the worst insults in Trump’s lexicon.
In an excerpt of the book launched by The New York Times in April, Haberman and Swan describe a February gathering in the White House Situation Room that included Trump, Netanyahu and a handful of high US and Israeli officers. In the assembly, Netanyahu offered Israel’s case for going to battle with Iran, which Trump finally determined to again.
Haberman and Swan additionally write about Trump’s skepticism towards Ukraine and its chief, Volodymyr Zelensky, as Russia’s battle in Ukraine dragged into Trump’s second yr regardless of his marketing campaign promise to resolve it inside 24 hours.
After a remarkable argument in the Oval Office between Trump, Zelensky and Vice President JD Vance final February, Haberman and Swan write that Trump thought the confrontation was nice.
“Better,” he would inform an advisor, “than The Apprentice,” in accordance to the book.
Haberman and Swan seize a few of the president’s vitriol towards his personal Cabinet, together with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a longtime affiliate of Trump’s who played a key role in finishing up Trump’s tariffs over the previous yr.
The authors recount a scene in April 2025 the place Lutnick was attempting to persuade Trump that tariffs couldn’t put US automakers at a significant drawback.
Trump stated that Lutick “used to be tough” however had gotten “weak” after coming to Washington, Haberman and Swan wrote.
“You used to be a killer, Howard,” Trump stated, in accordance to the authors. “I remember when you were thirty-five, you were a killer. And now you’ve got your beautiful wife, and your big house, and you’re just soft. And you’re a pussy. You know what you are? You’re a pussy.”
Months later, as tariff revenues started coming in, the authors write that Lutnick used Trump’s insult with a quip of his personal, telling the president he was “your twenty-five-billion-dollar-a-month pussy.”
The book dives into one line that Trump selected not to cross in his second time period: Trying to fireplace then-Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Instead, Trump launched a marketing campaign final yr to strive to make Powell’s life depressing.
An aide advised the authors at the time that Trump was not going to fireplace Powell, he was simply going to torture him.
Haberman and Swan recount how Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought introduced Trump a plan to assault Powell over the renovations of the Federal Reserve constructing, which led to a unprecedented go to by the president to tour the site final July.
“I want to bust his fucking balls, honestly,” Trump stated of Powell throughout a July workers assembly, in accordance to the book. “What about that fucking building? Can we stop it? Can we stop construction. I just want to bust his fucking balls. Fuck him.”
Trump requested if they might cease development. “I’ll look into it,” Vought stated.
“No don’t look into it,” Trump replied. “Bring me a plan.”
Vought’s normal counsel at OMB, Mark Paoletta, got here up with the plan to appoint Trump allies to the National Capital Planning Commission, an arcane board that handled development in the Washington, DC, area.
Trump advised his then-deputy chief of workers, James Blair, to be a part of the board. “It’s like a two-week campaign. You know what to do. I just put you on the board. You have fun, you be vicious, you do a job,” the president stated, in accordance to the authors.
After the assembly, Blair went to Will Scharf, Trump’s workers secretary, and had him be a part of the board, too. Scharf chaired a gathering the very subsequent day, the place Blair ordered up a “full review” of the Federal Reserve renovation challenge.
In April 2025, Trump issued govt orders instructing the Justice Department to examine a number of perceived enemies, together with Chris Krebs, the former head of DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency who was fired in November 2020 after he said publicly that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.”
Haberman and Swan reveal that the investigation got here after Trump couldn’t keep in mind Krebs’ identify.
According to the book, Trump “began to muse about past grievances” whereas in a gathering with a number of workers, together with his highly effective deputy chief of workers for coverage Stephen Miller and Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s longtime aide.
“I remember there was this lawyer who was in the administration who said the election was fair and there’s no fraud. Who was he?” Trump requested.
“Oh the DHS — I think you’re talking about the DHS guy,” Miller replied. “I forget his name.”
Epshteyn then googled Krebs’ identify. “Yeah, Chris Krebs,” Trump stated, in accordance to the book. “Whatever happened to him? He was a bad one. Take a look at him.”
Haberman and Swan write that Miller then proceeded to have a presidential memo drawn up, “unleashing the resources of the federal government on a man whose sole offense against Trump had been to attest to the security and validity of his 2020 election.”
Haberman and Swan supply new insights into the efforts of Trump’s particular envoy, Steve Witkoff, to win over Russian President Vladimir Putin and finish the battle in Ukraine.
Trump tapped Witkoff, a longtime pal and New York actual property developer, as his chief negotiator for a lot of diplomatic crises, together with Gaza and Ukraine.
Witkoff sought a breakthrough with Putin based mostly on private chemistry, the authors write, including that Putin “seemed to play into this” whereas giving up nothing on the battlefield.
Haberman and Swan write that in a gathering final yr at the Kremlin, Putin was doodling on his private stationary. Witkoff requested what it was and Putin held up the paper, which stated “3+2,” which was shorthand for the territorial framework that Witkoff had mentioned with him to cease the preventing.
“Can you sign that for me and can I take it home?” Witkoff requested, in accordance to the book.
Putin signed the drawing, and Witkoff had it framed in black with a taupe mat, Haberman and Swan write.