Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump
by Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan
View on GoodreadsNew York Times White House correspondents Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's inside account of the first year-plus of Trump's second term — built on roughly a thousand interviews — arguing that an unconstrained, instinct-driven imperial presidency has transformed the office into an instrument of retribution and profit, with the first term's restraining forces gone.
Core ideas
- The organizing thesis is that Trump's second term is a form of "regime change" turned inward on the United States — an imperial presidency operating on instinct, with the restraining "adults in the room" of the first term replaced by a stable core of dependent loyalists, so the internal checks that once slowed him are simply gone.
- Haberman and Swan argue Trump's own legal jeopardy is the engine of his second-term conduct: the prosecutions and convictions he survived taught him impunity and grievance, converting scandals that would have ended other politicians into assets and fueling a presidency of retribution — the Justice Department turned against his enemies.
- As the NYT's definitive Trump reporters, their method is the argument: more than a thousand interviews and Trump's own non-rebuttal in a March 2026 sit-down, deployed to "wrest reality back" from Trump's fantasy-generating machine — documenting Situation Room deliberations (Iran, Venezuela), the Epstein-files handling, and the office as a vehicle for profit.
Published2026
Pages480
ISBN9781668067246
ReadJul 2026
