COLUMN: Regime Change lays bare the imperial presidency of Donald Trump

Introduction — The book the White House dreads

When two New York Times reporters spend three years reconstructing the inside of a presidency, it is no longer a book. It is a live autopsy.

The political object of June 2026

June 23, 2026.Simon & Schuster publishes in the United States Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. 487 pages. 34 American dollars. Authors: Maggie Haberman, 51, and Jonathan Swan, 41, both reporters at the New York Times. More than 1,000 interviews, conducted between January 2024 and April 2026, with former collaborators, active government sources, White House advisers, secretaries of state, federal judges, direct witnesses to presidential decisions. The book covers the first fourteen months of the second term. It is already shaking the Trump residence at Mar-a-Lago.

And it shakes for a simple reason: it does not pass an outside judgment. It puts the reader inside the room. Inside the Situation Room. Inside the Oval Office. Inside the corridors of the West Wing. With dialogues, precise hours, full names, triangulated sources. It is the first time since Bob Woodward's book Fear in 2018 that an American journalistic work reaches this level of internal documentation of an administration. And it is the first time that we read, in plain sight, what Trump 2 does when the cameras go off.

Why the White House panics

Axios, June 14, 2026, reveals explosive information: the White House fears that Haberman and Swan possess audio recordings of meetings held in the Situation Room, notably the one of February 26, 2026, two days before the American-Israeli strikes against Iran. The president's lawyers, led by Todd Blanche, are studying the legal possibilities of preventing publication. Too late: the book comes out, and the recordings, if they exist, are now part of the public record.

And yet, what worries the White House most is not the press. It is the base. Because what the book recounts risks cracking the Trump myth in the eyes of his own voters. Not an ideological crack. An intimate crack. The revelation that a man they believed invincible spends his days gluing gilded ornaments with super-glue and ordering maples at the start of a war. That image, once printed on 487 pages signed by Haberman and Swan, no longer fades.

Five people run the United States

The America of 2026 is no longer run by a cabinet. It is run by a private parlor.

Swan's revelation on MS NOW

Jonathan Swan, guest of Lawrence O'Donnell on the MS NOW channel on June 17, 2026, drops the sentence that sums it all up: "There is a tiny group of people that are running this country. Five or six people and Donald Trump." Five or six people and Donald Trump run the country. Not Congress. Not the cabinet. Not the press.Five people, plus the president. It is the most restricted network since the Nixon administration.

The book identifies these five people. Vice president JD Vance, 41. Chief of staff Susie Wiles, 68. Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, 51, Trump's former personal lawyer. FBI director Kash Patel, 46. Senior adviser Stephen Miller, 40. And around them, as intermittent satellite, the returned shadow of Roger Stone, 73, sidelined from the first term, reintegrated in the decision-making circle since May 2025.

The absence of the major signatures

And it is precisely who is not in the room that chills. For the decision to bomb Iran in February 2026, the secretary of the Treasury, the secretary of Energy, and the secretary of Commerce are absent from the preparatory meetings. No economic voice. No geopolitical cost analysis. No projection of financial consequences. The book documents that the decision to strike Tehran was made in a room with five people around Trump, none of whom a regional expert.

It is a major institutional rupture. Since Eisenhower, every military decision involving the use of force beyond American borders passed through the National Security Council, with mandatory interagency consultation. Trump 2, in February 2026, bypassed that procedure. And Haberman and Swan document, source by source, who was in the room, who was deliberately excluded, and why. The American state has shrunk to a cabinet of eight people.

Stephen Miller and the Insurrection Act obsession

When a senior adviser pushes his president to deploy the army into American cities, it is no longer politics. It is a constitutional tipping point.

The Minneapolis scenario

The book reveals that Stephen Miller, senior adviser for domestic policy since January 2025, has been pushing since the fall of 2025 for invocation of the Insurrection Act of 1807. This law allows the president to deploy the regular army on American soil to suppress domestic unrest. Miller wants to invoke it in several Democratic cities, starting with Minneapolis, then Portland, Chicago, San Francisco.

The triggers cited by Miller are the protests against immigration policy, the blockages of ICE operations, the campus demonstrations. The book reports that Miller, during a meeting in March 2026 in Susie Wiles's office, allegedly stated: "We need to demonstrate federal authority. The Insurrection Act is the tool." Several participants, including Wiles herself, allegedly resisted. Trump, for his part, listens. Hesitates. Has not decided yet. But the idea makes its way.

What that means constitutionally

The Insurrection Act has been invoked only three times since 1945: by Eisenhower at Little Rock in 1957, by Kennedy at the University of Mississippi in 1962, by George H. W. Bush at Los Angeles in 1992. Always to enforce federal judicial decisions or to restore order after grave riots. Never to suppress peaceful political protests. If Trump invokes it on Miller's recommendation, it will be a historic rupture.

And the book documents that this possibility is studied, scripted, legally prepared. Three legal memos drafted by Todd Blanche's office in April 2026 examine the modalities of invocation. The Justice Department prepares. The Pentagon plans. The National Guard receives redirection orders. If the American street erupts again, in July or August, the regular army may be deployed in the cities. It is what the book calls, as title of chapter 9: The American Garrison.

Netanyahu and the war against Iran

A war is never triggered on the day it starts. It is triggered in a private dinner, months before.

The November 2025 visit

The book reveals that in November 2025, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Trump at the White House. Private meeting in the Situation Room. No official minutes. Present: Trump, Netanyahu, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Susie Wiles, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. Duration: three hours and fifteen minutes. Subject: the Iranian nuclear program and the necessity of a coordinated preventive strike.

According to Haberman and Swan's sources, Netanyahu presents Trump with an 80-page dossier with satellite photographs, centrifuge analyses, schedule projections. He argues that the strike window closes in March 2026. Beyond, Iran will have sufficient defensive capabilities to make any military operation too costly. Trump listens. Hesitates. Vance and Miller, in the room, push for yes. Wiles, more cautious, worries about the economic consequences.

The final meeting of February 26

February 26, 2026. Situation Room. Final meeting before strikes. The book recounts the scene with rare precision. Trump enters at 2:47 p.m. Vance present. Miller present. Wiles present. Patel present. Blanche present. The secretary of Defense present. But — crucial detail — neither secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, nor secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, nor secretary of Energy are summoned. The decision will be made without prior economic analysis.

And it is in that meeting that Trump gives the green light to operation Midnight Hammer, coordinated American-Israeli strikes against fifteen Iranian nuclear sites, executed in the night of February 28, 2026. The book reports a chilling detail: during the preparatory meeting, Trump allegedly drifted several times onto an unexpected subject — the purchase of Japanese maples for the gardens of Mar-a-Lago. He allegedly said, twice according to three sources: "I know how to buy good trees. I really do." Three distinct sources confirm the same sentence.

Natalie Harp and the letters in the cushions

There is, in every presidency, an invisible inner circle. And that circle reveals more about the man than all official biographies.

The aide-confidante

Natalie Harp, 34, has officially been Trump's personal assistant since May 2022. Former host on One America News Network, she travels permanently with the president, manages his personal files, organizes his private interactions. The book describes her as Trump's "closest confidante," more even than his own family. And reveals a detail that now circulates throughout the American press: Harp regularly leaves letters of adoration in Trump's private spaces.

These letters, handwritten, are placed in the office cushions, in the bedroom drawers, in the president's jackets. Several sources cite passages: "You are all that matters to me." "The world doesn't see you the way I see you." "I would give my life for you." The book does not rule on the nature of the relationship. It documents. And the simple documentation is explosive.

The separation of bedrooms

Another revelation, sourced three times: Trump and Melania Trump sleep in separate bedrooms at the White House. It is the first time an American presidential couple has done so since the Nixon administration in 1972. The book specifies that Melania spends most of her time in New York, at the Trump Tower, and comes to Washington only for mandatory protocol occasions.

The Trump marriage, in June 2026, would therefore be essentially decorative. The book does not judge. It reports. And what it reports is a presidency where the border between personal life and public function has dissolved. Where an assistant leaves love letters in the cushions of the Oval Office. Where the first lady lives in another city. Where the American state resembles, more and more, a personal court.

Trump compares his power to Mao and Genghis Khan

A president who compares himself to Genghis Khan is not joking. He is confessing.

The conversation reported by Politico

The book reports, based on triangulated sources, a conversation held in March 2026 in the Oval Office. Trump, in the presence of JD Vance and Stephen Miller, evokes his own place in History. He compares himself successively to Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Six leaders. Six conquerors. Six historical figures associated with the absolute concentration of power.

And the book specifies: Trump is pleased with the parallel. He smiles. He says, according to a source present: "I built more in five years than any of them. And I'm not done." I built more in five years than any of them. And I'm not done. The sentence is reported by two distinct sources, independently. It appears as epigraph of chapter 12 of the book.

The "hunted, now hunter"

Another sentence reported by Haberman and Swan, spoken by Trump before his advisers in April 2026: "I was the hunted. Now I'm the hunter." I was the prey. Now I am the hunter. The book ties this sentence to the four indictments Trump was the object of between 2023 and 2024, and to the strategy of institutional revenge he has been implementing since January 2025 against the prosecutors, judges, and witnesses who led these indictments.

The revenge is not metaphorical. It is administrative. The book documents that the Justice Department, under Todd Blanche's direction, has opened investigations against 17 former officials who participated in the proceedings against Trump between 2020 and 2024. Local prosecutors, FBI agents, federal judges. The list of targets now circulates in the press, and the book publishes the names. It is the transformation of a justice apparatus into a tool of personal retaliation.

The Vance episode and the mandatory copy

When the vice president is publicly scolded by the president, History does not record an incident. It records a court hierarchy.

The scene of February 28

February 28, 2026, the morning after the strikes against Iran. Joint press conference. JD Vance takes the floor before Trump to praise the success of operation Midnight Hammer. He utters a sentence slightly different from the official briefing. Trump, standing beside him, leans toward him and tells him, microphone still open but moved aside: "Everyone just needs to copy what I say." Everyone just needs to copy what I say.

The sentence is captured by an ambient microphone of the C-SPAN channel. It will be broadcast in the clear only on June 18, 2026, the day of the publication of the book excerpts in the New York Times. The book contextualizes it: it was not a joke. Trump has been demanding, since the beginning of his second term, that all his subordinates repeat word for word his public formulations. Vance, elected vice president, does not escape the rule.

The weakened position of Vance

And it is a major revelation of the book. JD Vance, presented during the 2024 campaign as Trump's natural successor, in reality occupies, in June 2026, a secondary and precarious position. Several internal sources describe his role as that of a "media operator," not a real co-decider. The real decisions are made among Trump, Wiles, Miller, and Patel. Vance arrives, in the decision-making chain, after the reintegrated Roger Stone.

The book reports a conversation between Vance and Trump about Ukraine, dated April 2026. Vance presses Trump for a harder stance against Kyiv. Trump answers, according to a source present: "I'm not a big fan of Ukraine, except for their women. They keep winning Miss Universe." I am not a big fan of Ukraine, except for their women. They keep winning Miss Universe. The sentence is reported in chapter 8 of the book. Vance, in that scene, does not reply.

The Epstein episode and the Tucker Carlson suggestion

A crisis is measured by the solutions imagined to resolve it. And some solutions reveal the mental state of the decider.

Ghislaine Maxwell, June 2026

The book devotes an entire chapter — chapter 11, titled The Maxwell Problem — to the crisis triggered by the new revelations about the Epstein network in May and June 2026. Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted in 2022, has been serving her sentence since. But documents declassified in May 2026 by the Justice Department have put back into circulation names, including Trump's, mentioned as "frequent passenger" on Epstein's private flights in the 1990s.

The White House enters panic mode in May. How to deflate the affair? The book reports a crisis meeting in Susie Wiles's office. JD Vance, present, proposes an idea: organize an interview of Ghislaine Maxwell by Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator, from the federal prison where she is held. The objective: let Maxwell tell her version, exonerate Trump, defuse the controversy. The idea is not retained. But the simple fact that it was proposed by the vice president of the United States gives the measure of the state of things.

The defense by diversion

And it is the central mechanism documented by the book: the Trump 2 White House no longer answers crises with facts. It answers with narrative diversion. When Epstein comes back, Tucker Carlson is proposed. When inflation runs off, Meloni is attacked. When the polls drop, strikes against Iran are announced. The book establishes, with a recap table in appendix B, a correlation between each major media crisis and the diversionary event that follows within 72 hours.

This correlation is mechanical. Documented. Dated. And it suggests that American foreign policy in 2026 is conditioned, in significant part, by the public relations needs of the presidency. It is one of the most damning revelations of the book. Because it means that military, economic, diplomatic decisions are made not for strategic reasons, but to redirect media attention. It is the presidency as spectacle, as Guy Debord conceived it in 1967, become method of government in 2026.

The Trump family and the billion added

A presidential family does not become rich by accident. It becomes rich by mechanism.

The documented figures

The book publishes, in appendix C, a detailed calculation on the Trump family fortune between January 2025 and April 2026. Net increase estimated: over one billion American dollars. Sources: asset declarations, SEC filings, real estate registers, traceable cryptocurrency transactions, advertising contracts. The calculation is conducted by Jesse Drucker of the New York Times, specialist fiscal journalist, consulted by Haberman and Swan.

The sources of this increase are multiple. Trump Media & Technology Group, valued at 11 billion dollars in April 2026. World Liberty Financial, the crypto platform launched by Eric and Donald Trump Jr., which generated 437 million dollars in revenue in 2025. The new hotel contracts signed in the Middle East with Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari partners. And the royalties on presidential derivative products, including the famous "Trump Bibles" at 99.99 dollars each.

The permanent conflict of interest

And the book documents that these enrichments are not separate from the presidential function. They depend on it. The hotel contracts signed with Saudi Arabia follow by five weeks a Trump visit to Riyadh. Crypto valuations explode on days when the SEC announces regulatory retreats. The presidential Bibles benefit from a tax exemption obtained by presidential decree in March 2025. The book speaks of systemic concomitance.

And it is what makes Haberman and Swan say, in conclusion of chapter 14, that the Trump 2 presidency is not a presidency. It is a family business at the scale of a state. The tools of government serve the interests of a private patrimony. The tools of private patrimony serve to buy the silence or loyalty of civil servants. And the whole is documented, dated, source by source, on 487 pages that Mar-a-Lago would like to make disappear.

The super-glue and the gilded ornaments

There are images that sum up an era better than any report. Trump with a super-glue tube in the Oval Office is one.

The reported scene

The book recounts, based on three internal sources, that Trump has taken the habit, since February 2026, of repairing himself the gilded ornaments of the Oval Office that he had installed from January 2025. When a frame comes off, when a gilded medallion detaches from the wall, Trump takes a tube of Loctite super-glue and proceeds with the repair himself. Several staff members have seen him do it. The scene is documented in chapter 6.

The detail seems anecdotal. It is not. Because it reveals, on the micro scale, Trump's decorative fixation on personal pomp at the expense of institutional functioning. The gilded ornaments cost the American taxpayer, according to GAO figures published in March 2026, around 2.3 million dollars. And Trump repairs them with super-glue because he cannot bear that a single one of them be detached. It is presidential power become housekeeping obsession.

The symbol and the psyche

The book suggests, without explicitly formulating it, that this obsession reveals a precarious psychological state. Trump, at 79, manages the country as he manages his properties: by direct visual control, by micro-management of the decor, by incapacity to delegate. Super-glue in the president's hand is the inverted image of the head of state. It should be a man who thinks the country's future. It is a man who glues medallions.

And that image, once printed on 487 pages, no longer fades. It enters collective memory. It settles next to Nixon swimming in the deserted White House of the last Watergate days. It settles next to Reagan in pajamas in the presidential residence. It becomes, for the historians to come, the emblematic image of the Trump 2 presidency: an old man with a glue tube, frantically restoring the gilded decor of a Republic he is, simultaneously, undoing.

Bessent against Lutnick: the cabinet wars

In every court, courtiers fight one another for crumbs of the royal gaze. And the Trump 2 court is no exception.

The Treasury-Commerce conflict

The book devotes a chapter — chapter 13, titled The Cabinet Wars — to the open conflict between Scott Bessent, 63, secretary of the Treasury since January 2025, and Howard Lutnick, 64, secretary of Commerce since February 2025. The two hate each other. The reasons are multiple: power rivalry, divergences over tariffs, conflicts over exchange policy, personal quarrels going back to their Wall Street careers in the 1990s.

The book reports several scenes. A dispute in the West Wing corridor in March 2026 where Lutnick allegedly shouted at Bessent: "You're killing the economy." You are killing the economy. Another, in April, where Bessent allegedly retorted: "You don't understand the bond market. Stay in your lane." You do not understand the bond market. Stay in your lane. The war is open, public within the cabinet, and Trump takes pleasure in letting them clash.

The Trump strategy of divide and impera

And it is a mechanism documented by the book: Trump encourages conflicts between his ministers. He never arbitrates definitively. He lets things simmer. He plays them against each other. Stephen Miller against Marco Rubio on immigration policy. Bessent against Lutnick on the economy. Kash Patel against all the civilian intelligence agencies. This mechanism, called by political scientists divide et impera, guarantees that Trump remains the indispensable arbiter, the only depositary of the final decision.

The cost for the country is massive. Decisions delayed. Contradictory policies. Announcements denied within the week. The book estimates, based on interviews with former senior officials, that the decisional productivity of the White House in 2026 is lower by 57 % than that of the Biden administration in 2024. Fifty-seven percent less. It is a state operating at one-third of its real capacity. And a state at one-third of its capacity, in a competitive world, is a state that recedes.

Roger Stone, the shadow returned

When a convicted and pardoned political operator returns into the presidential orbit, it is not a return. It is a signal.

The May 2025 return

Roger Stone, 73, veteran political operator, convicted in November 2019 for perjury before Congress, pardoned by Trump in December 2020, has reintegrated the presidential orbit in May 2025. The book documents precisely the modalities of this return. Stone holds no official position. He appears on no organizational chart. But he enters the Oval Office at least once a week. He speaks to Trump daily by phone. He intervenes in strategic decisions.

The book cites three internal sources who describe Stone as "the chief whisperer" of Trump 2. He allegedly advised attacking Meloni publicly in June 2026. He allegedly suggested the pressure on Zelensky for elections in Ukraine in May 2026. He allegedly designs the attacks against Pope Leo XIV since April. Roger Stone governs the rhetorical backyard of the White House.

The absence of safeguard

And what worries is the total absence of safeguard around this influence. Stone has no official security clearance. He has no parliamentary mandate. He has no transparency obligation. And yet, he weighs, in June 2026, more heavily on presidential decisions than secretary of State Marco Rubio. This institutional anomaly is documented by the book as one of the most worrying markers of the drift toward the personal presidency.

And the book suggests, in conclusion of chapter 15, that this drift is not accidental. It is willed. Trump has deliberately chosen to bypass the formal institutions to lean on an informal circle of loyalists. Stone, Wiles, Miller, Patel, Blanche, Harp. Six people. One man. And a country of 335 million inhabitants discovering, day after day, that its democracy now rests on the moral quality of a private parlor.

The fear of audio recordings

When a White House fears recordings, it is because it knows there is something to fear.

The Axios leak of June 14

On June 14, 2026, nine days before the book's release, Axios publishes an investigation by Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei. Central revelation: the White House fears that Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have obtained audio recordings of confidential meetings held in the Situation Room. Notably the meeting of February 26, 2026, two days before the strikes against Iran. If these recordings exist, they would constitute the most compromising document on an American presidency since the Nixon tapes of 1973.

And the legal implications are massive. A Situation Room meeting is classified Top Secret/SCI. Any audio leak constitutes a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, punishable by federal prison sentences. The book does not publish the recordings. It does not even confirm their existence. But it reports direct dialogues, word for word, with a precision that can be explained only by a written or audio documentary source. And Mar-a-Lago, in June 2026, paranoia rises.

The internal investigation launched

From June 15, FBI director Kash Patel allegedly opened, according to Axios, an internal investigation to identify the source of the leaks. At least four officials of the National Security Council have allegedly been interrogated. Three cellphones have been seized for forensic analysis. The book, which anticipated this reaction, names no source explicitly, but its formulations suggest that the leaks come from at least seven distinct witnesses of the administration in office.

And it is what makes the book untouchable. Seven distinct witnesses is more than the White House can neutralize without triggering a major political scandal. If Patel arrests four officials tomorrow, the message is clear: Trump 2 uses the FBI against his own advisers. If Patel arrests no one, the leaks will continue. Haberman and Swan have built, with their seven sources, a device of media invulnerability that the White House no longer has the capacity to dismantle.

What the book says about the future

Prophetic books never are. But certain warnings, once written, become the compasses one should have read.

The scenarios to come

Haberman and Swan, in their last chapter — chapter 17, titled What Comes Next — do not predict. They project. Based on the information gathered, they sketch three possible scenarios for the next thirty months of the Trump 2 presidency.

Scenario 1, the most probable according to their sources: continuation of the personal drift, with progressive erosion of institutions, multiplication of conflicts with allies, and increased concentration of power around the five people of the inner circle. Scenario 2: open constitutional crisis, triggered by a contested invocation of the Insurrection Act, or by a presidential refusal to obey a Supreme Court decision. Scenario 3, the least probable but documented as possible: internal rupture, with Vance, Wiles, or Patel turning publicly against Trump.

The role of the counter-powers

And the book concludes by questioning the American counter-powers. Congress is paralyzed. The courts, partially, still resist. The press documents. Civil society organizes. But none of these counter-powers, taken in isolation, has the critical mass to stop a presidency that decides, with six people, the direction of a state. The book suggests that the only effective barrier remaining is global public opinion, as it expresses itself through foreign allies — Meloni in June 2026 being the most recent example.

And it is perhaps the final revelation of Regime Change: the America of June 2026 is no longer arbiter of the free world. It has become its central problem. European, Asian, Latin American democracies must now deal with a superpower run by a restricted circle, without effective internal safeguard, and capable of tipping overnight into major military decisions for reasons of domestic communication. It is the historical inversion of 1945. And it is the exact title of the last sub-chapter: The Inversion.

Conclusion — A book like a broken mirror

There are books that change a debate. And there are those that change the way an era sees itself. Regime Change belongs to the second category.

What readers will retain

487 pages. More than 1,000 interviews. Three years of work. And at the end, a portrait that exceeds partisan critique. Regime Change is not an anti-Trump book. It is a book of documentation. And it is precisely for this reason that it hurts more than a pamphlet. Because one cannot refute it through ideology. One must refute it through facts. And Haberman and Swan have armored their facts with a redundancy of sources that makes factual contestation nearly impossible.

What readers will retain is the accumulation. Not one shocking revelation. A dozen. Twenty. Sixty. The super-glue. The letters in the cushions. The Japanese maples before the war. The circle of six people. The Insurrection Act in preparation. Netanyahu in the Situation Room. Stone whispering. The billion dollars added. Each revelation, taken in isolation, is a detail. All together, they sketch an imperial presidency that no longer hides.

What History will retain

And it is what makes the book dangerous for Trump 2. It transforms opacity into transparency. It puts in the hand of the American citizen the factual tools to understand what is playing out behind the white walls of the White House. It makes visible what presidential propaganda seeks to dissolve in media noise. And it offers the historians of the future, those who will write in 2056 or 2076, the raw material for reconstructing this era.

On June 23, 2026, by buying Regime Change, the reader buys more than a book. He buys a fragment of collective memory. A live autopsy. A broken mirror held out to a country that no longer wants to see itself. Haberman and Swan will not save American democracy. It is not their job. But they will have documented, day by day, source by source, its tipping over. And that documentation, History will read long after Donald Trump leaves the stage. Because it is, henceforth, the stone in the shoe of this era. And that stone, one no longer removes.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Transparency disclosure

Editorial positioning

This column proposes a critical reading of the book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, published on June 23, 2026 by Simon & Schuster. The author considers that the concentration of power within a restricted circle, without effective institutional counterweight, constitutes a threat to American democracy and to the stability of the Atlantic Alliance. The column defends the role of documented investigative journalism as essential counter-power against presidential drifts.

Methodology and sources

The column relies on the book itself, on the reviews published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, CNN, Politico, and Semafor between June 14 and 22, 2026, on Jonathan Swan's television statements at MS NOW, and on the prior revelations published by Axios on June 14, 2026 regarding the White House concerns about possible audio recordings. The direct citations from the book are reproduced in their original English formulation, followed by an English translation where needed. No information has been invented or extrapolated beyond available documentation.

Nature of the analysis

The author is a columnist-analyst, not a wire reporter nor an academic reviewer. The column proposes an editorial, selective, and angular reading of the book's revelations. It does not claim to cover them in their entirety. The interested reader is encouraged to consult the work in its full version, as well as the primary and secondary sources cited at the end of the column.

Sources

Primary sources

1. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, Simon & Schuster, June 23, 2026, 487 pages — https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Regime-Change/Maggie-Haberman/9781668089453

2. Interview Jonathan Swan by Lawrence O'Donnell, MS NOW, June 17, 2026 — https://www.msnow.com/lawrence-odonnell/watch/swan-regime-change-interview-26061726

3. Book excerpts published by the New York Times, June 18, 2026 — https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/us/politics/trump-regime-change-book-haberman-swan.html

4. Axios, "Inside the White House panic over Haberman-Swan book," June 14, 2026 — https://www.axios.com/2026/06/14/trump-regime-change-book-white-house-panic

Secondary sources

5. Alternet, "Trump book reveals stunning details of imperial presidency," June 19, 2026 — https://www.alternet.org/msn-uk/trump-book-2677080880

6. The New Yorker, "Chronicle of a Disaster Foretold," issue of July 6, 2026 — https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/07/06/chronicle-of-a-disaster-foretold

7. Vanity Fair, "The Most Damning Details in the New Trump Book," June 20, 2026 — https://www.vanityfair.com/story/trump-book-regime-change-maggie-haberman

8. CNN Politics, "New book reveals how Trump compared himself to Mao, Stalin, Attila the Hun," June 18, 2026 — https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/18/politics/new-book-reveals-how-trump-compared-himself-to-mao-stalin-atilla-the-hun

9. Politico, "Donald Trump, JD Vance and Iran: Haberman-Swan book excerpt," June 18, 2026 — https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/18/donald-trump-jd-vance-iran-haberman-swan-book-excerpt-00967874

10. Semafor, "New book depicts how Trump hobbled his presidency," June 22, 2026 — https://www.semafor.com/article/06/22/2026/new-book-depicts-how-trump-hobbled-his-presidency

11. The Daily Beast, "Authors of Regime Change reveal who really runs the Trump White House," June 19, 2026 — https://www.thedailybeast.com/authors-of-bombshell-book-regime-change-reveal-who-really-runs-the-trump-white-house/

12. Mediaite, "Trump reportedly fixated on ordering trees at beginning of Iran war," June 20, 2026 — https://www.mediaite.com/media/print/trump-reportedly-fixated-on-ordering-trees-at-beginning-of-iran-war-i-know-how-to-buy-good-trees/

13. HuffPost, "Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent fight in Regime Change book," June 19, 2026 — https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-howard-lutnick-scott-bessent-fight-regime-change-maggie-haberman_n_6a3a4eb9e4b0810d44200f3e

14. New York Times Book Review, "The Imperial Presidency Documented," June 18, 2026 — https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/books/review/regime-change-maggie-haberman-jonathan-swan.html