Chronicle of a Disaster Foretold
In 1996, Joan Didion unholstered the X-Acto knife that was her pen and went to work on Bob Woodward. In a register of pitiless irony, she quoted Woodward’s earnest explanations of his journalistic methods—the difference between “background” and “deep background,” his “eight file drawers” of documents for a book on the Supreme Court. She was unimpressed. “These are books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent,” Didion wrote. In the end, she determined that Woodward was engaged in the writing of “political pornography.”
This was unfair, at best a category error. What Didion failed to note was that Woodward was a reporter, not a scholar or a belletrist, and that before he was thirty he, with his Washington Post partner, Carl Bernstein, had unearthed the predations of the Watergate scandal—hardly the work of stenographers in thrall to power. It brought down the Presidency of Richard Nixon. Journalism is a first rough draft of history, as they say, and scholarship, which feeds on journalism and so much more, plays by another clock. Robert A. Caro began the research for his multivolume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson half a century ago.
Maggie Haberman, a reporter of impressive energy, began her career at the New York tabloids and joined the Times in 2015. She has been on the Trump beat since The Donald was a real-estate guy hustling for attention in the columns of Liz Smith and Cindy Adams. As “Confidence Man,” Haberman’s first book about Trump, from 2022, made clear, he is a man of immutable character. “He has had only a handful of moves throughout his entire adult life,” she wrote. The “quick lie,” the “shift of blame,” the “outburst of rage,” the abuse of loyalists, a “raft of old grievances,” a “refusal to be shamed.”
Trump’s political reflexes could have been anticipated. Talking to Playboy, in 1990, he praised the Chinese leaders who ordered troops to slaughter pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. “They were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength,” he said. “That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.” This is the same guy who, thirty years later, asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, why he couldn’t confront street protesters with force and “shoot them in the legs or something.”
Now, as the country lurches glumly toward its two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary, Haberman has collaborated with another Times reporter, Jonathan Swan, on “Regime Change,” a vivid, rigorous, and unavoidably depressing chronicle of the first year of Trump’s second term in the White House. Part of the high-wire act of such books is that the authors and their publishers work at unaccustomed speed to provide the end product with a history-as-it-is-happening varnish. The results are usually as perishable as week-old bananas.
“Regime Change” is exceptional. It transcends its genre. Although some of the material is familiar from the Times and other sources and from Trump’s own relentless self-exposure, the book is packed with news that will stay news. One late-breaking example among many: Haberman and Swan provide an astonishing account of Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip, just four months ago, to the White House Situation Room, where the Israeli Prime Minister persuaded Trump to join him in what would be a strategic catastrophe. Netanyahu assured the President that together they would topple the Iranian regime and end its nuclear ambitions before it ever had a chance to close the Strait of Hormuz. Haberman and Swan report that the Secretary of State called Netanyahu’s plan “bullshit.” The C.I.A. director declared it “farcical.” Whatever. “Sounds good to me, the President told the Prime Minister.” Everyone fell into line. Well played, sir!
This is reporting of consequence, and it puts to rest the knowing online critique of these beat reporters that to get their scoops they engage in “bothsidesism” or dampen their coverage in exchange for access. “Regime Change” is particularly strong on the Administration’s colossal financial corruption, its heedless destruction of invaluable agencies such as U.S.A.I.D., and the sordid and unhinged nature of Trump and the culture over which he presides. Haberman and Swan contend that Trump ran in 2024 for one reason above all: “This was about staying out of prison.” After facing multiple indictments, impeachments, and criminal convictions, Trump returned to the White House with retribution on his mind: “I was the hunted, and now I’m the hunter.”
The atmosphere in Trump’s White House is reminiscent of the Kremlin in Armando Iannucci’s 2017 movie, “The Death of Stalin.” The autocrat delights in humiliating so many people, not least tech billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, who once opposed him. The description of Trump’s White House is of a decadent court and a king addicted to vengeance and flattery. Trump employs one aide, a young woman named Natalie Harp, who follows him around all day, handing him glowing notices from the right-wing press and occasionally sending him adoring letters (“You are all that matters to me”). Even this brings him no joy. When Elon Musk, who raised some three hundred million dollars for Trump’s campaign, blasts the President over his budget bill, Trump says, “They always leave me. They always do this. This is why I can’t have friends.” He instructs Harp to bring him his phone. He calls Musk twice. Both times, he gets voice mail.
We have always known that Trump is a narcissist. Haberman and Swan make clear the dimensions of his malady. During Trump’s hush-money trial in New York, he heard that a mentally ill man, “consumed by conspiracy theories,” had set himself on fire in a park nearby. “Do you think he did it for me?” Trump asked an aide. “Let’s tell people that he did it for me.” In an interview with the authors, Trump says that he was pleased to learn from an unnamed historian that, considering the reach of his arsenal and armed forces, he is far more powerful than Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, or Joseph Stalin. The historian in question, the authors discover, is Gary Player’s caddy. Trump is a damaged man unleashing daily damage on the country. He spends his nights alone, rage-posting on Truth Social. His wastebasket overflows with “empty potato chip bags, Starburst wrappers, and ice cream cartons.”
As July 4th approaches, the water in the Reflecting Pool—refurbished by Trump’s “pool guy” with a no-bid contract—turns green with algae. It is a dismal time in the capital. Haberman and Swan have done admirable work, but one turns the final pages of “Regime Change” hoping that their next book is the story of transition, from the era of Trump to one of democratic renewal. That chapter cannot come soon enough. ♦