{"id":1138,"date":"2026-07-21T12:22:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T12:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/21\/new-trump-book-will-have-readers-playing-the-parlour-game-who-blabbed\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T12:22:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T12:22:52","slug":"new-trump-book-will-have-readers-playing-the-parlour-game-who-blabbed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/21\/new-trump-book-will-have-readers-playing-the-parlour-game-who-blabbed\/","title":{"rendered":"New Trump book will have readers playing the parlour game: who blabbed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With their latest book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Australian-American Jonathan Swan have written an \u201cinside-the-beltway\u201d account<\/a>, as they say in Washington, for political nerds and Trump obsessives. It covers in intricate detail the first year of Trump\u2019s second term in office. And, as one would expect from two journalists of their calibre, it is scrupulously researched and thoroughly sourced. <\/p>\n

Up front the two authors announce that they conducted \u201cmore than a thousand interviews with a wide range of people close to President Trump<\/a>\u201d. These interviews were carried out \u201con the journalistic ground rule of deep background\u201d. This is an arrangement<\/a> whereby a source gives out information on the basis that it will not be attributed to them. <\/p>\n

And it is this sourcing of interviewees, in particular from the intimate group of Trump\u2019s most trusted and loyal buddies, that will fascinate journalists and the political cognoscenti. How on earth did the authors get such stunning access to the inner circles of his government, friends and associates? <\/p>\n

The book is stuffed to the gills with Trump\u2019s denigrating and indiscreet one-liners about world leaders and political opponents. It also contains what it calls \u201cdetailed scenes in sensitive locations\u201d and some of the dialogue is in direct quotes, so one can only conclude that it was the very people inside the room who were leaking.<\/p>\n

For example, in the meeting that planned \u201cOperation Epic Fury\u201d<\/a>, the ongoing US military operation against Iran which began on February 28, the book recounts that the group \u201chad been kept so tight that two key officials who would need to manage the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market \u2013 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright \u2013 were still not in the loop, one day before the launch of the war. Nor was the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard\u201d. <\/p>\n

So who was there? Vice-president J.D. Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles, CIA director John Ratcliffe, White House counsel David Warrington, communications director Steven Cheung, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Dan Caine, secretary of war Pete Hegseth and secretary of state Marco Rubio. So if there were, as Haberman and Swan note, \u201cno presentations\u201d and \u201cno paperwork\u201d, presumably one of these top officials must have blabbed.<\/p>\n

The only two people quoted directly in this instance were Trump and Ratcliffe, the CIA director. According to the authors\u2019 notes on sources at the start of the book, direct quotes come \u201ceither from the person speaking them, someone who heard them directly, or from contemporaneous notes, recordings or transcripts\u201d. This question will excite the political sleuths out there \u2013 not to mention White House staff. As the celebrated Anglo-American journalist Tina Brown notes in her \u201cFresh Hell\u201d Substack review<\/a>, at the very least, \u201cit\u2019s an interesting parlour game\u201d.<\/p>\n

The 464-page book is a comprehensive look at Trump\u2019s first year, but it\u2019s not a rollicking page turner. The details in certain chapters will only interest readers engrossed by that particular topic\u2019s minutiae. Broadly it is broken up into four parts, and the titles tell the tale: Whirlwind; Retribution; The Enemy Within and Plunder.<\/p>\n

Thin skin<\/h2>\n

Trump\u2019s narcissism jumps off the page. In a chat with the authors published in the epilogue, he happily quotes \u201ca historian\u201d as saying: \u201cDonald Trump is, without question, the most powerful man that the planet has ever known \u2013 by a long way\u201d. And that: \u201cIf President Trump is the American Eagle, then William the Conqueror was merely a sparrow.\u201d On checking the source, the authors discover that the \u201chistorian\u201d was South African golfer Gary Player\u2019s former caddie.<\/p>\n

The book finds plenty of evidence of the president\u2019s thin skin suggesting he will go to any lengths to wreak revenge on those he sees as having wronged him, particularly over what he still insists on calling the \u201cstolen election\u201d of 2020. The authors note that \u201cretribution \u2013 against critics, prosecutors, investigators, journalists, and even late-night talk hosts \u2013 was always at the top of Trump\u2019s second-term agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are few public figures prepared to stand up to him. One quiet hero of the book is the chairman of the federal reserve Jerome Powell. Trump was frustrated that he couldn\u2019t seize control of interest rates, but Powell did not buckle even though Trump tried myriad ways to have him prosecuted. In desperation Trump settled on the renovation of the organisation\u2019s HQ in Washington. <\/p>\n

His language concerning Powell, according to the book, is shockingly intemperate: \u201cI want to bust his fucking balls, honestly,\u201d Trump said of Powell. \u201cWhat about that fucking building? Can we stop it? Can we stop construction? I just want to bust his fucking balls. Fuck him\u201d. One is left asking again \u2013 who squealed on this particular story?<\/p>\n

On the record<\/h2>\n

The book represents the best of factual political reporting and will be read in the future as an invaluable historical record of the Trump government. Sprinkled throughout its pages are behind the scenes campaigns to try to snap shut the Epstein Files, and round up illegal migrants (and ordinary Americans) via Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). <\/p>\n

There are tasteless anecdotes such as when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave Trump a gold-plated pager, to commemorate an Israeli operation to blow up Hezbollah members. The pagers and walkie-talkies killed 37 people including children and injured many more.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s one area that the authors didn\u2019t succeed in penetrating, as underlined by Martin Pengelly in The Guardian<\/a>, and that concerns Trump\u2019s health. Here it seems nobody is prepared to spill the beans from either the regime or the health services. His tendency to fall asleep and slur his words is beginning to mirror the behaviour of Joe Biden in his final year in office. <\/p>\n

It is surprising that as journalists the pair has not investigated more of Trump\u2019s attacks on the press. They do summarise his lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, and his fights with CBS and the New York Times, but there is only passing reference to his appalling treatment of journalists \u2013 in particular women reporters. <\/p>\n

The breakup of the Elon Musk bromance is also covered only scantily, when one would have expected more in-depth reporting. <\/p>\n

Inevitably one is left to ponder if Musk could have been one of the early whistleblowers, or perhaps even conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson, another former insider with whom the US president appears to have had an epic falling out. I don\u2019t suppose Trump will want to pop this tome on the shelves of his presidential library. But when he finishes investigating the leaks, whose heads will roll?<\/p>\n

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Colleen Murrell has received funding in the past from Irish regulator Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n for the Reuters Digital News Report Ireland (2021-4). She is a pro bono chair of The Conversation’s UK editorial board.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With their latest book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Australian-American Jonathan Swan have written an \u201cinside-the-beltway\u201d account, as they say in Washington, for political nerds and Trump obsessives. It covers in intricate detail the first year of Trump\u2019s second term in office. And, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}