Among critics of President Donald Trump — liberals and progressives as well as right-wing Never Trump conservatives and libertarians — there is a widely held view that his second presidency is considerably worse than his first. The second Trump White House is the focus of “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Sean Woods, in a late June review for Rolling Stone, describes “Regime Change” as “essential reading” for those who want to understand why Trump’s second presidency is so chaotic and dysfunctional.
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“President Trump, the most powerful man in the world — maybe in history — comes off in these pages as among the most miserable of humans, surrounded by sycophants and toadies, living in a gilded palace, filled with rage and bile,” Woods says in Rolling Stone. “It’s an unpleasant and chaotic portrait, one that could almost be satirical but for the fact that his wars, police-state tactics, and pettiest grievances have affected all of our lives.”
One of the anecdotes in “Regime Change” that speaks volumes about Trump’s state of mind, according to Woods, describes Trump’s reaction to Tesla/Space-X head Elon Musk attacking Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Act as an “abomination.” Trump commented, “They always leave me. They always do this. This is why I can’t have friends.”
Trump didn’t view Musk’s criticism of the Big, Beautiful Bill as a major policy disagreement — he saw it as an act of betrayal.
“With Trump, it’s always one d– – thing after another: Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) destruction of the federal work force already feels like another era, and that was barely a year ago. We are light-years away from the man who ran for office in 2016. Too much has happened in those 10 years. Swan and Haberman show why Trump, and his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, have returned to Washington with vengeance on the mind and a ruthless desire to wield and abuse power…. It’s immediately clear in Trump 2.0 that all the safety checks that existed in Trump 1.0 are long gone.”
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Woods adds, “Turns out, the presidential Cabinet really matters — and if it’s staffed with the Pete Hegseths and Kristi Noems of the world, nothing good will come of it.”
Another thing “Regime Change” brings out is how many people on the right have turned against Trump.
“As the Year 1 barrels along,” Woods notes, “Swan and Haberman document the fallout. MAGA loyalists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie and Tucker Carlson split with Trump over the mishandling of the Epstein files and the Iran war…. Former allies, Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, and Mike Pence are now hostile to the White House and John Bolton has been targeted by Trump for vengeance.”
Woods continues, “Bad blood and feuds surround MAGA, a coalition only held together by the president’s will and fear of his wrath…. It makes for grim reading. No president, perhaps no person in public life, has ever fully embodied the Seven Deadly Sins the way Trump does. You see them all in him, even at 79, throughout these pages: lust, greed, pride, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth…. ‘Regime Change’ is essential reading to understand how, in just 18 months, Trump’s presidency reached this dreadful precipice, and why, in the end, everyone leaves him.”
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