Jonathan Swan, the book’s Australian-American co-author, is equally knowledgeable about the US President, whom he has extensively covered, first as a national political correspondent with the news website Axios and later as investigative journalist with The New York Times
Few journalists have followed US President Donald Trump as closely as Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for The New York Times. Her association with him dates back to the late 1990s when she was a reporter with the conservative tabloid, the New York Post. At that time, Trump was someone who was easily accessible to reporters and could be counted on providing a good quote or two. When 9/11 happened, Trump in an interview to Haberman made the extraordinary observation that with the fall of the Twin Towers he now had the tallest building in New York! Her earlier book on Trump — Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America (Penguin Press, 2022) — was highly regarded as being full of startling insights.
Jonathan Swan, the book’s Australian-American co-author, is equally knowledgeable about the US President, whom he has extensively covered, first as a national political correspondent with the news website Axios and later as investigative journalist with The New York Times. He has been interviewing and writing about Trump since his first presidency and is known for his breaking stories involving the President. For instance, he was the first to reveal Trump's decisions to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and so on.
Both eminently qualified to write on President Trump, the duo has authored a book that is certain to hit the charts internationally as it provides an intimate window into the workings of the most powerful man on earth. The book, its authors write, “is the culmination of our combined decades of covering Trump, the product of hundreds of interviews with his closest advisers, officials throughout his government, every ring of his networks, past and present”.
Regime Change is a fascinating recreation of events, meetings and often secret confabulations that have defined the first year of Trump’s presidency. This makes it a must read for all those who wish to get an eye witness account of how the US President and the system in which he operates works. The retelling is so convincing that the reader is seemingly transported into the confidential interiors of the White House, eavesdropping on some of the most significant conversations of our times.
What adds to the book’s authenticity is the fact that President Trump personally participated in its making, offering interviews and details the authors could not have garnered from anyone else. The astonishing details of events the book records are believed to have unnerved many US government officials.
The book’s title reflects the authors’ assessment of Trump being a disrupter whose presidency has been unlike that of any other in recent history. His way of working appears to have completely re-worked the system. The title is not, therefore, so much about the regime change operations in other countries that Trump later engineered.
Once the book was published, however, Trump distanced himself from it declaring that it was “mostly made up, Fake News, largely fiction.” He also attacked Haberman personally, calling her a “third rate writer and intellect!” These remarks far from undermining the book have added to its appeal.
The book is an example of reportage at its best, a recording of history as it is being made. The authors conclude by observing: “We have been conscious that this story is far from over; and that the shape of this presidency, and the judgments historians will make of it, cannot be adequately understood in real time. This is, therefore, our best attempt at a first draft of the remarkable history we are all living through — a story we intend to cover till the end.”
Regime Change
By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
Simon and Schuster
pp. 428; Rs 999
