Exclusive: Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan book on Trump, "Regime Change," coming in June
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Cover: Simon & Schuster
A Truth Social post last month had Washington and media insiders scratching their heads: Why exactly had President Trump attacked The New York Times' Maggie Haberman and some of her "associates" — when everyone in the West Wing knew that she and her reporting partner, Jonathan Swan, had been on book leave for months?
- Now it can be told: Haberman and Swan were on the president's radar because the two supremely wired reporters, stars of the news organization the president is most obsessed with, have been working for more than two years on a book that's causing high anxiety in Trumpworld.
The book is complete, and Axios can reveal its title: "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump." It'll be out June 23 from Simon & Schuster.
- The cover is clad in gold. Publishing sources say they've conducted something like 1,000 interviews. It's the Trump book that even Trump is waiting for.
The title gives a clear clue about the book's thesis. For generations, American journalists have parachuted into foreign capitals to chronicle regime change. Swan and Haberman concluded they were covering one at home.
- The publisher's announcement says "Regime Change" takes you inside secret deliberations of a president "who has fundamentally altered the nature of the office he holds — and, with it, how the rest of the world understands American power."
Behind the scenes: I hear that over the past few weeks, there have been private conversations in the senior ranks of the administration about leaks to Haberman and Swan from meetings in the Oval Office and Situation Room — including from this year.
- Remember Trump's first term, when bombshell book disclosures had the president's inner circle pointing fingers at each other in mutual suspicion?
Maggie — author of the 2022 bestseller, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America" — kept her role as a CNN contributor while working feverishly on the book (and mostly resisting her compulsion to file the breaking news that courses through her laptop).
- Jonathan, talking to sources deep into the night, hasn't been seen on TV since he plunged into the book.
On March 16, three days after that Truth Social post, Haberman and Swan were spotted in the West Wing. I'm told the president answered their questions in the Oval Office for an hour.
