Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

The Gilded Presidency of Donald Trump with NYT Reporter Maggie Haberman (‘Regime Change’)

July 12, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In a March 2025 fact-checking interview for their book Regime Change, Maggie Haberman and her co-author Jonathan Swan watched as Donald Trump had an aide retrieve a two-page document. It listed Attila the Hun, the Caesars, Tamerlane, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Genghis Khan. The document, written not by a historian but by golfer Gary Player’s former caddy, argued that Trump was the most powerful figure in history because he commands the U.S. military and is willing to use it. Trump read the list aloud, not as a moral judgment but as a statement of pure power. For Haberman, a New York Times White House correspondent who has covered Trump since the 1990s tabloid wars, it was a startling moment—not because of the comparison itself, but because Trump usually bristles at any Hitler reference. This time, he seemed fine with it.

What Changed Between Term One and Term Two

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:00) **Opening: The "Most Powerful" Document** - Haberman reveals a document Trump presented comparing himself to history's most powerful conquerors.
  • 2 (03:43) **The Core Distinction: Term One vs. Term Two** - The second Trump administration is "fundamentally unrecognizable" from the first.
  • 3 (09:53) **The Oval Office as a "Truman Show" Set** - The White House runs on rolling, unstructured bull sessions with a rotating cast of characters.
  • 4 (14:12) **Trump's True Obsession: Decorating, Not Governing** - The president spends a vast amount of time on interior design and building projects.
  • 5 (18:34) **The Insider Trading Question & Accountability** - Trump's financial disclosure form raises questions about his family's stock trades.
  • 6 (21:18) **The Epstein Files: A Crisis of Secrecy and a Fracturing Base** - The administration's handling of the Epstein files reveals its obsession with secrecy and a rare moment of political vulnerability.
  • 7 (27:03) **Playing for History: Tariffs and International Risk** - Trump is taking stratospheric risks on the global stage because he is playing for his legacy, not domestic politics.

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Guests on this episode

Maggie Haberman Jonathan Swan

Show Notes

All that glitters is not gold. 

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The New York Times who’s been covering Donald Trump for nearly three decades. Her extraordinary level of access in and around the Oval Office has resulted in two best-sellers, including the book of the summer, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.

The new book, co-written with her Times colleague Jonathan Swan, chronicles the first year of Trump’s 2nd term: how the current Trump administration differs from the first (5:05), the “rotating cast of characters” that orbits the Oval Office (9:40), the president’s obsession with gold and interior decorating (13:15), and what his insatiable appetite for risk has meant for the country–and people–who delivered him back to the White House (28:25) . We also discuss the tentative release of the Epstein files (22:03), the ongoing wars in Iran and Ukraine (33:15), and how Trump’s health is like “a black box” inside the administration (41:00). 

On the back-half, Haberman unpacks the early influence of her father, fellow Times journalist Clyde Haberman (47:00), finding her footing at New York tabloids (55:20), how her career took a left turn after Trump’s victory in 2016 (1:01:35), the “access journalism” critiques she’s received in recent years (1:04:33), and why she prefers to make journalistic assessments of the President rather than psychological ones (1:10:40). To close, she talks about interviewing Trump this past spring (1:13:09), a shocking exchange around power inside the Oval Office (1:14:30), and her commitment to covering this chapter of American history until we turn the page (1:30:20). 

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