On a presidency with no limits, only yes-men
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Peace on earth. That’s what Trump told reporters his new year resolution was, at the Mar-a-Lago party to ring in 2026. But the year has gone quite the other way, and some folks say this is all because of wily Netanyahu.
Nope, insists a new book from NYT journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan . They establish in Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump , how the man is running his second term with this central thought: There has never been an American president as powerful as him.
“This time is about legacy,” he says. “This time he would unleash his inner Louis XIV,” say the authors.
In an interview he gives to Haberman and Swan in March, shortly before their book goes to press, he recites the names of those he has out-powered. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Napoleon...the moral distinctions don’t interest him. Only that his economic and military reach is global, bigger, better. “No other president could do some of the shit I’m doing.” No one anywhere ever has. “Essentially I won every fucking time.”
Crazy tariffs. Threats to annex ally territories. Extrajudicial killings at sea. Considering the suspension of habeas corpus. ICE gone rogue. Epstein files.
Iran war. Inflation. It’s not that all this is not taking a toll on Trump’s popularity. It’s that he no longer cares. And the price of staying in his inner circle is to fall in line with his outlook. He will no longer stand anybody resisting like Rex Tillerson and James Mattis once did.
There’s now an Ultimate Fighting Championship feel across both the cabinet and White House staff. “Fundamentally, Trump enjoyed toying with people.” It’s not just Vance and Rubio who’re pitted against each other.
The book describes, for example, how a DOGE meeting in the Oval Office goes. “Fuck you!” the treasury secretary says to Musk, who then leans into Bessent, “Say it louder, I can’t hear you!” They repeat this riff, and shove at each other.
Flip side of playing everyone is how readily he gets played. Trump’s tight with real estate mogul Steve Witkoff, and sends him to meet Putin alone. Witkoff reports back that Putin was so upset by the assassination attempt at Butler that he went to Mass to pray. “It seemed almost too easy to impress Trump.”
His own family is doing great, from the overlap of business relationships and govt work. Acting as though the international system simply does not exist? “Nobody else could’ve done it.” Abusing executive power to carry out vendettas against law firms and universities and the Smithsonian? Pushing the legal system to breaking point, by having govt stall and even defy court orders?
The most pushback he’s getting at his table is, “You know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it I’ll support you.”
Tucker Carlson’s repeated warnings against an Iran war are well known.
“I know you’re worried about it, but it’s going to be okay,” Trump said.
Carlson asked how he knew. “Because it always is.” Surviving several controversies, any one of which would have sunk another political career, is indeed Trump’s superpower. There will, of course, be costs. But to be paid by others. Including Trump’s own party and country.
