“You are getting pure Trump now.” Those were the words of MAGA movement leader Steve Bannon after Donald Trump granted a blanket pardon to roughly 1,500 people charged over the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. They are also a neat summary of the book in which they appear: Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s bestseller Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, which is currently topping charts in several countries.Both authors are unusually well placed to write it. Both cover the White House for The New York Times. Haberman wrote one of the finest Trump biographies, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America — one of our must-read books on the US President — and Swan’s 2020 interview with Trump won an Emmy the following year.Across almost five hundred pages, Regime Change offers an insider’s view of the first year of Trump’s second presidency. A little more than a year, in fact: the book opens with Trump entering the White House (surprisingly amicably, charming even Joe Biden) and closes in the early stages of the Iran war — Operation Epic Fury, as Trump named it — in March 2026.It draws on about a thousand interviews with people in the administration, most of them unnamed, and follows a very Bob Woodward-like method: long stretches of conversation reported in direct speech, a strictly chronological narrative, and a heavy diet of fact. The result is the most readable book on Trump’s second term so far.‘He spoke his own words into existence’Regime Change contains no shocking revelations. For most readers it will simply confirm what they suspected: that Trump is domineering, often bullying, and possessed of a self-belief that borders on the delusional. Haberman and Swan treat that self-belief as one of his great strengths, and as the reason he could return from the defeat of 2020, when even close associates seemed to have abandoned him:“Trump had always endeavoured to author his own reality and then force others around him to submit to his version of events. Trump lied, of course, endlessly and preposterously; but what started as fantasies often blurred and morphed into a reality of his making. With jarring frequency, and with the help of his devotees, Trump spoke his words into existence.”The book is about how Trump bent the United States, and the world, to his will. Winning the presidency the first time, in 2016, he had taken advice: “he may have projected bravado back then, but he was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the job.” The second time, the only person he deferred to was himself:Story continues below this ad“This time, Trump felt he knew everyone and everything. Now he saw himself as the ultimate expert, smarter and more knowledgeable about every topic than the ‘stupid people’ who had spent decades in Washington destroying the country.”This, in Bannon’s phrase, was pure Trump. The new confidence shows most clearly in the chapter on choosing a cabinet. Pete Hegseth gets Defense because “nobody’s ever looked better on camera than this guy,” and because “he’s been so good to me.” Loyalty — real or imagined, and measured against the betrayals Trump believes he suffered in 2021 — governs almost every appointment. When a party colleague attacks a prospective nominee, Trump waves him away: “She’s been so good to me.”In places the book reads like a revenge story. Trump humiliating the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley, extracting compliments and showing off their grovelling messages to guests, will make many readers wince. Through all of it runs an apparently invincible self-assurance and an almost complete absence of any fear of defeat or reprisal. The deployment of ICE, the January 6 pardons, the pursuit of Joe Biden, the relationship with Netanyahu, the turning of Elon Musk from friend to foe, the invasion of Venezuela, the opening of the war on Iran, the alienation of European allies, the crisis over the Epstein files — all of this and more is here in detail.A compelling, objective account of a disturbing periodNeither author is much taken with the President, but both let the facts, and the participants’ own words, do the work. What emerges is a portrait of an administration that is whimsical and eccentric to an alarming degree. Enormous decisions — the invasion of Venezuela among them — are taken with little discussion. It is a reign of fear, in which nobody is willing to confront a President who not only knows his own mind but follows it wherever it leads.Story continues below this adReaders who do not follow American politics closely may find the book too detailed. The legislation, the states, the officials all blur together. Haberman and Swan draw fine verbal sketches, but it is hard work remembering who is who and where they sit. If you follow the administration closely, this is a great book. If your knowledge of US politics comes mainly from headlines, keep Google open as you are marched down the corridors of the West Wing.The pace is rattling, yet the book turns repetitive — the fault of the subject rather than the authors. Every few pages brings another expletive-laden eruption from the most powerful man in the world, and another decision with no discernible relationship to logic. Once the initial did he really say that? shock wears off, what remains is a flat, depressing despair: not only is this happening, it shows every sign of continuing.The one thin consolation is that whatever comes next, Haberman and Swan will be there to record it. As they write in their introduction:“This is, therefore, our best attempt at a first draft of the remarkable history we are all living through — a history we intend to cover until the end.”Story continues below this adThere will be sequels. They will be every bit as compelling. We only hope they leave us less shaken. Pure Trump can have that effect.Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan Simon & Schuster496 pp₹999