Book review: Regime Change- Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

An eye-opening look at the Trump 2.0 administration, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s Regime Change exposes the chaotic reality behind the Oval Office’s closed doors—from the spectacle of governance to the puzzling rise of figures like Natalie Harp. Gouri Agtey Athale reviews the non fiction.

The tagline to the title of the book tells it all, just in case you missed what’s been happening in and around the world since Trump 2.0 began.

Donald Trump hadn’t been in office as President in his second term for even 18 months yet there is the book detailing all that has happened since January 2025 to April 2026. That is a period which will ensure that Trump will go down in history as a man who did not care. Mainly, in this reviewer’s opinion, because he cannot run a third time. So, he’s going to do what he wants, when and how he wants. The outcome of those actions … he doesn’t care.

The authors are reporters with The New York Times and Maggie Haberman covers the White House on a daily basis. For readers of The NYT, hers is a familiar name. The authors have spelled out, right in the beginning that “the bulk of the reporting” in the book covers the time from the spring of 2023 to the spring of 2026, so some of the time is when Trump was not in office.

The book, by itself, is thorough and detailed so there are details and background information on all the major events since Trump took office the second time. All of these are events everyone around the world with access to a smart phone knows.

And then suddenly, there is an extraneous interest. A minor role, so minor that it goes practically unnoticed, played by Natalie Harp during all these tumultuous events, has suddenly generated great interest. Who is this woman?

In Regime Change, Natalie (or Nathalie, as the president prefers to call her, apparently the French pronunciation) is part of the wallpaper. She sits at the back of the room in a wooden chair, takes notes, runs errands as and when asked to (like `Nathalie, check Google’, `Nathalie, fetch MAGA hats’ for visitors…) and does not offer an opinion on anything. But she is always there.

What is amazing in Natalie’s story in Trump 2.0 is that she sits in on high level presumably confidential meetings, all with no apparent security clearances. Or none that have been mentioned. As the authors note, Natalie’s presence in the Oval Office is `ubiquitous’.

Natalie has hit the spotlight since she herself revealed that she flew with the US president in the anonymous flight out of Turkey, slipping out of one aircraft via a food container into another. And reversing the procedure at the mid-way halt. Now her back story is emerging. If anything, readers of this book will find she represents what is happening in the Oval Office: people walking in and out, a casual free-for-all atmosphere. The talk is loose, cuss words fly freely. People with no relevant training handling jobs that require specialised or specialist knowledge… none of that matters. How Trump views you is all that matters.

As the authors note, “governing is a spectacle, a show of strength staged for an audience of one” and Natalie Harp is just one of the characters in this reality show. The mantra that runs this presidency is to never admit making a mistake. Which is obvious to the world.

The one thought that keeps coming back is the slogan raised by Trump’s domestic detractors and that is TACO, or Trump always chickens out. Event after event show the president reversing, back-tracking and white-washing away actions that have boomeranged.

The authors begin the book with their analysis that had Trump won the 2020 election, he would not have been able to become this destructive. He would have been a weaker and not been able to accumulate the power he now has. He had four years to think over what and how he could. In the Epilogue, the authors find Trump agreeing with their analysis!

As the world lives with the outcome of his bizarre war in Iran, one wishes he really HAD won that election. We would have been spared so much!