Inside the White House: How Trump wields unchecked power to leave his mark on history

If there is a turning point in Donald Trump’s legacy as President of the United States, it is to be found on January 20, 2025 — the first day of his return to the Oval Office after his abrupt departure in 2021, when he was defeated by Joe Biden and turned into a political pariah for inciting an enraged crowd to storm the Capitol.

On that day, four years after losing power, Trump sat down once again at the Resolute Desk and issued a series of orders intended to reshape the country’s essence. One of the most controversial was the pardon of hundreds of his supporters who had taken part in the January 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol, one of the darkest episodes in U.S. history. Steve Bannon, the strategist and ideological architect of Trump’s MAGA movement, saw the move as quintessential Trump.

The book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump chronicles the inside workings of the first 14 months of Trump’s second presidency. It has become a phenomenon in the United States. Its authors, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times — who base their account on information provided by more than a thousand official and anonymous White House sources, as well as a face-to-face interview with Trump — have become sought-after guests on television programs across the country, invited to recount anecdotes and scenes from life inside the walls of the White House.

“We were covering the most consequential year of a U.S. presidency in our lifetimes and watching presidential power used in ways we had never seen,” Haberman said during a book presentation in Washington. The journalists describe episodes that seem as though they were lifted from an installment of Game of Thrones — complete with palace intrigue, betrayals, and accusations of corruption — were it not for the fact that these are real events taking place in the world’s leading superpower.

The carefree billionaire who arrived at the White House almost by surprise in 2017 is very different from the unapologetic, vengeful Republican politician who returned in 2025. This time he came prepared. He had become more isolated, more distrustful, and more driven by a desire for retribution after the legal efforts to disqualify and prosecute him over the excesses of his first term. He also reduced his circle of advisers to a bare minimum, demanding a near-divine level of loyalty.

As a test of that loyalty, he requires his advisers to maintain that the 2020 election — which he lost to Joe Biden — was fraudulent and that he was the true winner. During these months, the U.S. president has pushed the boundaries of executive power in foreign affairs to an extent few of his predecessors attempted, all in pursuit of a lasting place in the history books. He is determined to make the imprint of his legacy indelible and to prevent it from being erased, as happened after his first term.

‘You’re the only thing that matters to me’

Natalie Harp is one of the key characters in this story. She is responsible for posting some of Trump’s messages on the social media platform Truth Social and for preparing AI-generated images to feed the president’s account, including the xenophobic image depicting the Obamas as apes. Harp is Trump’s sole executive assistant. She often accompanies him late into the night as they craft provocative social-media posts, and her presence has reportedly aroused suspicion among members of the White House staff.

She is 34, blonde, and known among White House employees by the nickname “the human printer.” Before the New York real-estate developer returned to the Oval Office, she used to accompany him on the golf course, carrying a small printer and a laptop so she could read aloud snippets of flattering news coverage.

Harp is one of Trump’s most loyal advisers. She follows him everywhere. She leaves notes for him “in his private spaces.” On one occasion, the book recounts, she left a note that read: “You’re the only thing that matters to me.”

A former television presenter for the far-right network One America News Network, Harp joined Trump’s team in 2022, when the New Yorker decided to return to the political arena after being publicly vilified and subjected to legal proceedings over the excesses of his first term.

She says the president saved her life by signing legislation that allowed access to experimental treatments, enabling her to live with the cancer from which she suffers. “Without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved,” she told him. Now she serves Trump with unwavering devotion.

According to Haberman and Swan, Harp is just one figure in the decadent court that the White House has become under Trump’s leadership. They portray an almost Caesar-like administration, headed by a president driven by a desire for revenge and deeply addicted to flattery.

The vendettas

Stephen Miller is another of those theatrical advisers who often seem eager to go further than the president himself. If, during Trump’s first term, he had officials who set limits on him, this time he has surrounded himself with advisers who do the opposite: they encourage him to go one step further.

Miller, a far‑right extremist, is known as “the guardian of grievances.” He has gained great power within the administration, removing legal obstacles to Trump’s policies. He is credited in the book with pushing the cruel immigration policies of Trump’s second term. He reportedly sought to suspend habeas corpus for immigrants — a remedy that prevents arbitrary detention and requires detainees to be presented before a judge. Miller is also the instrument Trump is using to exact revenge on his critics.

One passage of the book describes how, shortly after shaking up world trade with his tariff war, Trump called a meeting to issue several executive orders aimed at launching legal investigations into some senior officials from Joe Biden’s presidency who had investigated or accused him of misconduct.

According to Haberman and Swan, a meeting in the Oval Office that had originally focused on trade policy eventually turned to Trump’s long-standing grievances about the 2020 election. The authors describe him asking aides about a lawyer in the administration who had publicly defended the integrity of the vote. The book claims that Miller, ever attentive to the president’s wishes, hurried to identify the official and opened an investigation into him without being directly instructed to do so.

More powerful than Mao, Stalin or Hitler

The journalists recount that, during an interview with the president in mid-March intended to wrap up the book, they asked Trump whether he considered himself the most powerful man in history. Trump had no doubts. He asked Natalie Harp to fetch a copy of a document. The president showed the reporters a letter in which he compared himself to several historical figures. “Donald Trump is, without question, the most powerful man the planet has ever known,” the businessman‑turned‑politician read.

The list included Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, the Roman Caesars, William the Conqueror and Napoleon. Trump reportedly took pride in the comparison. The ranking, he said, had been compiled by what he described as a “presidential historian.”

What’s more, it did not seem to concern him that several of those figures are remembered for genocide or the destruction of entire civilizations. Moral distinctions played no role in the comparison. Trump reduced the question to one of notoriety and power alone.

Trump later explained that he had first heard the comparison while playing golf with Gary Player, the nonagenarian golfing legend. According to his account, Player told him about a historian and his theory regarding the most powerful leaders in history. The supposed historian, however, turned out to be little more than a caddie with a keen interest in history books.

Haberman and Swan’s book is, in many ways, a chronicle of what they regard as one of the most turbulent periods in recent U.S. history. It portrays a president exercising power with few restraints, reshaping the nature of the presidency and testing established limits in an effort to expand his authority.

The authors depict a period in which Trump has sought to remake the international order established after the Second World War; upend global trade through tariffs; pursue an aggressive campaign of deportations and immigration enforcement; authorize military action against Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro; and become embroiled in another conflict in Iran from which, they argue, he cannot extricate himself.

According to Haberman and Swan, all of this has occurred with limited congressional oversight, amid a weakening of traditional checks and balances and the replacement of thousands of independent officials with loyalists and private-sector lawyers willing to go to any lengths to carry out the administration’s agenda.

Panic over the Epstein files

Another of the book’s most revealing episodes concerns the alarm that reportedly swept through the White House over the declassification of the Jeffrey Epstein files. According to Haberman and Swan, the president’s inner circle was deeply concerned about the consequences of Congress’s order to release all confidential documents related to the investigation into the financier convicted of child sexual abuse and running a sex-trafficking network.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, convened a meeting in the Situation Room, a facility normally reserved for major national-security and military crises. Polling suggested that the Epstein matter was damaging Trump’s standing among core MAGA supporters. According to the authors, Vice President JD Vance bluntly described the situation as a major problem.

Those present reportedly included the FBI director, the attorney general, the White House communications chief and several lawyers who had previously represented Trump and now held positions within the administration. The group examined a range of possible responses. Among the ideas discussed, according to the book, was the possibility of having Ghislaine Maxwell — Epstein’s associate and longtime confidante — testify before Congress in exchange for a pardon.

That suggestion immediately raised concerns. “Pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls, would create a huge P.R. problem,” objected Steven Cheung, White House communications director, according to the book.

In another meeting on the matter, also held in the Situation Room, officials discussed a complaint by one of the young women associated with Epstein’s network that allegedly described Trump’s fetishistic interest in nipples. The debate over whether that document should be released reportedly lasted for hours. One official, according to the book, remarked that a discussion about nipples taking place in the same crisis room where Barack Obama had once monitored the operation to kill Osama bin Laden was “surreal.”

Trump has increasingly withdrawn into the White House. He has cut back on travel and rarely visits his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for weekend rounds of golf. He has built an administration effectively run by half a dozen people. Many senior officials, according to the authors, have little idea what is being discussed behind the closed doors of the Oval Office.

Haberman notes that Trump frequently repeats a particular claim: “We have the most transparent administration in history.” The reporter rejects that: “That is complete nonsense. In reality, they are incredibly good at keeping secrets.” As evidence, she points to the negotiations with Iran. According to her account, no senior official from the military, the intelligence community, the Pentagon or the State Department saw any documentation relating to the memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran aimed at ending the conflict until Vice President JD Vance unexpectedly produced it.

Swan argued that Trump’s second presidency differs markedly from his first. Whereas he once had to navigate Washington as a political outsider, rely on advisers he barely knew and remain focused on re-election, opinion polls and day-to-day political pressures, he is now far less constrained by those concerns. In Swan’s view, Trump’s attention has shifted away from electoral politics and towards the longer-term question of how history will judge him.

‘I am not a big supporter of Ukraine. Except for their women’

Another of the book’s more striking episodes concerns Trump’s tense Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. According to Haberman and Swan, Trump was frustrated by the fact that the war in Ukraine had not ended despite his earlier promises that he could bring it to a close in 24 hours. As a result, when Zelensky arrived at the White House, Trump subjected him to an unusual and highly public dressing-down.

The authors write that, far from being embarrassed by the encounter, Trump later described it to aides as excellent television and favorably compared it to The Apprentice, the reality show that helped make him a household name. “I’m not a big supporter of Ukraine,” he admitted at another high-level meeting while sitting at the Resolute Desk. “Except for their women. They keep winning Miss Universe.” Trump once owned and promoted the Miss Universe pageant and has often boasted about the women who competed in it.

The book also describes the U.S. military operation in Venezuela in January 2026, when — in a matter of hours — the U.S. military captured and jailed president Nicolás Maduro. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the reporters say, told Trump that Delcy Rodríguez was a corrupt but pliable politician and the best option to control the country. On another occasion, Trump privately floated the idea that Venezuela could one day become a U.S. state governed by a U.S.-appointed administration. The success of the operation, the authors suggest, strengthened his confidence in the use of military power.

So when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House to press the case for military action against Tehran, Trump gave his backing despite warnings from the CIA chief, who told him the plan was “farcical,” and from JD Vance, who warned him it was a very bad idea.

The race between Vance and Rubio

The book even devotes a section to JD Vance and the competition to succeed Trump. Although tradition dictates that the vice president becomes the party’s standard-bearer once a president has served two terms, Trump reportedly enjoys toying with the idea that he is still weighing his options between Vance and Rubio.

The episode recounted by Haberman and Swan unfolds during a White House dinner with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, attended by both Vance and Rubio. Just weeks earlier, Trump had sued Murdoch after one of his newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, published a sexually suggestive drawing that Trump was alleged to have sent to Jeffrey Epstein years earlier.

As the authors tell it, Trump spent the appetizers berating and threatening Murdoch. By the time the first course arrived, he was showering him with praise. Then, during the main course, he slipped into one of the rambling, free-associative monologues for which he is well known.

Then suddenly he turned to Murdoch and asked: “What do you think of JD?” The media mogul considered the question and answered without great conviction — given he had tried to sabotage Vance’s vice‑presidential nomination — “JD has the potential to be great.” Trump then asked: “And what do you think of Marco?” Murdoch answered immediately: “Marco is brilliant.”

Despite Trump’s efforts to keep the succession question alive, most observers, according to the authors, believe that Vance will be chosen.

Haberman and Swan’s account depicts a president who is easily bored by meetings and given to biting, and at times ethically questionable, remarks. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for example, is said to entertain him by showing him footage of drone strikes against human targets — videos that one official reportedly described as “Hegseth’s snuff films.”

When the two journalists sat down with Trump for the interview that would help conclude the book, the United States was already deeply involved in the conflict with Iran. Yet they found that the Resolute Desk was covered with photographs of trees.

Trump explained that he was considering planting a grove on White House grounds and appeared more interested in discussing the logistics of transplanting maples and oaks than in talking about Iran or other pressing matters of state. Haberman and Swan came away with the impression that this was not a diversionary tactic. He seemed genuinely fascinated by the trees.

Decorator-in-chief

Perhaps because of his background as a real-estate developer, the president is intensely focused on aesthetics and design. He has sought to remake parts of Washington, redesigning plazas and gardens, refurbishing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — an effort that turned into a fiasco — while also planning a vast ballroom on the White House’s East Wing and pressing ahead with a proposal to erect a triumphal arch in a protected area.

His taste for ornamentation has also reshaped the White House itself. The Oval Office has become increasingly cluttered with gilded fixtures and gold-colored decorative elements. One episode in the book captures the extent of the obsession.

According to Haberman and Swan, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt entered the Oval Office one morning to discuss the day’s agenda and found Trump personally engaged in redecorating. The authors describe him holding a tube of superglue and attempting to attach gold ornaments to the marble mantelpiece above the fireplace.

According to the book, “As he was known to prefer his own aesthetic handiwork to anyone else’s, the sight of the president squeezing glue onto gilded appliqués and mounting them on the wall himself surprised no one in his inner circle.”

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