Speaker
Maggie Haberman
Appearances over time
3 episodes
Episodes
3
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Trump issued roughly 1,500 grants of clemency on Inauguration Day, including pardons for Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police officers.
Trump has repeatedly told people he will issue preemptive pardons to anyone who has come within 200-250 feet of the Oval Office.
Trump at one point called Netanyahu a con man — one of the most serious insults in Trump's lexicon — yet still pursued the Iran war at his urging.
Haberman argues Trump is in a better position than he would have been with two consecutive terms — he avoided post-pandemic inflation and the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Elon Musk operated out of grand Secretary of War suites in the EEOB, making unilateral decisions about cutting government agencies while often leaving Trump's own staff in the dark.
Netanyahu's top advisor Ron Dermer assessed there was roughly an 80% chance Trump would join Israel in war with Iran after a post-2024 election meeting.
The most consequential decisions in the Trump administration are made by just six to eight people, leaving senior officials at State, the Pentagon, and CIA out of the loop.
Rubio personally negotiated with El Salvador's Bukele in his palace to create the CECOT deportation arrangement, which ultimately sent innocent people to the foreign prison.
Trump aide Natalie Harp left raw, emotional notes in Trump's private spaces, including one saying 'You are all that matters to me,' which alarmed Secret Service agents.
White House aides gave influencers Epstein binders without first checking whether Trump's name appeared; it did — in travel logs that were already public.
Trump's White House bedroom contained potato chip bags, ice cream cartons, and Starburst wrappers, and staff had to monitor silverware disappearing into the trash.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan conducted more than 1,000 interviews while reporting Regime Change, published just 17 months into Trump's second term.
Trump was significantly more hawkish on Iran than most of his own advisors, including Vance and Rubio, who had private doubts but largely stayed silent in the room.
Haberman reports Trump was always more aggressive on Iran than his own advisors, and told Netanyahu after the Butler shooting he would be far more aggressive in a second term.
Trump's administration has released less and less health information even as he makes more frequent visits to Walter Reed; his swollen ankles from venous insufficiency were only addressed after photographers noticed.
A CBS News poll found 70% of Americans believe the Iran war was not worth the cost. Even 56% of self-identified MAGA Republicans want the conflict ended now. When you can't hold your own base, the political damage is real.
JD Vance told Ross Douthat that unlike Obama's deal, the new arrangement removes Iran's enriched uranium. That's flatly false. Under the JCPOA, Iran shipped 97% of its stockpile to Russia. The current deal would merely down-blend it and keep it inside Iran.
Trump's $16.5 million no-bid pool renovation — awarded to a convicted crony — failed spectacularly, with algae blooms and peeling liner. Rather than admit failure, the administration invented phantom vandals, posted AI-altered images of a clean pool, and then arrested people just for looking at the mess.
In April, Trump boasted the reflecting pool's new lining was so strong that even a knife couldn't cut it, and would last 50 years. When it failed, he claimed a 350-foot slit was cut by a box cutter. The irony is complete: he gave the vandals their script.
Qatar initially sought $150–$200 million for the jet now serving as Air Force One. It suddenly became a free gift, with the idea reportedly generated at the POTUS level. Taxpayers then paid hundreds of millions more to make it safe for presidential travel — money pulled from nuclear modernization funds.
People around Trump want to raise $2 billion for his presidential library — designed as a tower with a gold Trump statue, restaurants, and hotel. Eric Trump is soliciting Gulf monarchies including Saudi Arabia's MBS. The fundraising happens simultaneously with the administration selling advanced chips to the Emirates.
A Washington Post investigation found that in 24 of 32 TV appearances between 2014 and 2016, then-Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard used language from memos written by an alleged cult leader almost verbatim. The memos also directed which legislation she should introduce. She was the Director of National Intelligence.
Trump blocked the quick confirmation of his own DNI pick, Jay Clayton, to keep Bill Pulte — a corrupt political operative with no intelligence experience — in the acting director seat. A CNN source reported Pulte began carrying out deep-state firings almost immediately upon taking the role.
Trump commuted David Gentile's sentence less than 2 weeks into a 7-year prison term, despite Gentile having stolen over $1 billion from mom-and-pop investors. Jailhouse communications showed Gentile discussing over $2 million in payments to secure his freedom, and Trump's own appointees killed the investigation into how the clemency happened.
At a White House dinner, Trump sat JD Vance and Marco Rubio at the same table as Rupert Murdoch, then asked Murdoch to assess each of them. Murdoch gave Rubio a much stronger endorsement — calling him 'brilliant' versus Vance's 'potential to be great' — while both VP candidates had to sit there and hear it.
The US agreed to a 60-day oil sanctions waiver — the first in 40 years — potentially worth $10 billion to Iran, before Iran confirmed a single nuclear weapons inspector entry. Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor note that under the JCPOA, no sanctions relief came until Iran acted first.
In the Oval Office, Trump handed Haberman and Swan a 2-page document comparing him to Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan on the basis of power. He was relishing the comparison. The document was supposedly written by a historian — but was actually produced by Gary Player's former caddy.
Trump's name appeared over 38,000 times in the Epstein files. His staff held crisis meetings in the Situation Room — a national security command center repurposed as an Epstein PR crisis response center. Private focus groups conducted nearly a year later still showed Epstein cutting through to an alarming extent.
Witkoff, Trump's real-estate-buddy-turned-diplomat, asked Putin to sign a piece of paper reading '3+2' — the territorial framework ceding three Ukrainian oblasts to Russia. Putin signed it, and Witkoff had it framed at home in black with taupe mats. His colleagues describe him as treating Putin and Zelensky as moral equals.
There are no structured meetings in Trump's Oval Office — just a rolling bull session. Maggie Haberman describes NSC officials waiting in a corner for sign-off on classified programs while someone else is on speakerphone from Mar-a-Lago and a decorator walks in with paver samples for the Rose Garden.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Government 63%
- News 37%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
