Regime Change (Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump), by Maggie Haberman | Free Audiobook

Inside the second Trump White House, told by two reporters who covered him for a decade

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have covered Donald Trump for The New York Times longer than almost anyone, and in this audiobook they turn that access into a close account of the first year of his second presidency. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and reporting from inside the administration's most guarded rooms, they reconstruct deliberations in the Situation Room and the Oval Office that rarely reach the public.

The authors describe a term very different from the first, one they say has been freed from many of the checks that once slowed him down. They report on the decisions behind a new war in the Middle East, a hardened approach to the border, the deployment of National Guard troops into American cities, and a Justice Department reshaped around the president's priorities. Throughout, Haberman and Swan keep their focus on how choices were actually made, and on who was, and was not, in the room when they happened.

Running underneath the reporting is the book's central argument: that the indictments, the convictions, and four years out of office left Trump more willing to gamble rather than more cautious. Robert Petkoff narrates across roughly seventeen hours, giving the dense reporting a steady, measured pace. It is a long listen aimed at anyone who wants to understand how this presidency has worked from the inside, wherever they sit politically.