REGIME CHANGE

Regime Change is a book-length journalism account of the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, built from more than 1,000 interviews. Haberman and Swan argue the second term is unrecognizable from the first: a smaller, more loyal inner circle, a collapse of norms that were mistaken for laws, and decisions made by gut rather than data. Its transferable lessons concern how to report and navigate environments where power is concentrated, information is filtered, and flattering or alarming claims go unverified.

1. Before interviewing an evasive or powerful person, prepare extensively and decide in advance which moments to press. You cannot fact-check every false claim in real time, so pick the points that matter most, and act as a stand-in for the audience by asking what an ordinary person would want answered. (source)
2. Treat the gap between what is an enforceable law and what is merely a norm as a real risk surface. Constraints that everyone assumes are solid may be only conventions, and a determined actor who ignores them can bypass what looks like a safeguard. Audit which protections you rely on are actual rules versus habits. (source)
3. To judge an important decision accurately, cross-check every scene with multiple independent sources and push for inside-the-room detail. The authors won confidence in their account by checking and rechecking scenes with people who took risks to correct the record, rather than trusting any single account. (source, source)
4. Deliberately engineer your information intake so that bad or uncomfortable news reaches you. When a gatekeeper filters what a leader sees down to mostly positive news, that leader loses touch with reality and decides in a bubble; the habit of welcoming bad news is a guard against this. (source, source))
5. Verify the credentials of anyone offering a flattering expert judgment, especially one that tells you what you want to hear. The book’s “historian” who ranked the president the most powerful leader ever turned out to be a golfer’s caddy. A conclusion that feels authoritative deserves a check on the authority. (source, source, source)
6. Refuse to make consequential decisions on gut feeling or an unexplained formula. The book describes a major tariff decision made while the president dismissed accurate figures as fabricated and relied on a calculation no one could explain, which then crashed markets. Insist on hard, checkable data before acting. (source)
7. Distinguish authority, the ability to dictate outcomes without using force, from raw power, the ability to destroy. The book’s lesson is that authority outlasts force: an actor who only threatens or strikes without building consent ends up weaker even while looking powerful. (source)
8. Read the strategic use of access and favors, such as private jet rides, golf invitations, a freely shared phone number, and campaign money, as a compliance system rather than generosity. Recognizing that perks and proximity are how influence is bought makes you harder to co-opt. (source)
9. Map who is actually present when decisions get made, not who is nominally responsible. The second term’s major choices were made by a handful of people in the room while agencies and even cabinet secretaries were cut out. Power sits with the small group in the room, not the org chart. (source, source))
10. Judge transparency by the substance of what is revealed, not the volume of access. A source can hold frequent press conferences, answer nothing of value, and use the appearance of openness as a screen. Measure disclosure by whether claims can actually be verified, not by how often they speak. (source)