Political Gabfest - Gabfest Reads | The Presidency as Pure Pleasure
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
John Dickerson interviews Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan about their new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Drawing on extensive reporting from inside the White House, they explore how Trump's second term differs radically from his first, from his decision-making process to the people surrounding him and his relationship with power, money, and the presidency itself. Unlike his first term, when he felt under siege, Trump now operates from absolute confidence.
He's surrounded by loyalists and flatterers, getting information through a curated ecosystem that includes Fox News, Truth Social, and aides like Natalie Harp ("the human printer") who fetch him what he asks for, regardless of its accuracy. His decision-making is reactive and gut-driven, shaped by what people want to tell him. Meanwhile, his family and inner circle are making unprecedented wealth from the presidency, and Trump himself, who equates money with intelligence, is richer than ever. With Supreme Court immunity, total command over his party, incomparable wealth, and an administration of unequivocal supporters, Trump appears completely in his element: free to exercise power exactly as he wishes, being praised constantly, and getting richer by the day.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jonathan, I'm going to ask you a question in the way I never would a real person by slightly telegraphing it. |
| 0:06.9 | This is about another. |
| 0:08.5 | We're not real people. |
| 0:09.9 | We're not real people. We're not real. You're not. You're fake. Fake person. |
| 0:15.4 | Does Donald Trump enjoy the presidency, Jonathan? |
| 0:25.6 | Yeah. Enjoy the presidency, Jonathan. Welcome to GabFest Reeds for the month of July, |
| 0:28.7 | 2026. I'm John Dickerson, one of the hosts of this late political Gap Fest. |
| 0:33.3 | I'm here today with Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the authors of the new book, |
| 0:38.5 | Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. |
| 0:43.7 | Maggie and Jonathan, it's great to be with you since I've been living with your work in my head. |
| 0:49.7 | And the number of questions go into the thousands. |
| 0:52.7 | Let's start here, though. |
| 0:55.5 | George W. Bush used to call himself the decider. His book is called decision points. One of the things that Bob Gates said about |
| 1:00.2 | Obama was that despite his lack of experience, he could make decisions. So decision-making at the |
| 1:05.9 | center of this book. Maggie, I'll start with you. How does Donald Trump make decisions? It's a good question, |
| 1:13.8 | especially because part of the premise of our reporting for this book, and it's frankly, |
| 1:20.5 | he sort of affirmed it in an interview that we did with him, is about how radically different |
| 1:25.2 | this term is from term one to term two. And one of the aspects of |
| 1:29.2 | that is how he is making decisions. I mean, there are things that are similar where he will still, |
| 1:33.5 | from previously, if people are telling him something that is contrary to what he wants to hear, |
| 1:39.5 | he will find someone and poll various people until they give him the answer he wants, right? If he is given |
| 1:46.3 | numbers that he doesn't like, whether it's, you know, tariff numbers or polling numbers, he will say |
... |
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