Will Weissert
Washington: Showing off towering new flagpoles he had erected on the White House North and South Lawns last summer, President Donald Trump suggested that he wanted to make similar renovations in his first term but was worried about the negative press.
“You guys were after me,” he told reporters. “I was the hunted. And now I’m the hunter.”
The incident, recalled in Regime Change, the new book on the first year of Trump’s second term by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (a former reporter for this masthead), encapsulates how different Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 has been from his first term.
The book spells out a thesis that Trump himself believes: Had he not lost the 2020 election, he would not be as powerful in his second term as he is now, emboldened to trample norms, dismantle established institutions and push the limits of presidential power.
Trump still falsely claims to have won in 2020. But a second term coming then might have been marred by pushback from members of his own administration, the coronavirus pandemic and the runaway inflation it caused, as well as an antagonistic Congress controlled by Democrats. He hasn’t faced those issues this time.
Here are five takeaways from the book.
1. Vance or Rubio in 2028? Trump will loom large in the choice
The authors recount how Trump frequently quizzed aides about whether Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be better to succeed him.
Some donors promoted Rubio and some aides thought the secretary and the president had better personal chemistry than Trump and Vance. But Trump also indicated that he was impressed by Vance’s intellect and abilities during television interviews – particularly tough ones, the book says.
Trump is also said to be impressed by the background of Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants. The book describes how, after Trump redecorated the Oval Office to fill it with gold flourishes, someone asked the president about the likelihood that the next president would undo all that he had done. Trump retorted: “Cubans love gold.”
But, Haberman and Swan write, Rubio and Vance are also friends. An example they offer is Rubio texting Vance after the 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee’s comments about “childless cat ladies” became a scandal. Rubio offered to campaign with Vance to show his support.
As those two men jostle for position before 2028, it’s possible Trump won’t soon yield the spotlight to them.
The president frequently talks about the two and a half years left in his term, a timeline that carries him right up to Inauguration Day 2029 — suggesting that he’s unlikely to let the Republicans running in the presidential race overshadow him.
A case in point occurred during an Oval Office meeting with Trump, Vance and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the House Democrats. As Haberman and Swan recount, the president showed off “Trump 2028” baseball caps, prompting Jeffries to gesture at Vance and ask, “How does he feel about that?” Trump responded “Ah, he’s fine. He doesn’t care,” adding “we’re giving him a little more training.”
Vance, speaking up for himself, offered “no comment.”
2. Panic inside the White House over the Epstein files release
Haberman and Swan detail the deep level of alarm over the administration’s handling of the release of files from the investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. That included White House chief of staff Susie Wiles convening a crisis response meeting in the Situation Room, and Vance suggesting enlisting friendly interviewer Tucker Carlson to sit down with Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
That revelation has raised questions about whether the reporters got audio recordings of what was said in a secure area of the White House, which would be a security concern.
3. Trump redecorated while the first lady was away
The book details how the president and first lady are the first first-couple to sleep in separate bedrooms since Richard and Pat Nixon, though Bill and Hillary Clinton slept apart briefly when his affair with Monica Lewinsky became public. First lady Melania Trump sleeps in the White House’s traditional master bedroom of the executive residence — Room 219 — while the president sleeps in Room 220, next to second-floor space known as the Yellow Oval.
The president fitted his bedroom with gold and other flourishes, carrying in some objects himself from the corridor where his wife had selected the decor during the first term, the book said. Because the first lady wasn’t in Washington much during the start of the second term, she wasn’t there to stop the president from rearranging things.
Among the items moved was a gold-leaf-framed mirror that had been part of the first lady’s redesign of the second-floor queen’s bedroom. But that ended up outside, on the Colonnade outside the Oval Office, where it is used to facilitate selfies.
The first lady had also overseen first-term Rose Garden renovations and objected to Trump wanting to pave over the area for his patio space reminiscent of his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. The president relented, and the surrounding grass was covered, but not the roses. She lost a larger battle, the authors write, as the East Wing was demolished to make room for the $400 million ballroom her husband is building.
4. Trump long had a Venezuela fixation
The president began his second term talking frequently about seizing Greenland and making Canada the 51st state, but was privately more focused on Venezuela — even suggesting it could become a state where he’d be allowed to appoint the governor.
Initially, Trump allowed special envoy Ric Grenell to negotiate with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, but he was eventually sidelined as Rubio made the case that Maduro would string along the administration for years, in an attempt to wait until Trump was out of power in 2029, Haberman and Swan write.
Rubio told White House officials that Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, was corrupt but serious and could most likely keep Venezuela together. Rubio spoke with Rodriguez on the night US forces stormed into Venezuela and deposed its president. He told her she had to bring stability to her country and prevent mass migration and violence. Rodriguez remains head of Venezuela after Maduro’s ouster.
Trump also told the authors during a March 2026 interview that he had a “love affair” with Venezuela that began with his years of owning the Miss Universe pageant and the beautiful women representing that country in it. That wasn’t enough to improve his opinion of Ukraine, though, which Trump said he didn’t like, except for its women who kept winning Miss Universe, the book says.
5. Trump said he was talking to a historian. It was Gary Player’s caddy
Haberman and Swan conclude with the president telling them about a historian introduced to him by golfer Gary Player who described the president as the most powerful man the planet had ever known — surpassing even Alexander the Great, William the Conqueror and Napoleon.
Trump, who promoted the anecdote himself on social media Thursday, was unable to recall the historian’s name during that interview. However, a White House staffer later revealed to the authors who the golf legend had been talking about. It was Player’s long-time caddy.
AP
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