A Man in Full*
Much has already been written about “Regime Change.”
New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have chronicled the
first year of the second Trump administration which they rightly characterized
as the start of an imperial presidency. Thus, I don't have much to add. It is an administration loaded with
sycophants who are willing to enforce Trump’s retribution agenda. Indeed,
Trump is presiding over an historic expansion of executive power that has no
parallel in peacetime and has engaged in a pattern of self-enrichment that is
without precedent.
There are more than a few nuggets in the book such as
the use of the situation room, hitherto focused on national security events, to
discuss the Epstein affair which for a while, paralyzed the administration. We
also learn that Trump aide, Natlie Harper is with him constantly as she runs
his Truth Social account and caters to his every whim.
Nevertheless, I expected much more from the book,
especially from Maggie Haberman who has followed Trump since her days at the
New York Post in the early 2000’s. ( See: Shulmaven: My Amazon
Review of Maggie Haberman's "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump
and the Breaking of America") In many respects the book reads like a long New York Times article,
except most of the sources are on deep background. The authors put you in the
room where it happened with direct quotes of the participants without
attribution. Unlike Trump’s first
administration, the current one does not leak out of a real fear of
retribution.
So, we are left with question, who talked to the
authors? Who benefits from the book? I
can only guess, but those officials most interested in running for office in
2028 and in protecting their future reputation from the investigations that are
sure to come can give us a clue as to who spoke to the authors.
My candidates are Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary
of State Marco Rubio, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of the Treasury
Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and son-in-law Jared Kushner. These
folks talked to Haberman and Swan on a situation-by-situation basis. They only
spoke when it served their individual interests, par for the course.
What Haberman and Swan have done is to give us a good
summary of Trump’s first year and it demonstrates his primary motivation is to
avenge those who he perceived wronged him in his first term and the
investigations that followed. Policy is secondary to vengeance, the accretion
of power and self-enrichment.
*-With apologies to Tom Wolfe.
