Maggie Haberman: A Gross and Messy White House

**Tim Miller** (0:12)
Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We got a double header for you today in segment two. It's the podcast's favorite, Gen Z, bisexual, quasi-communist. We're assessing what's been happening with the DSA in the primaries. That's my man Cameron Kasky, of course. But first, she's a New York Times White House correspondent, author of Confidence Man, and co-author of Jonathan Swan of the new book Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. It's of course Maggie Haberman. What's up, girl?

**Maggie Haberman** (0:40)
How are you? Thanks for having me.

**Tim Miller** (0:41)
I'm doing great. It's been a minute and it's like you guys have sold so many of these books. Can I just say, I'm just going to say it. This is, we have this relationship. I can just be blunt. I don't get it.
I mean, people want to relive the first year of the Donald Trump presidency in written form and long form. I mean, I understand wanting to watch Yellowstone reruns or the World Cup. But it's your magic.

**Maggie Haberman** (1:07)
I appreciate you having me on to talk about a book that you say you don't understand what people want to read. But I am grateful that a lot of people do. I understand.

**Tim Miller** (1:15)
After reading it, I understand it.

**Maggie Haberman** (1:16)
I appreciate that.
There are very long cues at libraries, which is great. In all seriousness, there's a very long audible cue. I don't think it's about reliving it, Tim, honestly, because this book nearly killed us. And I know Jonathan's line, my co-author's line is always, we're not in Fallujah, and we're not, and that's correct. But this was incredibly hard to do because this is not term one. This is not walking around with what Swan would call the slot bucket, and you're waiting for your scoop to just drop into it because everybody was fighting and everybody was leaking. And half of that government, if not more, half of that White House, if not more, viewed Trump as dangerous, or at least unmoored for some of them, and were concerned about his behaviors. This is a group of people who are relatively tight-knit. They really believe in Trump. They want to see him succeed. If they are concerned about some things that they see, they believe in his worldview, and they want to see his agenda implemented. So this took us a really long time, but this was, for us, this wasn't reliving last year. This was trying to understand much more about last year. And it took a really long time. And we focused on various aspects of how Trump has transformed, you know, we'll see what aspects of it are permanent, but I think more than people realize, he has transformed the US presidency into something very different than we've ever seen in our lifetimes. And that was the impetus for the title Regime Change, because we are witnessing a form of it in our own country.

**Tim Miller** (2:50)
Yeah. Well, with the Supreme Court news yesterday, I mean, that's a good place to start about the way that he is changing the nature of the presidency. You have a scene in the book where he is walking around saying, I'm immune, I'm immune, and it does, like that is another element of this, right?

**Maggie Haberman** (3:06)
Absolutely.

**Tim Miller** (3:06)
It's not only that he has a different staff, but it's this idea that he feels like he has carte blanche to do whatever he wants, that there's no consequences for what he wants. He doesn't have to follow the laws. He could just make declarations by fiat, and there isn't anybody that can stop him.

**Maggie Haberman** (3:20)
Well, there's a couple of aspects, and you're right that it is not just one thing. There are many, many factors as to why this presidency has been the way it has, and why he has expanded executive power to a degree that I think would, you know, it was foreseeable that there would be an expansion. Exactly how it has gone has been at rapid speed, and as maximalist as they've been able to do. You know this, every president for decades now has incrementally expanded executive power. Sometimes it's bigger increments than others, but obviously the biggest was right after 9-11 during the Bush presidency, Bush, second Bush presidency. This is just, you know, orders of magnitude different, and it's a combination of factors. It's the fact that he became much stronger in, you know, within his own party during the years out of power. The fact that being banned off of social media really did help him, frankly, because he was relegated to true social.