5 Wildest New Trump Bombshells From Star NYT Reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s Book

The headline-grabbing excerpts keep coming from The New York Times star reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s new book on President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Haberman and Swan have been on a bit of a media tour to promote Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump recently, leading to plenty of juicy details emerging before the book officially released on Tuesday.

That included the behind-the-scenes freakout over how the administration handled the release of files on dead sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, with ex-Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino fuming at ex-Attorney General Pam Bondi she “f*cked this thing up” at one point.

More has emerged since then, though. Here are five new revelations that stood out to us:

Trump Exclaimed “Holy Sh*t!” When He Found Out About His Own Tariff 

Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough seemed to love a moment in the book where Trump was told his administration had slapped a 125% tariff on certain goods from China — which was news that startled the president.

“He goes, ‘Holy sh*t!'” Scarborough said, while recounting the story back to Haberman and Swan on Tuesday’s show. “Like, he didn’t remember. And that’s just one example… it happens time and time again. It’s all from the gut, there’s no process.”

Swan added it was a “great example” of Trump having ideas, but not planning them out. He said Trump never “developed [an] economic theory of how this would work” when it came to tariffs.

The President Is Surrounded by “Radicalized” MAGA Zealots

Haberman told Morning Joe on Tuesday that Trump’s closest advisers were “radicalized” by the onslaught of trials — literally — and tribulations that Trump faced between his first and second term.

She pointed to the assassination attempts against Trump and the politically-motivated cases that his advisers believe led him to being the first convicted felon to serve as commander-in-chief. Trump rising above those those challenges and winning the 2024 election turned them into true MAGA diehards, she argued.

Haberman said, “Their theory is he can do what he wants” now that he’s back in office.

She made a similar comment during her interview on MS NOW anchor Lawrence O’Donnell’s show on Monday night.

“They believe there is something almost mystical about him,” Haberman said. “That he can hear frequencies that maybe they can’t. And they hate the mainstream media more than they hate things they see him doing, that they have concerns about.”

Trump Was Fixated on Buying ‘Good Trees’ Amid the Iran War

Haberman and Swan wrote they met with Trump in March, 17 days after the Iran war started. But the war “seemed the furthest thing” from his mind at that point, as the aforementioned O’Donnell noted while reading from the book on his show on Monday night.

He continued reading the following passage:

On the Resolute Desk, instead of a map of the Middle East, were printouts of maple trees.

“I’m ordering trees for the White House,” Trump told us. “I know how to buy good trees. Maples.”

Trump held another printout. The headlines screamed “339 billion all-time views” of Trump TikToks. “Can you believe it?”

The President asked us. Then Trump showed us two final printouts, renderings from different angles of the grand ballroom he was building on the White House grounds.

They added he was in a “convivial mood,” even though he had bashed Haberman on Truth Social earlier in the day.

One Aide Writes “Adoring Letters” to Trump 

Vanity Fair’s Aidan McLaughlin noted the book is full of details about the “peculiar” habits of several people in Trump’s orbit. That includes White House aide Natalie Harp, who writes “adoring letters” to Trump and puts them in his “private spaces,” according to the book.

One of those notes told Trump: “You are all that matters to me.”

Trump Compared Himself (Favorably) to Historical Leaders Like Napoleon and Stalin 

The president showed Haberman and Swan a document that argued he was “more powerful than some of the most feared and treacherous leaders in history, including Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler,” according to CNN’s preview of the book.

The report explained further:

Trump had been asked by Haberman and Swan about the power he wielded as president in his second term and his place in history, which prompted him to tell the story of a two-page document he had received from “a historian” during an event honoring the hall of fame golfer, Gary Player.

Trump proudly asked an aide to fetch a copy of the document, which argued that each of the other leaders, “however fearsome in his day, had no global reach. Their power was local. But (Trump’s) was not.”

Trump proudly showed them the letter, Haberman and Swan write, “reciting the names of some of history’s most powerful figures, explaining how each fell short of his own power as US president.”

These leaders “maintained power through fear,” Trump said, according to the book. “Who would ever do a thing like that? Right?”

Watch the clips above.

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