Maggie Haberman is “a resident of Donald Trump’s head,” according to Texas Tribune co-founder Evan Smith. Haberman, a White House reporter for The New York Times, sat down with Smith for an hourlong conversation at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas, Sept. 24.
Haberman and Jonathan Swan are coauthors of Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, which has been on the Times’ bestseller list since its release in June, most of that time at No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 for nonfiction. The book has sold more than 700,000 copies across all formats and is the bestselling nonfiction book of the year.
In the far-ranging conversation, Smith attempted to get Haberman to explain what she thinks is going on inside Trump’s head besides his obsession with her and other female White House reporters.
Her candid assessment is that the president is physically unwell, mentally unstable and politically protected by not only his White House staff but also by an overly compliant Republican-led Congress.
Despite White House claims the Trump administration is the most transparent in history, it is instead one of the least transparent, she said — from outright lies to being very good at keeping secrets. And one of the biggest secrets, she said, is Trump’s health.
Health
On the health issue, anyone with eyes can see what the American public is being told about the president’s excellent health isn’t true, she said. “If there is an area where we just failed miserably in this book, it’s his health.”
But that’s not lack of trying, she added. “It’s because it is a unique black box for Trump and America.” Past presidents have tried to obscure information about their health, but Trump has taken that to new levels. Trump doesn’t even do “the bare minimum.”
“He goes to Walter Reed and he says he saw 22 specialists. For what? … In 2018, the last time I remember them putting out a really serious report, and that was Ronnie Jackson, who was the White House doctor at the time, that noted he had a coronary calcium score of, I think, 133. And Sanjay Gupta, a colleague at CNN and a doctor, wrote a story about how that’s definitionally heart disease. The White House was furious about that story because it was clearly true. I haven’t seen an updated calcium score. We’ve seen nothing like that since. And now the reports about his health are essentially clearly drafted, if not by the president, very much in his voice.”
Smith interjected that it’s obvious Trump and his staff lie about his weight.
“I only rely on things I can actually verify,” Haberman said. “But the one I remember is that when he had to report for his arraignment in Fulton County in 2023 when he was indicted, they were able to choose themselves how they answered for his weight and height. I don’t remember what the height was, but he has often said he’s 6’3″ and I don’t think he’s 6’3″. I think he’s 6’2″, but it can be the difference between whether you’re obese or not in terms of your BMI. But they had him at 215. And my kid’s dentist was that height at 215 and they did not look similar.”
She later added: “While we’re joking about the reality, he’s an 80-year-old man. And so the idea that he campaigned against Biden as an 80-year-old man, saying there’s not enough being released about ‘Sleepy Joe,’ et cetera, et cetera. There are very valid reasons to want to understand what is happening with an 80-year-old man’s health.”
And now Trump keeps falling asleep in public meetings, Smith noted.
“He started doing it actually during the criminal trial in Manhattan,” Haberman responded. On day one, he fell asleep and this has been a more visible thing. And then the White House will say he’s thinking deeply or he’s focusing.”
President Donald Trump falls asleep at an event on lowering drug prices in the Oval Office at the White House on November 6, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Transparency
Even since publication of the book in June, the Trump White House has tightened its control of information. But this also has been a pattern from the beginning, she said.
“Trump has never released his tax returns — ever. He kept saying he would release them when the audit was done. I’m pretty sure the audit must be done based on the deal that his DOJ was trying to make in terms of making him not subject to any kind of investigations in response to a private lawsuit he filed. But they’re very, very good at keeping secrets and particularly about how decisions are made.”
Another example, she said, is the runup to Trump initiating a war in Iran.
“In these situations, during meetings in particular, there were half dozen top advisers to Trump — just from the cabinet level — kept out of those meetings: The treasury secretary, the energy secretary, the two people who would have to manage and have been trying to manage the biggest global energy shock in history because of this war. They were kept out of the room because this administration is so concerned about leaks and doesn’t trust its own government.”
Screenshot of President Donald Trump lashing out at a female reporter.
Attacking Haberman and the Times
While Trump has a long history of criticizing Haberman, she’s not unique, she said.
“He’s expanded his roster of people he insults this time. It’s almost everyone he comes in contact with who asks a question that he finds mildly adversarial or even frankly just digging or curious. He is very focused on The New York Times and so that was always a part of it. …
“The first time he attacked me on social media was in 2012 when I was at Politico and it was when he had been considering running for president earlier when he dropped out,” she continued. … He’s known me longer than he knows a lot of the people who are covering him.”
She drew Trump’s ire in his first presidency when she reported that he had a habit of ripping up classified documents and flushing them down the toilet.
In 2015, Donald Trump mocks a disabled reporter. (Screencap from NBC News)
Trump isn’t the first person not to like her reporting, she said. “I really don’t think about it because I don’t actually want to become the story. … This is one of the things that’s been frustrating for a lot of the people he attacks in terms of how the coverage becomes about them.”
Trump’s vitriol toward reporters often results in threats against the reporters and their families, Haberman said. “The threats are definitely part of the new landscape.”
Smith interjected that it has mainly been female reporters Trump has demeaned and targeted. Then he added to thunderous applause: “Part of me thinks when these women are attacked, it is the obligation of the remainder of the press force to get up and walk out.”
Haberman disagreed with the last point: “Actually no. Our job is to stay and ask those questions.”
That situation is different than what was playing out last week after Trump banned three media outlets from the White House. In response, other members of the network pool took a stand in solidarity.
“If one individual is attacked and everybody walks out, then that … only makes the focus about us,” she said, but the press pool ban is a different optic. “The White House has taken control of the press pool. They decide what elements across media are in this pool. That has not happened in decades. Typically, it was decided by the White House Correspondents’ Association to maintain editorial independence. The White House now sets the rotation and there’s really not much the Correspondents’ Association can do about it. There’s no legal filing that can be done.”
“Trump is systematically waging these bullying campaigns or has been across industries and across institutions.”
And because the video press pool is drawn from a very small rotation, it is easier to have a group impact through protest, she explained. The absence of pool video and audio footage became notable to people at home, which put attention on the White House’s actions and not on individual reporters.
Trump has a long history of attacking the press in order to undercut the institutions of democracy, Haberman said.
“Remember in 2016 the phrase Tim Kane used to mock Trump at the DNC was, ‘Believe me.’ Because that is what Trump would say, ‘Believe me, believe me.’ And his supporters did, and they just also didn’t trust the media, not just his supporters, but some independents. … Trump is systematically waging these bullying campaigns or has been across industries and across institutions. The media is just one of them.”
Crooked politics
Trump’s idea of politics comes from past corruption in New York City, Haberman said, citing 20th-century party boss Meade Esposito as an example.
In 1987, Meade Esposito, former Brooklyn Democratic leader, rejoices as he leaves court cleared of bribery and conspiracy charges. He was found guilty of lesser charges of offering gratuities and interstate travel violations. (Getty Images)
“There was a huge interconnection between the Democratic Party bosses and some aspects of the mob and some aspects of contracts and so forth, but the party bosses controlled the judges and they controlled the DAs,” she said. “So they controlled the local system. … That was generally how you kept investigations from happening.”
When Trump entered the White House the first time, he wrongly assumed he would have that kind of executive power. And he assumed Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell would control Republicans for Trump.
Instead, the president didn’t know 90% of the people who served in his cabinet or in the White House. “And he was very distrustful with all of them for the most part. He saw them as trying to undermine him. Many of them did view him as dangerous and needing to be controlled or needing to be curtailed from his most aggressive impulses.”
But this time is different, she continued. “This time, his advisers are a very core group who stayed with him during the four years out of power. Some of them like Stephen Miller and Russ Vought spent that time planning for how to expand executive power, how to get the right lawyers in place to help Trump get to a yes on things.”
And here is a connection to current Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton of Texas, Haberman said. Those in close contact with Trump’s allies in the interim “were particularly a majority of the lawyers who worked for Ken Paxton, and they were in constant frequent touch with him. Stephen Miller has a very deep tie to Ken Paxton’s legal orbit.”
In recruiting staff for the current Trump administration, assessing loyalty to Trump is key, she said. The result is “this is a group of people that genuinely either believes in him or believe that he should be able to do what he wants. And there are so few people who push back the way you saw in Trump One. There is so much concern about giving him bad news for how he will receive it, and he is having so much on pure gut impulse now.”
While Trump campaigned on “draining the swamp” in D.C., the reality is he has “rebuilt a New York swamp,” Haberman said. “And in that way, it’s not just lobbyists to have access, it’s that they took control of anybody who could independently investigate them to the extent they could. The DOJ is essentially running from the White House. Can you imagine if Bill Clinton had put his personal lawyer as the attorney general? I mean, seriously, just think about it.”
Likewise, the current Trump administration has refused to seek congressional approval for a variety of its radical changes. “And Congress said, ‘OK, cool.’ … The Republican Congress essentially said, ‘OK, here you go. Here’s our power.’”