Haberman and Swan’s “Regime Change”: How Trump became “untethered” in second term

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan tell me these are the top two themes of their book on President Trump's second term, "Regime Change," out Tuesday:His greater willingness to use power in his second term — like no other president, period.How four years out of office built up his determination to project that power globally.The latest: In the duo's first live interview about "Regime Change," Haberman said Monday night on Lawrence O'Donnell's "The Last Word" on MS NOW that people got used to Term 1: Trump didn't really know his government, and he was surrounded by aides who saw his behavior as dangerous."There's none of that now," Haberman said. "They believe there is something almost mystical about him, 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."Swan added during the MS NOW appearance, which ran an astonishing 46 minutes, that Trump wants to be "the capital G, Great Man of history.""He wants to reshape the world," Swan said. "I don't think he would have gone to war in Iran in the same circumstances in Term 1. I don't think he would have rolled the dice on what he did in Venezuela. … He wouldn't have started a trade war with the whole world. … But he's in a different mindset, and he's untethered from all of those domestic political considerations [of] the first term."Behind the scenes: Haberman and Swan write that some Trump aides told them they wished their boss "was more anxious about the dangers he was courting, and about his plunging poll numbers.""To the extent he still cared about polling at all, he was seeing far fewer polls than during his first term. His advisors knew he was not receptive to being briefed on harsh realities. In his second term, unlike his first, he was willing to take breathtaking risks, risks that could throw not only his presidency but the Republican Party and the entire world into chaos and carnage. More than ever before as President, he was operating on pure gut instinct." (p. 409) Watch the interview … Book takeaways (NYT gift link).