White House wracked with 'high anxiety' over upcoming Trump book: report

The Donald Trump White House is bracing for impact from a potentially devastating new book set to publish mid-June. New York Times correspondents Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan — two of the most wired reporters in Washington with a proven track record of explosive Trump administration disclosures — have spent a lot of time investigating Trump's presidency, and the results are causing "high anxiety" in Trumpworld.

According to Axios founder Mike Allen, Trump's vicious mid-March attack on Haberman finally revealed what he was so desperate to suppress: the announcement of the book, titled "Regime Change," which examines Trump's "Imperial Presidency."

Trump's rage was unhinged. "Maggot Hagerman, just another SLEAZEBAG writer for The Failing New York Times, insists on writing false stories about me," Trump posted on Truth Social, threatening to add Haberman and her "associates" to his Florida lawsuit against the Times.

The timing wasn't coincidental. Allen noted that Trump's post lined up perfectly with an Oval Office interview Haberman and Swan conducted with the president in March — suggesting Trump was already aware of the book project.

The White House is now in full damage-control mode. Over the past few weeks, senior administration officials have been privately discussing leaks from Oval Office and Situation Room meetings to Haberman and Swan — including recent 2026 discussions — signaling panic about what explosive information might be contained in the forthcoming book.

The parallels to Trump's first term are unmistakable: previous bombshell book disclosures had his inner circle pointing fingers at each other in mutual suspicion and paranoia.

The publisher's description hints at the book's scope and ambition: "Regime Change" takes you inside secret deliberations of a president "who has fundamentally altered the nature of the office he holds — and, with it, how the rest of the world understands American power."

For a president obsessed with controlling his media narrative, the prospect of two supremely connected Times reporters publishing an in-depth examination of his presidency represents more chaos for an embattled White House.