U.S. President Donald Trump called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “con man” and promised Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson during a joint meeting in the Oval Office that the United States would not go to war with Iran because a regional confrontation would destroy his legacy, according to the new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, which was published this week.
According to the book, "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," Trump initially said he wanted “no part of Netanyahu’s war with Iran,” but changed his position after a meeting in the Situation Room in which Netanyahu presented Israel’s arguments. CNN reported that the authors noted the term “con man” is considered one of the harshest insults in the president’s lexicon.
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Trump called Netanyahu a 'con man', one of his harshest criticisms
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The book also details that the president was both “fascinated and horrified” by Israel’s pager attack against Hezbollah in September 2024. In the Oval Office meeting, Trump described at length to Musk and Carlson severe injuries that included severed genitals and missing hands, and said one survivor “looked like a great white shark came and just took a chunk out of him.” The authors wrote that Trump repeatedly said, “It’s terrible, terrible,” and expressed astonishment at “the indiscriminate nature” and “recklessness” of the attack in a public space.
In the same meeting, according to the book, Musk was “mesmerized” by the golden pager Netanyahu had given Trump as a gift, while the president himself asked Carlson for advice on how to influence “the base,” his right-wing supporters. Carlson scolded Trump for refusing to attack Netanyahu over what he called “the slaughter in Gaza” and said the Israeli prime minister was pushing the United States into a war with Iran that would destroy his presidency.
Trump boasted to the two men about a document stating that his power was greater than that of leaders such as Stalin, Mao and Hitler. According to the authors, he claimed the document had been written by a presidential historian, but it later turned out to have been written by the personal caddie of golfer Gary Player.
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US President Donald Trump and Ukrainine President Volodymyr Zelenskuy meet at the White House
(Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
Additional accounts cited in the book from the White House describe Trump gluing gold decorations in the Oval Office with superglue, because he trusted only his own aesthetic taste; cursing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whom he said had gone soft, and calling him a “pussy”; and describing the televised confrontation in front of the cameras with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “better” television than “The Apprentice,” the reality show long associated with him.
The Times journalists Haberman and Swan also reveal in the book the attempt by the president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to ingratiate himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During a meeting held last year at the Kremlin, Putin scribbled on his personal stationery. Witkoff asked him what he had drawn, and Putin lifted the paper, on which “3+2” was written, shorthand for the territorial framework Witkoff had discussed with him in an effort to stop the fighting with Ukraine. Witkoff asked the Russian leader: “Can you sign this for me and I can take it home?” Putin signed the drawing, and Witkoff framed it in a black frame now displayed in his home.
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Vice President JD Vance talks to reporters at the White House
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Another excerpt from the book, titled "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," describes tensions between Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, after the U.S. strike in Iran. According to the report, Trump was angry that Vance had not precisely adopted his wording that the strike had “completely destroyed” Iran’s nuclear program, and told his aides that everyone should simply repeat what he says.
Vance, who was interviewed after the strike, said he was not sure what the difference was between “severely damaged” and “destroyed,” but stressed that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back significantly. According to the book, the vice president appeared worried after the strike, and advisers believed he feared further escalation. When he tried to suggest to Trump that he soften parts of the speech about the operation, the president replied: “I know what I’m doing,” turned around and did not continue the discussion.
The book also deals with the way the White House tried to handle the Jeffrey Epstein affair in the summer of 2025. According to Haberman and Swan, senior administration officials, including the vice president and chief of staff Susie Wiles, held several crisis-management meetings in the White House Situation Room, amid fears of leaks about the way the administration handled the Epstein materials and against the backdrop of Trump’s previous ties to the convicted sex offender. Trump himself, according to the authors, wanted the affair to disappear from the agenda and was angry that it was being discussed at all, while his aides tried to formulate a response line without him.
Vance said in the discussion that this was a major problem and pushed for the materials to be released quickly, out of fear that Congress would force the administration to do so. At the same time, he raised an unusual idea: trying to arrange a Tucker Carlson interview with Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, in the hope that she would say Trump had not been involved in wrongdoing in the affair.
According to the reports, the White House even considered the possibility that Justice Department lawyers would question Maxwell and publish the transcript of the questioning, and the possibility of a pardon also was raised. But communications director Steven Cheung warned that a pardon for Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking teenage girls, would be a public relations disaster.