Trump’s Bid to Bury Embarrassing Book Backfires Spectacularly

A book filled with damning revelations about Donald Trump’s second term is on track to be the bestselling nonfiction work of 2026, despite the president’s best efforts to undermine it.

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The book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, has sold over 500,000 units since its June 23 publication and has topped the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list for three consecutive weeks, Axios reported on Wednesday. The figure includes hardcover, audio, and e-book sales.

“Based on a very quick and boring briefing concerning the Magot Hagerman book about me, it is mostly made up, Fake News, largely fiction, as have been most of the things she has written about me for so many years,” Trump, 80, wrote, intentionally using an insulting nickname for the veteran New York Times reporter.

He tore into Haberman, calling her “a third rate writer and intellect” without mentioning Swan.

According to Axios, Simon & Schuster has ordered a seventh printing of Regime Change, bringing the total number of hardcovers in print to 460,000. The publisher had already ordered an additional 150,000 copies on publication day to meet unexpectedly strong demand.

Keith Urbahn of Javelin, Haberman’s agency, described the book as “different.” It draws on more than 1,000 interviews with people close to Trump, including administration officials, according to the authors.

“Maggie and Swan pierced the veil of a White House that has been pretty locked down on scoops and scenes. ‘Regime Change’ is a unicorn of publishing. It goes well beyond political circles to people who are hungry for a narrative and frame to make sense of Trump 2.0. Even Trump and his team aren’t disputing the facts.”

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The book contains a plethora of embarrassing revelations, including that Trump is a “nighttime snacker” who leaves behind trash after late-night binges, that he is a “night owl” whohas bizarre sleeping habitsand struggles with sleep, that he has “trouble hearing”, and that he and first lady Melania Trump do not share a bedroom.

The authors also referred to the elderly president as an “inveterate hoarder” for turning what was once his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s office into a personal storage space filled with junk including “papers, paintings, tchotchkes, MAGA paraphernalia, and various gifts he couldn’t bear to throw away.”

Regime Change cast light on the 80-year-old president’s habit of holding impromptu popularity contests among his allies. Trump pit JD Vance against Marco Rubio during a private dinner in October 2025, asking media mogul Rupert Murdoch to compare the 2028 Republican contenders while they sat at the same table.

The authors also claim that during Trump’s second term, some of his aides began to say the president was “beginning to seem old.”

“Those who spent time with him could see the signs—the moments of fatigue, the cupped hand behind the ear.”

“That he had aged since he last lived in the White House was obvious. There were the repeated bouts of drowsiness during mid-afternoon public events. And there were the near-constant bruises on his hands, which his aides first attributed to marks from frequent handshaking. Trump, who usually tried to conceal the bruising with makeup, later said they were caused primarily by the unusually large aspirin regimen he took as a blood thinner,” the book said.

Responding to Trump’s criticism of the book as “boring,” “90% fake news,” and “garbage,” Swan wrote on X this month that Trump was welcome to join him for an on-camera interview “any time he wants.”

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The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.