Trump Told Netanyahu Everybody, Including ‘All the Jews,’ Is Sick of Him
'Regime Change' is a devastating new book from two ‘New York Times’ reporters; an extraordinary account of American chaos and decline at the hands of a madman and his enablers. Read it and weep.
There are shocking headlines to be drawn from Regime Change, the new blockbuster by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, when it comes to Donald Trump and Israel. Of course there are. It’s an astonishing feat of reporting. Every page seems to contain something appalling about Trump’s second lunatic term.
Early on, Trump is shown meeting in the Oval Office with Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk. Musk is distracted, the then-billionaire man-child “transfixed” by a golden pager given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “staring at it intently, silently working it between his fingers like a Rubik’s Cube.”
“’Don’t push the button,’ Trump joked.”
It was February 2025. The president’s “joke” emerged from his fascination with Israel’s attack on Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon the previous September, using exploding pagers: an operation that killed at least 32, maimed more than 3,200, and was widely condemned as a war crime. Never mind pesky things like morality. As described by Haberman and Swan:
Trump then ‘regaled’ his guests ‘with horror stories of the destruction that the explosions had wrought. He had seen pictures, he said. Mutilated genitals and missing hands. He was horrified by the injuries, but fascinated as well, lingering on the scenes and the details. One survivor, he said, ‘looked like a great white came and just took a chunk out of him. It was like a shark bite. It was horrible.’ He grew voluble, repeating, ‘It’s horrible, horrible!’
If you were paying attention in season one, you may recall Trump’s view of sharks according to Stormy Daniels – “He is obsessed with sharks… Terrified of sharks… ‘I hope all the sharks die’” – and you may laugh. But this is season two, altogether darker. The scene continues:
And there was something else that captivated him. Many of the devices had detonated in public, and it was hard to know who was holding a pager when it exploded. The indiscriminate nature of the killing and maiming had shocked Trump, and while he was taken by the ingenuity, he showed a measure of disbelief at its recklessness. He seemed at once enthralled and horrified.
This man is president. And yet the book has many more worrying places to go.