‘Regime Change’: This book about Donald Trump’s second term is essential, chilling reading

Not long after the Second World War, the Jewish, German-born political philosopher Leo Strauss coined the term reductio ad Hitlerum. It suggests that simply comparing something to Adolf Hitler does not inevitably taint it with the Nazi dictator’s terrible crimes. Hitler was a vegetarian, but that doesn’t make all vegetarians bad people.

When the internet arrived several decades later, attorney Mike Godwin updated Strauss. “As an online discussion grows longer,” he said, “the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler” increases.

These days, few are willing to compare anyone or anything to Hitler, for fear of invalidating their argument. This can have the effect of closing off comparisons that could be illuminating.

Nowhere is this more strikingly illustrated than in the closing scene of Regime Change – Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s excellent, glowingly reviewed book about the first year of the second Trump administration – in which the authors finally gain an interview with the president to fact-check the damning material they have gathered.

Haberman has been reporting on Trump since his New York property developer days, and Swan has covered both his presidencies. The New York Times journalists knew from experience that Trump had two main modes of dealing with journalists: silk-smooth salesman’s patter and outright bullying.

Days before their interview, Trump had unloaded on Haberman via his Truth Social site in personal...

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