Gen. Dan Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth operations in Venezuela, from Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday, January 3, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)
New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman gave a shocking revelation while speaking on MS NOW Monday evening. According to the two writers of a forthcoming book, there is an entirely different group of people in charge of major national policy than the experts.
Speaking to Lawrence O'Donnell late Monday, Haberman and Swan were promoting their forthcoming book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, which comes out Tuesday, the Daily Beast reported.
“The thing that was really notable about this White House, compared to the first one, is they keep talking about how they’re the most transparent White House in history,” Swan explained. “It’s a canard. They’re actually incredibly good at keeping secrets.”
According to Swan, “You have a tiny group of people that are running this country, five or six people and Donald Trump.”
“The war-planning group had been kept so tight that the two key officials who would need to manage the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright — were still not in the loop, one day before the launch of the war,” Haberman and Swan note. “Nor was the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.”
It isn't unusual to keep war-planning meetings small, but those in attendance generally have military experience. That wasn't the case in the Iran planning, which likely speaks to why so many important consequences weren't gamed out ahead of time.
The authors say that those in the room plotting the war were Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Counsel David Warrington, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, State Secretary Marco Rubio and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine.
Not on hand were Bessent and Wright, who likely would have lent some comments about what would ultimately happen to global oil markets if the Strait of Hormuz were closed. Reducing costs on food and fuel were key pieces of Trump's 2024 promises.
Another detail O'Donnell read from the book is that in the middle of the disastrous Iran war, Trump welcomed the two authors into the Oval Office, where he was picking out trees for the White House grounds.
"I know how to pick out good trees," he told them. He then bragged about his views on TikTok and began showing off his "grand ballroom" designs. Behind the scenes, aides told the authors they wish Trump was more concerned about his plunging poll numbers and "the dangers he was courting."
According to the staff, Trump isn't "receptive" to polling or to bad news in general. So, they simply don't tell him.
"He [is] willing to take breathtaking risks, risks that could throw not only his presidency but the Republican Party and the entire world into chaos and carnage. More than ever before as President, he was operating on pure gut instinct. It would take a combination of mind reader and psychologist to explain fully why Trump was willing to gamble so much more recklessly now," the book continues.
His confidence in himself and his instincts had ballooned, and more often than not, he feels "vindicated."
"Then there was the fact that he was a walking moral hazard, rarely saddled for long with the costs or consequences of his risk-taking and rule-breaking. Now was his moment to try things, like military adventures and overthrowing the global trade system," the authors cautioned.
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