Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-08-18 Tuesday

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Democracy Now! Tuesday, August 18, 2026

This is Democracy Now. This term is almost unrecognizable to term one, and we are looking at not just a remaking of a Trump presidency, but a remaking of what the U.S. presidency looks like, both domestically and abroad. Regime change inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. We'll be joined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. She's been covering Donald Trump since the 1990. often referred to as the Trump whisperer. We'll talk with her about the White House war room freakout over the Epstein files. Trump's decision to wage war against Iran? And who was on that secret

flight with Trump out of Turkey and more? Then to Gaza, as President Trump's son-in-law and envoy, the billionaire builder Jared Kushner, hold separate meetings with Hamas and the Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We have a plan to rebuild Gaza, but we will not allow Gaza to be rebuilt until the demilitarization occurs. Nobody wants to put more money into a place that's gone on for so long until if it's just going to be taken over by terrorists or blown up again. We'll speak with political analysts, Muin Rabani. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

The White House said Monday it would not seek to extend a memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran as the 60-day ceasefire deal expired without an agreement to end the war. In Washington, President Trump called on Tehran to, quote, put up the white flag of surrender, unquote. While Iran's foreign ministry said Tehran would shift to a fully offensive military posture after the U.S. repeatedly violated terms of the agreement. The negotiations never began because the United States committed gross and widespread violations of the text of the MOU, just a few weeks after signing it on June 18. And therefore, the 60-day discussion is basically no longer relevant. In Yemen, fighters with the Houthi movement said Monday, they'd launched a missile attack on a Saudi ship in the Red Sea. The latest such strike since the Houthis declared a maritime bloat.

lockade on Saudi Arabia last month. The Houthis control roughly a third of Yemen's territory. The United Nations warns recent attacks by the group have killed at least 17 civilians. A major ecological disasters unfolding in Oman, where a massive oil spill has spread to over 2,000 square kilometers, has begun fowling beaches. The oil spread largely unchecked for weeks after a tanker carrying 800,000 barrels of Russian crude ran aground in a protected Marine Reserve following an unexplained attack on the vessel in June. This comes after President Trump Monday threatened to, quote, bomb the bleep out of

Oman if it gets in the way of U.S. efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, crude oil futures climbed to over $90 a barrel Monday following reports that Iran had seized a UAE-owned tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. gas prices have seen. said a mid-August record and stalled talks with Iran, with a national average at $4.6 a gallon. The U.S. Navy says a guided missile destroyer spent four days adrift in the South China Sea last month, after an engineering failure left the 10,000-ton warship unable to maneuver under its own power. The breakdown left sailors aboard the USS Benfold without easy access to food, water, toilets and air conditioning. The news comes as the Pentagon's under scrutiny over reports of low morale and mental health crises impacting sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which has been deployed continuously for nine months supporting President Trump's attacks on Iran.

On Monday, Trump downplayed reports about poor conditions on the Lincoln, including rationed food, multi-shower shortages of basics, including soap and deodorant. Trump insisted the Lincoln is, quote, beautifully maintained. and beautifully taken care of, unquote. Meanwhile, Trump lashed out at CNN reporter Kristen Holmes when she asked whether North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had personally requested the U.S.N. Joint Military Exercises with South Korea. Mr. President, Mr. President, he's just to scale back on those. Quiet. Quiet. You're very disrespectful in front of this young man. Okay. Don't you find her disrespectful? He understands. Quiet.

Who are you with? I'm with CNN. Fake news. I just wanted to follow up on the South Korea question. You're a loud boisterous person. You're fake news. I was trying to find out if you had been talking to Kim Jong-un if he had asked you to scale back on those military exercises. Israel's militaries carried out fresh air strikes and mortar attacks on southern Lebanon after weekend air strikes killed at least 11 people, including children.

A U.N. spokesperson warned of an alarming surge in violence. As the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in Lebanon said, it recorded an average of 137 projectiles fired daily into southern Lebanon by Israel over the last two weeks. We are witnessing both from our humanitarian and peacekeeping colleagues, alarming and concerning intensification of violence in the southern part of the country over the weekend. This which also includes civilian casualties on the Lebanese side. Some of this violence has displaced families from America. areas where they had only recently returned, prompting them to seek safety elsewhere. President Trump's son-in-law and envoy, Jared Kushner, held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. The meeting did not lead to an agreement for Israel to implement

a framework that Hamas previously agreed to. This is Kushner speaking to Fox News. We have a plan to rebuild Gaza, but we will not allow Gaza to be rebuilt until the demilitarization occurs. Nobody wants to put more money into a place that's gone on for so long until if it's just going to be taken over by terrorists or blown up again. Hamas had agreed to disarm as part of the U.S.'s 15-point plan, but Israel rejected that proposal. Israel's been conducting near daily attacks on the Gaza Strip, despite last year's so-called ceasefire, killing more than 1,200 people since October. This comes after Israel's far-right national security minister at Tamar Ben-Gavir, used a podcast interview with a freed hostage, Ram Braslovsky,

to demand a kill quota in Gaza. This is Ben Gavir. It's no secret. I disagree with the prime minister. I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night. Not just those who pose an immediate threat. There are people there who are not worthy of life.

They shouldn't live. They're not even people. The comments drew condemnation, even from staunch defenders of Israel, like Nevada's Democratic Senator Jackie Rosen, who said, quote, anyone advocating for acts of violence against innocent civilians should not be in an official government position. I believe Ben Gavir must resign. And I urge Prime Minister Netanyahu to denounce these remarks and reaffirm to the world that this is not the government's position, Senator Rosen said, in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has amplified messages comparing New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani to authoritarian leaders from the Middle East. On Sunday, Netanyahu posted an image showing a new Lakoud Party campaign billboard towering over a Tel Aviv highway that places Mamdani shoulder to shoulder with Turkish President Recep Tayy, Erdogan, Iran's supreme later much to Bahamani, and the Hezbollah chief, Naim Qasem. The four appear under the Hebrew slogan, they want Netanyahu to lose. Don't let them win, unquote. Israeli elections are scheduled for October 27th. In Florida, voters head to the polls for primary elections today with progressive challengers looking to unseat powerful incumbent Democrats.

In Broward County, union organizer Oliver Larkin, is seeking to upset Congressmember Jared Moskowitz. Larkin is a member of Democratic Socialists of America who supports Medicare for all. in an NTOS weapons transfers to Israel. Moskowitz has heavy support from donors associated with APAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as well as the Artificial Intelligence Super PAC, leading the future. Elsewhere, Democratic Congress member Debbie Wasserman Schultz faces a crowded field as she seeks a 12th term in Congress.

Wasserman Schultz is running in the newly redrawn 20th District in southeast Florida, which is heavily African American. She faces four black primary challengers, including progressive Elijah Manley, a Democratic socialist campaigning on universal health care and a federal jobs guarantee. Wasserman Schultz led Democratic National Committee during Hillary Clinton's failed presidential bid in 2016. Wasserman Schultz resigned in July of that year after WikiLeaks revealed DNC staff favored Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the primary. Meanwhile, President Trump voted by mail in Florida's Republican primary, despite repeatedly attacking mail-in ballots and signing an executive order earlier this year to curb voting by mail. In Southern Texas, the Trump administration said Monday it had temporarily paused construction of a section of border wall in the Big Ben National Park. Customs and Border Protection, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, said he would personally conduct an on-the-ground evaluation of the site after,

construction crews were filmed bulldozing pristine desert wilderness, prompting fierce criticism from environmentalists. In a statement, campaigner Lake in Jordal of the Center for Biological Diversity accused the Department of Homeland Security of lying about border wall construction in big men, adding, quote, we won't rest until the contracts are canceled, the waivers of law are rescinded, and the bulldozers are sent packing for good, unquote. For the second time, the Supreme Court's turned down. Donald Trump's effort to undo the 2023 jury verdict, holding him sexually liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll and later defaming her. The justice has issued a one-sentence order Monday denying his request for a rehearing with no explanation and no noted

dissents. The ruling leaves the more than $5 million civil judgment intact. A New York judge pushed back Luigi Manjone's state murder and weapons trial Monday over the 2024 killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. This comes after Manjune pleaded guilty last Friday to federal stalking charges. He's pleaded not guilty to the state charges. His lawyers are arguing that he should not be punished for the same crime twice. The judge gave prosecutors until October 9th to answer his motion and scheduled his next court appearance for December 10th. In Las Vegas, opening statements began Monday in the murder trial of Dwayne Davis, nearly 30 years after Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot near the strip.

Prosecutors told jurors that a gang war in Compton drove the killing and that Davis orchestrated it as revenge for an attack on his nephew. This is prosecutor Binu Palal. Dwayne Davis has repeatedly told us over and over again about the anger he felt and his own role in the revenge drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur. And now, nearly 30 years later, we're going to ask you to finally hold Dwayne Davis accountable. Tupac Shakur was the son of Effeney Shakur, a prominent activist and member of the Black Panther Party.

And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. coming up, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on her new book regime change inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. Stay with us. The Reckoning by Zach Lemon and Alexander Rudd. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Mimi Goodman. We begin today's show looking at secrecy in the Trump White House.

We're joined by the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times. Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who's been reporting on Donald Trump since the 1990s, often called the Trump Whisperer. She is co-author of the new book, Regime Change, inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. She and her co-author, New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan, give an inside look at how the Trump administrations handled many of the biggest crises of his second term. From the Epstein files to Trump's decision to wage war on Iran. Haberman and Swan report many key decisions are made by Trump, along with a tight-knit group of five to six people in the room with him. Haberman has also been reporting on many recent controversies involving Trump, including the

decision to fly the president out of a recent NATO summit on a secret plane due to an alleged Iranian threat. Trump had arrived in Turkey on the newly refurbished Boeing 747-8 jet, gifted to him by Qatar. But on his departure, he was seen boarding the older Air Force One. But then the Secret Service used a catering truck to secretly transfer Trump to a military jet. Well, to talk about all of this and more, we're joined by Maggie Haberman. It's great to have you with us. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Before we start with regime, change. Let's start with this story. But I actually want to start before he got into that older U.S. Air Force One. To the subpoena, to the New York Times reporters, your colleagues, for the

earlier story that the U.S. Air Force One that was gifted to Trump, and I say Trump, not exactly the United States by Qatar, wasn't militarily prepared to protect him. And then the Trump administration was so angry that they subpoenaed the reporters and family members. A judge knocked that down. They withdrew their subpoenas. But I was wondering if you think that what they were really concerned about the Trump administration is the second part of the story is when he went on to that second jet, in fact, he didn't fly out on it and that it would be discovered that, you know, he was secreted onto a catering truck and went on to a third plane. Entirely possible, Amy, and there's so much we still don't know about this entire

episode. What we do know is, as you said, those subpoenas that were issued to my colleagues for doing their job, the procedure and process by which they came about, the judge that was handling the matter condemned how the Justice Department dealt with it. You know, subpoenas are not new to reporters, as you know, but this is not how it is supposed to be handled. It's not supposed to be within the first 24 hours of a story. It's supposed to be the last stop. President Obama did a lot of subpoenas, but not in this way. And, you know, the efforts to try to chill reporting, while not, you know, specific only to the Trump administration, this was a new level of intimidation. And what exactly they were looking at and trying to stop from getting out,

I think that we have yet to learn. But I do want to point out to your viewers that the whole reason that the public was aware that the president was not flying out on that Katari plane was because he said it. He put it on Truth Social, his social media site, that he was going to fly the older Air Force one for quote unquote old time's sake. And anybody who has followed him found that rather hard to believe. But he puts this out and then they're surprised that reporters asked about it. Anyway, there's so much about this whole episode that we don't know yet. And then explain what happened coming. off that plane onto the third plane. Who was with him and who wasn't?

Trump, as you saw, made a display of going into the older Air Force One. He waves. There had been a pool camera. I think ABC News was the pool camera that day, set up just to capture what appeared to be a routine departure from the NATO summit at the Ankara airport. The president and a couple of aides were then taken, it appears to be directly across to the other exit on this 747 to a a catering container that was on a hydraulic lift, and that secrets them to the military jet, where Pete Hegset, the Secretary of Defense, boarded himself, very visibly, it appears to have been part of the ruse, the people who the president took with him, and there may have been others, but these are the ones we know about. The White House has refused to answer any questions about any of this.

were Natalie Harp, who is his ever-present aide, who is known as the human printer, as Jonathan and I described at length in regime change, that, you know, she's, she alarmed the Secret Service during the campaign because she left him these adoring letters in his personal spaces in his private quarters, one of which said, you are all that matters to me. She prints out pieces of good news for him and searches on the internet for information he wants to see. She is an alternate channel for reaching the president. And how do you know about that note? You're all that matters to me that she left for Trump.

We obtained it without getting into more detail. So Trump got very upset about being asked about this. On Sunday, the Democratic Senator John Ossoff of Georgia taunted Trump for his taking his aide, Natalie Harp, on the secret flight out of Turkey. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. So the president was then asked about Assoff's comments on Monday.

John Alsup said you'd rather travel with your aide Natalie Harp and build the ballroom than do your job as president. What is your response? John Ossef? You mean Peewee Herman? Peewee Herman look alike? No, I would much rather do other things. things. It's a, we're building a great facility here. We're fixing a White House that hasn't been taken care of. So that was the president responding. And as you say, Maggie, you write extensively about Natalie Harp and regime change. Tell us more about her and why you think Assoff's raising this and

her name is being raised at this point. And what it meant for her to be one of the few people on this third secret playing with him. I'll work backwards. Natalie Harp is essentially a body person for lack of a better way of putting it, but she is, I described her as something like a human binkie a couple of days ago. And that really is what she is. You know, he describes her as we report in the book to staff as, you know, somebody who loves him as much as his wife and children. And he would say to AIDS, you'll all go off and make money, you know, she's never going to leave me. That's one. Walt Nauta, who is his actual body guy, also now the head of the Oval Office, whatever, he has some official title. Who was indicted?

Trump's co-conspirator are indicted in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Dan Scavino, who has been with Trump forever, started out as a caddy at his Westchester golf course. Those are three very personal aides. They also do deal with his social media piece. And then Pete Hegseth. So what it tells us is that these are people who Trump would find most comfortable to be around him, who could give him certain species of information. Again, we don't know exactly why.

But I'm not surprised that AASA focused on this, because A, Natalie Harp is everywhere. She literally is in almost every Oval Office meeting. She was there when Jonathan and I went in to interview the president as a fact-checking interview for this book. And she was the one who handed us this document that he said was by a historian. It, in fact, was a former golf caddy for Gary Player who had described Trump as the most powerful person ever to walk the planet and compared him to history's best-known despots and monsters and conquerors separately. Assoff, I believe, was trying to get a reaction, and he did. And the White House bit, and he was obviously making an insinuation.

It goes further than our reporting. Trump was traveling with other people. But she's a taxpayer-funded staffer. It is not inappropriate to get asked a question about her by a reporter. And the president, all he did was draw further attention to this and how he handled that. And, of course, attacking Kristen Holmes at CNN, who, and he, I mean, he so often attacks women reporters. Your response, they are all your colleagues,

our colleagues. Look, a couple of things. I mean, he has attacked many of us for a very long time. He has expanded his roster of who he is attacking in this particular term. He is, you know, almost everybody who writes something he doesn't like or even asks something he doesn't like gets, say, you're dumb, you're ugly, you're, I can go on and on and on. He does attack men, too, with women. It is always about their looks. The Kristen Holmes, a

attack. First of all, Caitlin Collins does an incredible job, and she is basically alone in there every day because this White House has taken control of the media pool that covers him. It used to be decided by the White House Correspondents Association. Now they pick the outlets. And so Caitlin or Kristen will be asking a serious question. And the person who asks after them is, you know, an influencer who says something to the effect of Mr. President. Why are you so fantastic? It used to be that reporters would back each other up. It's so much harder now. And so So the Kristen Holmes attack in particular, reporters don't want to be the story. One of the things that was really very jarring about what this White House did yesterday, and this wasn't the president directly, but it doesn't matter. It was some social media account from the White House raising her children and attacking her using her children and saying that your children will be ashamed of you. It's really something for a White House that was making a point of the fact that its press secretary, who is a young mother, is leaving in part because she wants to take time with her children. is going after a female reporter using her children. Children should be off limits,

no matter what, they're going to attack us, whatever we do. This was a different level. Why doesn't he attack you? I mean, yes, he's called you maggot and other names, but actually, you've been covering him for decades. And you get a personal sit-down interview with him. Yeah, but I think there's a, so I was thinking about this when you use the Trump whisper phrasing, which is a comment or whatever, a description of me that I wish I had pushed back on years ago when he first. Because it suggests a level of personal engagement that just doesn't exist. It confers an intimacy that just doesn't exist. And it also confers a sort of, I'm, as opposed to just sort of interpreting and covering someone that there's some kind of a level

of like, you know, resputening, which is preposterous. I'm a reporter. He is my, subject who I cover, I have covered any number of politicians over the last 20-some-odd years, going back to the 1990s, many of whom did not like my coverage. They just did not handle it like this. In terms of the me of it specifically, it is largely about being at the New York Times. He really is obsessed with the Times uniquely. But I did cover him, you know, before he was a candidate. I did cover him for a long time. I covered his, you know, quasi-run in 2011. I worked at the New York post. There is a New York of it that is real. But that is what it is. Jonathan and I have both had very little contact with him directly this term. We actually did have to go to him directly to ask for this

interview, but not because we wanted to open mic night with Donald Trump. We wanted to do a fact-checking interview, and it was quite revealing. I mean, there's so much here. For example, talk about the use of the war room, as you describe it both in a piece in the Times Magazine, but all. also in your book, inside the White House freak out over the Epstein files. Yeah, the Times Magazine headline was, I think, pretty precise. So we describe in this book a handful of what were many meetings in the White House Situation Room, which is a meeting where presidents have, and it's a series of conference rooms, but there's this large conference room that people have seen pictures of presidents sitting in. The complex itself is

where President Obama monitored the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. It is where presidents have talked about wars. It is also what became essentially a crisis comms hub for the Trump team. Not the president. He was not in these meetings, but his team trying to deal with the general issue of the Epstein files, which Trump wanted nothing to do with. Trump obviously was very close with Jeffrey Epstein in the 1990s. He often talks about a falling out that we still don't totally understand in the 2000s. But his name was in these files, and some of that was public already. But he just didn't want to hear about it at all. And he had several people in his government who had repeatedly talked about transparency in these files once they got in office.

The problem is the president did not want anything to do with this. So they then were in these meetings trying to figure out what they could put out to the public, how to handle Galane Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate and girlfriend. And it ends up in these remarkable moments where they are discussing, among other things, you know, an uncorroborated secondhand allegation made to a reporter a decade earlier about Trump, you know, sleeping with a woman who in Jeffrey Epstein's house and that Trump had a nipple fetish and that he had clearly abused her body according to this secondhand account, which had already been public.

but this was the kind of thing they found themselves talking about in the situation room. It was not really in those meetings that we focused on about justice for these victims. Now, there were other discussions on that front, but that was not what this was. And talk about who was there? It was the top levels of the White House and the DOJ. It was the chief of staff, the vice president, Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, who they mostly all blamed for comments that she had made public. and how she handled it. Todd Blanche, now the Attorney General, then the Deputy Attorney General,

Cash Patel, the FBI director, Dave Warrington, then the White House Council. The list goes on, and that's a partial list. I mean, there's more than a dozen people. And it's so significant, Todd Blanche, given that he is the Attorney General now, the questions he was just asked by Christian Walker on NBC about whether he would be independent and he took great affront. He's the one who handled the Epstein files? He was the person who was overseeing the majority of how this was dealt with. Pam Bondi talked about that in House testimony. And while she was certainly present in a bunch of these meetings and aware of what was happening,

it is true that Blanche is who the White House tasked with this. And he was tasked with this because they believed that he would be, you know, clear with them about what was there and be clear with them about how they would move forward. There was a total eradication. of the norm of DOJ independence that has existed since Watergate. What this White House will say is it is an agency of the executive branch. There is no actual independence. In this case, the middleman just doesn't exist.

Talk about the briefing, Maggie Haberman, in the war room that Benjamin Netanyahu gave leading up to the U.S. Israeli attack on Iran. unusual this is. Right. This is an unusual meeting in the situation room, that large conference room, from the other end of the spectrum. This is actually about matters of governance. There are few things as important as how a president takes the country to war. And that is what this meeting was about. But this was a foreign leader sitting in the situation room. Trump normally sits at the head of that big conference table. And in this instance, in our reporting, and again, we get into this in detail in the book. This was really the last reporting we did for this book. Trump moved

to seat so they were sitting across from each other, which said something about Netanyahu and the level of respect that Trump was conferring on him. But we could not find any other example of a foreign head of state being present with the President of the United States in person for this kind of a meeting. And in this meeting, Netanyahu made the case for a regime change scenario, trying to pull the U.S. in. Various steps would happen. Various things were unlikely to, you know, be constricting, according to Netanyahu. He portrayed the Iranian regime as fairly easy to topple. And he played this video for the president in the conference room, which was of, you know, possible leaders who could take over, which most of the U.S. government did not take very seriously. Trump, however,

liked the sound of this. Trump, at the end of this presentation, said something to the effective sounds good to me. And while there were more conversations with his own government, It was clear to his own advisors how appealing this was to Trump. Trump was acting on instinct. This was after the Maduro raid in Venezuela earlier in the year. He believed the Iranian regime was a paper tiger based on how it had responded the previous year during the 12-day war. And the president basically ignored many of his own advisors and just went ahead. Do you think Epstein also drove some of this?

I mean, you had Epstein dominating the headlines in December. So then he attacks Venezuela, gets Maduro and his wife, wipes the headlines off, very successful for President Trump. Then they're creeping back in again in February. The whole operation is called Operation Epic Fury, which many dubbed Epstein Fury. What drives Trump? What drove him into the man who fought endless wars? We don't have reporting suggesting this was an active diversion. or an active distraction, although obviously Trump likes distractions, and we talk about that in the book as well.

We have a scene early on where they were looking at ways to wipe the controversy over an OMB memo that had gone out, you know, off the front pages. And one of the things they were talking about was, you know, let's talk about sending migrants to Gitmo. That was one possibility. So obviously he likes distractions, but we don't have reporting suggesting that this was the active method behind it. It almost doesn't matter, though. He was expanding his own power. That is the main focus for him now. So you have Netanyahu in the situation room.

And now you have Trump on this secret flight, and it turns out, I think it was the Washington Post-Expoise saying that the CIA didn't hold much stock in Israeli intelligence that Trump was being targeted on this plane. So we actually have different reporting on that. And again, this is all still emerging. But our understanding is that this is actually a separate. threat stream from what the Israeli government had been discussing. In real time, the CIA, according to our reporting, on what was motivating them to get the president out, did not have a confidence assessment one way or the other in real time. Now, they later, I think, looked at it and were less confident. But that was not, I think things are getting conflated here, but again,

we are all still trying to figure out what happened. We're talking to Maggie Haberman, co-author of regime change, let's talk about the inner circle. Talk about people like Stephen Miller, how he rose to power, how important he is to Trump, what this immigrant crackdown is all about. Talk about the Rubio Vance competition to succeed President Trump. I thought it was interesting that Rubio was on the plane that possibly was targeted. He was left on the plane. And it then turned out that Trump is telling people behind the scenes that he's for Vance now? Trump is quite capable of saying different things to different audiences, as you and I both know, and I think that that will continue. I think that if Vance is likely, you know, to be the nominee,

which at the moment he seems like he will be, Trump will get with him. I don't think Trump is going to make it easy for Vance or anyone who is the Republican nominee, because Trump does not like attention shifting elsewhere. And Trump's legacy is less about policy in his mind. It's about Trump. So that's one piece of... Do you think have allowed the elections to continue? I do. I don't have reporting suggesting otherwise, but there's a difference between, you know, A, there are limits to what he can actively do, as you know, to take over elections in states. That doesn't mean that there won't be, you know, efforts to try to get involved somehow. We've already seen that. In Minnesota, in the middle of these killings of Alex Pready and a few weeks

before that, Renee Good earlier this year. The DOJ, then run by Pam Bondi, was saying, well, you know, we can, we'll pull back the agents, the federal migrant forces, immigration forces, just give us your voter rolls and so that we can take a look at them and see what's there. So I expect we will see more of that. In terms of Stephen Miller, he is the most powerful White House advisor, arguably over, you know, the last few decades, probably in modern history. He is dual-headed. He is the Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Policy. He is also the Homeland Security Advisor. Even those two titles do not really explain the level of his power.

We got into his background, who he is, how he grew up. We were trying to make clear who these people are and what drives them in this book. Miller is fundamentally important to understand for Trump in general. But he came up in California, in a very liberal enclave in Santa Monica. And he was listening to Rush Limbaugh. He has been talking about undisputed. documented immigrants for decades, and his vision is a restrictionist immigration policy. He is more hawkish than Trump on this matter, but on this topic, but Trump just doesn't stop him most of the

time unless it gets negative attention in the press, and then he will pull him back like after Minnesota. But that was extreme. This immigration crackdown is what it looks like. It is about restricting who comes into the country and who can keep living here. And there is so much happening on this front that, you know, everybody across the media, I think, at the mainstream outlets, and not just mainstream outlets, are doing a lot of coverage. And there is still so much happening on so many fronts that we're not really fully seeing the full picture. Regime change inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. Talk about the title. So one of the things that occurred to Jonathan and me very early on, and this relates to actually

what we were just describing about Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller is one of the people who had spent the most time thinking about what a Trump 2.0 would look like, including how to put in lawyers who would help Trump get to a yes, not just help, but be willing to say yes and then figure out how to work the policy and the justifications later on. It was clear within the first three months that what we were covering was not, you know, Democrat to Republican transition or even Trump to Biden, and where Trump left Biden a handwritten note after January 6th, you know, and there were still some efforts to try to have some kind of a transition between the governments. This is a form of regime change in our own country. This is a reimagining of the U.S. presidency, an expansion of

executive power on a level we have not seen before in modern history in some ways ever. And we had come up with this title months before the Maduro operation. This was not about Venezuela. It was not about Iran. It happens to be true of those efforts too. But this is about the U.S. And the other people who surround him who are most important that we should be looking at? This is a government run by, as you said, about a half dozen people, give or take. Susie Wiles, Pete Heseth, Dan Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Radcliffe, director of the CIA, Steve Whitkoff, Trump's All-Purpose Envoy.

Jared Kushner does not have an official government role, but he is quite involved now. Scott Besant sometimes, Howard Lutnik, sometimes, that's about it. Jared Kushner just declared a billionaire. He's the billionaire builder, Trump envoy. And in fact, is that a benefit to Kushner not to have a portfolio exactly or be a paid employee? Because it means he just goes around the world like Steve Whitkoff. Some people, Trump is saying he's going to make peace. Other people are saying he's going to make money. Right. Well, and two things can be true at once. I mean, certainly in the case of Whitkoff, who actually does formally work for the government, whereas Kushner does not at all, Whitkoff and Trump and their children are partners in this crypto business. The self-enrichment of this administration is at an astonishing scale. And I think people were loath to really believe in Trump's world and among Republicans how much money mainstream media was describing him as making through these ventures.

Then he filed his personal financial disclosure form. And there it was. There is absolutely no precedent for this. You have been following Trump for decades covering Donald Trump. What has most shocked you? Covering Donald Trump in various ways and others, not a lot has shocked me, honestly. I mean, there is a lot of what we are seeing right now that is what I expected the first year to look like of 2017. And in some ways, what you are seeing now is what 2020 was set to look like after the impeachment trial.

where he was acquitted is the headline that he likes to hold up, and then COVID hit. And that changed everything about that year. This level of loyalty as the dominant factor, this level of vengeance and retribution as an animating theme, that is what I expected this to be for a long time. Have you been shocked by the lack of resistance? I have been shocked at the degree to which Congress in particular is just handing over its power, the House Republicans. I have been shocked at how tech leaders were, and we described this at length, many of whom had declared themselves Democrats before or had contributed to Democrat

causes, even if they were doing both parties. Just brought these. Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, you know, Tim Cook, although he had a relationship with Trump and Term 1, just bringing these tributes to him. I mean, we get into detail in this in the book. I would say the one thing I was really surprised by, honestly, if I have to look at it, was Elon Musk, which was that Trump essentially, it's been really memory hold, and we get into this a lot in the book, but Trump essentially made him a co-president. He wasn't exactly a co-president, but he was basically a co-president. And what Musk wanted to do was not always aligned with what other people in Trump's West Wing wanted to happen. So the first several months of this term were really hijacked by Doge and what Musk was

doing, again, some of which they liked. Musk also did things like get rid of a congressionally created agency in USAID, just got rid of it, gutted it. And the rump was taken over by the State Department and Marco Rubio, who was not thrilled to be doing this, that did surprise me. Trump only pulled Musk back after a meeting of my colleagues and I reported on where he was supposed to be getting a briefing on the China War Plan in the Pentagon in a room called the tank. It's a sanctuary of sorts. meeting with Hegside. Correct. And some others. But it was clear to Trump and what he was saying to his advisors that, you know, this was problematic. Conflicts-wise, Trump has problems when other people get him bad headlines for conflicts, less so himself and his family. Well, I want to thank you

for spending this time with us. Regime change inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. Maggie Haberman wrote this book along with Jonathan Swan. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org. She's also author of Confidence Man, the Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Coming up next, we look at President Trump's son-in-law and envoy, the billionaire builder, Jared Kushner, who held separate meetings with Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We'll speak with the political analyst, Mouin Rabani. Stay with us. America, New York

New York City of Palestinian Youth Choir. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. President Trump's son-in-law and envoy, Jared Kushner, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem Monday, after Israel rejected a 15-point plan for Gaza, promoted by President Trump's so-called Board of Peace. The proposal would have seen Hamas gradually disarm and turn over governance of the Gaza Strip to an international force in exchange for Israel's withdrawal. This is Jared Kushner speaking to Fox News. We have a plan to rebuild Gaza, but we will not allow Gaza to be rebuilt.

until the demilitarization occurs. Nobody wants to put more money into a place that's got on for so long until if it's just going to be taken over by terrorists or blown up again. Over the weekend, Jared Kushner held rare direct talks in Cairo with Hamas's political chief, Khalil Al-Haya, also joining the talks with the Egyptian president of al-Fatel-Ci, former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and Qatari, Turkish, and Egyptian mediators. Moss officials said Israel had violated the terms of the October 2025 ceasefire and that the roadmap agreed to last month was not open to changes. Israel's been conducting near daily attacks on the Gaza Strip despite the so-called ceasefire, killing more than 1,200 people directly. For more, we go to Montreal, where we're joined by Muin Rabani, Middle East analysts and managing editor of Jadalia.

His forthcoming book is titled Gaza Apocalypse. Welcome back to Democracy Now, Moim. Let's begin with what exactly these meetings have been about and what came out of them, beginning with who Jared Kushner is. Again, is not officially a government employee. Yes, I think as Maggie Haberman was just informing us, he's actually not part of the of the government. He has no official role, no official position, and therefore is essentially accountable only to his father-in-law, Donald Trump. He's also someone who is deeply invested, both literally and figuratively, in the Middle East. He relies to a very large extent on funding from

Gulf states and connections with various rulers and oligarchs and so on. for his business activities, but is also someone who is very deeply, intimately tied to Israel and its imperial project in the region. I mean, you know, his father, the current U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Kushner and Netanyahu have a longstanding relationship. And at one point, when Netanyahu used to visit New York, he would literally sleep in Jared Kushner's bed. So, you know, this is all a kind of very incestuous, uh, sorted, uh, background for someone to now pretend to play the role of, of a mediator, uh, between two different parties. It's really not on the cards.

And when you would say sleep in his bed, you mean the, uh, childhood home of, uh, of Jared Kushner. He, he, he would sleep in his bedroom, right? Um, uh, uh, well, I recall, I recall, I recall, all Netanyahu, I think, stating that he slept in Kushner's bed. No suggestion Kushner was in it as well. This is all pre-Ebstin. But, you know, the broader point is there's a very intimate, ideological, political connection between the Kushners and Israel. And then there is, in addition to that, a very intimate, active business and financial connection between Kushner and many of the states in the Gulf. So Axios reported Monday that Hamas leaders had committed to disarming

and demilitarizing Gaza. What does that mean in the near time? And can you talk about the significance of Kushner and other Trump officials meeting directly with Hamas? Well, the meeting, the direct meeting with Hamas is significant, but it's also not unprecedented. It was unprecedented at the beginning of the Trump administration when its envoy, Adam Bueller, met directly with Hamas officials, including Khalid al-Hia in Doha. And this caused such outrage in pro-Israeli circles that Adam Bueller has essentially been politically disappeared. But to get back to your question, What happened last month is that the Board of Peace, the self-proclaimed Board of Peace,

which sees itself essentially as replacing any other international institution and any other international resolutions dealing with the question of Palestine. The Board of Peace put forward a 15-point proposal. That proposal included two key points. The first is the decommissioning of Hamas heavy weapons. and various other aspects relating to Gaza governance in which Hamas would have absolutely no role. But the second point was that none of these commitments would need to be fulfilled unless and until Israel properly fulfilled all its commitments and obligations that it accepted in October of last year pursuant to the ceasefire agreement with Hamas. In other words,

Israel would have to stop its daily bombardments and killings in the Gaza Strip and actually observe a cessation of hostilities. It would need to allow the surge of humanitarian goods into the Gaza Strip pursuant to its obligations and so on. Israel then objected to this and acting through the board's point man on Gaza, the former UN envoy Nikolai Mladenov, essentially adopted some. key Israeli conditions, thereby revising an agreement that had already been agreed with Hamas. Subsequently, Netanyahu rejected what was in effect his own agreement.

And I think that move should be seen primarily in terms of the upcoming Israeli parliamentary elections in a few weeks in two months. And now Kushner has come to the region. First, he met with Hamas, and rather than reconfirmed the validity of the agreement that the board has already reached with the Palestinians, he's essentially trying to rewrite it. And then after his meeting with Netanyahu, he came out and emphasized Israel's what is called Israel's right to self-defense, meaning Israel will be under no obligation to observe any commitments regarding a cessation of hostilities. Israel would not be obliged to conduct any of its obligations unless and until Hamas was fully disarmed, meaning it even has to confirm that it no longer has any military infrastructure or even any light personal weapons. This is essentially Israel throwing a poison pill into an agreement by including conditions that can never be met,

because Israel can always claim, you know, there is still a Kalashnikov or a pistol or a slingshot and thereby indefinitely, in other words, permanently, postpone the discharge of any of its own obligations. And you can say Kushner fell for it or Kushner is complicit in this, but the result is the same. You have the far right national security minister, Tamar Ben-Gavir, a calling for nightly targeted eliminations of 30 or 40 people in Gaza. Interestingly, a number of news outlets associated press, Financial Times, Times of Israel, are reporting that Ben Gavir said not just those who pose an immediate threat. There are people there who are not worthy of life.

They shouldn't live. They're not even people making the remarks on a podcast. with a former hostage. Yeah, it's interesting that we have seen Israel's apologists, particularly in Europe and the United States, rushed to dismiss this on the pretext that Netanya, that Ben Gvier is some kind of freelancer who doesn't really play an important role. And therefore, these explicitly fascist statements, these explicitly genocidal utterances, can be somehow ignored.

He is the equivalent of, let's say, the head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or the British Home Secretary, if not more so. And for him to be making these statements, saying the quiet part out loud, because he knows he can say the quiet part out loud, and he knows there will be absolutely no consequences for making these kinds of statements,

I think, you know, that says a lot. And it says even more that he is making these statements in the context of an election campaign where he is assuming, in my view, correctly, that making such statements probably has an electoral benefit for him rather than placing him beyond the political pill in what is today is real. Mouin Rabani, I want to also turn to the U.S. Israeli war in Iran. The White House said Monday it would not seek to extend the MOU, the memorandum, of understanding with Iran as the 60-day ceasefire deal expired without an agreement to end the war Monday. In Washington, Trump called on Tehran to, quote, put up the white flag of surrender.

And at the same time, you have President Trump threatening Oman, reportedly threatening to bomb the rhymes with hit out of Oman, if it, quote, gets in the way of the U.S. blockade of Iranian ships in the strait of Hormuz when it has not been secret that Oman is negotiating with Iran to open the strait. Well, you know, this also ties into the previous part of our discussion. We are not only dealing with an exceptionally bad faith actor in Israel, but we are dealing with the United States whose statements, whose commitments are, whose agreements are completely unreliable, untrustworthy. We're dealing with an impetuous leader who will talk out of both sides of his mouth,

as in this case, threaten a close ally for performing its role of seeking to promote diplomacy. Look, no one expected that the 60-day term of the Iranian U.S. Memorandum of Understanding would result in a comprehensive agreement. I think many people, myself included, did think that at the end of this period, the U.S. and Iran would jointly agree to extend the term of the memorandum of understanding, to give diplomacy a chance. But I think at this point, we have to assume that a renewed full-scale military confrontation between Iran on the one hand and the U.S. and Israel on the other looks increasingly likely, if not inevitable. And that is the product of the, you know, crazy decision by Trump, which you discussed previously with Maggie Haberman,

to launch this war in the first place. And then back on Jared Kushner with Gaza, as they talk about the new Gaza and the new Rafa, and they talk about making the first contract for Moroccan. soldiers to come into Gaza to cordon off that area? We just have a minute. Well, again, you know, the decommissioning of Hamas heavy weaponry that was agreed in this 15-point plan was supposed to take place under Palestinian and international auspices. We're now talking about the total disarmament of Hamas directly under American auspices, a poison pill. And regarding your question about these Moroccan

soldiers. You know, we had been talking about an 8,000 man stabilization force, but no one wants to be part of this because no one knows what the details are. No one knows what the objectives are. And the plan keeps changing. And therefore, I think it's essentially a dead letter. Well, Muyn Rabani, we will, of course, continue to follow this. Thank you so much for being with us. Middle East analyst and managing editor of Jodalia. His forthcoming book titled, Apocalypse. That does it for our show. I'll be in Middlebury, Vermont on August 28th, to speak after the screening of T.Lesson and Carl Dale's film about Democracy Now called Steal This Story, please. Then in Madison, Wisconsin on September 5th, in Chicago, on September 6th,

and then in Bayshore, New York on September 17th. You can go to our website at DemocracyNow.org. for the screenings and the Q&A afterwards. I'm Amy Goodman. This is another edition of Democracy Now. DemocracyNow.org, the War and Peace Report.