With their latest book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Australian-American Jonathan Swan have written an “inside-the-beltway” account, as they say in Washington, for political nerds and Trump obsessives. It covers in intricate detail the first year of Trump’s second term in office. And, as one would expect from two journalists of their calibre, it is scrupulously researched and thoroughly sourced.

Up front the two authors announce that they conducted “more than a thousand interviews with a wide range of people close to President Trump”. These interviews were carried out “on the journalistic ground rule of deep background”. This is an arrangement whereby a source gives out information on the basis that it will not be attributed to them.

And it is this sourcing of interviewees, in particular from the intimate group of Trump’s most trusted and loyal buddies, that will fascinate journalists and the political cognoscenti. How on earth did the authors get such stunning access to the inner circles of his government, friends and associates?

The book is stuffed to the gills with Trump’s denigrating and indiscreet one-liners about world leaders and political opponents. It also contains what it calls “detailed scenes in sensitive locations” and some of the dialogue is in direct quotes, so one can only conclude that it was the very people inside the room who were leaking.

For example, in the meeting that planned “Operation Epic Fury”, the ongoing US military operation against Iran which began on February 28, the book recounts that the group “had been kept so tight that two key officials who would need to manage........

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