Trump's 2020 election loss empowered second term: Haberman and Swan

Journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election was more beneficial to him than not and enabled him to have a powerful second term.

Haberman and Swan of the New York Times appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and discussed their new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, in which the co-authors examine Trump’s first year back in office following his defeat against former President Joe Biden.

The pair argued that Trump losing the 2020 election was a largely advantageous outcome for the president, as he was able to “continue grinding out any pockets of resistance to him in the Republican Party.” Being out of office and fine-tuning the GOP allowed Trump to enter his second term free of restraints, Haberman and Swan said.

“Remember, one of the first things that he did was start targeting the people who had voted to impeach him,” Haberman said.

“If he had won that election, he would have been hobbled,” Swan said of 2020. “COVID was raging, inflation was raging. Instead, Biden was the one who ate all of those conditions, and now the whole point of this book, the title Regime Change, is we’re watching presidential power expressed in a way that we haven’t seen in our lifetime.”

The authors also discuss in their book how Trump views the future of the Republican Party, particularly its chances of success in the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 elections, with Haberman and Swan concluding that “Trump could barely be stirred to even think about the midterms” based on their reporting and presidential coverage.

Swan explained it is not that Trump does not care about the midterm elections but that the people in his inner circle “wish he cared more.”

“There was a very revealing comment that Trump made last year when Republicans did extremely poorly in the off-year elections,” Swan said. “He said, ‘People have been saying they can’t win without Trump on the ballot,’ and he said, ‘That’s a great honor.'”

Swan also noted that the president does not want to be impeached again but that the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling, granting presidents broad criminal immunity, renders a conviction unlikely if not impossible.

Trump has taken issue with Haberman and Swan’s book, calling it “largely fiction,” as portions of the book are written based on closed-door briefings. He went after Haberman directly, referring to her as “Magot,” but did not mention Swan.

“Based on a very quick and boring briefing concerning the Magot Hagerman book about me, it is mostly made up, Fake News, largely fiction, as have been most of the things she has written about me for so many years,” Trump said in a late-night Truth Social post. “She is a third rate writer and intellect, who has made a first rate income because of your favorite President, ME.

“She was wrong about me on the Elections, although she knew I was going to win, BIG! She was wrong about me on the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and she was wrong about me on just about everything else. But she continues to spew out garbage, and people continue to buy it. REMEMBER, I WON THE ELECTION, BIG – ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, THE POPULAR VOTE, 86% of the Counties…And they don’t have the audio tapes that they imply they have. Just another Margot Con Job! And Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon!!!”