Trump's Attack on Female Journalist Backfires After Book Exposes Secret Epstein Meetings, Elon Musk's 'Co-Presidency'

Donald Trump's latest attack on New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman has backfired in a very Trumpian way, putting fresh attention on a new book that claims senior aides held an Epstein fallout meeting without him and that Elon Musk briefly operated as a kind of co-presidential force in the White House. The row, sparked by Trump's Truth Social rant over the weekend, has only amplified the allegations in 'Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.'

The news came after Trump lashed out at Haberman, who co-authored the book with fellow Times reporter Jonathan Swan, calling the reporting 'mostly made up' and branding her a 'third rate writer and intellect' in a post that also misspelled her name twice. He did not attack Swan in the message, a small detail that says quite a lot about how these Trump outbursts tend to work, all fury and loose aim.

Trump and the Haberman Book Row

Haberman has been a persistent thorn in Trump's side for years, and the president's latest insult was hardly subtle, even by his standards. In the weekend post, he dismissed the book as a 'very quick and boring briefing,' before sneering that Haberman had made a 'first rate income' because of 'your favourite President, ME.' He first referred to her as 'Magot Hagerman,' then 'Margot,' before closing with a grand, stray line about Iran.

The book itself is making noise because it reaches into the machinery of Trump's second term, not just the usual swirl of palace gossip. According to The New York Times and the book's publisher, it draws on hundreds of interviews and describes how Trump's administration handled the Epstein files crisis, including a Situation Room meeting held without the president present. That alone is enough to set off the modern Trump ecosystem, which tends to treat any mention of Jeffrey Epstein like a live wire.

Epstein, Musk and the White House

The strongest claims in the book are the ones Trump is most likely to hate, and arguably the ones readers will care about most. The Epstein files allegedly 'caused a freakout' inside the White House for much of a year, with senior officials meeting as the issue spiralled. The book also says Elon Musk's financial support for Trump's 2025 election effort left him effectively functioning as a 'co-president' for four months.

That is the sort of line that lands hard in Washington and even harder online. It also explains why the book is travelling well beyond the usual political readership. Haberman and Swan are not writing about Trump from a distance. They have covered him for years, and the publisher says the book is built from reporting inside some of the administration's most closely guarded rooms.

Why the Story Sticks

There is also a darker thread here, and it is not just the Epstein material. The same book reportedly says Trump's White House considered suspending habeas corpus, a constitutional safeguard against indefinite detention without charge. That is not gossip, it is a serious claim about how far the administration was willing to go, and why people inside and outside government may have been rattled.

Trump's reaction, though, has done the opposite of what he likely wanted. Instead of shrinking the story, he has helped push it deeper into the news cycle, turning a book excerpt into a larger argument about power, loyalty and the appetite for control around him. In the old Washington rhythm, a presidential swipe might have blunted attention. In Trump world, it usually gives the thing another lease of life, which is rather mad, but there it is.

What happens next is fairly obvious. The book will keep circulating, the excerpts will keep leaking into the public conversation, and Trump will probably keep doing what he always does, attacking the messengers while making sure everyone hears the message anyway.