‘Who’s the Rat?’: Jon Stewart Pressures Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan to Name the Leaker Behind Their Trump Book, but the Authors Refuse to Crack
‘We’re not going to talk about sourcing.’
Jon Stewart just put Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in the hot seat over their explosive new book about Donald Trump. The two journalists refused to budge on one critical detail: who leaked the secretly recorded Situation Room conversations that made the book such a bombshell.
The Daily Show host grilled the New York Times journalists during their Monday, June 22, 2026, appearance, pressing them to name the insider who provided some of the book’s most jaw-dropping revelations. Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump hit shelves Tuesday, but the questions around its sourcing have been swirling for weeks.
Reports suggest some of the book’s most explosive claims came from audio recordings of private White House meetings. According to The Daily Beast, Stewart didn’t hold back. “Without giving away the secret, who’s the rat?” he asked, leaning into the tension with a grin. The room laughed, but the question was dead serious.
Stewart even threw out names
The host guessed at possible leakers like Scott Bessent or Howard Lutnick, before pivoting to another theory. “Can I ask – when I read the book, honestly, there was a part of me that thought, ‘I bet Trump called them’,” Stewart said. “Like, he – some of this – is a lot of this information from Trump?” Haberman and Swan shut that down quickly.
Trump wasn’t in the meetings about the Epstein files, they explained, so he couldn’t have been the source. Those discussions happened without him because, as Swan put it, “They knew he didn’t want to talk about Epstein.” Haberman added that the meetings were held in private to avoid leaks. Stewart’s response? “How’d that go?” The joke landed, but the mystery of the leaker remained unsolved.
The authors weren’t just tight-lipped about their sources. They also dodged Stewart’s questions about whether the conversations were secretly recorded. “I am baffled that this administration, who is – they are so tight knit and so loyalist, that you would be able to glean this – did you have – was it on tape?” Stewart pressed.
Swan’s response was blunt: “Yeah. We’re not going to speculate or talk about that.” Stewart fired back, “I’m not asking you to speculate. I’m asking you to tell me.” The journalists laughed but stood firm, refusing to confirm or deny how they obtained the material. “We’re not going to talk about sourcing,” Haberman reiterated.
Writing the book was a grueling process for Haberman and Swan
What makes their silence even more valuable is just how hard the two seasoned journalists worked to get these details. In a separate interview, the duo revealed that reporting the book nearly broke them. “We really nearly killed ourselves during this book,” Haberman admitted, according to Reality Tea.
Over two years, they conducted around a thousand interviews, digging into the inner workings of an administration that Swan described as “incredibly good at keeping secrets,” despite Trump’s public claims of transparency. The result is a book that pulls back the curtain on some of the most chaotic moments of Trump’s second term, from his reported attempts to glue gold decorations onto the Oval Office fireplace to high-stakes decisions like the U.S. entry into the Iran war.
That war, according to the book, was so poorly planned that key officials like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright were left in the dark until the last minute. “Just think about this for a second,” Swan said. “The two people in the government that would have to handle the biggest energy shock in world history… weren’t in the room for the meetings that led up to this war.”
It’s the kind of detail that makes Regime Change feel like a fly-on-the-wall account of a presidency operating on instinct, with a small circle of loyalists calling the shots. But the book’s most explosive moments might be the ones that didn’t even involve Trump directly.
The Epstein files saga is a perfect example
The authors describe a White House scrambling to contain fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein controversy, with advisers holding meetings without the president because they knew he didn’t want to discuss it. Those are the conversations that reportedly ended up in the book.
Stewart wasn’t the only one curious about how they pulled it off. The authors themselves have marveled at the level of access they achieved, especially in an administration known for its secrecy. “There’s a reason that there hasn’t been a ton of inside-the-room reporting since last year,” Swan said. “It’s because it’s really f—ing hard.”
For readers, the book offers a rare glimpse into the chaos of Trump’s White House, but for the authors, it’s the culmination of a reporting marathon. The fact that they’re still refusing to name their sources speaks to how seriously they take their role as journalists. Whether the leaker was a disgruntled insider or someone with a conscience, Haberman and Swan aren’t saying.
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