Leader of the 'free world'
A new book by two veteran New York Times journalists examines Donald Trump's "imperial presidency" during his second term
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 "Blueprint Bureau")
 "The book chronicles Donald Trump's second term and the emergence of what its authors describe as an “imperial presidency”.")
The book chronicles Donald Trump’s second term and the emergence of what its authors describe as an “imperial presidency”.
In his second term, US President Donald Trump has taken risks that have upended global markets and toppled heads of state. Two veteran journalists from The New York Times, who have covered Trump closely, write about his “imperial presidency” in their book. Here are some excerpts, with permission from the publisher, Simon & Schuster. It costs ₹999.
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Trump arrived at Mar-a-Lago for the Christmas holiday with the win-dow for the raid set to open within days. But the President had other business to attend to first. On December 22, he sat down at his private club with Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Reding Quiñones had just overseen the sentencing of Ryan Routh, the man who had lain in wait with a rifle in the shrubs along the fence of Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course. But Trump told advisors he was interested in a more pressing matter: Reding Quiñones’s investigation into possible conspiracy charges against a raft of Democratic officials involved in the Russia investigation that had engulfed his first term. The old grievances still came first.
“Holy shit,” the President said.
At 2 a.m., Saturday, January 3, 2026, Trump sat in his makeshift SCIF at his Palm Beach estate, staring intently at a monitor, watching the daring and intricate military operation unfold.
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Fourteen hundred miles away in Caracas, a coordinated attack that had been planned since Thanksgiving and exhaustively rehearsed since then was now underway. A Delta Force extraction team was moving in to seize the Venezuelan dictator.
As the assault unfolded in the middle of the night, there was no guaran-tee it would go as planned. Visions of another Delta Force mission, the April 1980 operation to rescue fifty-three Americans taken hostage in Tehran-an operation that had failed catastrophically-swirled in Trump’s head. Eight American commandos had been killed in Operation Eagle Claw, the country had been humiliated, and President Jimmy Carter himself had been subject to the taunts of the religious fanatic who was the new Iranian head of state, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who declared that the doomed American rescue operation was an act of God Himself. Similarly, a failed mission could make Maduro stronger.
The plan had been set and the team had been ready to go for more than a week and there had been a handful of aborted attempts. On some nights, the weather wasn’t optimal. On others,Maduro’s whereabouts couldn’t be determined with certainty. The CIA had been watching his every move for months, and he was switching up his routine. On a couple of nights, U.S. officials believed that Maduro was out partying and had slept away from his own compound.
“Holy shit,” Trump said again. Heavy black curtains enclosed him and his national security nucleus in the SCIF-now a provisional Situation Room-that had been constructed at Mar-a-Lago to allow him to monitor the operation with his team even as his resort home still brimmed with holiday revelers celebrating the new year. Inside the curtain, as the scene unfolded, General Dan Caine narrated the action for the senior officials assembled. Others in the room included CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and Stephen Miller.
The U.S. forces reached Maduro’s compound at Fort Tiuna in Caracas at 2:01 a.m. local time. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured and on board the USS Iwo Jima ninety minutes later. Trump posted a photo of Maduro, cuffed and goggled, wearing a gray Nike tracksuit. By nighttime, Maduro and Flores were in New York.
Trump had told several senior officials in his administration that he now wanted 75 percent of Venezuela’s oil profits in perpetuity. In her first pub-lic utterances after the operation, Delcy Rodríguez had condemned it as a “foreign-backed attack” and a “kidnapping” by the United States, and asserted that Venezuela “will never be a colony of any nation.”
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 "Blueprint Bureau")
First Published: Sep 10 2026 | 5:45 AM IST
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