President Donald Trump personally decorating the Oval Office with super glue, a panicked call from Barron Trump after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and White House officials holding Situation Room meetings about Jeffrey Epstein are among the more eyebrow-raising details contained in a new book from New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

In an excerpt published by the Times on Friday ahead of next week’s release of Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, Haberman and Swan recounted several unusual moments from Trump’s second term.

The Superglue

Among them: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reportedly walked into the Oval Office one morning to find Trump in the middle of a decorating project. According to the book, the president was using a tube of super glue to attach gold-colored ornaments to the room’s marble fireplace mantel. Haberman and Swan wrote that “the sight of the president squeezing glue onto gilded appliqués and mounting them on the wall himself surprised no one in his inner circle.”

Barron’s Call

The authors also described Trump’s reaction after the September killing of Kirk. According to the book, Trump first learned of Kirk’s death from his son Barron, who called his father in distress, worried about his father’s safety. Trump reportedly tried to calm him down, telling Barron, “Calm down, honey, calm down,” though the journalists wrote that the president appeared shaken as well.

Epstein Panic

Elsewhere, Haberman and Swan reported that senior administration officials spent considerable time discussing the political fallout surrounding Epstein. One official later described the experience of sitting inside the White House Situation Room — typically reserved for major national security crises — and discussing allegations connected to Trump and Epstein as “surreal,” recalling conversations about “Donald Trump and abused nipples.” Many of these details were previously made public in an excerpt-based report released last week by the Times.

Mocking Tech Titans

In another revealing moment, Trump reportedly boasted that powerful tech executives had changed their posture toward him after his 2024 victory. Reflecting on outreach from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Trump told Tesla CEO Elon Musk, “They hated me,” before adding, “And look at them now.”

“First-class groveling,” Musk replied, according to the book.

Rupert’s Take

The book also detailed an awkward White House dinner at which Trump asked media mogul Rupert Murdoch whether he preferred Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while both men were sitting at the table. According to the authors, Murdoch said Vance had “the potential to be great” but was more emphatic about Rubio: “Marco is brilliant.”

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