Jonathan Swan, co-author of “Regime Change,” is interviewed by Axios CEO Jim VandeHei on “Behind the Curtain.” In this portion, Swan discusses President Trump’s increasing interest in foreign policy in his second term and his beliefs about how the world should run.

JIM VANDEHEI, AXIOS: I’m Jim VandeHei, CEO of Axios. I’m here today with Jonathan Swan, co-author of the new book, Regime Change, which is the best book ever written on Donald J. Trump. All right, let’s plunge in since we only have a half hour. Congrats, by the way. JONATHAN SWAN, THE NEW YORK TIMES, AUTHOR: Thanks, man. VANDEHEI: So, I was thinking about this, about Trump and how he’s different, and one of the things in your book, this idea about him being kind of captivated with being a great man, not just in America, but like a great man in human history. And I was thinking about that juxtaposed with, you know, when you and I went in to interview him in his first term, it was still when he had this obsession with polls, right? The only thing that would be sitting on his desk is a little stack of polling data. And when we went to see him in Mar-a-Lago, it was the same thing. So he went from this small ephemeral obsession to almost scraping that to what might be the grandest possible obsession you could have. Walk me through that. SWAN: Yeah, Maggie and I started noticing this pretty early on last year after he returned to power. Towards the end of the election, he really pushed himself to the physical brick. We have seen in our book where one of his aides with him, he momentarily fell asleep on his feet. I mean, he worked, I mean, for someone who’s almost 80 years old, he worked so hard in that final stretch of the election. And I think, again, based on our reporting, I think when he finished that election and then had that sort of two-month period in sort of the pleasure palace of Mar-a-Lago and everyone’s coming to him and facing him, he said a couple of times, you know, basically I’m done with rallies and we haven’t really seen him do any substantial domestic travel. He’s sort of become quite housebound. His aides have sort of tried to get him engaged in the midterm elections, interested in issues like the housing bill. As you can tell, he’s ostentatiously bored by all of these things. He won’t even make a pretense otherwise, he says it out loud. And so it’s not completely binary, it’s not that he’s like, oh, I don’t care at all if we lose the midterm elections, but in terms of his mind share, it’s just minuscule and it couldn’t be more of a contrast to the first term. Trump I think has always had innately a sort of 19th century colonialism sort of mindset about the world. I think he’s always been very comfortable in a spheres of influence world. When he looks at the map of the Western hemisphere and sees these large territories of land, Greenland, Canada, Venezuela, you know, one advisor also said something to the effect, I’m paraphrasing, but he doesn’t really regard them as sovereign countries. He looks at Venezuela as an oil field. And he admitted to us that he basically views it as America’s 51st state or wants it to be essentially admitted that he said that out loud now since then. But I think that’s how he views Delce Rodriguez now in Venezuela. He doesn’t view her as the leader of a sovereign nation. It’s essentially an American colony. And Greenland is territory that in his mind should be American. Canada, again, started people thought, Oh, is he trolling? Whatever. I’m not suggesting he’s going to go do some military. He’s not going to invade Canada. But is he serious about wanting to have Canada as part of the United States? Absolutely. And what’s interesting about that vision is in one sense, it’s grand. In another sense, it’s very small because for the last 80 years, America has led the free world and has been at the head seat of the table, built the whole architecture of the post-World War II order, led NATO. And where Trump’s instincts lead him essentially are a regional power. He would never say that. Of course, he would never say that. America is still the most powerful country on earth. But really what this comes down to is this is our neighborhood. And Xi Jinping, you have your neighborhood. Putin, you have your neighborhood. We have a scene in the book where he’s talking about Taiwan. And he holds up a little spoon and he said, this is Taiwan. And that’s how we’ve used Taiwan. I mean, by the way, I think a lot of Americans would share that view of why would we fight a war over this tiny island nation right near China? I think if Trump could guarantee a supply of semiconductors, we’d be very open to having a conversation about Taiwan. It’s not me thinking that. He’s made that pretty clear. He’s certainly intimated that and people around him believe that. So I think that’s how he views the world. And the difference in the second term is he’s basically living out in his presidency what he wanted to do or would have done in the first term if he didn’t feel under siege with investigations or if he hadn’t surrounded himself with advisors who thought that his worldview was detestable and dangerous.

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