President Donald Trump rang in the new year at his Mar-a-Lago winter home featuring a multimillion dollar painting auction and high-profile members of his Cabinet dancing and singing along to rap songs, according to a newly released book about Trump’s second term in office.
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New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan open their highly anticipated book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” by painting a picture of the opulent 2026 New Year’s celebration, just days before the U.S. would capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Rapper Vanilla Ice took the stage to perform his 1990 breakout hit, “Ice Ice Baby,” to a range of reactions from Trump’s Cabinet members and top advisers, the authors wrote.
Kristi Noem, then-Homeland Security Secretary who was frequently called “ICE Barbie” by critics, “threw herself” into the song “with relish, dancing for the cameras, arms pumping,” Swan and Haberman wrote.
In contrast, Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, “mouthed along to the lyrics, looking stiff and faintly pained, as if caught doing something undignified,” the book said.
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Secretary of State and anticipated 2028 presidential candidate Marco Rubio “put on a show for whoever had their phones out, singing along and dancing in his chair” to the house band’s rendition of Pitbull’s hit “Fireball,” according to the book.
The “highlight” of the evening was a speed painter who created a depiction of Jesus Christ on a canvas. As Trump played auctioneer and signed the painting, it would end up being sold for $2.75 million to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the local sheriff’s department, Haberman and Swan wrote.
The evening at Mar-a-Lago where Trump “behaved as though no force could touch him” was just foreshadowing of what was to come throughout the first half of 2026, said the book, which revealed the “norm-shattering” efforts from the “most powerful president of our lifetimes.”
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