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- [00:01]
Commercial Narrator
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- [00:27]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:44]
Joanna Michael
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- [00:58]
Michael
This, this, this totally alone figure without any kind of basic warmth. He functions essentially like an old time monarch who has married someone for political reasons as the as, as was done and there was really no pretense of a, of a, of a domestic life. He's generally regarded among his stat as post sexual. Here is a guy in the White House who has nowhere to turn, who has no comfort, who has no warmth, who is alone.
- [01:43]
Joanna Michael
Joanna Michael, did you just reverse how we introduce ourselves?
- [01:49]
Michael
I did because I was getting silence from you. I thought for us perhaps you had forgotten. I had not forgotten that we're doing a podcast.
- [01:57]
Joanna Michael
I had not forgotten, Michael. How could I forget? Because we're going to focus today.
- [02:01]
Michael
We have a favorite topic.
- [02:04]
Joanna Michael
We do have a favorite topic. Trump and the women. Trump and the women.
- [02:11]
Michael
Or I think even in a broader sense Trump and his personal life. Because that, I mean we sort of take it for granted that presidents have personal lives and they certainly put their personal lives to a great extent on display and seem proud of their personal lives. But Trump doesn't, I mean he doesn't seem to have a personal life. He really doesn't put it on display or when it is on display, it's on uncomfortable display. And he really is a man who by all appearance is alone in the White House. I mean and that kind of weird thing and I think this has sort of been a theme of his life to eschew a personal life that he is entirely a public man. He doesn't need to have anyone to tend to him, to comfort him to love him. And it is all about being a singular public person. Weird.
- [03:26]
Joanna Michael
Well, and one of the benefits of having a spouse or having a wife, given that it's only been men that have so far occupied the White House, is surely that in the middle of the night, when you are lying there, hopefully weighing up affairs of state, if you can't sleep, you have someone to talk to. But Donald Trump does not, as far as we know, have anybody to talk to apart from his endless friends on his speed dial. But he doesn't have, as far as we know, anyone intimate to talk to. So what does he do? He takes to Truth Social. And we've spent some time at the Daily Beast chronicling how little he sleeps by the time between his Truth Social posts. We know the average last month was 27 a day, most of which are sent out in the middle of the night. And we understand from previous conversations you've had with people in the White House that he's assumed to be post sex. So instead of having sex in the middle of the night, which you assume other presidents have done, he is Truth socialing.
- [04:31]
Michael
Well, even more importantly, so is in the middle of the night. He remains a public person.
- [04:36]
Joanna Michael
Right. Which is a great observation. Great observation.
- [04:39]
Michael
Lying in bed, he is the public man. So, I mean, there are two questions. You know, what's the impact of being so alone? Must be. It must. It does have meaning. And how has he, remember, he's elected with the support of the Family Values political constituency, gotten away with what surely seems to be a wholly cynical regard for his wives and family?
- [05:10]
Joanna Michael
So, as you say, he's still a public person in the middle of the night. We know this because he's on Truth Social talking to us, talking to his audience, talking to the world. But there's no Melania there. Very clearly.
- [05:28]
Michael
Yeah, no, I mean, there's. I mean, clearly we know that she just made a whole movie about basically not being there. I mean, she is that vacancy and central question mark mark in this White House. And, you know, I mean, you can't. You can't miss this question mark. She isn't there. She isn't by his side. You know, we went through the 2024 campaign and she was never there. Not until actually the final week did she make one appearance. Even at the convention, she refused to be at his side. So this was, you know, I think we can safely say this was hostility.
- [06:18]
Joanna Michael
Well, and there was also the moment when she appears by his side in the convention. He looks incredulous that she's turned up he looks like he's surprised to see her there.
- [06:30]
Michael
And even then she's only on the stage with other people. And so prior to this, and this was, you know, a big issue within the, within the campaign, she would not sit in the VIP box next to him. She would only come in to the VIP box when he had left to give his speech.
- [06:49]
Joanna Michael
Right. Poor Usha Vance had to sit next to him in the VIP box and she looked so awkward. And you just thought, what could they have to talk about except J.D. vance? And of course, I'm sure Donald Trump doesn't want to talk about J.D. vance at all.
- [07:03]
Michael
So he has this kind of, kind of, you know, I mean he is in this White House, this totally alone figure without any kind of basic warmth. Basic. Even the people who are the familiar faces are familiar only on a professional basis. In the first administration he had Hope Hicks who really tended to him and now he has this woman, Natalie Harp. But you know, but he functions essentially like this, like an old time monarch, you know, who has gotten, who has married someone for political reasons, as was done. And there was really no pretense of a domestic life. And then he's tended to by factotums
- [08:03]
Joanna Michael
and he has no, as far as we know, sort of real intimates,
- [08:10]
Michael
you know, other than the golfing buddies. I mean, and then there's this, I mean Natalie Harp, you know, has become as Hope Hicks was this kind of curious person in his life. We don't really understand that relationship. She appears to be hopelessly in love with him and we've seen a series of letters that she have, that she has, you know, cringe worthy letters that she has written him. But you know, as, as you say, I think that he's generally regarded among his staff as, as post sexual. I mean nobody certainly there's there, there is at least nobody who is, who is whispering, rushing to say nor whispering that he has a relationship, a sexual relationship with anyone. Start up your new business now with Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Aloyoga and and skims to brands just getting started. Get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. On the back end, everything lives in one place. Inventory, payments, analytics. So you're not stitching together five different platforms just to operate. And if you hit any snafus, don't worry, Shopify is always around to share real advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com dailybeast go to shopify.com dailybeast that's shopify.com dailybeast
- [10:34]
Joanna Michael
as Melania and as we have said on this podcast before, as Melania makes clear in her movie, which is about the 20 days and the run up to the inauguration, when you get to the inauguration, the one evening you think that a newly inaugurated president might want to have sex with his wife, she makes it very clear that they're going in completely separate directions at the end of the evening.
- [10:59]
Michael
And let's just be clear, even in the first administration, they didn't share a bedroom, as a matter of fact. And they were the first, first couple since John and Jacqueline Kennedy not to share a bedroom.
- [11:17]
Joanna Michael
Right. And he doesn't have siblings either around him. Right. He has one living sibling, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Trump Grau, who worked in banking and has really stayed out of the limelight. You don't see her on the campaign trail. You don't see her on the stage in the White House when he's parading his sort of Camelot style family. So he seems essentially very alone. All his other siblings have died.
- [11:43]
Michael
I mean, he obviously has children, but that seems also these to be equivocal relationships of people who work for him. And of course, the child that he was theoretically the closest to who was in the White House, who was subbing in for in the first lady role really was Ivanka, who has now very much distanced herself.
- [12:08]
Joanna Michael
Right. And may physically distance herself if she ever gets her island retreat in Cezanne in Albania, which we've mentioned before and which she bravely swam to from a friend's yacht and then climbed to the top of a sand dune barefoot, Michael barefoot. These are intrepid people, the Trumps.
- [12:28]
Michael
Anyway, well, let's go let's trace how I mean, tracing this strange personal life here or its strange lack of a personal life. So let's go back to Ivana Trump, which at one point in New York history, they were a kind of a seminal couple.
- [12:54]
Joanna Michael
They were a seminal couple. And of his three wives, she appears to be the most interesting. She grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia and she actually wrote a rather interesting book called Raising Trump, which I was rifling through the other day to look for quotes. And I found one when she moved to New York and she was married before Trump she actually married an Austrian for an Austrian passport, which once she'd finished college in Czechoslovakia, she actually moved to Austria.
- [13:29]
Michael
Was that a phony marriage?
- [13:30]
Joanna Michael
Yeah, it was a totally phony marriage.
- [13:32]
Michael
That was a green card marriage.
- [13:33]
Joanna Michael
Yeah, the equivalent of a green card marriage, but it was to an Austrian. So it was to get an Austrian passport. She had. So her background was growing up in really Communist Czechoslovakia. They really had very little access to the Western world. But her escape, as many people's escape, was sport, ironically, thinking about UFC and our conversation about Donald Trump being interested in sport. And she was a good swimmer and she was a good skier, and she was given the opportunity to start doing both at a higher level when she was at school. She ended up choosing skiing, and she basically became part of the Junior Olympic team, which gave her the opportunity to travel abroad. And she discusses in the book what it's like going away and just, you know, eye opening, to go from the sort of black and white of Communist Czechoslovakia to the colors of Western Europe where she was competing. And then she would come back and she would always be debriefed by the police who wanted to know who she talked to, and was she, in fact, going to be a defection threat? Would she embarrass them by defecting? And she soon realized that the way to get them on side and to make the police interviews much shorter was just to bring them either fruit or pantyhose for their girlfriends or cigarettes. So she learned very quickly how to do that. But there's a telling anecdote.
- [14:59]
Michael
And she's not saying in this book, as I recall, that she actually was a enthusiastic informer.
- [15:09]
Joanna Michael
No, she was just saying this was part of doing business. And the way to cut the interview
- [15:13]
Michael
short, I'm saying that she was likely an enthusiastic.
- [15:18]
Joanna Michael
Oh, you are. You are. I actually came away from the book feeling a bit more sympathetic to her than.
- [15:23]
Michael
Well, that's why people write these books.
- [15:26]
Joanna Michael
Fair. Totally fair, Michael. And of course, you, as you said recently in. When we were discussing Graham Platner, you should be skeptical of everybody, which is a good one. You shouldn't just believe women. You should be.
- [15:38]
Michael
But I think, you know, in this kind of situation and where she came from, you really had to be an enthusiastic informer or you got in trouble.
- [15:46]
Joanna Michael
Right. And. And this.
- [15:47]
Michael
And. And it's just in. Just to see this as a background against, you know, the. The curious thing about Trump getting involved with. With Eastern European women, women who have had this complicated immigration history and who have. Who have come out of, you Know cultures that were not free.
- [16:15]
Joanna Michael
Well, cultures that weren't free and also cultures that were deprived. So both Melania and Ivana, I'm sure, felt very grateful to Donald Trump for the opportunity. Right. To have access to everything that he had access to. But there's an anecdote. So Ivana eventually leaves Czechoslovakia. She has a fake marriage, gets an Austrian passport, but she also has what she describes as the sort of love affair of her life with a man who then gets killed in a car accident. And it's unclear quite what happens with the accident. They're supposed to be meeting on a Friday night for a weekend, and he never shows. And then she learns he's being killed in a car accident. Any. She then eventually moves to Vienna and gets out from Vienna to Canada, where she has relatives, and then on a modeling trip, is sent to New York. But there's an interesting.
- [17:12]
Michael
Oh, she's. So she's a model also. Which is another Trump theme, obviously.
- [17:16]
Joanna Michael
Yes. When she goes. She's modeled in Czechoslovakia, and when she's in Canada, she claims she gets scouted as a model when she's at a shopping center. But there was just one quote that I found interesting. And to your point, it goes to this sense of two of his wives having grown up in a culture where they were used to being watched. And she's offered the opportunity to model in a fashion show for Dennis Basso, who's a famous fur designer in New York. So she's asked if she's not afraid of being attacked by Petter. She's asked if she's not afraid of what the press will say if she seen wearing a lavish sable coat, which is what Dennis Basso wants her to wear. And she says, no, I'm not afraid of the press. I said, I was raised in Communist Czechoslovakia. The secret police watched us constantly. We were told what to eat, where to work, how to think. I came to America to experience freedom and opportunity. I'm going to wear what I want to wear, and nobody is going to tell me otherwise. So that gives you a slight sense of who she wants us to think she was.
- [18:30]
Michael
And she was kind of. She was certainly her profile in New York, and we're talking. So they got married in 1977, I believe. But this is kind of an 80s New York story. And she was a portrait, and I think this was a cultivated portrait of naked ambition. So she matched him. I mean, he was clearly nakedly ambitious. Was she or not? I mean, she raised children. So she was, in fact, spent a great deal of Time at home where he did not. But that was the Persona that she was side by side with him in many of his projects. The Plaza Hotel, notably.
- [19:23]
Joanna Michael
Well, she has a description of what she does, and there is a sort of notable description of her giving the children their breakfast in the morning, and then she would take a helicopter and fly to Atlantic City to oversee some of the casinos there. But she Sundays, during my 14 year marriage to Donald, I designed the interiors of the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Tower, was president and CEO of Trump Castle, the only woman in the top position at any casino in the world that I know of, and president and CEO of the Plaza Hotel, winning the prestigious Hotelier of the year award. In 19, I wrote three international bestsellers, made tens of millions selling House of Ivana clothes, fragrances and jewelries on hsn, Tampa, QVC London and TSC Canada. No matter how busy I was, I had breakfast with my children every day. I sat with them at dinner every night, and I helped them with their homework. Bracket. I love algebra before going out in a Versace gown to a rubber chicken charity event. So she's every bit as ambitious as
- [20:25]
Michael
him and mostly going out without her husband. And so, you know, this, this begins the other, the, this, this other theme of Donald Trump is never at home. He's never with his family. He is out all of the time. And this is back to that 80s, that 80s moment. I mean, and I used to, literally every time I would, I, I went out, there would be Donald Trump, certainly not with his, not with his wife, and certainly on the lookout for other women. I mean, it was like a weird thing to see him, the way he looked up and down everybody, just as a shark on the hunt. Rayman Meta lets you explore the world without a screen getting in the way so you can stay present in the moment.
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Joanna Michael
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Joanna Michael
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Michael
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- [21:40]
Joanna Michael
I can't imagine you ever being at a social event that Donald Trump would be at, because I can't imagine you were hanging out at Studio 54, but perhaps I'm wrong. Were you? Where did you come across him?
- [21:51]
Michael
What sort of rooms he would have been at? I mean, these were not such glamorous events. He would have been at every promotional event. In New York. So whatever the opening was for, whatever the. And I'm sure he did many, many a night. So it wasn't as though he's living an exclusive life. He's just living a life in public. See me, see me, see me, see me. So wherever there is press, wherever there is page six, wherever there again, all of these promotional occasions in which the press was called, that's why the press is there, because it's been arranged. That's why Donald Trump is there, because he's been alerted that the press was there.
- [22:38]
Joanna Michael
So just this sense of ubiquity that wherever you turned, there was Donald Trump, which of course, is him beginning to build his brand, which, as we know what happens, how the story ends.
- [22:49]
Michael
Yeah. And then this is also, you know, the, the 1980s. So the Jeffrey Epstein begins to enter that picture at this, at this point. And Jeffrey Epstein becomes part and parcel of Donald Trump's lack of a personal and domestic life. I mean, in a sense, Epstein represents the inverse of that. And there was a lot of, you know, Epstein would talk about, about, about, about Trump's marriage, actually all of Trump's marriages with an incredible disdain and haughtiness. And I think the affect was Epstein was certainly not going to get married because he was honest about his desires and interests and Trump was a phony about it, but at the same time maintained the same desires and interests as Epstein. And there was a moment, I remember Epstein said that Trump complained that Ivana was past her sell by date but still wanted to have sex, and that's why he had to stay out of the house. Lovely guy.
- [24:04]
Joanna Michael
Oh, goodness. Well, they get divorced after 14 years. Right.
- [24:09]
Michael
Which is a major story in New York. They have a big fight over their, their prenup. And it's a huge, one of the, one of the first big divorce battles that I remember in, in my time in New York, you couldn't, you couldn't avoid it.
- [24:32]
Joanna Michael
And, and at one point she accuses him of rape, which she later withdraws that claim.
- [24:39]
Michael
Right. I mean, it seems like a, I mean, it was, it was a horrible breakup. I mean, we saw it and it out and I, you know, I can't help think that it played out because he wanted it to play out this way on the front of the New York tabloids.
- [24:55]
Joanna Michael
What, what was it in it for him that it played out that way?
- [24:58]
Michael
Fame.
- [24:59]
Joanna Michael
Fame. Just attention, attention.
- [25:01]
Michael
You know, at that point, remember, remember, he was not, certainly was not running for president. He was running to be the most famous playboy in New York.
- [25:11]
Joanna Michael
And of course they get divorced because he's now with Marla Maples. Another.
- [25:18]
Michael
Yeah, and he's been with Marla. I mean, I think he's been with countless people, but Marla is the designated bid on the side, which begins in the 1980s. And Marla Maples is another model, model, actress.
- [25:35]
Joanna Michael
She's the American of the three.
- [25:37]
Michael
Right, exactly. And then. And then, I mean, I think the. The dates. The dates are. I think the marriage with. To Ivana starts to break down in the, you know, late 80s. And the divorce happens in 1992, I believe. But already Marla is in. In position. And Marla seems to be a kind of, you know, also, you know, a. A woman, a girl who's out on the town, a party girl. That was almost a kind of a category in the 1980s and 1990s.
- [26:18]
Joanna Michael
Right. And against the background of this, we have. He owns a modeling agency, he owns Miss Universe, as do many of his friends, Paolo Zampoli, Jean Luc Brunel, who will later die of suicide in a jail cell accused of the same things that Jeffrey Epstein was accused of. So this is the sort of somewhat seedy. Well, very seedy background.
- [26:43]
Michael
The model. This stuff, I think, happens a little after. After this. I mean, it really apt, you know, the bankruptcy. His financial troubles happen in the early 90s. And then he looks for other things, you know, that aren't so expensive. Like, like the model business. But yeah, I mean, very much the model business. He's marrying models, going out with models, and then into the model business. And again, you can look at this. This is complete lack of domesticity and intimacy. It's just everything, even. It's all a public act, right. And then a public business.
- [27:27]
Joanna Michael
So it's a photo. It's a photo opportunity to have children and a wife. And then he has, as you describe her, his bit on the side. And then Marla Maples gets pregnant.
- [27:39]
Michael
So the divorce is in 1992.
- [27:42]
Joanna Michael
He divorces Ivana and is thrilled to be free, Right, to patrol the streets of New York.
- [27:53]
Michael
But then immediately, Marla Maples gets pregnant, or tells him that she is pregnant. And Jeffrey Epstein comes back in at this point to say he doesn't believe her. And he makes a bet with Trump. I'll give you a truckload of baby food. I think the bet was if she is pregnant and she's just trying to trap you, et cetera, et cetera. But anyway, it actually turns out that she is actually pregnant, which then becomes a whole different crisis. What it indicates is that that's where these guys live, they certainly don't live in the world of women. They live in the world of men. And I don't think that. And I can imagine that Trump was not happy to suddenly have to get married again. And he's just gotten out of this marriage and something it was not easy for him to get out of, and now suddenly he finds himself in a new marriage. Now, the interesting thing is, I mean, Marla Maples may be pregnant, but he didn't have to marry her. But he does, because it's another thing about Trump that he's very much in a 50s and 60s cultural mindset. Still is. And, you know, he has to do it. I have to get married.
- [29:27]
Joanna Michael
Although I think he says at one point the reason he decided to get married, not mentioning that Marlowe was pregnant, was because of the Long Island Railroad. Do you remember there was a mass shooting, and he said it made him realize how life was shortened. So he wanted to get remarried.
- [29:42]
Michael
Didn't we? Recently, in J.D. vance's book, he said he was going to have a fourth child. Because of Charlie Kirk.
- [29:51]
Joanna Michael
Yes. Because of Charlie Kirk's assassination. Yes. You're absolutely right.
- [29:54]
Michael
Yeah. So this must just be. Maybe this is just the kind of thing that AI produces, or maybe it's
- [30:02]
Joanna Michael
the sort of thing that people think after they've been close to a shooting and realized how horrible and violent it is, and that life is worth living and pursuing and love is at the center of it.
- [30:12]
Michael
Yeah, not these guys.
- [30:12]
Ryan Reynolds
Guys.
- [30:13]
Joanna Michael
Not. Not Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump.
- [30:18]
Michael
Yeah. So, yeah, I. I mean, Donald Trump gets married because he has to. He is one of that. That generation. I have. I got my. Why did you get married? I had to.
- [30:29]
Joanna Michael
And then he has the baby called Tiffany because he's got the rights to build above the Tiffany store on Fifth Avenue. Right. He's got the air rights, I think, to build above Tiffany with Trump Tower. And so he calls the baby Tiffany.
- [30:47]
Michael
Jesus, that's a real sentimental heart.
- [30:50]
Joanna Michael
Yeah. Tiffany must be thrilled.
- [30:53]
Michael
But then, understand. So he has this. I mean, this domestic life is a. It's. I mean, I'm sure it's actually is a sham, but certainly what it is is just a corner of his life. His life is a public life. His life, beauty pageants. His life is dating models. During this period, for instance, as he marries Marla Maples, he's sharing a girlfriend with Jeffrey Epstein. There is no room in his world for domesticity. He doesn't want it. There's no room for intimacy, as in, you know, being Deeply connected to another person.
- [31:47]
Joanna Michael
Right. Or self reflection with another person. And I've certainly read that Marla Maples and I've certainly talked to people who said Marla Maples had no idea what she was in for when she married him. And the sort of the Trump family and Ivana Trump hated Marla Maples because of the infidelity and never forgave her, whereas she forgave Donald. She says.
- [32:13]
Michael
And then Marla Maples has an affair. You know, and I don't know if she, if she admits to this, but he, he finds her with his bodyguard who he then fires and then he divorces Marla. And within the Trump circle, this is a kind of, this is one of the things that they actually continue to, one of the few things that they
- [32:44]
Joanna Michael
secretly chortle about that Marla had an affair with one of Donald Trump's bodyguards. Was this at Mar a Lago?
- [32:55]
Michael
You know, good, good question. And I think he found them under, as I recall the story, under a lifeguard chair. So maybe it was, maybe it was in Florida, but maybe it was somewhere else. I think this was in 1996. This marriage did not last very long.
- [33:15]
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- [33:40]
Michael
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- [33:45]
Joanna Michael
The marriage doesn't last long and then he's back, he's back on the market.
- [33:51]
Michael
This then becomes, in the late 90s, in the second half of the 90s, the peak model era of, in Trump's life. And he leaves quite a record of his anti domestic playboy, totally kind of despicable life. And he does this actually most often on the Howard Stern Show. So these clips which are available for anybody, I mean, he is the narrator of his own debauched life. By the way, your daughter, she's beautiful. Can I show you this? A piece of ass.
- [34:49]
Pageant Owner
Yeah.
- [34:50]
Michael
Some of these foreign girls, you know,
- [34:51]
Pageant Owner
Mr. Trump, in my country, we say
- [34:53]
Joanna Michael
hello with the vagina.
- [34:55]
Pageant Owner
Well, you could also say, as the owner of the pageant, it's your obligation to do that.
- [35:00]
Michael
So, so you have done that.
- [35:01]
Pageant Owner
Well, I'll tell you the funniest is that I'll go backstage before a show. Yes. And everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else. And, you know, no men are anywhere. And I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it. You know, I'm inspecting. I want to make sure that every dog is good, you're there, Is everyone okay? You know, they're standing there with no, is everybody okay? And you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.
- [35:23]
Joanna Michael
So we hear some clips there, Michael, of the, of Trump saying things which again, fought attention. I mean, really strange things to say for a man. And yet they got him attention and sort of set him up to be the performer that he becomes on the Apprentice eventually.
- [35:43]
Michael
Yeah, no, and part of that thing, part of his Persona, part of that shtick is all about, I am, you know, I am not a domestic guy. Marriage is, you know, is a pretense or a fiction. I'm a guy who's out with the most beautiful girls in the world. And this is always a major thing with him, to be with the most beautiful girls in the world. That's the point of life. That's success. If you made a lot of money, but you have, you have an ugly wife, then you fail.
- [36:26]
Joanna Michael
Which he uses against Ted Cruz. Famously. When Ted Cruz is a candidate for leader of the Republican Party, when he's running for president, he goes after Heidi Cruz and just says she's really, really frumpy and he's thoroughly unpleasant. And of course, Ted Cruz promises that he'll never support Donald Trump. And then lo and behold, he, he elbows his wife out of the way and is frantically supporting Donald Trump.
- [36:55]
Michael
No, I mean, it's a very clear thing. What kind of woman are you with? What kind of woman are you married to? And always a commentary on that.
- [37:06]
Joanna Michael
Which is interesting that he chose Mike Pence as his vice president because Mike Pence comes with Mother Pence, who, you know, just. Again, I can't imagine what Mother Pence and Donald Trump had to talk about apart from Mike Pence. But, you know, although maybe Mike. I've always wondered why Mike Pence wasn't allowed to be in the room with a woman on his own if Mother Pence wasn't there. Is that about Pence losing control because he's got an out of control libido, which seems unlikely, but who knows? Or is it cause women find Mike Pence so attractive that they're gonna throw themselves at him? Him, I'VE always found that mysterious, completely mysterious.
- [37:52]
Michael
And they would make fun of this. Everybody in the White House would make fun of Pence and Mother Pence and Trump, Trump especially.
- [38:05]
Joanna Michael
I'm sorry to laugh because I like Karen Pence because she refused to shake Trump's hand at Jimmy Carter's funeral. But it's such a strange relationship. Mother Pence. Mother Pence, who had to be in the room with Mike Pence in case. Goodness knows what happened.
- [38:25]
Michael
Goodness knows.
- [38:26]
Commercial Narrator
Jesus.
- [38:27]
Joanna Michael
Anyway, Trump did not marry someone that he was calling mother. He married Melania, wife number three, who's not in evidence and who we've spent a lot of time talking about, but who essentially, as you have always said, remains. She's a mysterious figure. She looks mysterious. She looks a bit like a cat. The surgery that she's had done makes her look a little cat like. And of course, she's very elegant. Of his three wives, she's the most elegant.
- [38:58]
Michael
And he is, you know, to understand that. So she's, you know, she's a model. She's part of this model circle that is most of his social life at this point in the late 90s is in the model circle, which is to say with models, with the men who supply models. Jeffrey Epstein, obviously a major figure here. And then he has this. Melania comes into the picture, and it's very important to him that she's a supermodel. Supermodel is a kind of, you know, that's the. That has become the term of art for the ultimate woman. So she has to be a supermodel. The problem here is that she's not a supermodel. She's actually a kind of. Not all that successful of a model. So it is Donald Trump who turns her into a supermodel by pronouncing her a supermodel and then setting her up with, you know, with the accoutrements of being a supermodel without her ever being actually a supermodel.
- [40:13]
Joanna Michael
And I wonder if that's why she's now so invested in doing things like the movie and her book. Because she wants to reclaim something that she never really had, which is the status of being a supermodel.
- [40:29]
Michael
Yeah, I'm sure that that's part of it. I'm sure it's also part of this. You know, everybody else in the Trump family is in on the grift. Why isn't she getting something here? And again, because she lives a separate life from Donald Trump. She sees this as, you know, she needs a. She needs a separate. She has A separate life. And she needs to support a separate life.
- [41:00]
Joanna Michael
Right. And again, she's not a domestic goddess. She's never pretended to be a domestic goddess. There's no evidence whatsoever that she is. But she produces him a son, the fifth of his children, Barron Trump.
- [41:15]
Michael
Yeah. And she seems to be an attentive, you know, honorable, good mother, but separate from Donald Trump and separate from a domestic arrangement with the father of her
- [41:29]
Joanna Michael
child, which is how Ivana Trump describes herself as a parent. That this was completely separate to Donald. Donald had no input. She described saying, I am going to tell you where they go to school. Ivanka's going to Chapin, the boys are going here. And he was like, fine, fine. He wanted no decision making responsibilities. And as I mentioned earlier, Ivana basically hands the children fully formed over to him at the age of 18, which is when he begins to take an interest. And that apparently seems to be the case with Baron. And again, in the Melania, the movie, they have a conversation about Baron where it's very clear that they don't talk about him very often together and that Trump is talking about him as if he really doesn't spend very much time with him at all.
- [42:18]
Michael
No, and just. And remember, these are. The children become employees. This is very, I mean, they become actually employees. He supports them, he writes the checks, they do the work. You know, it's kind of like an old fashioned family business. It's really. I mean, there's so much about Donald Trump that seems like living above the store and everybody has to, has to, has to pitch in and go to work. And he rather treats it like that. The other, you know, the other modern arrangement, you know, the arrangement that people have with their children now, to see them as something other than, than functional presence in their lives is not the relationship he has. I mean, you never get a sense that he has enjoyment, takes enjoyment from his children. You know that conversation that I've described before of him saying to people, you know, Don Jr, I wish I could take my name back.
- [43:30]
Joanna Michael
Right.
- [43:31]
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- [44:01]
Joanna Michael
And also. Yet that's very. It's counter to the enormous photos of them, the sort of campaign photos, the presidential photos of this burgeoning family. I mean, his kids go on to have lots of kids. I think Don Jr. Has. Does he have five kids? So when you see them on map, they look very powerful. And you have no sense of the, I'm sure, internecine war between them.
- [44:30]
Michael
It's not really a war, it's just a wall. They have a particular thing and there's no sense within that of a family, of a fight going on because there's lots of emotion here. It rather is no, you know, where you stand. And if you try to take more of that, that's going to be. I'm not even sure you think about taking more of that. It's not. You're not going to get more. He is, Donald Trump is what he
- [45:08]
Joanna Michael
is, and yet he's perceived by his evangelical base and by, you know, the conservative party of the Republican Party and by MAGA as the ultimate family man, a man who has no domesticity.
- [45:23]
Michael
Do you think that's true? Because they kind of believe it. Because this idea of, because of the photographs, because they look pretty good, because Melania is a good looking woman, because Ivanka is a good looking woman. They actually look kind of the same. Same doctors, no doubt, but, well, same hair.
- [45:46]
Joanna Michael
I mean, very similar hair. I think, you know, they look like a family that people would envy.
- [45:54]
Michael
I mean, I, you know, I understand. Okay. The leaders of the evangelical moment make, make a, a basic Faustian deal. Donald Trump is, is in, is an immoral so and so. But he's gonna give us what we want, so we do the deal. But what about all of those other people in the evangelical Christian constituency? Don't they say, hey, what a minute. God, this guy is a dog.
- [46:29]
Joanna Michael
Well, and a man who's been dogged with, I think, more than 25 accusations of sex abuse, sex assault at this point. And, you know, and at this point, Eugene Carroll is still going through the courts with him as the sole person who's actually taken him on in court and managed to win her cases against him for assaulting her in the changing room at Burgdorf Goodman. So a very complicated and unpleasant relationship with women. Three marriages. His third wife clearly doesn't like him. His first wife accused him of rape in there. Their initial divorce arguments, which she then recanted on. And Marla Maples get away sooner. Right, Right.
- [47:15]
Michael
So what is. Let's get back to the politics of this all or the good of the nation. I mean, here is a guy in the White House who has nowhere to turn, who has no comfort, who has no warmth, who is alone. What does that.
- [47:39]
Joanna Michael
And doesn't doesn't appear to have a best friend either. I mean, when he was tooling around with Jeffrey Epstein and they were hunting for women in Atlantic City, which they used to do together at least, perhaps you could say maybe both of them were sociopaths, but they had each other, but he doesn't have anybody.
- [48:01]
Michael
That for each of them, that relationship was the closest relationship they've ever had in their lives.
- [48:08]
Joanna Michael
Well, how does this impact impacts everybody? Because he's lying there alone at night when his, you know, colleagues are trying to get some sleep. Truth socialing in the middle of the night, not sleeping properly, not having any
- [48:23]
Michael
intimacy, you know, and you have to say, I mean, let's not go psychoanalyze too much, although that is really our purpose here. But that certain. How does that emptiness relate to that rage, that need to fill the space with his own monologizing on a constant basis, the need to always be right and to have people around him confirm that he is always right and to have the people around him who have no other function but to be sycophants and to bend to him and to
- [49:05]
Joanna Michael
agree with him and to always be the center of attention, the world's attention at this point. Michael, it's always interesting to discuss this stuff because it's essential to how someone lives their life and essential to understanding them. What is their domestic support? I mean, the fact that he eats burgers, the fact that he eats junk food all the time. Also, he's not someone that anyone has ever made a cottage pie for. You know, he's not someone that is moved by the scent of a roast chicken on a Sunday lunch because he's eating at the carvery at Mar a Lago. I mean, nobody's having home cooking. You know, I see your wife on her wonderful newsletter, Our Amagensett House, and from time to time she wr out the, the menu of what you and your family are going to be eating that week. No one is doing that for Donald Trump because he's only eating either at Mar a Lago or he's eating fast food that the chefs at the White House produce for him.
- [50:07]
Michael
Extraordinary. And just to go back to what actually this is highly relevant to what we are doing here, that it's interesting how all presidents and the comfort they take in the family lives that, that, that, that frustrate them or sustain them. But Donald Trump in particularly because of the way he operates as the president, which is he, it is a government of one. It is all about what comes into his head. It is all about what he wants, what he thinks, the stray facts he's absorbed. And everybody else is at most a bit player. So that what is going the life he leads has an immediate effect on all of us.
- [51:03]
Joanna Michael
And I suspect if you asked him, he would think that domestic life, in as much as he understands it or does think about it, and perhaps he doesn't, is somehow a weakness. That the need for a domestic life, the need for someone that you can talk to, to have someone to tell things to and help process the day, is actually a weakness that he doesn't need, that he doesn't need to tell anybody his insecurities or his anxieties because perhaps he thinks he just doesn't have any. He obviously has them. They just play out in different ways.
- [51:39]
Michael
No, in all ways. Women are accoutrements here. I mean, he does this thing when he's with these old rich guys who he hangs out with of a great proportion of them, if not all of them have younger wives of which he always makes a point of, always points this out. Now, the curious thing about them is that many of these guys are so old that you are. That the younger wives are also now pretty old.
- [52:15]
Joanna Michael
Well, it's fascinating. No, the wives are a reflection on him. Right. He wants a model wife because it's a reflection on him, because everything is a reflection on him. Well, Michael, we could talk about this indefinitely. I find it, it fascinating that we have a president who appears to have no one to confide. No one to confide in. But as you say, he doesn't think he needs it. He is a government of one. If you have been. Thank you for joining us. We will be back with our next episode of Inside Trump's Head. Michael, do you want to thank our team?
- [52:49]
Michael
Ryan, Rachel, Heather, Neil, John, thank you as always.
- [52:59]
Joanna Michael
So the good news is we have so many Beast Tier members now, there are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.