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- [00:01]
A
Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@Bloomberg.com
- [00:28]
B
Donald Trump's remarkable ability to deny reality, his entire life and Persona is essentially a sham. I compared this recently to his marriage. We all see the marriage. It's a terrible marriage. It doesn't exist. She doesn't live with him, she clearly disdains him. And yet there is the fiction that he is married to one of the most beautiful women in the world. That is the game he will play about the war in Iran. The war is real. It's the sham victory. It's not real.
- [01:01]
C
So sham marriage, sham victory, and the Iranians flicking him away in the same way that Melania is flicking him away. Michael.
- [01:14]
B
Joanna, it is nice to see you. I mean, I don't want to say that it is sometimes less than nice to see you, but this is literally nice to see you, since I did not. What's today? Thursday. So Tuesday. I was not able to see you and you were not able to see me, and we had to hustle to overcome our technical difficulties.
- [01:42]
C
We had to hustle. Big shout out to Nico Hynes, who is our global editor, global affairs editor, and was literally dragged by his arm out of a meeting and plumped in the chair that I normally sit in opposite you and had really very little idea of what he was doing and rose to the occasion supremely. Well, I had the enormous fun of watching Inside Trump's head at home, having failed entirely to figure out how we could upload anything to New York. Anyway, I have British Telecom coming out tomorrow, so hopefully our technical hustle will be rewarded. Anyway, it's very nice to see you, Michael.
- [02:25]
B
My wife was of the opinion that, well, as she said, you need Joanna, which is not to say anything against Nico, because he was really fantastic and
- [02:38]
C
if surprised, very surprised. Anyway, I think probably we need each other because I love your deep dives into what's going on with Epstein. I cannot wait to get into your thoughts on the suicide note. We have a lot to cover, not least the war. Are we still at war? I'm very confused. Obama on Colbert. And I am dying. Dying to get into Usha Vance's podcast, Storytime with the Second Lady. I mean, who even came up with that title? This week's guest is Cheryl Hines.
- [03:12]
B
In fact, we were gonna do that on Tuesday, but because you weren't there and I know you have a special feeling for that, we have saved it for you.
- [03:21]
C
Good. I'm so Nelle Scovell and I are obsessed by this podcast and I need to go into it with you in detail and I want to get your thoughts on what's really behind it and the strategy behind it. Because clearly there is a strategy, though it's unclear what it is. But you also talked about Rudy Giuliani and I have a Rudy Giuliani story which I do not want to forget to share.
- [03:47]
B
No. And I'm a connoisseur of them because who doesn't have a Rudy Giuliani story at this point. Point.
- [03:53]
C
Good point, good point.
- [03:54]
B
There will be no Giuliani stories in a short while. No more Giuliani stories.
- [04:01]
C
Oh dear. Well, as we say, get well, get well soon to Rudy if he can. But I'm here in the UK and it is election day here and there is a remarkable fever here around Keir Starmer, who two years into being elected is certainly in my living memory about the most unpopular Prime Minister there could be. And it's sort of unclear why.
- [04:32]
B
And that was after a big a landslide election in his favor not that long ago.
- [04:40]
C
Right. Two years ago, 2024, he was elected. Huge landslide victory after 14 years of Conservative rule and the insanity of Boris Johnson. And you will remember people smug suitcases in and out of number 10 Downing street, packed with bottles of alcohol where they were having secret parties. And most tellingly of all, the night before Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral, where the Queen was sat in St. George's Chapel very much on her own at Windsor Castle, obeying the then Covid rules of having no one around her with a mask on. And yet Boris Johnson and his cronies were partying at number, which is really in the end, I think the detail that felled the Conservatives. But Keir Starmer has not proved to be the popular president that certainly Tony Blair was when he was elected in a landslide. And what we're seeing is the knock on effect of Jeffrey Epstein playing out in British politics, I think, which is remarkable.
- [05:50]
B
Do you think it's just that though? I mean, this seems to me a discontent that is much deeper than just one issue.
- [06:01]
C
Yes, you're completely right. And what we're seeing is the fracturing of what has been for the most part, a two or three party system. So it was really the dominant Conservatives, the dominant Labour Party through the last Century with occasional pops of the Liberal Democrats. And what we've got now is the Green Party with a remarkable character leading it, a guy called Zach Polanski, who, if you can believe it, used to be a hypnotherapist. He was a hypnotist. That was his qualification for the job.
- [06:34]
B
I thought you were gonna say he used to be a hitman. Which would be more appropriate, really?
- [06:39]
C
No, no, but interestingly so just to step back a moment, there are several parties. So there's now the Green Party, which is led by Zach Polanski, who used to be a hypnotist. Except it came out this week that he wasn't even a properly tr. Trained hypnotist. And at one point he was hypnotizing women who wanted larger breasts. So I'm just putting out there and he's got a crazy, crazy set of.
- [07:08]
B
Well, just let me ask, though. So he was hypnotizing them to believe that they did indeed have larger breasts.
- [07:15]
C
No, he was hypnotizing them to grow larger breasts. So he's a very eccentric character with an extraordinary list of policies, including making all class A drugs, so cocaine, heroin, all of them completely available. And doing deals with cartels in South America and teaching children in kindergarten to take drugs responsibly so that when they, if they do eventually take drugs, they take them safely. So that's, that's one thing. And he's also suggesting a tax for frequent flyers. So strange as it may seem, because how would these policies, you would think normally be successful? He's got a remarkable head of steam up and people think he's going to win a lot of seats in the local elections. We've got Reform, which is the right wing party with Nigel Farage, who just,
- [08:16]
B
it was just aligned with and aligned with our friend.
- [08:21]
C
Yeah, aligned with our friend Donald Trump. He's a sort of Trump light, if you like, a remarkably effective communicator. Remarkably effective. And people like the fact, the thing that they often say or they used to say about Donald Trump, they say it less now. Oh, he tells it like it is. He says what he thinks.
- [08:44]
B
I once sat and I just. I once sat in a room with Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage with. And Farage was so drunk he couldn't sit on his chair.
- [08:56]
C
Well, he would not be the only British politician that's not, that's not been able to sit on their chair, nor
- [09:06]
B
the only politician in the Trump White House.
- [09:09]
C
No. Indeed. Indeed. Yeah, well. And we haven't even mentioned Cash Patel, Kash Patel, obviously head of the FBI, giving out bottles of bourbon, cash. Patel bourbon, his own brand of bourbon or personalized bottles.
- [09:28]
B
But just before we move off of the Brits, just give me an extrapolation on what you think. What's going on in the UK which so often either follows or leads what's going on here. What does that mean for where we are in the U.S. okay, so I
- [09:51]
C
do think there is the impact of Jeffrey Epstein, which people couldn't have seen even six months ago. And this is to do with the firing of Peter Mandelson. You will remember that Peter Mandelson, who is a legendary figure in British Labour Party politics, he was involved in getting Tony Blair elected and was known as the master of the dark arts of sort of spin doctoring. Anyway, he was, by Keir Starmer, put into Washington as the British Ambassador to Washington on the grounds that he was sufficiently sophisticated and frankly, how does one put this?
- [10:37]
B
He was a sleazeball. He was meant to deal with other sleaze balls.
- [10:41]
C
Exactly right. Couldn't have put it better myself. Thank you. He was put into D.C. and then of course it became clear, though it was known he had a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, that it was much deeper and longer than anybody had expected. When the birthday book came out, first revealed in the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch's paper, it turned out that Epstein, that Peter Mandelson had sent Epstein a very fulsome note saying that he was his best pal.
- [11:13]
B
Along of course, with. With Donald Trump.
- [11:16]
C
Along with Donald Trump. Along with Donald Trump. But it turned out that Peter Mandelson had certainly received money, it appears, from Jeffrey Epstein and had been giving Jeffrey Epstein information when he was the business minister that really he had absolutely no business giving to him. So cut to it turns out that the vetting on Peter Mandelson that was supposed to have been done by the Foreign Office and the various security services in Britain really was very ineffective. And it looked like he failed the vetting but was given the job. Anyway. Cut to Keir Starmer firing a series of people, including a very popular Foreign Office civil servant, public civil servant. And it makes Starmer look weak. And there have been internal labor enemies working very clearly against him. So you mentioned Nigel Farage falling off a chair. He was so drunk. It was then revealed that Angela Rayner, who is a possible replacement for Keir Starmer, was spotted in the stranger's bar at the House of Commons, so drunk that she walked into a door and was the phrase used in the Daily Mail, was absolutely trollied. It's a wonderful tabloid phrase, just absolutely trolleyed. So it's a strange bunch of characters.
- [12:54]
B
I have a question. What effect do you think that Keir Starmer's sucking up and toadyism to Donald Trump has had on his reputation in the uk?
- [13:10]
C
It's a very good question.
- [13:13]
B
Let's be clear. Of all the European leaders, and all of the European leaders have been confused about how to deal with Donald Trump. But Keir Starmer has been the most forward in deciding that the way to deal with Donald Trump is just through flattery and through agreement and through willing to be a doormat.
- [13:39]
C
Well, up until the war. And then he refused to join America and Israel in bombing Iran, which I'm assuming he thought was a popular policy because of course, one of the elements that brought down Tony Blair was his support for George Bush and the Iraq war and the jumped up sex up dossier. So I think Keir Starmer's tried to have it both ways with the Americans.
- [14:06]
B
Yes, it has that a day late and a dollar short feeling.
- [14:12]
C
It really does. So in terms of Trump witheringly leaning
- [14:20]
B
forward in let's segue from there into the war, because how can you not? It is the central event of the moment.
- [14:29]
C
Sure. And I don't want to get stuck in British politics other than when Donald Trump leant forward and said about Keir Starmer, he is no Winston Church. It was a strangely effective line for people. Cause everybody went, he is no Winston Churchill and unfortunately he's charisma minus. And I think it's also, it's a lot to do with prices, actually, and the fact that people feel energy bills are completely out of control. So goes back to the affordability issue in the US but let's get onto the war because it's very confusing from here. Sitting here with a prism of British news to understand, are we still at war? What's happened? Is it terminated? Is it not terminated? Who's got control?
- [15:12]
B
Well, before having urged us to move on to the war, let me just stop a second and say, and say, I think that that's important to remember that part of Keir Starmer's problem, and maybe the overwhelming part of Keir Starmer's problem is the economy. And that may well be the overwhelming part of Donald Trump's problem in addition to the war. So let's do the war.
- [15:38]
C
Okay, so let's do the war. Who's in control of the Strait of Hormuz? Michael, we're recording this on Thursday morning. We should say it was all Being. Well, we'll broadcast Thursday night as we're recording. Who has control?
- [15:53]
B
Well, I think most importantly, Donald Trump does not have control. So, I mean, he's pronounced. Okay. His position as of two days ago was the war is over, we won. So that begs the questions, is it? Did we? And the answer is, no, the war is not over, and, no, we didn't win it. Now, that's interesting, because then yesterday, Marco Rubio basically came out and seemed in a somewhat good mood about this and said, the war is over. We won it. And then Donald Trump almost immediately, right on the heels of that press conference, said, no, we might go back to war. And, and with the clear implication that we hadn't won it and we were going to go and we still had to win it, and we might win it again, or we would win it again, but we haven't yet. So, you know, it's interesting. The, the Times, the New York Times story, and, you know, I'm partial to kicking the New York Times as often as possible, referred to this, referred to Trump. They said Trump, Trump, who, Who cultivates an erratic style.
- [17:22]
C
Who cultivates an erratic style. He is erratic.
- [17:27]
B
Exactly. And that goes to the, to the entire problem, to the Times problem and to understand what's going on in the White House. He doesn't cultivate an erratic style. He is erratic. He's erratic by temperament, by nature, and by whatever mental processes are in fact, going on in Trump's head from minute to minute. He changes not as a matter of style, not as a matter of strategy, but because he both loses focus and because he is ruled by what comes into his head at any given moment. So again, the New York Times setting that up as though this is by design, as though he knows what he's doing, as though this is part of grand strategy. And that is completely. It could not be more wrong, it could not be more misleading by the premier journalism organization in the United States of America.
- [18:40]
C
All right, let's push your, let's push the New York Times to one side. You've written four books on Trump. Have you ever seen Donald Trump in such a tight spot as he is now? Because it's one thing to make up policy in America swinging his legs from the chair behind the Resolute desk. It's another to make up a policy that has caused energy shock across the world. He's about to go to China. He goes to China next week. And yet he appears to be completely in a self blockade, never mind the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.
- [19:23]
B
I appreciate your position on this, but the answer would be the opposite. Yes, I've seen him many times. I mean, I've seen him in the middle of the Russian. The Russian investigation in the middle, when he fired Comey and everything seemed to be coming down on his head. I've seen him in the middle of COVID when he absolutely had no idea what to do. And I've seen him in the middle of deciding that he had, or believing that the election had been stolen from him. I mean, the truth is that Donald Trump, Donald Trump's entire, certainly political career and maybe longer career has been a series of these predicaments, many of his own making, that he appeared not to be able to deal with, cope with, or get out of. Now, the curious thing is that he has so often, in fact, gotten out of them.
- [20:27]
C
So how does he get out of this, then?
- [20:30]
B
I don't know.
- [20:30]
C
Because he can't just call it a day and say, it's over.
- [20:34]
B
I don't know. I mean, right now, he is clearly trying to do that. He is trying to call it a day. We won. The war is over and we won. I mean, that was earlier this week. Then he reversed that. But then he will go back to that erratically, and that is really the only thing he can actually do, is that. That, I mean, he's going to be in a situation. The situation is going to be, we've bombed. We've bombed Iran to our almost maximum capacity. And nevertheless, the regime, the Iranian regime remains in place. Its nuclear capability is. Has not been altered at all, and they have basic control over the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point in the worldwide economy. That's not going to change. That is going to be the result, whatever happens now. So how does he. How does he not fall on his sword and say, I failed? And, you know, and the answer is, as it has always been in everything that he does is this remarkable ability, this rhetoric and will to deny reality. And he has done that better than anybody else in so many situations his entire life in Persona is essentially that I am the world's greatest businessman, where every piece of evidence suggests absolutely the opposite of that. He's a bankrupt. And I compared this recently to his marriage. The marriage, we all see the marriage. It's a terrible marriage. It doesn't exist. She doesn't live with him, she clearly disdains him, and she only shows up for him by special arrangement. And yet there is the fiction that he is married to one of the most beautiful women in the world. So I don't know. That is the game he will play about the war in Iran, that we blew them up, we obliterated them, we conquered them. They're nothing. We're everything.
- [23:14]
C
We've discussed this before, but there was something irresistible about watching her just flick his hands away. And now she seems to be wearing gloves more often in public, which I suspect means she doesn't really want to touch him.
- [23:27]
B
The Iranians are just sort of flicking him away at some. In some way. So I think this. I'm gonna go with this metaphor.
- [23:38]
C
Okay, so there's a similarity between the sham war and the sham marriage. What are we hearing about his trip to China next week? I mean, this is.
- [23:48]
B
It's not the sham war. And just let me, Let me. Let me point the sh. The war is real. It's the peace. It's the sham.
- [23:55]
C
Yes, sorry, I meant his description or the sham.
- [23:58]
B
The sham. The sham victory is, I think, what. What we're talking about. Yes.
- [24:04]
C
So sham marriage, sham victory, and the Iranians flicking him away in the same way that Melania is flicking him away. Can we get onto his trip to China? How do we think that will go? What is the point of it for him? We know that Iran is supplying a lot of oil to China. A lot of it's not being able to get there. We're expecting huge parades and the Chinese to put on a great show for Trump. What does Trump want out of this?
- [24:34]
B
I think you've answered your question. It's just distraction at this point. I mean, he doesn't have. He's not going to do. You know, the relationship with China was supposed to be fundamental. Both in the first Trump administration, the second Trump administration, China was our primary antagonist in the world. China was responsible for much of the economic hardship of a significant part of. Of the U.S. and of the. And of the U.S. that was essentially the manufacturing base of the U.S. and that was what we were taking on. Now, the result of two administrations with the Biden administration in between has been that China has only solidified its position and its power and its. Its potential in the world. So Trump is going to show up in China and not take on any of that and just receive. The Chinese are going to. I suppose they very clearly understand that their position is a solid one. And all they have to do is deliver Trump a parade.
- [25:58]
C
Well, all they have to do is deliver Trump a parade. Well, let's talk to your earlier point about him just making things up and still believing that he's the only one that matters about what's happened in Indiana? Because in December, we talked about state representatives in Indiana refusing to vote for redistricting in Indiana, even though it looked like it was going to come up with more Republican candidates or more Republican. Safe seats, seats. And this week, Donald Trump's candidates have opposed those who were opposing the redistricting, and five out of seven of them have won, which is actually a remarkable evidence of still his power. Or is it?
- [26:53]
B
You know, I mean, it's. Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's curious. It's one of those things that always happens. Trump, Trump wins. And obviously he has won repeatedly over the last decade, and yet everybody, or at least the liberal press ecosystem, stands there completely bewildered. How could this happen? How could people vote for Donald Trump? Which is a completely fair question. But it, it seems to continue to ignore the reality that that is the reality that an enormous number of people in the United States of America are absolutely loyal to Donald Trump. Why? Well, we still can't answer, at least if we're essentially liberal people, we still can't answer that question. What happened? What, what separated these people? What drew a line in this country? I'm not going to try to answer that question now because literally that is the question that can't be answered. But it is worth acknowledging, and it's important to acknowledge that that line is still there. That from the point of view of this side of the line, people have drunk the Kool Aid and continue to drink the Koolai Kool Aid on their side of the line. Of course, they don't feel it's the Kool Aid. They feel we have drunk the Kool Aid. But, but having said that, and, and it, and it does, as you know, I think a lot of people are, are at the point of think, of thinking, of thinking this Trump thing is coming apart. We're looking at the midterms and the likelihood that he is going to be wiped out. So what does this say about that? And I mean, I think it says two things. The one is a cautionary tale saying, remember, you know, Trump is. If we are inside Trump's head, Trump is inside a lot of people's heads. And he's there in a, in a, in a kind of, in a positive way. I mean, he has, he owns a lot of people, so always keep that in mind. At the same time, this is, this is Indiana. These are local elections. The turnout is very low, very sparse. He has his support. He in, he injected an enormous amount of money into these races to support, to support the people that he wanted to support. He gave them enormous attention and enormous publicity in local races. So what happened there on a structural basis is pretty easy to explain in standard politics. Any president could have moved these local elections. And so it's almost another element that we ought to look at here, which is his capacity for commitment to, and drive for revenge, because that's what happened here. He disproportionately, just. Just for his own, for his own ego, for his own. For his own needs to be proved correct, for his this weird need that he has to. To bring people to their knees. That's what was going on in Indiana, and that's what's going on on a broader, much broader scale. And I think most of the evidence would indicate that it is incredibly unpopular, that it is redounding to his negatives, which are now at 37 or in the high 30s I in incredible danger territory. So that, I think, is the thing. If I had to look at this and say, what is the takeaway here? It is that need for revenge. And we're seeing that on the indictment last week of James Comey on a completely specious charge. I mean, almost an absurd and ridiculous charge, a charge that will not stand. And again, we've also seen this, actually, his revenge appears to have succeeded in Indiana, but his revenge through the law and through the courts has been a spectacular failure. It is one of those other things that just says this kind of neon sign above his head, which is both that he is. He's disturbed in some way, that his fixation on this is a disturbance, and also it's a failure. He is a failure. There's a certain kind of pathos, plus absurdity in his continual quest to prove himself in ways that is just going to make him look ridiculous.
- [32:46]
C
Well, and I think that it's revenge on people who've humiliated him. And I remember at the time, and I think we perhaps even rang a tape off it in the podcast, was the local Republicans who said, we don't like Donald Trump. We don't like the way he speaks to us. We don't like the fact that he's uncouth and that he's not polite and we've had enough. And it looked like. And it was certainly being celebrated as a victory for normal Republicans. But clearly, clearly he is so motivated by revenge when someone has humiliated him, which is obviously what James Comey did and what Tish James did. And it's remarkable his powers to, as you say, get inside people's head. And I was thinking when you were talking on Tuesday about Rudy Giuliani, I wanted to share. It took me back to a story I wanted to share when I was at Marie Claire. I just arrived there as the editor, and it's slightly tied in a little bit with the Devil Wears Prada, which came out the month I joined Marie Claire as editor in chief. But one of the things I wanted to do, we had the theme of American fashion. And so we decided that we would shoot four politicians in American fashion. And we shot Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Rudy Giuliani, because Rudy, at the time was looking to be the leader of the Republicans and run for president. And. And the others were all pretty fairly straightforward, actually. John McCain was very humble, just wanted to be shot eating a sandwich out of a brown bag somewhere on a bench outside the Capitol. Hillary Clinton was very sort of efficient. Barack Obama, at that point, a senator from Illinois, was incredibly sort of generous and fun and sort of bouncy. And actually, in the middle of the interview, Kareem Abdul Jabbar suddenly arrived in his office, and he was very excited by that. And happily, we had a photographer so we could capture it all. But Rudy Giuliani, who I had frankly admired when he was the mayor of New York, and I'd covered him a little bit when I was the bureau chief for the Guardian and had followed him around. I'd had a couple of days following him around, and he was certainly very busy, as people like to say. There was no pothole he didn't like to go to the opening of. He insisted on being shot with a helicopter in the background. So he. He went off to the west side helicopter pad. And you referred to him having. I mean, he had a series of relationships and marriages, but you referred to one being particularly unfortunate. And at the time, he was married to someone called Judith Nathan, who he also wanted in the shot. So he was clearly setting himself up. President and first lady. And she. We put her in a Carolina Herrera sample dress, which you often use for shoots, and it hadn't yet gone into production. And at the end of it, she said she wanted to keep the dress. And we said, well, we can get you the dress, but you can't keep this dress. It's a sample. They need it back. And she said, I don't think you understand. I want this dress. It was a beautiful brown dress with polka dots. And the fashion editor and Judith Nathan basically got into a kind of, as far as I remember, tug of war. And I can't remember what happened to the dress, but the photo was fantastic. And made him look super powerful. And then he went and blew it all and tragically sold his soul to Donald Trump. What an incredible lesson.
- [36:19]
B
No, no, an incredible story. And a story most of all about what happens. I mean, Rudy Giuliani is the ultimate cautionary tale of what happens when you get involved with, with Donald Trump. One of the reasons in 2016, when Rudy dived all in for Donald Trump and Rudy had never, when he was mayor, certainly considered Donald Trump a kind of clownish guy, Rudy Giuliani was the important person, not Donald Trump. But in 2016, when he went literally all in for Donald Trump, I asked Roger Ailes, I said, said, you know what? Really, this is a little undignified. Why is Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News? And I said, and a friend of Rudy's, a friend of Donald Trump's. I said, why is Rudy going, you know, doing this? Why is he going. Going all in, really, really risking his. His reputation. And then, and then he said, and he said, well, if you were, if you were married to Judy, you'd have to get out of the house, too. Any excuse.
- [37:28]
C
Oh, dear. Well, I don't know what's happened to Judy Nathan, but what an extraordinary ride. And it's amazing to think that he was a senior prosecutor, that he led really powerful prosecutions against the Mafia and changed the future of the Mafia in New York. And he ended up really a figure of great mockery and foolishness anyway, a
- [37:53]
B
tragic figure, bankrupt figure, a figure without. With his reputation destroyed. And then in the end, Trump sort of gave him the heave ho, too.
- [38:08]
C
Yeah. Again, Shakespearean in its scope, really. And I wonder if Cheryl Hines will also. I wonder if Cheryl Hines and actually JD Van will live to regret their connection with Donald Trump, too. And I cannot tell you how remarkable I find story time with the Second lady, which is a podcast they have set up utchavants with. I cannot believe that this is Usha Vance's idea. I mean, here was an unbelievably powerful lawyer, someone who'd studied law at Yale. She was a Gates Scholar at Cambridge, and here she is reading children's books, looking as uncomfortable as I can think I've seen anybody look. Except that this week's episode with Cheryl Hynes as her guest who reads the Three Little Pigs. The two of them look incredibly uncomfortable, and I've no sense of whether or not this was an initiative that was suggested to them. If they were told, we need to get Usha out there, let's have her reading to children. That's all women are fit to do, but it is the most bizarre. And who is this for? I can't believe that any child is sitting watching this podcast. It's remarkable. It seems full of subversive messages about libraries and how important libraries are. And then the catchphrase of this podcast is when we read, we grow. And it sounds, when she says it, it sounds like a threat. Anyway, I think we have a clip from it, which I'm excited to share.
- [39:57]
D
Hello, I'm Usha Vance, and welcome back to Storytime with the Second Lady. I'm so glad you're here today to read another fun book because when we read, we Grow, today's special reader is no stranger to storytelling. Cheryl Hines is an actress who's been in many movies and TV shows. Hi. Hi, Cheryl.
- [40:16]
C
Hi.
- [40:16]
D
Thanks so much. Thank you so much for being here today. Well, I'm so happy to be here. This is fun. You know, I've always loved watching you on tv. You're so funny. And I wondered, did you always want to be an actress?
- [40:26]
C
I did.
- [40:27]
D
Isn't that funny? Since I was a little kid.
- [40:30]
B
Oh my God. Oh my God.
- [40:33]
C
I know it's funny.
- [40:34]
B
I mean, have you seen anything more painful, more cringe worthy, more get me out of here than this?
- [40:41]
C
Well, and also anything less fun? She goes, it's fun. And then Cheryl's like, yes, I've always wanted to be an actress. Isn't it that funny? Not really, no. None of this is fun or funny. It's excruciating.
- [40:55]
B
And just to point out, which we, which we haven't, that, that, that, that Cheryl Hines is the wife of, of Robert. Robert Kennedy Jr. Still Jr. At 72.
- [41:09]
C
It's just crazy that they would make them do this. I mean, it's just in insane. Poor Usha fans.
- [41:17]
B
Cheryl Hines is already caught in this predicament of being married to this guy who is, among other things, we know all about his affairs along the way, including while he's married to her, not to mention his preposterous positions on so many, you know, life and death issues. That's what she has to swallow. That's what she's now forced to, forced to force, to support, forced to identify with. And now to make matters worse, we're now putting her in a, in a podcast in which she's on display as a, you know, as someone with a gun to her head, basically. I mean, she clearly doesn't want to be there. She clearly shouldn't be there. She's clearly, among other things, by any indication of this a terrible actress. She can't even. She can't even play the part of, of the politician's wife called upon to. To do some, you know, some. To be nice to children.
- [42:33]
C
Okay, let's. So we're just going to play my next favorite clip of it. So just to set it up for people in case I haven't. Usha invites someone to come on and read from one of their favorite children's books.
- [42:47]
D
So you brought a book for us today? I did. I brought the Three Little Pigs. And I loved this book when I was growing up. Well, for one thing, I like pigs. They're cute.
- [43:01]
C
I like pigs. They're cute. I mean, it's.
- [43:04]
B
And also, let me just. I gotta point out, the Three Little Pigs is not a book. You know, it's a. It's a, you know, it's a. It's a nursery tale, you know, of which there are many versions and exist in many books. This is not a book.
- [43:23]
C
But it's so. It's so diminishing. It's so diminishing of Uche Vance, you know, highly intelligent parents, were Democrats. It makes no sense that they would use her like this. And I'm wondering who's come up with this strategy. Is this one of JD's ideas? Is she now doing story time? Because he's got a book coming out. I mean, what is the point of this? And also, it's got nobody following it. When I last looked at it, it had. Fewer than 700 people had read it. And it's. I mean, if you're going to launch something like this, at least give it some oxygen. At least give it, you know, the wings of potential success. But it's as if they've just buried it in the corner of YouTube and we happen to stumble across it.
- [44:19]
B
Well, you know, one of the ways that these things happen, you know, in any political organization and the White House is a political organization, and, And Vance has his own organization. There's a lot of things. We need ideas. Ideas. What are the ideas? Ideas. Actually, any political organization is a fountain of terrible ideas. And I suspect this became somebody's idea and somebody. Because she doesn't want to do this. Usha probably doesn't want to do this. And there's a long list of things she doesn't want to do. And then suddenly, well, this seems harmless. You know, we'll read kid books to books to kids. And then it. And then they produced it, and everybody inside looked at this and said, God, this is terrible. Let's bury this that's my analysis of what happened here.
- [45:14]
C
Well, I can't wait to read Uche Vance's memoir and to read about this particular section and if it even gets a couple of lines in it. Because. Because she could be doing all sorts of things. She could be going out and talking to military wives, which is often what the second lady and the first lady do together.
- [45:36]
B
Well, as I said, I'm sure that those options are being presented to her on a daily basis, and she's not doing them because she's decided not to do them. And probably I would read this. She has refused so many things that she had to agree to something. And this is what she agreed to. And it's. Well, you see what it is.
- [45:58]
C
Well, we did a quick search of what we think Cheryl Hines was wearing, and she was wearing a $1,200 dress and a $995 pair of Jimmy Choo shoes, I think. I cannot imagine a child sitting still to listen to Cheryl read that. Remarkable. Remarkable. What we end up doing to political wives.
- [46:28]
B
Let's make a little book on whether that marriage lasts how long. Cheryl and RFK Jr. Still Jr. At 72.
- [46:38]
C
Well, I don't want to be in the guess. I don't want to be in the game of hoping marriages fall apart, but I think it probably doesn't have long for this world.
- [46:49]
B
This is just being realistic.
- [46:51]
C
A couple of years. A year.
- [46:53]
B
I think he gets out of this, leaves the administration and the marriage breaks up and then he runs, sets up his campaign for 2028. I mean, he's got to get rid of. Probably we'll get rid of the marriage yet extricate himself from that because you don't want that to blow up during the campaign itself.
- [47:17]
C
My Interesting.
- [47:18]
B
Best political judgment.
- [47:20]
C
Interesting. And we know that he's already set himself up with a podcast. I think it's questions with the secretaries where he challenges government lies without realizing he is currently the government. So. Oh, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael. Joella, we've made it this far with only a few technical difficulties. We've had to stop a couple of times for me to throw overboard some data that I've no idea if I'll ever need in a future life. But whatever, it's been deleted now and I look forward to seeing you on Saturday.
- [47:58]
B
And meanwhile, British Telecom will have come to rescue.
- [48:02]
C
Well, I hope British Telecom will have come to rescue me. And I just wanted to thank everybody who's written to me. I've had lots of emails, hundreds and, well, thousands at this point of comments on YouTube. Many, many thanks for all your good wishes. And to everybody out there also going through something like this, it's particularly painful and acute. The ailing of a parent. And some of your stories have been really harrowing and I really appreciate you taking time to write to me amid your own suffering. Anyway, Michael, it is good to see you and you.
- [48:38]
B
And thanks to our team as always, particularly in this managing to get all of this managing to broadcast from Yorkshire.
- [48:52]
C
So the good news is we have so many bee beast tier members now there are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team. Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.