The Real Reason Trump Talks Like an Idiot: Author

Summary

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The Real Reason Trump Talks Like an Idiot: Author

The Daily Beast Podcast with Joanna Coles & Kurt Andersen
Date: March 24, 2026

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Overview

In this rich and energetic episode, host Joanna Coles sits down with Kurt Andersen — acclaimed author, journalist, co-founder of Spy magazine, and author of Fantasyland and Evil Geniuses — for a rollicking discussion dissecting Donald Trump’s language, persona, and the uniquely American qualities that fostered his rise. They traverse topics like Trump’s hyperbolic speech patterns, America’s cultural penchant for hucksterism and “clever humbug,” the blurred line between reality and fiction, and whether Trump genuinely believes his outlandish claims. The conversation also touches on cults of personality, the role of enablers and “disciples,” comparisons to historical figures like P.T. Barnum, the realities behind longstanding conspiracy theories (such as Jeffrey Epstein), and the intersection between show business and American politics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Maximalist Trump Lexicon & PT Barnum Parallels

• PT Barnum as Forefather:
  Andersen and Coles draw parallels between PT Barnum and Trump, highlighting their use of showmanship, spectacle, and attention-grabbing language to con, entertain, and enthrall the public regardless of truth.

  • “The great thing in that, one of the quotes… was he said… I can do that in an hour and a half. I can learn everything I need to know about missiles.” — Kurt Andersen [03:31]
  • PT Barnum “created the sense of a sensation before you’d even experienced it,” much like Trump and reality TV.

• Trump’s Hyperbolic Language:
  They break down how Trump’s speech uses “the best,” “nobody’s ever seen,” etc., as tools of attention, often detached from reality.

  • Coles lists some of Trump’s signature phrases:
    “Like nobody’s ever seen before, the likes of which we’ve never seen. The greatest. The best ever.” [25:19]

Does Trump Believe His Own Hype?

• Belief vs Performance:
  Andersen posits that Trump’s success stems from a sort of method acting, needing to believe his own story “in the moment” in order to sell it — even if fundamentally driven by cynicism rather than conviction.

  • “I don’t think he does in the end… but effective salesmen and con men do kind of sort of have to believe it in the moment, just like actors…” — Kurt Andersen [00:13, 25:54]
  • “His deep animating feature as a person is the most horrible, unpleasant, miserable, wretched cynicism about human behavior and that there are no good people, there are just suckers kind of thing.” [25:54]

• Blur of Delusion, Lying, Bullshitting:
  Andersen distinguishes between lying, bullshitting, and honest delusion in Trump, suggesting that with age and mental decline Trump may actually believe more of his own “bullshit” than before.

  • “He’s a bullshitter and just a constant one, as well as a liar. And those are slightly distinct things.” [26:59]
  • "He gets scarier when you sense he really does think he can just do this.” [26:59]

America: Land of Hucksters and True Believers

• Cultural Weakness for Cons:
  Andersen references his book Fantasyland, citing America’s historical fondness for being “conned” as both a form of entertainment and a byproduct of a religious, belief-driven culture.

  • “I can believe what I want because it’s the truth and it feels right. All that stuff, which is not uniquely American but it is definingly American.” [06:05]

• Hucksterism + Religiosity:
  The conversation explores the contradiction of Trump’s evangelical support despite his irreligiosity, linking it to a national predisposition to blur fact and fiction.

  • “It’s such an American story, this combination of religiosity, I guess sincere, and this kind of hucksterism. And that’s part of the story of America and how Trump came to be, even though he is irreligious and a nonbeliever, I think, pretty clearly.” — Andersen [11:14]

Showbiz Politics: From Kennedy to Trump

• Politics as Entertainment:
  They trace the evolution: Kennedy and Reagan as media-savvy, Clinton’s saxophone and scandals, Obama’s stardom — leading to Trump, the ultimate reality TV candidate who merges business, politics, and showbiz.

  • “Presidential politics had become kind of a category of show business… And this was certainly then and remains, if not unique about America, defining about America. Everything becomes show business in one way or another.” — Andersen [18:23, 17:36]

• Why Trump Won Twice:
  Trump’s outsider, anti-politician appeal, and his authenticity — however appalling — provided a marked contrast to traditional, perceived-hypocrite politicians.

  • “This guy came along, was unlike any politician ever.” — Andersen [16:06]
  • "People hate politicians. And he’s entertaining. And that’s the thing. And he understood that.” [16:08]

Cults and Enablers

• Trump’s Disciples:
  The hosts discuss Trump’s inner circle — true believers like Stephen Miller versus opportunists like JD Vance or Kristi Noem.

  • “Stephen Miller is kind of a disciple, I guess. He comes close to being a freakish true believer in his version of Donald Trump.” — Andersen [21:02]
  • "Most of them are, you know, higher on the cynicism axis, I think, than the credulous true believer." [21:47]

• Show Must Go On:
  Trump’s unpredictable behavior is likened to a TV show forced to “jump the shark” ever more perilously, putting the world (not just viewers) at risk.

  • “Just the having to, you know, jump the shark every so often in order to make people talk, make people watch.” — Andersen [34:15]
  • “His whole, I mean early on I remember in his first term somebody comparing him to the horrible little six year old who just keeps pushing his glass closer and closer to the edge of the table…” [28:21]

Evil Geniuses, Jared Kushner, and the Real Masters

• Kushner’s “Normie” Evil:
  Andersen tells tales of business dealings with Jared Kushner, labeling him “much more intelligent and normie-ish than his father-in-law… but basically untrustworthy.” [36:45]

  • Jared is not an “evil genius,” but rather a tool of them.
  • “Some of them are not geniuses at all. And certainly Donald Trump is not, nor is he an evil genius. He’s used by the evil geniuses and then has to come back to bite them in their various asses…” [37:39]

• Who Are the Real Evil Geniuses?
  Kochs, Musk, the donor class, and others who engineered the post-1970s economy. Trump is their “rabble mesmerizer,” a user and a pawn.

  • “The people who in the 1970s decided we gotta take control of this economy… hijacked the economy.” [38:09]

Jeffrey Epstein, Conspiracies, and America’s Reality Distortion

• Conspiracies with a Kernel of Truth:
  They dissect Epstein as both ancillary and illustrative of the blurred lines in elite America between power, vice, and impunity.

  • “The good ones, the successful [conspiracy theories], have a germ of some kind of truth. Right. They’re not nothing…” — Andersen [43:05]

• Epstein’s Death:
  Andersen explains his evolving skepticism about Epstein’s apparent suicide and the challenges of real secrecy in large-scale conspiracies.

  • "I still think it’s my problem with conspiracies too… as soon as more than three or four or six or whatever small number of people know about anything, it’s really hard to keep it a secret.” [45:49]
  • Now, “I’ve become less skeptical in the case of Jeffrey Epstein… because of the various fishy facts like the prison guards…” [48:29]

• Conspiracies as Bad Fiction:
  Andersen likens most conspiracy theories to “bad fiction” for their implausibility — but acknowledges that sometimes, “the world… is inexplicable and not obvious.” [46:38]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He’s an idiot. He’s always been stupid. And his stupidity has been an under remarked upon, under heralded part of his… Along with the lying, along with the mental disorders, the stupidity is important.” — Andersen [04:53]

• “America has always been the world leader in that kind of weak mindedness and slippery sense of the difference between reality and fiction.” — Andersen [06:05]

• “You know, once you get a country in which so much belief in any old thing you want and hear and disbelief in things that are true, anything goes.” — Andersen [12:41]

• On the Trump reality show style:
  “Every day is a new episode of the Donald Trump Show.” — Andersen [04:53]

• On Trump’s relationship with reality:
  “It’s hard to know from second to second where he believes it... he gets scarier when you sense he really does.” — Andersen [26:59]

• On Kushner:
  "My experience of him as a business person who is basically untrustworthy... I see how he fits into that family." — Andersen [36:45]

• On Evangelicals and Trump:
  “His most devoted supporters are evangelical Christians. Because once you get a country in which so much belief in any old thing you want and hear and disbelief in things that are true, anything goes.” — Andersen [12:41]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–04:08: PT Barnum, Spy Magazine, Trump’s old salesmanship, NY bluster
• 04:08–08:02: Trump’s loose relationship with the truth; Iran negotiation anecdote; American weakness for “fun cons”
• 09:27–11:14: Mark Burnett, reality TV, and creation of The Apprentice Trump persona
• 13:12–14:48: Trump’s behavior pre- and post-presidency, “short-fingered vulgarian” insult
• 15:18–18:23: Why Trump won (twice), authenticity vs. inauthenticity in politics; showbiz presidency through history
• 18:23–22:02: Cult of Trump, disciples and enablers, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, opportunists
• 25:17–27:49: Trump’s maximalist speech, belief versus cynical salesmanship, bullshitting
• 28:21–30:19: Brinkmanship, pushing boundaries, American political fragility
• 31:46–32:54: Joseph Smith, Mormonism, believing absurdities, rationalists among religious
• 33:18–34:45: The appeal of being “in on the show” — politics as tribal, entertaining spectacle
• 34:45–36:45: The global scale: Trump jumping the shark, impact on real-world events (Iran, Ukraine)
• 36:43–39:35: Kushner business anecdote; who counts as “evil geniuses” in American plutocracy
• 39:40–42:21: Epstein, evil geniuses, and the intermingling of money, politics, and crime
• 43:05–46:38: Epstein conspiracy analysis, what conspiracies reveal about US mindset
• 48:29–end: Conspiracies as stories, reality vs. fiction, what keeps Americans consuming the “show”

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Episode Takeaway

Coles and Andersen expertly illustrate how Trump is both a product and a master of America’s blurred lines between entertainment, hucksterism, and politics. Trump’s success springs from a society deeply primed to embrace showmen and “clever humbugs,” and, as Andersen notes, sometimes even wanting to be “in on the con.” The episode leaves listeners with the sobering reflection that Trump’s tactics — the hyperbole, the improvisation, the “ad-libbing us into war” — are not aberrations but rather the most extreme manifestations of American traditions. The conversation is threaded with sharp wit, dark humor, and an undercurrent of real concern for the fragility of the political system when it becomes all spectacle, no substance.

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Transcript

[A]

PT Barnum, obviously, the greatest show on earth, which made me start thinking about the language that Trump uses. Everything is maximalist, like nobody's ever seen before. The greatest, the best ever. Does he believe this?

[B]

I don't think he does in the end, but I think effective salesmen and con men do kind of sort of have to believe it in the moment, just like actors have to, in their method way, believe they're really playing this person. It's this. It's a similar thing.

[A]

Welcome to the Daily Beast podcast. I'm Joanna Coles, and I'm joined by author, journalist, and I think of him as the Trump soothsayer, Kurt Anderson. You may also remember him as a co founder of Spy magazine and the longtime presenter of Studio360 on NPR. But before we jump into the show, I'm just gonna ask you to share this episode with a friend. We are almost at 600,000 subscribers, which is just incredible. And we're dying to actually hit that number. And then our bigger goal is a million. But if you want to support independent media, please do and subscribe on our subscribe button.

[B]

This is like a public radio fundraiser.

[A]

It's really not. It's really not. On today's show, we're going to talk about Trump saying that he was having negotiations with Iran and then Iran saying, yeah, no, we're not. We're gonna talk about his strange lexic and the weird way everything is just hyperbole all the time. And I know you have lots of thoughts on that. I thought we should. Also referring to the title of one of your books I've been rereading recently, Evil Geniuses, about how the elite basically captured the economy for themselves. Is Jared Kushner an evil genius? We'll come to that. But we have a fantastic video that really. Well, I use the term soothsayer that really analyzes Trump's remarkable abilities and projects. In fact, what goes on to happen.

[B]

What if Donald Trump were to get his own Saturday morning cartoon show? Trump. Trump. Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. He's a Trump. He is Donald Trump.

[A]

Sarah Young, big build a building.

[B]

Even with this power finger. This child loves finger losers don't linger this dynamite. You're number one, Donald.

[A]

And don't forget Trumpy do so good. You sent me that video and I just couldn't stop laughing. Where does it come from?

[B]

It comes from the first Spy magazine primetime NBC special called how to be famous in 1990 that we got this literally newcomer that nobody knew. We said, ah, okay. Named Jerry Seinfeld. To host. But NBC said, hey, this guy is good. Anyway, he hosted, he gave that introduction to it and it was a distilled version of Spy magazine. And Donald Trump had from literally the first issue of Spy been one of our regular characters. First issue was the 10 most embarrassing new Yorkers. And he was one of them. We didn't number them, so he could have been one. He could have been.

[A]

I think he was one who could have been more embarrassing than Donald Trump even back then.

[B]

And the great thing in that, one of the quotes we had to show what an bully, bluster guy, ridiculous fellow he was as he is, was he said it was a time when we were negotiating, when Ronald Reagan was trying to negotiate with Gorbachev a nuclear arms deal. Said, I could do that in an hour and a half. I can learn everything I need to know about missiles. He said in the first issue, in an hour and a half. So there we are, and he's still firing missiles and thinks it's gonna be great. Or now he's firing missiles, I guess I should say.

[A]

Yeah, he really is, you know, $3 million missiles, a lot of them as we speak, in fact. And this morning he said, we're negotiating with Iran and it's all going swimmingly. And then the Iranians came out and said, yeah, we're not actually negotiating at all. And then he's like, well, we're going to talk to them this week and I guess it's going to be on the phone because they can't really get out. You're like, what are you talking about? You have no idea what you're talking about. He has ad libbed us into this war. Could you have, could you have prophesied that? Is that the right word? Prophesied? I think it's the right word. Prophesied, perhaps prophesied that he, he would ad libus into war, having sort of ad libbed his way into the presidency.

[B]

Well, it is the next episode and he's all about every day is a new episode of the Donald Trump Show. Do you know he. Because Venezuela went so well, relatively speaking, right. And no disasters befell it and it had next to no military to fight back and nobody liked Maduro, so they gave him up. So that went fine. This is easy. Why didn't anybody ever do that? I can do this too. And of course he has no clue about the Persian empire or the Iranian history or that they put up with eight years of horrific war with Iraq in the 1980s and became more entrenched. He knew nothing. So he thought, oh, I'll just drop a lot of bombs and they'll as he said, cry uncle. He's an idiot. He's always been stupid. And his stupidity has been an under remarked upon, under heralded part of his. Along with the lying, along with the mental disorders, the stupidity is important.

[A]

Well, maybe it hasn't quite mattered as much. Although it's incredible that he got elected twice.

[B]

It is of course one of the incredible things that none of us as we used to be called reality based people can get our heads around, but which is one of the reasons, not one of the reasons actually, because I wrote this book Fantasyland before he was elected, but it was a history of America's weakness for being conned and kind of half enjoyment of it and just. And because of the incredible religious history of Americans which is really part of the national character. I can believe what I want because it's the truth and it feels right. All that stuff which is not uniquely American but it is definingly American. And we like many things, America has always been the world leader in that kind of weak mindedness and slippery sense of the difference between reality and fiction.

[A]

So I loved Fantasyland when it came out. It gives such an interesting perspective on America and frankly, whether or not a character like Donald Trump could actually exist in another continent. I mean whether or not he could exist in Europe. One of the characters you talk about in the book is P T Barnum and by happenstance I was in Bridgeport over the weekend where P T Barnum became man. There's a big statue to him which I drove past, but he's almost like the forefather for Donald Trump. I mean his first freak show was 161 year old woman, obviously not true, who was the nurse to George Washington, obviously not true. And yet people lined up to see this thing which they knew wasn't true, and the sort of sophisticated nature of P.T. barnum having the audience in on the con and yet still paying to see her.

[B]

Absolutely. And he did that again and again and again and he did normal entertainment, little plays and stuff. He created this incredibly successful museum in lower Manhattan called Barnum's American Museum which had all this stuff and more, it was just fun of any kind. And he said, and you know, he was still in the middle of it and he said and it was this great epiphany obviously that the good nature with which it was something like the good nature with which Americans Except a clever humbug.

[A]

A clever humbug, yeah, it's such a good, such a good analysis.

[B]

And so he didn't hide it. He didn't pretend it was true. He said, how do you know it's not? Was basically his response to people. He said, well, if you can't prove it's not and people enjoy it, then that's entertainment.

[A]

Right? And his understanding, which you say in the book, that actually it's attention that matters, not whether or not it's true, but, but the fact that you get people lining up for it. And he was able to do, and he did this with Jenny Lind. He was able to create the sense of a sensation before you'd even experienced it, which is such an interesting, smart thing to do. And also what Mark Burnett went on to do, as you've also talked about with his reality shows. And obviously he went from Survivor to the Apprentice and gave us all Donald

[B]

Trump and then to making docudramas, I guess you could call them, if you believe the docu part about Jesus Christ, because he is this super Christian character along with his wife, Roma Downey. And so again, they're Brits or he is. I don't know what she is exactly, but is she Canadian, some Commonwealth thing? I think you should take credit for her.

[A]

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[B]

the combination of sanctimonious Christians and incredibly successful hucksterism. And I had him on my radio show and he was talking about how. Well, he was talking about how the Survivor, one of its proofs and one of its moral lessons, he told me, was that people don't like liars. You could be sneaky and everything, but they don't like the contestants who are actual liars. And if you pretend to be something, then people will never forgive you. Which, of course, in this day and age, one thinks, well, what about the man you made, the man whose career you made? You blocked that from nothing. Donald Trump in the Apprentice, of course, that's him to a T. And I said, and he was going on and on about this and about Donald and how great he was and wonderful. I said, well, wait a minute. I said, he's the most un. Jesus Christ like person I can imagine. And he was. And his wife were just like, that's harsh. You know, he gives money away. His. He's got this nice Scottish wife and. Or rather mother. And so it's just, it's such an American story, this combination of religiosity, I guess, sincere and this kind of hucksterism. And that's part of the story of America and how Trump came to be, even though he is irreligious and a non believer, I think, pretty clearly. But his most devoted supporters are evangelical Christians. Because once you get a country in which so much belief in any old thing you want and hear and disbelief in things that are true, anything goes. And that wasn't always the case. It was always tended to be the case in America a little bit, but then it got out of control the last 60 years. And along with the Internet, give us Donald Trump.

[A]

Right? And also conspiracy theories. And I want to come on to Epstein as well. Cause at the moment, we've got the huckster of all hucksters in the White House, and then the world is consumed by the biggest conspiracy theory I think it's fair to say America's ever seen. I mean, maybe the assassination of JFK comes close, but really the Epstein conspiracy is sort of remarkable. But you've been covering, or, I mean, you really spent some time observing Donald Trump up close in the 80s and 90s. How has he changed? What change do you see?

[B]

If any, other than getting old, he could keep, as they say, the shit in the bag better. When he was younger and his lying was still plain, everything he is today, he was that. He was a bully, he was a liar, he was a bluster. He, he all, all of it was absolutely true. I'm the best. I'm the greatest. My mistress says she had the best sex in the world. Whatever it was, you know, was, was there as soon as I was aware of him. When, when my partner in SPY came back from an interview that he'd done doing a profile of Trump for GQ magazine and just told me stories about what a, what a, what an ass this guy was that he just spent days with and also how short his fingers were for a.

[A]

Right. And then you termed the short fingered

[B]

vulgarian right into his epithet that we used many, many, many scores of time.

[A]

Yeah. Which was very funny. So one of the things you talk about in fantasyland, which I'd love to go into in a bit more depth, is just that sense of what does it say about America that they do elect him twice? And notwithstanding the catast, catastrophic debate for Joe Biden and his. Well, his very visible decline, what does it say that we knew what we were getting and America still voted for him?

[B]

Well, you know why they voted for him the first time? In a. Why a close, almost not a minority voted for him, but he won the first time. And a small majority voted for him. Or a small, I guess, plurality, whatever it is, however, he won the second time. It does say a lot. And it's partly because people, Americans, I think, and not just Americans, hate normal politicians. The normal politician who is inauthentic and hedging and, you know, we see them every day on certainly Republicans in Congress to an extreme of people who, you know, don't tell the truth and pretend to be people they aren't and aren't authentic and all those things about politicians that people just hate. This guy came along was unlike any politician ever.

[A]

Right. It's unlike any person ever.

[B]

Well, I don't know. Yes, I guess, but certainly unlike a politician and a friend of mine in show business appropriately said to me early on, before he got the nomination, no, he's going to win. He's going to win the presidency because people hate politicians. And he's entertaining. And that's the thing. And he understood that. His biographer, Tim o' Brien said, or Trump told him. He said, when I was even a teenager, I knew I was gonna go into real estate. I was gonna go into real estate, but I'm gonna go into show business, too. I thought about it, but I'm gonna combine them and it'll be the best of both worlds. It'll be real estate, but it'll be show business. Well, it'll be politics, but it'll be show business. Right. And he didn't come out of nothing. Right. I mean, he Couldn't have. He joked about or joked, no, he talked about. Teased about running for president in 1988, in 1992, 96, again and again and again, and it was a joke. And Spy magazine made fun of it back in 88 when we said, he has 4% support. Maybe it's time to make him. Make him president, we said, but, you know, the time came when it was possible. And I think in his feral, brilliant way, he sensed that America had changed sufficiently that a guy like him in reality TV age and all the rest maybe had a shot and if nothing else, it would be good for the brand, which is what he really thought the first time.

[A]

Yeah, because I think he was surprised the first time he actually got elected that he managed to pull it off.

[B]

But again, it was the end of evolution, devolution, whatever it is. But as soon as TV came along and Jack Kennedy was an amazing performer right at TV in a way that Nixon wasn't. And arguably one of the reasons he won in 1960, Ronald Reagan, a movie star. He was a real movie star. And then a TV star. And then. And used all of that to be the president. I'm the president. And was good at that. And then Bill Clinton, in his way, playing sax and wearing, you know, wearing shades. Wearing shades and saying, you know, telling an MTV audience that he wore boxers, not briefs. And, you know, all this stuff, what, this guy's running for president. Then I really had my epiphany was when I. In 1998, when he got in trouble for having sex with his intern, Monica Lewinsky in the White House, and his approval ratings went up because it was suddenly the second season, as I said in this piece that I wrote then of the Clinton show. And now it's exciting. This is new, this is interesting. And I realized that for some years, through all those various presidents, politics, and especially presidential politics had become kind of a category of show business because again, and that's going back to the 19th century in America. And this was certainly then and remains, if not unique about America, defining about America. Everything becomes show business in one way or another. You know, hospitality becomes restaurants, become themed. All this stuff that we take for granted now, that wasn't the case. Restaurants were restaurants. They weren't, you know, Joe Blow from Outer Space, you know, Chicken Barn or whatever. And religion, too, in America. The thing that made it different, you know, itinerant preachers out on the frontier was that they were entertainers where there was nothing else to see or watch. And so here we are. And there was so There's a history of Donald Trump, and there was obviously this group of people who were willing and remain eager to be members of this cult.

[A]

And I mean, cults survive because they have people around them. Obviously, they survive because they have followers, but they also often survive because they have a group of people around them, the sort of disciples, if you like. Literally taking the example from the Bible. Who are the worst disciples around Trump, do you think? I mean, there are quite a lot of contenders, but if you were to pull out the worst and the biggest enablers, who do you think they are?

[B]

Well, you see, there's disciples who are true believers. For instance, I think Marjorie Taylor Greene was a true believer. And why she's turned on him because she was a true believer. And my messiah has lied to me and I've lost the faith now. Is Steve Bannon a disciple? No, There are no. I mean, we shouldn't get bound up in the comparison to Jesus Christ and his disciples. But those disciples believed. I believe JD Vance is not a disciple. People are, wow, this is amazing what he's done. And look at what he's done. This is a new kind of Republican, a new kind of politician. All those things are true. And he has changed politics. But disciple? I mean, the worst people around him. I mean, it depends on the year and the. I mean, the obvious that we could all name, like Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller is kind of a disciple, I guess. He comes close to being a freakish true believer in his version of Donald Trump. He comes close. Whereas, you know, J.D. vance and Pete Hegseth and most of them are, you know, higher on the cynicism axis, I think, than the credulous true believer.

[A]

Right. And it was. They're opportunistic. No one else is going to give them a cabinet job.

[B]

Well, no, indeed.

[A]

Well, we hope.

[B]

And no one would have given Kristi Noem a cabinet job. No one would have given Tulsi Gabbard. No one would have given Bobby Garrett Kennedy, all of them.

[A]

Right. Bobby Kennedy, your friend who sold you coke at Harvard. People loved it when you came on to discuss that. And the peculiar thing where he calls you for. For people who didn't hear it, you bought. Well, you tell the story. You buy. You just tell the story. Such a good story, especially the straw bit. Just give an abbreviated version of it because it's so fabulous. For those who haven't heard it, I

[B]

bought cocaine one time in my life, my freshman year with my freshman roommate. We went to. We walked over to Bobby's dorm. We tried the Coke. When he was gone getting his stash, we looked in his address book and saw the Pope's phone number that we wrote down.

[A]

Did you ever call him, by the way?

[B]

I think we did. I don't think we got through, but several popes ago, of course. But anyway, so we did the coke, we bought the gram from him, and went away. Turns out I realized when he called me that I had taken his little straw, this little inch of straw or half inch of straw, whatever it is that he gave us to sample his cocaine. And he was really pissed, and he said, come back. You took my straw, man. It's full of crystals. It's full of crystals. And so, okay, I'll bring it back. And he was really angry, and he just, like, took it out of my fingers and slammed the door.

[A]

And he wanted it because he thought the crystals were sort of organic and in some way healthy.

[B]

Right.

[A]

These were nasal juices combining with the cocaine that created the crystals.

[B]

I'll leave you to that disgusting recitation, but yes, indeed, exactly. And he thought there was some scientific thing he was growing special, you know, personal cocaine in his straw that I had destroyed. In fact, I hadn't added this detail until now. I was like, whoa, maybe we did, like, crush it or something. Maybe ruined his crystal farm. And so we put, like, a spit, or we put, like, a little bit of the cocaine soldiers and a little bit of, I don't know, mucus. I don't know what we put in it, but to, like, try to reform the crystal before so he wouldn't be upset.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

That's what boys did.

[A]

It's so disgusting. Well, maybe you were the. Maybe that's how the brain worm came to be in there.

[B]

Oh, who knows? Well, as he said recently when he was saying he doesn't mind germs, did cocaine off of toilet seats a lot. Well, you know, yeah, I guess he probably did.

[A]

Unlike Jeffrey Epstein, who I want to come to in a moment, who was a germaphobe but managed to get STDs all the time. It was constant, as we see from the tranche of emails, getting gonorrhea. And yet he was a germaphobe.

[B]

Well, Trump was famously a germaphobe. And one of the reasons he didn't want to run for president is all the handshaking.

[A]

Right? And yet he didn't use a condom, according to Stormy Daniels. I'm like this. It's very strange. Men have a way. All I'm saying is men have a way of compartmentalizing that's very peculiar. Anyway, P.T. barnum, obviously the greatest show on Earth, which made me start thinking about the language that Trump uses. And he does have this sort of strange thing where everything is maximalist, everything is the best. He's the only person that knows. And I wrote it. I wrote it. I wrote down.

[B]

You write good, Joanna.

[A]

I do. Like nobody's ever seen before, the likes of which we've never seen. The greatest. The best ever. I'm trying to give him, at least I'm giving him the benefit of an English accent, but he's adenoidal, which I'm hoping is diminishing the value of a British accent. But this sense in which he knows more than anybody else, does he believe this? Do you think he believes it? The nature of a kind of huckster like this. Do they have to believe it in the moment when they're selling it?

[B]

That is the operative question with all of them, all of the great ones. Do they have to believe it? You know, I don't think he does in the end. I think his. His deep animating feature as a person is the most horrible, unpleasant, miserable, wretched cynicism about human behavior and that there are no good people, there are just suckers kind of thing. So does he know? But I think, you know, as you say, I think. I think effective salesmen and salespeople and con men, a more extreme version of salespeople, do kind of sort of have to believe in the moment, just like actors have to, you know, in their method way, believe they're really this. Playing this person. It's. It's a similar thing, but, you know, it's. It's hard to know from second to second where he believes it. And to me, he gets scarier when you sense he really does things.

[A]

This.

[B]

He really does think he can just do this. And when, you know, he really, like, did he. You know, he famously said it was reported at the time when he lost the election in 2020. Yeah. Why this guy beat me. He said that privately, but never admitted it publicly. And I wonder. It's scary to me. And it may be part of his mental decline that he believes this stuff he believes is bullshit more and more. I mean, he's a bullshitter and just a constant one, as well as a liar. And those are slightly distinct things. But, you know, I think it's a good bet that he believes more of it than he did, you know, in the past.

[A]

Right. And also it's more acute for us, especially if you look what he's trying to do with the Save America act, which we're this on a Monday afternoon. And it appears that it's never gonna make it through the House. But just the sense in which it's come this far that he might actually impact elections by saying you have to turn up with an idea and it's not gonna happen. And it, you know, John Toon's not gonna get rid of the filibuster. But nevertheless, it's sort of brinkmanship.

[B]

Well, it is. And his whole, I mean early on I remember in his first term somebody comparing him to the horrible little six year old who just keeps pushing his glass closer and closer to the edge of the table, closer and closer until one of his parents smack him or it drops off or whatever. He's that kind of just pushing, see how far I can push it. Who says I can't do this? Who says I can't do this? And that's. And again he's shown us the fragility of our system which is so based on norms rather than laws and regulations. Nobody says I can't do this. And then the Supreme Court says, yeah, nobody. In fact, you can do anything and you can't be prosecuted. So, you know. But did he really think, does he really think he's the smartest guy on earth and all the maximalist things he says about himself all the time? Well, you wonder and you worry because he really thought that in days he would have victory in Iran. And that's just, I mean the ignorance and stupidity of that belief. Is that stupidity? Is it ignorance and I conflate them or is it some kind of believing your own headlines that you're anointed by Jesus? Speaking of Jesus, he said, I think today he said about the SAVE Act, Voter Registration act and the ICE thing which he's now combined. You have to, you know, you have to.

[A]

Right. He wants funding for ice.

[B]

Put them all. He's trying to make another big beautiful bill where all these are lashed together. He said do it for Jesus. He actually said that today, which is weird for him. That's a new.

[A]

So new.

[B]

I heard your great talk with Michael Wolf the other day about the Christ ness of his coalition, certainly, but him coming out of his own mouth, that was, wow, that was a new Hegsethian Vancian version of Christianity that. And maybe he does believe more again as he gets closer to the end. There was a period last year where he was talking about going to heaven or was he going to get into heaven a lot? And repeatedly it was clearly a little for a While a hobby horse of his. So who knows, maybe he sees enough pictures online of AI created pictures of him with God and him with Jesus and him. All these things, you know, who knows where the. Where the line between delusion and the con ends? There was a famous. The great. In my view, one of the great American charlatans and a highly peculiarly American guy was Joseph Smith, who invented Mormonism based on all kinds of remarkable claims that he made. And there's a great quote from him, though, that makes me. Makes one respect him, which is. I'm only slightly paraphrasing. If I didn't. If I weren't me, and I didn't see what was going on, I wouldn't believe this stuff I'm saying either.

[A]

It's just an insane.

[B]

Yeah, but it's.

[A]

He's leading the church. He's leading the Mormon, I mean, and ran for president. Right. And amazing to me that Mitt Romney, of all people, who seems like the ultimate rationalist, would be a Mormon.

[B]

Well, and Mormon. I am a big fan of Mormons today, actually. I mean, they are the least bad of the Republicans. They really are, as a group. I mean, Jeff Flake, Senator Jeff Flake, forced out because he was too honest and good. Mitt Romney basically forced out because he was too rationalist and honest. No, exactly. They are good people.

[A]

Well, and Governor Cox, too, who was in, you know, who runs Utah and tried to calm everything after Charlie Kirk.

[B]

Right. And Jon Huntsman, the previous governor from Utah, great guy, moderate Republican, ran for president briefly, so who could.

[A]

But it's just still so hard to get your head around a religion where someone says. Where the founder says that, where the Messiah says that.

[B]

No, I know. Well, but it's back to what we were talking about before. Where is this true? Is it not true? Did George Washington's 165-year-old former enslaved nursemaid really go on tour with PD Barnum or not? Well, probably not, but it's fun to believe she's an old woman, that's for sure.

[A]

I know. And it is that sense of being in on the joke, on the con, of wanting to be part of a cultural moment, which is, I think, what Trump has created and what Barnum created too. Right. That you're part of something.

[B]

True.

[A]

It's tribal.

[B]

Well, and politics. Not only were politicians boring to people and useless, you know, grifters and liars and hedgers and hypocrites, I think. And hypocrites, exactly. All the reasons people hate him. Also politicians. Politics was boring to most people. And they never liked it and they don't like it and they paid no attention to it, which is another reason Trump gets elected. Because most people don't pay attention to what all this means. They just know, oh, my gas prices are high or, oh, you know, crime's worse or better, whatever it is. So the fact that it can be this show, this, wow, look what he did today. What's he going to do tomorrow for, you know, 10 years now? 11, almost 11 years now. And you think again, like, people get sick of shows after a while. Well, you know, that's one reason, I think. I mean, there's the pathological thing of seeing what he can get away with. Oh, I can do this. Can I do this? Can I do this? There's also just the having to, you know, jump the shark every so often in order to make people talk, make people watch.

[A]

And if we're in season 10 or season 11, just given the years he's been doing it. Also, not only do you have to jump the shark, but it's gone global, right? It's now global. We're at war. That might be nuclear. I mean, it's hard to it the stakes are so high. And of course in entertainment value, it doesn't matter. Except it really matters if you're going to a. Which she's already done, disrupt the global energy supply chain, but also antagonize a country that's got whatever it's got, however many tons of enriched uranium.

[B]

In the case of Iran. Yeah. And apparently according to reporting in the last with this war effectively ended up antagonizing his buddies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states by like, no, no, no, this is not good for us, Mr. Reckless Friend of ours, Mr.

[A]

Person who we've given a $400 million

[B]

new Air Force One to or invested several billion in your son in law's business. Speaking of his son in law, Jared Kushner, the great negotiator of both the end to the Ukraine war, which has happened, hasn't it? And the end to the Iranian war. I worked with. He bought a business that I was co founder of a media business called the Very Short List. And I wrote about that once. And he's much, much more intelligent and normie ish than his father in law. But he's also. My experience of him as a business person who is basically untrustworthy. You know, it's, I see how he fits into that, you know, family.

[A]

So he's untrust. How is he untrustworthy?

[B]

Oh, just keeps stringing you along about these little things. This little deal that. No, I really want to do it. Oh, we'll have to look into this. Oh, no, this problem has come up. Just, you know, an annoying inability to close this little, little deal, actually, for buying this Media Daily newsletter, very short list that was owned and published by Mr. Barry Diller and the IAC company.

[A]

Oh, interesting. Okay, so you're taking me back to history. I didn't know. And what happened to it?

[B]

We sold it to or IAC sold it to the Observer Company and they, you know, published it for a while and along with the New York observer, put it out of business.

[A]

So. Interesting. So is Jared one of the evil geniuses?

[B]

And let me stipulate, I call this book Evil Geniuses. Some of them are not geniuses at all. And certainly Donald Trump is not, nor is he an evil genius. He's used by the evil geniuses and then has to come back to bite them in their various asses in various ways. But, you know, he certainly is part of. Yes, in the most broad sense. I wouldn't have ever included Jared Kushner in that book. I'm talking about the Kochs and the bigger characters.

[A]

And Elon Musk would be in it now.

[B]

100%. Elon Musk would be in it. And it's the people who in the 1970s decided we gotta take control of this economy and this political economy because it's getting basically. I mean, inequality has gotten too low, it's too fair. And basically they decided we want more. We want more. And let's set up a counter establishment, a right wing counter establishment. Let's set up the Federalist Society, let's set up all these foundations. Let's do all that they did Starting in the mid-70s, the Heritage foundation, all of it, in order to, you know, basically hijacked the economy. And then. And then, oh, Ronald Reagan, this guy. Really? Okay, we'll try. And, you know, they had their, you know, a predecessor to Trump, really, and a guy who could mesmerize the rabble, if you will. And my parents and lots of people who liked Ronald Reagan. I don't know, I never hated Ronald Reagan. He was, you know, he. But he was used by and willingly used by, because he was a genuine conservative. The evil geniuses who wanted lower taxes and no regulation. And that was it. And that was their obsession and still is. And those are the people, the donor class, we now call them. And some of them are the Epstein class.

[A]

Well, I was going to ask you. I mean, Jeffrey Epstein fits perfectly into Evil Genius, doesn't he?

[B]

He does. And again I, and yes, he does indeed. And I'd barely known about him at the time, but he was, but he's an ancillary player. I mean he's a guy making tons of money, oddly for himself. But he was never, for instance, very politically involved or engaged. And unlike the true evil geniuses who

[A]

basically, well, probably if he'd been politically engaged, his nefarious underworld business would have come to light.

[B]

I think that's good. I never thought of that. But you're absolutely right. It would have been in somebody's interest to expose him.

[A]

Right. I mean, can you imagine the opposition research if you're thinking about running against Jeff or if he's thinking about running. But he was certainly friendly. I mean you think of him being friendly with Kathy Rummler who was Obama's chief counsel, so America's lawyer. I mean he certainly had, I mean Peter Mandelson, who is business minister in Britain. So he certainly had his fingers in

[B]

political pots, as you know, in this system, like any system really, where political power and financial power are intertwined in all kinds of ways. And he was living in the largest house in Manhattan and having Noam Chomsky, Mr. Socialist and Woody Allen and the liberal leader. So of course he wasn't going to become, you know, a fierce libertarian right winger. And also back then, for most, for much of his life in the 90s and aughts, politics were not what they became. Right.

[A]

It didn't become, it wasn't as entertaining. And presidents fight celebrities either. In the same way that Obama say, became enterprise, huge celebrity.

[B]

Correct. No, absolutely. Or the very different way in which this guy is a celebrity. No, and again, in the way that, and Obama's a good example. He was still dignified and intelligent and all the wonderful things that Barack Obama was, but he was, wow, he was a star and he knew that, I knew that immediately and swooned for it like crazy immediately even knowing like, wow, I'm just, I have a crush on this guy. And, and, but, but you know, and beautiful looking and performed well and, and you know, he, he was, he was kind of the, the Jack Kennedy incarnation.

[A]

Right, right. It's so interesting. So I mean, Fantasyland, which I, I've said, I mean is such an interesting book about the psyche of America. What does the Epstein conspiracy tell us about it? And I'm very curious because you know, you have great clarity in the way you write about it and as you mentioned earlier, you're a reality based person and yet the fun about conspiracies is that every now and then they start, you know, they start eating themselves in from the edges. And I wondered if you'd actually changed your mind about whether or not Epstein had died by suicide or if he'd been murdered.

[B]

I've never had a firm conviction about that. My view of. Basic view of conspiracy theories is that there are some conspiracies, but that it is that are true. And unfortunately, the proliferation of nutty conspiracy theories where that becomes 96% of conspiracy theories is unfortunate because like it basically you don't. People don't see that. No, that's a real one. And the other thing about conspiracy theories and appealing conspiracy ideas is that they often the good ones, the successful ones, have a germ of some kind of truth. Right. They're not nothing. They're not, you know, and so, you know, whatever people, I mean, and Epstein had more than a germ, obviously. And Epstein is the thing about the Epstein thing, whatever. It's however, you know, conscious how many of those men were of the underage pedophilic sex trafficking ring in which they were adjacent, if not engaged. It was, it was, you know, it was, it was happening. It happened for a long time and it was covered up and to various degrees of, oh, I'm just gonna look the other way or so all the

[A]

coded language in emails of like Snow White.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, weird that you. Once you read them, knowing what you know about him is hard to read.

[B]

She was naughty and all that stuff, right? No, it was disgusting, of course.

[A]

But no new shipments have come in. I think that was one that Peter Attia said referred to drugs, you know.

[B]

Yeah. So it was. It's real. And again, as somebody who, you know, I, for instance, still I've read a lot, not as much as many people have about the Kennedy assassination. I still don't think, you know, Lyndon Johnson or the CIA killed him. I don't. But there's. It's clear there was a cover up by the CIA to cover their ass. And they didn't want the world to know that they had met with Lee Harvey Oswald and all this. There was a lot they didn't want the world to know. I don't believe it was that they arranged for the assassination. The Epstein one seems to me, and increasingly as now we study it now instead of just QAnon being the proponents of it, has more truth than I knew or I was willing to admit. And I still think it's my problem with conspiracies too. Just from my basic understanding of the world is that as soon as more than three or four or six or whatever small number of people know about anything, it's really hard to keep it a secret. If it's a big awful secret, like killing the president or even killing a guy in federal prison.

[A]

Right. I know you would think, I always think that too, that at some point you can't possibly keep this secret that Jeffrey Epstein was killed. And yet the more you read about it, the more strange. Well, there are just lots of unanswered questions.

[B]

Well, and no, there are. And it's. The thing about conspiracy theories too is I write fiction, right? So it always struck me as mostly bad. Like bad fiction, like where you. This is not plausible. Okay, fine, it's fun and it's entertaining. But come on, it strikes me as they bear some resemblance. As does, in a way the whole Christian religious theology, eschatology, history is a magnificent, you know, the most magnificent conspiracy theory of a kind with the Antichrist and Armageddon and God and his son and all of it is like. Well, and it all fits together, right? It all fits together in a too neat of a kind of way as, as conspiracy theories tend to do for my taste because so much in the world, as we both know, is inexplicable and not obvious. And it looks like this connects to here because she met him and then. And maybe, but. Yeah, but like you're, you're the conspiracy mindedness that leads one to see everything as meaningful. Meaningful. That's not a coincidence. That's the problem is being willing to see them when they exist, but being skeptical until you become less skeptical. As I admit, I've become less skeptical in the case of Jeffrey Epstein and not just because it's bad for Trump, because of the various fishy facts like the prison guards, you know, right. Reporting about, searching for Googling Jeffrey Epstein.

[A]

Right. Five minutes before it was announced and

[B]

days after she got 10 grand right

[A]

in her bank account. The weird regular payments in her bank

[B]

account, those kinds of things. I mean, those, you know, I mean, that's not just random connecting this dot to that dot, that looks suspicious to me. So yeah, I mean, and again, this is not, I mean, God knows, you know, people in all cultures and all nations and all places have believe all kinds of untrue conspiracies and have a weakness for that that is not uniquely American, but compared to, you know, the

[A]

Netherlands or something, I know it's. And this one has been all consuming and it sucked up the President too. Well, Kurt Anderson, it's Fantastic to have you on the Daily Beast podcast. Promise me you' come back. As the Epstein conspiracy continues to unfold. We've got another 3 million papers to go, I think.

[B]

Yeah. And it sounds like, I mean, you've become a regular scholar of this thing. You've read. Well, no, I hear you talking about. I hear you talking about the emails like, wow, she knows so much. So between your scholar, your Epstein scholarship, and your ability to do a Melania Trump impersonation, that makes me laugh every time I hear it.

[A]

Well, thank you.

[B]

I really appreciate it.

[A]

Thank you so much. Kurta, thank you for coming to studio. Thank you. So many favorite parts of that conversation. For me, I love the understanding of P.T. barnum as the forefather for Donald Trump and his ability to understand that actually, all that matters in the end is attention. And as long as you have someone's attention, no one else has it. And that's what you want Anyway. Leave us a comment about your favorite part of the conversation. We'll be back tomorrow with Inside Trump's Head. Michael Wolff and I will be at it again in those dark, cavernous spaces. And big thanks to Kurt Anderson. And don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. And don't forget, as our first lady would have us say, bebeast. 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. Thanks to our production team. Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus. Found something funny. Send it instantly. TikTok makes sharing with friends effortless. One tap. Whole group laughing moments move fast. Download TikTok now.