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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
- [00:22]
Rachel Maddow
of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan. Required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms.
- [00:30]
Michael Wolff
He's got one audience and this is not it. He decided to show up because he's become, he's bigger than everybody. This was a statement of I have no insecurities when it comes to you people who I only have contempt for, who in the past I probably have felt insecure around.
- [00:50]
Rachel Maddow
I think Donald Trump knew he bombed in the room.
- [00:52]
Michael Wolff
I can tell you that he came off that stage, everybody said you were fantastic. And that's exactly what he will believe. Donald Trump, I feel safe to say, has never once in his life even entertained the possibility that he has bombed. Michael Wolf, Joanna Coles.
- [01:18]
Rachel Maddow
Oh my goodness, we have so much to discuss. Not least, we have the resurgence of measles and the Forever peptide popping RFK Jr. We've got the return of tariffs.
- [01:31]
Michael Wolff
Actually, peptides you don't usually pop, you usually inject. RFK Jr. Loves an injection.
- [01:39]
Rachel Maddow
Well, we're going to come to that. And the rise of measles in the US which is bigger than it has been in the last two years than it has in the entire of the last 20. Thanks for that, Maha. Definitely not making things better. We're going to talk about J.D. vance's book, which I think, I think we've both totally stalled on. We're going to talk about Darlene Graham and the latest dynastic politics. Is this what we're going to see? And I know you have a point of view on it and you've also been talking to the White House and you have thoughts on what is going on inside Donald Trump's head, which is where we go thrice a week to figure out what this government of one is up to. But before we get into that, don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast. We've hit our 700,000 subscriber mark, which we're incredibly grateful and excited about. So onwards, onwards to a million. If you haven't subscribed to the Daily Beast. Please do. There are all sorts of tiers of membership for all sorts of membership benefits. And we love having you as part of the Daily Beast community.
- [02:45]
Michael Wolff
Onwards to 10 million.
- [02:46]
Rachel Maddow
The biggest cringe I have had for the last few months was watching Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner last night, bombing. He may not have been bombing Iran for the first time in 10 days, but he was bombing in the Trump ballroom.
- [03:02]
Michael Wolff
And I think that's a misunderstanding on your part and the part of your many colleagues. Let me separate myself from you and your colleagues in the press corps. I think that that's what everything that I saw is. Donald Trump as we know him and look, love him or hate him, that he was not changing and the expectation here that he would show up and somehow I don't even know where this expectation could have come from. Turn into a cool late night host sort of guy is a profound misunderstanding of who Donald Trump is, what has made him a success and what, what powers him forward at every minute. That was Donald Trump. There was no difference. And he was not. That was the interesting thing that he was not hardly even trying to approach and certainly not pander to this group of people.
- [04:09]
Rachel Maddow
Well, he certainly didn't pander to them, but I did actually. I slightly disagree. First of all, he's usually quite good at reading the room and one thinks about him.
- [04:18]
Michael Wolff
Absolutely. This is not. He's good at reading his rooms. This is not his room. These are people he doesn't care about, has no feeling for. This is just another world. And actually the only reason I can think that he showed up here is that it was an act of arrogance on his part. I don't care about these people. I'm just gonna go and be my usual self.
- [04:45]
Rachel Maddow
Well, there were plenty of his people in the room. Fox was there, Fox News was there. There were plenty of Republicans in the room. And he was BO even for them.
- [04:54]
Michael Wolff
But those, it doesn't, they don't get him either. This again, profound here. That's why they are behind him at all times because he gets the people who they need but they don't get because they're elite, professional lawyers, whatever, very much more comfortable in Washington than they are in, you know, among the MAGA crowd at a 40,000 people arena or
- [05:28]
Rachel Maddow
I guess at a town hall. I mean, for the Republican congresspeople who are in the room and the politicians who are in the room, I thought the most interesting moment for me was when he discussed the Barack Hussein Obama moment. And of course, in 2011, Obama teased Donald Trump, showed a picture of the White House with the Trump logo on the top of it, which Trump, as far as I know, hasn't really addressed before. And it's often been suggested that that was the moment that Donald Trump decided to run for office. Now, of course, you have said many times that's not true. He's thought about doing this many, many, for many years before that. But he said yesterday, I think, addressing some kind of primal wound, that actually Obama had teased him nicely, that this wasn't negative teasing, that actually he'd done it in a way that was. He implied that Obama had done it in a, in a rather sophisticated way. And I don't think we were expecting him to turn into Jon Stewart, but I do think we were expecting him to be funny and he was trying to be funny and he wasn't. And it reminded me.
- [06:43]
Michael Wolff
Well, funny. Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. Funny to whom? Um, you know, there's, I, there, I, I think that there's, there's an interesting moment. Do, do we have a clip of that Chris Christie joke?
- [06:56]
Rachel Maddow
Yes, we do.
- [06:57]
Michael Wolff
Let's, let's put that, let's roll that if we can, because I think there's a, my, there's an interesting point here.
- [07:03]
Guest or Producer
But I can exclusively reveal to you this evening that for the heaviest of the heavyweights, we will have sloppy Chris Christie, one of the sloppiest human beings you'll ever meet, fighting. I would say I could mention the Governor of Chicago, but I'm going to mention instead Jerry Nadler. And they're fighting for a big piece of cheesecake. Big fat piece of cheesecake. Who the hell wrote that line? But it is true.
- [07:31]
Michael Wolff
This went over like this was an oh my God moment because he made a fat joke. This is an audience that has, sees itself well beyond fat jokes. But if Don Rickles had delivered that, that line in 1965, that they would have been rolling on the floor. So the jokes, it is this juxtaposition of Trump Sensibility, 1965 Sensibility, Rat Pack sensibility, whatever it is that this group of people, the press corps people in Washington, sophisticated so called people don't get at all, and which a great many Americans still seem to get and perhaps
- [08:25]
Rachel Maddow
even pine for, except that Don Rickles wasn't the President. This is the President of the United States. He spent a lot of.
- [08:32]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, not. I think, I think that misses the point on two counts. You know, he's showing up to this thing where he's Supposed to make, make jokes, he's supposed to act like a comedian. And also the entire Trump thing is not to be a politician, not to be the president, but to be, to have some kind of visceral emotional connection to an audience. Which presidents, which he does have and which presidents usually don't have. Sometimes I get something like almost a little flash of fondness. Could it be for Donald Trump? I mean, I hate this White House correspondence crowd. I mean, I hate them for their self satisfaction, for their shared references, for their shared jokes, for their profound lack of originality at any level. So the idea that Donald Trump would go in there and say, basically, I don't give a shit about you. And the interesting thing is that is so many other politicians and presidents certainly have tried to adapt to what the White House press corps wants, what the press wants. And Donald Trump, even in his symbiotic relationship with the press, has just never done that. I mean, this is, I don't think that's true.
- [10:05]
Rachel Maddow
He loves the press. He couldn't exist without the press, you see.
- [10:08]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, but he has never.
- [10:09]
Rachel Maddow
Watching himself on television, he has never
- [10:12]
Michael Wolff
done what they want him to do. He has never become what they want him to be, which every other politician has. Now, I feel this is a somewhat awkward position to suddenly be defending Donald Trump because his, you know, he exists in such, in such a horrifying and he is such a horrifying juxtaposition to, you know, to what I guess I have to, I am part of what, of what we would otherwise want him to be. But, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't grovel to me.
- [11:02]
Rachel Maddow
He came across as desperate, both president.
- [11:07]
Michael Wolff
Because you are not his audience.
- [11:09]
Rachel Maddow
No, but I can appreciate, and I've always said, I find, you know, I understand he's charismatic, I understand he's funny. I understand he can hold people's attention. This was a night where he looked desperate, he was flaming. We've said he feels desperate. You know, the White House is leaking. He's stuck in a war he can't do anything about. And he read like an old Catskill comedian on his last desperate Material context is everything.
- [11:38]
Michael Wolff
He's got one audience and this is not it. And I again, to repeat, I think that the interesting thing is that he decided to show up for this, which he in the past has not. And he decided to show up because he's become, he's bigger than everybody. This is a, this was a statement
- [11:58]
Guest or Producer
of,
- [12:02]
Michael Wolff
I have no insecurities when it comes to you people who I only have contempt for who in the past, I probably have felt insecure around.
- [12:11]
Rachel Maddow
Well, I suspect that whoever wrote his speech will be fired. I think Donald Trump knew he bombed in the room. I disagree with you about him trying to reach beyond the room. I think he was actually, as you say, swaggering, that he was bigger than everybody. But actually he knows that the war is going wrong, the price of gas is up at the pump, that inflation is up, and that he is in last chance saloon and he's going to lose the midterms.
- [12:40]
Michael Wolff
I can tell you that he came off that stage. Everybody said, you were fantastic, and that's exactly what he will believe. Donald Trump, I feel safe to say, has never once in his life even entertained the possibility that he has bombed.
- [13:00]
Rachel Maddow
Well, he's bombed Iran to no great effect. As far as we can see. The price of gas, well, crude hit 100 again. I know you've been talking to people in the White House.
- [13:15]
Michael Wolff
I have. But what I want to discuss is the tariffs. Cause I think it's. I think that is the big story of the moment and of incredibly emblematic story about Donald Trump, that he can't get away from tariffs, that the Supreme Court has struck this down. The Supreme Court said, no, you can't do this. Tariffs are taxes. The power to tax resides with Congress. You can't do this. And what they have done, in typical Trump fashion, you know, when you have, when the law says you can't do something in the Trump way, well, you find another law that says you can. No matter how preposterous this might. Might be, we have another rationale, and then we can wind through the courts on that. And what this is, you know, they, they basically said that, that. That there is an exception in the tariff and tax regulations that talks about countries using forced labor in terms of their exports. And I mean, this is meant to be a very fine exception, more of a. More of a policing and national security function than it is an economic consideration. But they have. This spring, the administration began a wide sort of investigation of, I think, I don't know, 60 countries, including, I noted Norway of all countries, and found them guilty of using forced labor. So that then now becomes the pretext of slapping on extra tariffs, imposing these new tariffs. In thinking about this, I came back to recalling a discussion that Steve Bannon and I had early in the first administration. And I was pressing Steve on. On what he thought about Trump's intelligence. Did he think Trump was smart? And I remember Steve looked at me like, that is the stupidest question. I have ever been asked. The answer is obviously self evident. But then he said, well, he is as smart as a guy who has spent 20 years listening to Lou Dobbs can be now. And now Lou.
- [16:03]
Rachel Maddow
Can we remind people who Lou Dobbs is?
- [16:05]
Michael Wolff
Yes. Yeah, no, I think Lou Dobbs, who died in just a couple of, couple of years ago, was one of the central personalities in business journalism, business reporting on cable television. He started on cnn, ultimately went to Fox, went to Fox. Fox Business, was ultimately fired by Fox because he was one of the named defendants in the Dominion lawsuit. When Dominion, the voting machine company, sued Fox for saying, along with Trump and people in the Trump circle that they had conspired to fix the election. Lou Dobbs had been one of those, the outspoken people there and was subsequently fired because of that. But for many years. 30. Better part of. Yeah, certainly more than 30 years.
- [17:04]
Rachel Maddow
Wait a minute, wait a minute. Was Lou Dobbs on the side of Dominion or. Lou Dobbs was saying the voting was.
- [17:10]
Michael Wolff
No, he was a Fox person. Yeah, he was at Fox saying that Dominion had fixed the election.
- [17:17]
Rachel Maddow
Okay, got it.
- [17:19]
Michael Wolff
And he was subsequently fired. But for years before that, he had been one of the people, I mean, he was the, one of the key birther people. He was one of the, you know, a key anti immigration voice before that became a prevalent issue. And he was a person who said always. It was a part of the Lou Dobbs mantra. You know, the problems with our country is the trade imbalance. We need tariffs. Tariffs will fix everything. So essentially, Lou Dobbs articulates the entire Trump political
- [18:04]
Rachel Maddow
economic strategy.
- [18:06]
Michael Wolff
Every, I mean, I mean, I mean, from birtherism, birth ism, which is Trump's first big issue, to, to anti immigration, to tariffs. And Trump and Lou Dobbs were, were, you know, I mean, joined at the hip from a political point of view. And also they were deep, you know, extremely good friends.
- [18:30]
Rachel Maddow
Lou Dobbs, that face that you always saw on the airport television as you walked past it.
- [18:36]
Michael Wolff
Yes. So therefore the question who really influences Trump? The answer to that is Lou Dobbs.
- [18:46]
Rachel Maddow
But Lou Dobbs isn't with us anymore. So who is Donald Trump talking to about?
- [18:52]
Michael Wolff
Well, he doesn't hang. He's. He's talking to the ghost of Lou Dobbs. And that is there, you know, there is, if you see, you know, you know, Trump, Trump is not a man of principle. He is a man of fixation and he is fixated on tariffs. And you can't tell him. Matter of fact, during, it's interesting, during the first administration, and I remember that this was a constant thing. And people within the administration would kind of raise their eyebrows and kind of make fun of of Trump on this tariff issue. And they would try to explain, including his son in law, Jared Kushner, why tariffs really didn't make economic sense. And then they would ignore him. He wants tariff, let's do, let's develop tariff policies. But they would just gently ignore him. And in this administration, it's kind of, it's a condition of employment, basically. You have to agree with him that tariffs will solve all problems.
- [19:56]
Rachel Maddow
Is one of the other reasons that he's so fixated on tariffs to do with it putting America at the center of the world, that this gives him control over other countries?
- [20:08]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, well, I think that there's a whole specious rationale for tariffs, but it's a rationale that everybody, literally everybody understands is counterproductive. I mean, it will do the opposite of what you want. It won't help protect your economy or grow your economy. It will limit your economy. It doesn't give you a dominance over the rest of the world. It actually creates fissures across the rest of the world. You make enemies through tariffs. You don't subdue your enemies. I mean, everything is wrong about this, everything is misguided. But it's a thing about Trump, and it's what's inside Trump's head that he can't understand. You present him with the logical argument that something doesn't work, counterproductive, should be certainly at best modified. And he can't, literally cannot understand that. Looks at you like he doesn't hear you. So he learned somewhere in decades ago, he listened intently to Lou Dobbs on the subject of tariffs, and that convinced him and stayed in his head. That's it. And he cannot, literally can't waver from it. It's just stuck. He can't replace one idea that he holds with another idea. And I remember, I mean, Bannon, I mean, Bannon is such an interesting figure because Bannon is a smart guy. He's just such a flagrant, rank opportunist that he'll do anything to get ahead for himself. But that doesn't change the fact that he is a smart guy and would analyze Trump and say that he has. Trump has, because he doesn't read, has really never had exposure to ideas. So therefore, when Lou Dobbs comes along and pounds and propounds an idea, it caught Trump's attention, but he has no other ideas in his head that can be, that he can measure against Lou Dobbs idea. So Lou Dobbs implanted this idea in his head, tariffs. And there it stayed.
- [22:44]
Rachel Maddow
Poor Lou Dobbs died before he got to see his tariff obsession actually put in place.
- [22:53]
Michael Wolff
Poor Lou Dobbs.
- [22:55]
Rachel Maddow
Does Donald Trump understand the significance of the price of crude oil going above $100?
- [23:04]
Michael Wolff
You know, I've had this other discussion, this has come up with White House people this week and a kind of marveling on their part, bewilderment maybe, and somewhat concern that the idea of a dollar this way or that way at the pump is something that Trump can't fathom. Why is that an issue? It's a dollar more. That seems of so little interest to him and of so little impact on him, on the people that he knows, on the nature of life as he knows it. They can't convince him that this is the emotional centerpiece of what people are thinking and feeling as we approach the midterms. What's the price at the pump? So the fact that it is back to a hundred dollars for the Brent crude price is, you know, he acknowledges that, yeah, be better that it's lower, but can't get. They, they can't convince him. And you, you know, you only spend a limited amount of time trying to convince Donald Trump of anything because, because in short order he becomes a very irritated guy. So this is that thing that he, that this is probably essential. This is probably the most important issue for the, for the fortunes of the Republicans in the coming midterm election. And Donald Trump can't quite comprehend it.
- [25:01]
Rachel Maddow
But Michael, how does that square with what you started off talking about, which is that his base love fat jokes. They would roar with laughter at the idea of Chris Christie and Jerry Nadler at a UFC fight fighting over a piece of cheesecake. How can he understand that part of it, but not understand that $0.50 per gallon makes you, adds up to several dollars if you're filling your tank and that impacts people?
- [25:29]
Michael Wolff
Well, because he spent his life as a billionaire. I mean, when was the last time Donald Trump filled up his car at the pump? You know, I mean, he can appreciate a fat joke. He can appreciate what an audience responds to. You know, I, I think that that other, the other, this other level of understanding people, understanding their daily lives, understanding what they, what in their daily lives, they have to consider how they value things. The, the, the expectations they have and the trade offs they have to make. He, what, what, what, what possible experience would he have to relate to that?
- [26:22]
Rachel Maddow
Well, there was one joke that I thought he could relate to and clearly reflects on the people he's spending his time with. Which is the joke where he says that a senator comes home from work, his wife shouts at him from the bedroom, come upstairs and make mad, passionate love to me. And he says, well, I can't do both. I mean, he might be talking about Mitch McConnell, who's what, 45 days now into not saying a single word. I thought, oh, that reflects on all the aging senators, Chuck Grassley sitting there, you know, blowing smoke up Todd Blanche's ass.
- [27:04]
Michael Wolff
Yikes. I'm just thinking about, I mean, the Mitch McConnell thing, which I have thought and I have said here with some amount of tolerance. You know, people go into and. They want some peace, and that's what's going on here. But I think we are beyond that. At 45 days, obviously, Mitch McConnell is closer, certainly closer to a vegetable than to.
- [27:40]
Rachel Maddow
Why hasn't. Don't. Well, we can come to that in a minute with RFK Jr. But who, interestingly, was a year older than, is a year older than Lindsey Graham was when he died. And I want to come on to his sister, but why hasn't Donald Trump said anything about Mitch McConnell? I mean, Donald Trump says something about everything. And actually on Mitch McConnell, he's remained completely silent.
- [28:06]
Michael Wolff
A good question. And I don't know, because at the same time, he's been going after John Thune, who is a Mitch McConnell, is the Mitch McConnell replacement and has been the longtime Mitch McConnell protege and
- [28:23]
Guest or Producer
very
- [28:23]
Michael Wolff
much represents the Mitch McConnell side of the, of the party and the congressional leadership, which has been adamantly opposed to Donald Trump.
- [28:37]
Rachel Maddow
Not that they have done anything about
- [28:40]
Michael Wolff
it courageous enough to stand up to Donald Trump. But in private, they have, they have for many years now seethed and mocked and, and I, I, I guess been found some point of pride in themselves that they have personally detested Donald Trump.
- [29:07]
Rachel Maddow
So another joke that he made at the White House correspondence, which got a smattering of laughter, was he said, I hope you all enjoyed your beef tenderloin tonight. Bobby Kennedy, he ran over the cow. And then he said, he's a different kind of person. He's a different kind of person. He's very smart. He's very smart. And Bobby and Cheryl kind of laughed. I mean, obviously thrilled to be the centre of attention for a moment. Odd timing to highlight RFK Jr still Jr at 72, as we like to point out, because this week a report came out saying that there have been more measles cases this year in the first six months of this year than there have been in the last. Well, in the first 24 years of this century. So measles cases are now up from pretty much 0 to 2,318 cases in the first six months of this year, which is a terrible trajectory and interestingly, most of them in South Carolina and Utah.
- [30:15]
Michael Wolff
What do you think that Trump meant when he said that RFK was a different sort of person?
- [30:22]
Rachel Maddow
I think he probably meant he was a Kennedy. I think he meant he was. I don't know. It's a great question. Weird, creepy, peculiar.
- [30:37]
Guest or Producer
Yeah.
- [30:38]
Michael Wolff
So, yeah. Was he saying you think of him as a weird and peculiar person but he's really a good guy? Is that what he was saying? I don't know. Well, let's not.
- [30:52]
Rachel Maddow
I wonder if he, I mean he speaks of him with admiration and I think it's partly because he's a Kennedy. It's partly because he's got away with loads of women's stuff, which Trump, as we know Trump, likes people who've done that because he's done that. So he's always looking for kindred spirits. RFK was the one that got the biggest shout out.
- [31:10]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, I'm interested in this. We've also this, this week there's been a lot of talk and a lot of going back and forth about, about, about these, the regulations that he's removed from the sale of peptides. Peptides are another, another supplement. And he's got, I mean RFK is kind of the secretary of supplements. Supplement. Supplements are profoundly related to our, how RFK sees health and the health systems. But not just rf. This is a maga, a MAGA thing, supplements. And you know, I'm a kind of, I'm aware of this partly because, because a lot of right wing Internet media has been supported by supplements. They, they sell, they have sold. That's, they have made a significant amount of their money on selling a variety of supplements. And I've always thought what, what is this? I mean, I mean, supplements. Okay people. I, I've never taken a supplement, but sort of, but to, to function.
- [32:27]
Rachel Maddow
You've never taken a supplement. Don't you even take a multivite?
- [32:31]
Michael Wolff
I, I, I do take a multivitamin.
- [32:34]
Ryan Reynolds
Yes.
- [32:35]
Rachel Maddow
Well, that's a supplement.
- [32:36]
Michael Wolff
I suppose that, that, that is, I
- [32:39]
Rachel Maddow
take loads of supplements or I have done over the years. I get very enthusiastic about supplements.
- [32:44]
Michael Wolff
Well, I think there, I mean, I think that this is, I mean this is a major, a foundational MAGA issue. Supplements, the right to supplements, the importance of supplements seen in the entire healthcare system as either trying to keep you from your supplements or A workaround to the, to the hypocrisy of the healthcare system by figuring out how to supplement it with supplements. And I think that this is that kind of issue which people such as myself overlook as having an incredible hold on a large segment of the voting public.
- [33:47]
Rachel Maddow
Well, and it's true. If you watch Joe Rogan or you watch Dan Bongino or any of these guys, they're constantly interrupted by ads for supplements. And of course, the supplement industry itself is not regulated now, which is the thing.
- [34:03]
Michael Wolff
So the healthcare system in the United States or the, the federal health care system has essentially been designed. It's almost first responsibility is to keep people safe from.
- [34:23]
Rachel Maddow
From explosive diarrhea, from cyclospora in lettuce that causes explosive diarrhea.
- [34:29]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, well, it's the. From. I mean, that's the history. Drugs and untested drugs can cause enormous. Cause, enormous harm. So the, the government is there to stand in the way of that and to be a conservative, actually presence. You know, it is hard to get FDA approval on. On a whole range of drugs and on anything. And this is. So what's going on now in the RFK position is, is that's bad instead of good. And the federal government is keeping something from you. And the federal government does not want you to have what you order by any right. You have a right to your peptide. And even though that, we don't know what the effect of that will be, we represent your right to have whatever drugs you want to have. Which might be logical coming from a health secretary who has spent a lifetime taking drugs, who is a drug addict.
- [35:42]
Rachel Maddow
Well, certainly a lot of peptides are injected, aren't they?
- [35:48]
Michael Wolff
I think that's mostly how. Maybe there's some. I saw some you can take orally, but yeah, no, they are injected.
- [36:00]
Guest or Producer
So
- [36:03]
Rachel Maddow
thinking about some of RFK Jr still Jr at 72's previous health habits, snorting cocaine off a toilet seat, taking an unregulated peptide might be a healthier choice.
- [36:18]
Michael Wolff
I think it's just part of a. Part of a significantly different culture that RFK Jr because of his own experience is can. Is channeling and believes that it will be that this is a stepping stone to his further ambitions, let us say, to possibly running for the Republican nomination in 2028.
- [36:47]
Rachel Maddow
Do you think that increased cases of measles help get him there? This isn't a great legacy for him as the Health and Human Services and Peptide Secretary?
- [36:59]
Michael Wolff
Well, I don't know. This is, yes. If you relax regulations on healthcare, which includes regulations that require you to take vaccines. Well, you're going to get more disease. That's unavoidable. That's evident. That's logical. So it's a trade off that he's basically proposing. Do you want to do what you want to do or do you want to have a system that has significant more regulations but might yet keep you safe from the following diseases? That's a choice. And his bet, and the Trump administration's bet is that at least a good part of its base wants the former. Now, that may be incorrect ultimately, and possibly this will be yet another of the issues in the midterm elections. And that'll be a measure of what we're seeing there. And in fact, curiously, within this White House, they have moved to kind of keep RFK Jr under wraps because the anti vax thing is not popular. The Republicans have made a bet on that before and lost pretty badly on it. Yet still, this is against the background of a lot of people for whatever reason, because they have all taken drugs themselves or because of the Internet or because, who knows, thinking the federal government is depriving us of a range of healthcare health enhancing advantages.
- [39:09]
Rachel Maddow
Right. Well, at least Pete Hegseth will be personally injecting every single member of the military who scored on the low T test with a booster, with a booster shot. I wonder how Darlene Graham, who's got absolutely no experience in public office whatsoever, but does have some experience in health because she's an I specialist, how she will handle this because South Carolina has over a thousand cases of measles, which may be something she has to deal with when she, well, as she runs for office. She's got the job now through January, I guess, stepping in for her brother, Lindsey Graham, who died of an aortic dissection, we are led to believe two weeks ago. Why is Donald Trump so keen on her? What is this about? Is this about dynastic politics? I mean, she's going to be up against a couple of other people, not least Mark Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina, who's now said he's going to run for the seat. But why has Donald Trump already come out with his endorsement for her?
- [40:22]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, and at least one other person who Donald Trump had led to believe would get his endorsement. So I, you know, I, I don't know what's the advantage to Donald Trump? You know, I, I think that it's curious that we're seeing some kind of Donald Trump sentimentality, really. And you might call it a kind of movie of the week. Sentimentality that, that, that, you know, the sister of his, of his friend Lindsey Graham gets to take over his seat and to fulfill his legacy. I think that appeals to Trump in a storybook way.
- [41:08]
Rachel Maddow
Well, and also the fact that her parents died and Lindsey Graham adopted her when he was at college and she was only, I think, 13. There's a big age difference between them that adds to the movie if the
- [41:21]
Michael Wolff
weakest, as I say, the movie, the movie of the week. Now, what would the, what we don't say in that movie of the week is that it's not Lindsey Graham's wife replacing him because Lindsey Graham is, was gay and it was his sister who filled the, the, the role of, you know, what, what. Matter of fact, when Lindsey Graham ran for president at one point and he was asked about this, about the first lady, and, you know, with a number of titters in the background, he said his sister would serve in that, the role of first lady anyway. But it doesn't make any difference. It's all. It is a good movie of the week. And actually the gay aspect makes it an even better movie of the week.
- [42:15]
Rachel Maddow
So Trump alluded twice in his speech last night to, I guess being gay. One was to Anderson Cooper. He said he likes Anderson Cooper, but Anderson was of a very different persuasion. And then he called out Caitlin Collins and said she was very beautiful, but she never smiled. And that she reminded him of Dylan Mulvaney, a trans model who famously did a controversial ad, it turned out, for Bud Light and lost a lot of Bud Light drinkers. So I guess playing to his base, to your point, not playing to the room, playing to his bass, who are deeply suspicious of trans people.
- [42:59]
Guest or Producer
Yeah.
- [43:00]
Michael Wolff
You know, in your synopsis of Trump, you make his performance sound much more interesting than it actually was.
- [43:08]
Rachel Maddow
It was so dull. I was really tired. And I thought, you know what? I'll stay up and watch it. Cause I should do my job. And it was so bad. It really was bad. All right, so Grift Force One and the credible threat that the Secret Service said they had, do you think that actually seemed to shake Trump up at all?
- [43:31]
Michael Wolff
Well, I think it obviously did. I mean, he's not flying this plane. This is a plane that he desperately wanted, had forced through, had, you know, had twisted arms, probably to get in the first place. And to then. To then. To then to make it operational. I mean, this was his personal project. This was, again, a fixation. And so to have agreed to take it offline, so to speak. Yeah, I think they must have convinced him that he was going to be shot out of the sky. But the other thing is to do this. You know, I mean, this is. Which is, again, goes to Trump's absolute incompetence, a headstrong incompetence. I'm going to do this, we're going to do this. Why are we going to do this? We're going to do this because I want it. And everyone around him then goes into a chicken with their heads cut off because he wants this done. And nobody stops to think, well, it can't be done in this amount of time, and it can't be done at this cost, because the following most basic things have to be added to this airplane, otherwise it doesn't work. But pay no attention to that. Of course he wanted it, he got it. And then, only then did the Secret Service step in and say, the consequences of this could be really dire.
- [45:02]
Rachel Maddow
And do you think that lingers in his head? On the one hand, he keeps saying, I'm the number one target of the Iranians. I'm the number one saga, a target. They're scum. Somehow ignoring the fact that we took out their entire leadership. I think 40 members of the Iranian leadership. And then there was this peculiar thing that Marco Rubio said this week that, you know, he'd been talking to the Iranian defense minister who'd said, an eye for an eye. And Marco Rubio said, well, the President thinks it's a head for an eye, whatever that means. Well, I think it just means more violence, that we want more than an eye. We want an entire head. If you take someone's eye.
- [45:47]
Michael Wolff
Well, it doesn't. I would say it means literally nothing. And what it really means is Donald Trump can't figure out how to get out of this war, and he's desperate. So let's throw some more threats around. But. But right now, we're at yet another inflection point on this war. Do we go back to war, $100 Brent crude and climbing, or do we find another ceasefire agreement, however lame and ultimately futile?
- [46:30]
Rachel Maddow
Or do we send J.D. vance back in to try and negotiate for peace?
- [46:35]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, well, that would be another. Yes, I'm sure they'll do that again, as they did the last time with the same result. So this is, again, a forever war. The problem with forever wars is that you can't get out of them even if you want to get out of them.
- [46:57]
Rachel Maddow
Well, J.D. vance's Secret Service team has also been tattling on him. One of them was suspended this week after it seemed clear that they had been leaking information that he is chaotic. Now, this may not be his fault, but they complain. And in fact, they've created a series of badges which they now wear that he scrambles them. They have to go off and do advance work, which is obviously part of being part of a security team. And then plans change at the last minute. I suspect they change at the last minute because his boss is sending him here, there and everywhere and giving him all sorts of new portfolios and just throwing more stuff at him. But the Secret Service is saying it's making it hard for them to do their job and he's being a diva at taxpayer's expense. What are your thoughts?
- [47:48]
Michael Wolff
Well, my thoughts are that we're avoiding the subject that we have promised to talk about, which is JD Vance's book Communion. And we are avoiding this because it's so such a slog to get through.
- [48:05]
Rachel Maddow
It really is a slog.
- [48:07]
Michael Wolff
We're trying to be honorable enough to have actually read the book before we discuss it. And I'm afraid we're going to have to push this yet into, into Tuesday's Inside Trump Head episode because we haven't finished it. But I'm eager. I mean, I am really making my way through this book. And I think it is an interesting window into this guy.
- [48:43]
Rachel Maddow
Well, how does he have time to write a book like this? I mean, he said that he'd originally conceived of doing it in 2017, then life had other plans. But these are books that traditionally you write after you've left the White House. You're not trying to monetize your role in the White House.
- [49:02]
Michael Wolff
I think you can partially see this as a campaign book. Everybody has to produce a campaign book. He's going to start to run for the Republican nomination shortly. I mean, I think that gets underway, underway after, after the midterms. So I think he thought, yes, I need to have this in place. And these books get written by politicians. And I have seen this. They become a kind of a committee enterprise. This is my broad thinking on this subject. So you, whatever aide you are, can you give that some thought, give me some, some background research on that and maybe come up with an outline. So that's how these books come together. This book is his first book, Hillbilly Elegy, enormously successful book and a pretty good book and a pretty well written book. This is not well written. It is not particularly well organized. It's kind of, you know, a lot of throw it against the wall stuff. But nevertheless, I think it is honest stuff and genuine stuff and, and what he doesn't talk about and the. The aspects of what he doesn't talk about, and then the aspects of what he emphasizes are, you know, offer a lot of insight into this. This guy, which. Which I would like to discuss if we can ever finish the book, which.
- [50:44]
Rachel Maddow
Well, I think we both got stuck at page 100.
- [50:47]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, well, I have pushed. I have pushed beyond page 100, but.
- [50:52]
Rachel Maddow
Oh, well done. All right, well, I will try and finish it by Tuesday. I got to page 100 and thought, Gosh, this is hard going. So then I started from the back and I read the last couple of chapters to encourage myself to try and actually, I think the bits. The interesting bits must be the bits in between, which is how he reconciles his faith with working for Donald Trump and how he does his 180 from saying Donald Trump is the new Hitler. And I'm assuming that I'm going to come to that.
- [51:20]
Michael Wolff
Yes, I have my doubts that we will, but I think the Peter Thiel of it all is pretty interesting, and he does spend some time on that. So I think it's worth at least trying to finish.
- [51:36]
Rachel Maddow
Okay, we will doggedly keep going, Michael. We will doggedly keep going. Okay. Well, I will look forward then to seeing you on Tuesday. In fact, I think I have to make a brief correction, which is that I thought that the Vanceys had bought their $9 million home in Virginia, but it turns out they're just renting it. So I'm assuming that the tax taxpayer is paying for that. We should check that. And then we have a poem. We've got one about Melania which was inspired by your case with Melania. And this is from someone called Katherine Blauwendrad. There once was a lady named Nous, a con artist made her his spouse, for better or worse, be it blessing or curse, it landed her in the world White House. Very good. Very good. All right, Michael, do you want to thank everybody for joining us, if they have been, and read out our team,
- [52:37]
Michael Wolff
anyone who has joined us, if you have. We appreciate it. We appreciate the people who managed to get us in front of you, which we could not have. We could not do on our own. Not remotely.
- [52:54]
Rachel Maddow
Well, and we should celebrate our 700,000 subscribers, too, which we can.
- [52:59]
Michael Wolff
We celebrate our 700,000 subscribers. I'm still confused about that. Do the subscribers get a notice that we are. Of each podcast that we are doing? I have subscribed. I don't get that notice.
- [53:16]
Rachel Maddow
I think you choose to get that notice. Or you can if you go to your account. It should come up when we drop.
- [53:23]
Guest or Producer
I see.
- [53:24]
Michael Wolff
Okay. Ryan, Rachel, Heather, Neil, John. Thank you very much.
- [53:35]
Rachel Maddow
See you on Tuesday. So the good news is we have so many Beast Tier members now, there are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support.