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- [00:01]
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- [00:28]
Hugh Doherty
we discovered that there were only five days in April when the when the President did not post on truth social between 9pm and 6am 80% of nights when he could be sleeping, he's posting. He is so regularly posting at times like 2:45am which you know, I think everybody knows, nothing Good happens at 2:45am, 1:00am 12:30am there's no way that he's having any healthy sleep. He's clearly sleep deprived. When did he catch up on the sleep deprivation? We don't know. And we all know it's bad for your brain.
- [01:08]
Joanna Coles
I'm Joanna Coles, this is the Daily Beast podcast, and what a week. We have an incredible story for you about how little the President stood sleeps. Our correspondent Josh Fialo has been tracking his Truth Social posts and it's very clear that the President is up frequently during the night, agitated and panicked and fearful. It seems from the Truth Socials he's sending out, he's managed to break the polls. We had the disastrous White House correspondence. We had the select Committee hearings for Pete Hegseth which showed him massively on the defense. And of course we have the very strange, ambiguous situations surrounding the war in Iran. Who better to get into this with than our very own Hugh Doherty, the Daily Beast's executive editor, who was actually, amazingly, in the room next to the alleged shooter at the Washington Hilton last weekend. But before we get into it, and before we get Hugh's total breakdown of the crazy of the week, just a request that you smash the subscription button wherever you're listening or watching this podcast. We are independent media, increasingly rare these days, and we really appreciate your support. We're almost at 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is amazing given that we really only started podcasting in earnest about a year ago. We're thrilled with your support and also, don't forget to leave us comments. You, I'm sure, have all sorts of reactions to the conversation we're having. We love to know what your reactions are, and I answer as many many as I can, and I read as many as I can. But let's get into it. No more of me. Let's hear what Hugh's got to say. Hugh Docherty Hugh Docherty, Tell me about this crazy, crazy story we have exclusively by our correspondent Josh Fialo, which really reveals something very concerning about the president.
- [03:21]
Hugh Doherty
Thank you, Joanna. It is an extraordinary, extraordinary piece of work. Josh Fialo, our brilliant reporter, counted up all the times that Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in April. And then he looked at when he was posting and he looked between the hours of 9pm and 6am and we discovered that there were only five days in April when the president did not post on truth social between 9pm and 6am and that means that's your opportunity for proper sleep. This is the president is not sleeping, and 80% of nights when he could be sleeping, he's posting.
- [04:06]
Joanna Coles
So I think it's probably fair to say at this point that Donald Trump is sleep disordered. He doesn't appear. I mean, the diagram that we have of this, this information about him sleeping is really alarming. It suggests that the longest time he seems to sleep is about three hours. And the frenzied nature of the posting suggests he is having anxiety in the middle of the night. Obviously, there's a lot going on and we'll get into that in this podcast. I mean, we're going to talk about the war, we're going to talk about Pete Hegseth, we're going to talk about the crazy meltdown that Scott Jennings had on scene cnn. We're going to talk about the poll machine breaking because the polls are so low. But this is really, I think, extremely concerning about the mental health of the president.
- [05:03]
Hugh Doherty
Right? I mean, first of all, obviously he's 79, which we know well and we document daily on the Daily Beast. But what this shows is that he is so regularly posting at times like 2:45am which, you know, I think everybody knows nothing good happens at 2:45am, 1:00am, 12:30am there's one day in which he posted 18 times between midnight and 2:45. So there's no way that he's having any healthy sleep. He's clearly sleep deprived. He himself has said that he thrives on very little sleep. But, you know, as a disclaimer, I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on television, but there's obviously, you know, we all know if you don't get enough sleep, that's bad. And usually people catch up at the weekends. In fact, there was only one weekend day, which was the first Saturday in April in which Donald Trump did not post fanatically between 9pm and 6am on a weekend day. So or a Weekend night. So when did he catch up on the sleep deprivation? We don't know. And we all know it's bad for your brain.
- [06:24]
Joanna Coles
Well, I think we do know when he catches up on his sleep because he falls in meetings in the middle of the day. I mean, he falls asleep in cabinet meetings. I mean, if this was a teenager and you were the parent, you would be freaking out that your teenager was posting in the middle of the night. You would know they were not posting things. Now, I know the aging brain is different from the growing brain, but nonetheless it seems extremely concerning. And what I think it suggests is, as we just talked about, extreme anxiety about issues, a lack of feeling that one is understood, a determination to insist upon one's own point of view and putting it out there. And the interesting thing is, who does he think is paying attention at 2:45 in the morning? His poor team look exhausted. I couldn't help thinking how absolutely shattered Marco Rubio looked at the state dinner. He looked absolutely wiped out. I think we saw Pete Hegseth in the hearings looking completely agitated because these guys all know they're under pressure. They're working for someone who doesn't appear to have a sense of logic. So it's impossible to try and please someone who's so quixotic. And this work by Josh Fialo really suggests there's something alarming going on. What are we doing to. Are we sending it to any doctors? How can we have this analysed for more. Well, for more understanding of what's going on?
- [08:01]
Hugh Doherty
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, having been reporting this out and analyzing it for the numbers ourselves, and the numbers are. I mean, I was going to say off the charts, but I don't believe there are two charts for Truth Social because obviously he's the only person on it. But, you know, it's always amazing when
- [08:19]
Joanna Coles
you see him posting how few likes there are. It's sort of like 1.7k likes, which compared to any other social platform. But of course, the reason Truth Social is. Gets attention is because he's the President and then other people are paying attention and amplify it on different platforms. But Truth Social itself really has very little traction, it seems.
- [08:41]
Hugh Doherty
Yes. Just cynically would say, I don't know anybody that's on it who's likely to be giving a. Like, all the people I know that are on it, including many of our newsroom, are on it. To see his, we've actually got quite a good metric that I think puts us in focus. Trump has always been obsessively posting on what used to be on Twitter in his first administration, now called X. So April 2018, comparable time in his first term. He posted 250 times on Twitter. And at the time we all thought and everybody remembers think, my God, this president is unhinged on Twitter. I can't believe he posts that much. Anyway, we should all have reigned ourselves in because this april it wasn't 250 times. It was 565 times on Truth Social. That's 18 times a day. And of those, one third were in those witching hours. I guess wee hours. I was going to say from my native country, the wee hour of Scotland to those who do not know the wee hours. And you know, first of all disturbing, but also, you know, something that we are reporting on it. We're going to this, you know, you'll be able to see this story, you are able to see this story on the Daily Beast right now on Sunday. But something that we, you know, we believe should be of interest at the very least to doctors and also to Democrats, of course, who are already questioning his health and his cognition.
- [10:17]
Joanna Coles
Well, it's also interesting that Janet Mills, who has been a very popular governor in Maine and was hoping to challenge Susan Collins, the Republican for the Senate seat in Maine, has in fact stood down from her race. She would have been 80 when she went into the Senate. And I think there is a general realization now, even though she was the chosen candidate of Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, that she is too old for this. She couldn't get the finances to really challenge Graham Platner, who's come up from apparently nowhere. He's an oyster fisherman from Maine who's actually created a very good campaign against her. But clearly there's a realization that 80, which Donald Trump will be in June, is too old to be running the country. We saw it with the previous president, but this frantic posting in the middle of the night feels like a new level of frankly imbalance.
- [11:24]
Hugh Doherty
Yes, there's no doubt. I mean, obviously he nicknamed Joe Biden Sleepy Joe. I don't quite know if Sleepless dawn is going to catch on because who wants a sleepless president? But it's really concerning other world leaders have spoken about the need for sleep of all things. George W. Bush was very much an early to bed man. You know, Margaret Thatcher, prime minister from both of our, both of our native land and our past survived, it was said, on three to four hours sleep. But just to point out, she was significantly younger and her term in office ended, as you wrote in a brilliant substack, Joanna, fairly catastrophically. And there are people who have suggested that that was in some way related to, you know, her. She became out of touch and out of, you know, out of support, in part because she wasn't really trying healthily to engage with her job well.
- [12:31]
Joanna Coles
And I think there is so much around health, sleep, and I refer everybody to that brilliant book by Matthew Walker, the SC at Berkeley University called why We Sleep, which suggests that actually sleeplessness and sleep disorder is often a symptom of dementia to unfold at a later date. Because what's going on when you sleep is the memory is being sort of washed and it actually creates a much healthier brain to have sleep. There is a purpose to sleep. Jeff Bezos talks about sometimes needing nine hours. ARIANNA Huffing Washington, of course, has led a whole movement around this, urging business people to take sleep seriously and saying it's not a macho thing to say, oh, I only sleep four hours or five hours a night. Actually, that's not a good thing for your decision making. You need to be able to sleep well. And it has to be said that Donald Trump's decision making right now feels erratic.
- [13:34]
Hugh Doherty
Yes. There's so many questions this week over and not just this week, obviously, but I think this week had been very in focus about his decision making and the erratic nature of what he does appears, it appears most obviously in well, I was going to say the war, but apparently it's been terminated and is therefore not a war. So I don't know quite know what one calls a terminated war, but the war, you know, the war in Iran and this bizarre blockade aftermath, is all about erratic decision making.
- [14:09]
Joanna Coles
All about erratic decision making and not allowing anybody else into that process. So Congress, which In fact, the 60 days is up where Congress is supposed to now weigh in with whether or not they want to continue with the war. Pete Hegseth has said now that there's a sort of, what did you call it, termination.
- [14:34]
Hugh Doherty
Well, so, yes, exactly. As you just saying, they've said, legally this war was terminated by the ceasefire and therefore the 60 days don't count. Now, nobody will be surprised to learn that at the very least got a raised eyebrow. And Tim Kaine, the Virginia senator, who of course is Democrat, immediately said to Pete Hegseth, as he testified to this effect, that the statute simply doesn't read that way. And I think I would probably pick the word of Tim Kaine over Pete Hegseth on this simply because Tim Kean has been pushing for a vote on the war powers and has dived into this issue in great depth. So he did not accept it and I suspect many other people wouldn't accept it. But this, this is kind of the, you know, this is just one of the aspects of how this war has gone wrong because, you know, why are we at war? Well, there's various reasons. We don't know. There's been a, you know, there's been lots of justifications, different justifications. And what's actually happening in the. What I was going to say was the Strait of Hormuz, but just to go back to sleeplessness, one of his posts in the middle of the night renamed it the Strait of Trump. So what's going on there again? Are we having talks? Are we not having talks? Who's deciding on talks? It's an incredible lack of clear decisions.
- [16:04]
Joanna Coles
I mean, this is so extraordinary. Can you imagine working for Donald Trump and every morning you have to wake up and see what he's truth socialed overnight and then react to it? I mean, this is such a relatable story for anybody who's got a boss who's slightly erratic or who's got some issues or whatever. The idea, I mean, I actually had a boss once who used to text me drunk late at night. The text was somewhat incomprehensible, but there's always enough in there to make me think, oh, goodness, I need to do this. And then when I would contact them the following morning, there was no memory of them having sent the text at all. And so I wonder if he posts these things and then it's almost as if he's got them out of his system or if he remembers them or if he keeps looking at them and reminding himself what he's truth socialed. But it's very concerning. It's very concerning. And we urge everybody to look at Josh's piece. We put a chart out there so you can see the nights he didn't appear to sleep at all. There are certain nights when he barely got more than 90 minutes shut eye. And it's truly concerning in the man who's the leader of the free world.
- [17:17]
Hugh Doherty
It is. Can I just set people's minds at rest, by the way? Because obviously people are watching this. Joanna is my boss and I have. No, no, I was nodding when you said it was relatable. Joanna, that was not you. Absolutely not you. I just hope that I am also a boss of people in a much smaller capacity than Joanna. I'm hoping they're not finding that relatable. So I'm, you know, I hope I'm innocent, but Joanna is absolutely innocent. For those who are just wondering.
- [17:47]
Joanna Coles
Well, I was just going to say I don't remember if I send any, so I actually think I could use a bit more sleep at the moment. But. So listen, Hugh, thing that is so interesting this week is that not only has Donald Trump had many, many broken nights, but he's also broken the mechanism by which the polls, the polls are collected. The polls are so low. Tell me, tell me.
- [18:14]
Hugh Doherty
This is a story that it would be impossible to make this up. So there is a pollster.
- [18:19]
Joanna Coles
So many stories, Sarah, about Donald Trump, right?
- [18:22]
Hugh Doherty
I mean, you know, which ones would you have made up? Anyway, there's a pollster and I'm just going to make sure I get this name right because polling companies have specific and complicated names and some can sound remarkably similar. But poster out there called G. Elliot Morris and he does a regular tracking poll and it's well regarded because he takes the monthly to do it. And it's not a hair trigger. It's seen as a comprehensive look at people's feelings about how the Trump administration, and obviously previously the Biden administration, but how the Trump administration is doing on a series of key issues. It's called strength in numbers and it's by Vericite, so it tracks an overall rating, how he's doing on health care, on deportations and immigration, which are issues that go in different directions on trade, on civil rights and in democracy. And in each of those, it's gone down and down and down. But there is one issue that's broken his graph. It's the issue of inflation. The precipitous fall of it is so bad that he had to tack on extra negative numbers because it was so low previously, his graph only went down to minus 30. Now it has to go down to minus 40. And as you'll be able to see, it's so precipitous in fall that he's going to have to. He's going to have to do it again. His words. GL Morris said Trump literally broke the scale of this graph on my data portal. He basically had to reprogram his data system. He has never seen it before. I mean, I know Trump is always saying, like you've never seen before, so he might see this as a positive.
- [20:28]
Joanna Coles
You know, no one's seen anything like it before. Never before. Never before. It's never been done before.
- [20:34]
Hugh Doherty
And not surprisingly, this is because inflation won't go away. The sudden plunge started in the middle of March, two weeks after the war now terminated, I should say, war on Iran began and it has not stopped since. And he's down now at negative 40.3. And anybody that has seen one of those ski jumps or something would say, oh my goodness, it's only going lower. I think there's a point at which it literally cannot go any lower, which is when everybody in the country disapproves. But still a way to fall.
- [21:12]
Joanna Coles
And it's interesting that it's on inflation. Is there an indication of what people are thinking about the war? Hugh,
- [21:21]
Hugh Doherty
he does not poll on this, but many other polls are available on this. And one poll today has, or one poll, I should say, taken over the last week. So, you know, obviously published as we speak, has found that this war's approval or disapproval is at the same level after eight weeks as that of Vietnam was after three years. And of course, three years into Vietnam was the bloodiest loss of life, the peak of deaths of conscripted or drafted young Americans. And while tragically there has been a loss of American life in the Gulf and those deserve to be honored and remembered, clearly not on the same scale at all. But that level of disapproval up in 63% disapproval is the same as it took three years of Vietnam. So really, I mean, there's no way to say that this is a popular war.
- [22:24]
Joanna Coles
Well, also, people are really feeling it at the gas stations. I mean, gas In California now, $8 a gallon, which just seems incredible. $8.
- [22:36]
Hugh Doherty
$8. We have nationally passed the $4.30 level as the national average. And to reach that average, of course, you go to, you know, you go to California on one hand, and traditionally southern southern areas, including Mississippi, Louisiana tend to be the cheapest.430. And there are every indication from people like GasBuddy and the AAA that 450 is maybe a week away, maybe, and that puts $5 in range and that, you know, no analyst. And with various polling and analysis this week, Sabato's, Sabato's crystal ball, which is easier to read than it is to say, but Sabato's crystal ball suggests that when you hit a $5 gallon fuel price, there actually isn't a parallel for the disapproval ratings that is likely to appear. And the knock on effect of that in November is catastrophic. And one final number on that, the prediction market, Poly Market has Now moved to 80% chance that the Democrats take the Senate. And beginning of the year you could have bought at something like 10%. So by the way, I'm not an advocate for gambling, but I think it's an obvious indicator of where we are moving.
- [24:04]
Joanna Coles
Wow. So how did Pete Hegseth appearing in the Select Committee hearings this week, how did that in any way influence people's opinion of the war, do you think? Do people feel that he's got a bead on it, or do they think this is a man who ran two veterans organizations, both of which ended badly amid accusations and recriminations of drunkenness and of disorganization and financial issues, all of which I'm sure Hegseth has denied. But as he's sitting there looking for $1.45 trillion to fund the Pentagon, how much is he giving Donald Trump a bounce and how much do you think he is a disadvantage to Donald Trump?
- [25:02]
Hugh Doherty
I'm very confident that there were no signs of any bounces in any polls after Pete Hegseth testified first to the House and then to to the Senate. And there were. I know, Joanna, you had a fantastic conversation with Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, whose questioning of him went viral. Very understandably, other representatives and senators questioning went viral as well. And all of them were Democrats. No Republican went viral for their support of the war. Very, very clear that Hegseth's testimony was not helpful and was quite possibly harmful. And you just mentioned the extraordinary budget that they're looking for. And one of the key things he said, or he was asked, what is the cost of the war? And he testified that it was $25 billion. Now that, I mean, that's an extraordinary amount of money by almost any measure, except that it was instantly clear that there could be no way that it was that cheap. There are already sources within the defense world have estimated it's probably 50 billion, probably, and that the amount of ordinance that has been used up is going to take years, literally years to refill. So the 1.45 trillion is actually about replenishing the supply of missiles and drones and planes. The United States lost planes. And that Hegseth's attempt to minimize this at $25 billion is again going to come and is going to bite back because that amount of money has to go somewhere, and it turns out it's basically gone.
- [26:53]
Joanna Coles
I really recommend anybody. This sounds like we're singing our own book here. But Jason Crowe was such an interesting person to interview, and he was fresh from having filleted Pete Hegseth as if he were a chef. And Pete Hegseth was a piece of mackerel, and he was flat on the slab. And Jason Crowe just Lifted up the tail and slashed him with incredible precision on everything that he asked him. It was a deeply worrying conversation. And Hegseth himself looked more and more agitated by the line of questioning and really couldn't answer and just kept going on the attack. But Jason Crow then talked to me about his thesis of how they wanted to get Pete Hegseth out of such an important job. And like many congressmen, Jason Crow served. He did three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. And like Hegseth, who served and feels very anxious about Hegseth being in there with the safety of American troops as his responsibility.
- [28:05]
Hugh Doherty
Yeah. And as you say, many of those particular members of the House have served actively in the recent endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they were extraordinarily personally concerned. And among those, notably was Sarah Jacobs, who represents district in Southern California that is the home to many of the Marines who are currently, I was going to say in action, but in deployment in the Middle East. And she had some very, very biting questions about the ability of Pete Hegseth to help and support those people. And she also had a question about the mental fitness of the president and whether Pete Hegseth would obey an illegal order. So it was really extraordinary to see it. And to go back to your original question, this does not help Donald Trump at all and raises the question of how long Hegseth has got.
- [29:12]
Joanna Coles
And it's really interesting to think how the select committee hearings in the end did for Christy Noem, they did for Pam Bondi, RFK Jr. I think did horribly in some of his. He had, I think, seven committee hearings and just looked terrible. He was stuffing a tobacco pouch up his lip. He just looked like he couldn't believe he was there. He was super aggressive. And I don't think think that this is playing well with the public. This is not making people feel confident. It makes them look. Makes the secretaries in the hot seat look very defensive. I mean, Pam Bondi going after people saying, I am not responding to your theatrics, but really the theatrics are coming from the cabinet secretaries who are performing for an audience of one. As Michael Wolff is always saying, an audience of one Donald Trump. And these select committees are not helping them. And if I were the Democrats, I would be holding them every single day.
- [30:14]
Hugh Doherty
Yes. And it's interesting that just go back to one of the things you mentioned about Graham Platner up in Maine, who also, by the way, served, and that, you know, there's controversial elements to that about the nature of after service tattoos, all sorts of things, but he was part of the war, you know, the endless wars. But one of the things that he has said is if he is elected, he will be using the power of subpoena to drag those secretaries in front of Congress day after day after day after day. And he says primarily to stop them doing things, because if they're there, they can't do bad things. But of course, that will simply highlight the defensiveness and the weakness. And for those people, this audience, of one problem, when they are in front of a Democratic senator or member of the House, they're performing for Donald Trump. But this is a man who's obsessed by people looking weak. And the more that you are on the defensive and performing the defensive, he also hates that. So I think the Democrats, Jason Crow's tactics are setting up a real tactical trap here.
- [31:30]
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- [32:00]
Joanna Coles
There's a whole group of Marines as well who are either in Congress or running. Graham Platner, Jake Orkin, Kloss and Seth Moulton on the Northeast, Alyssa Slotkin, Jason Crow, as we've mentioned, very interesting bunch of young congresspeople with a lot of energy. And many of them seem to be bringing a new layer of confidence and precision to the Democratic Party.
- [32:30]
Hugh Doherty
Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that. It's fairly clear that these are people who are very concerned about the welfare of Americans in a theater of war, but who are also really, really training themselves tactically and have a strategy here that puts the Republican Party and the MAGA officials in a very, very difficult spot of defending, let's just be honest about this. What turns out in the court of public opinion to be the indefensible.
- [33:03]
Joanna Coles
So another person who's always defending Donald Trump and frequently what we would think of as the indefensible is a character that is very big on the media scene at this point that we love to write about, Scott Jennings. Scott Jennings is. Scott Jennings is, for those of you who don't watch cnn, is a regular character. He's often on Abby F Phillips's show in the evening. I've come across him a few times there, and this week he really seemed like he'd had enough, actually.
- [33:38]
Hugh Doherty
Yeah. Well, where do we begin? So, as you say, Joanna, Scott Jennings has become an incredibly present character, I think, I would say, not just for CNN viewers, for Daily Beast readers, I think for a lot of people, but more importantly in this context, just to set up. He's become actually quite a powerful figure because he goes on cnn, he defends Donald Trump to the hilt. And that's kind of ironic because previously he was a top aide to Mitch McConnell and was in fact very publicly skeptical of Donald Trump and disgusted with him after January 6th. But he's at the Damaskine conversion, which has given him a big presence in the MAGA movement. He goes, he does speeches. He is cheered, applauded, because what does he do? He brings it to the libs. He really owns the libs on television. And I would say, kind of mostly true, right? He's a bulldozer. He demolishes people in debate. That all went off the rails spectacularly on Thursday night in the first opening segment of Abby Phillips show. And I believe we can actually play some of it now.
- [35:00]
Scott Jennings
Any political concessions? You can't name one. So here's what we're doing. No political concessions. When you get up past your bedtime, you get hyper. Here's the deal. We now you're making condescending remarks because you can't defend the fact that this war is not going your way. Wait one more time. Not going. Not going your way. Name one political concession.
- [35:18]
Hugh Doherty
As you can see there, Johanna, what he says is, get your effing finger out of my face. And he's saying it to Adam Mulclar, who is 23, that is less than half his age. Scott Jennings is 48. He's a father of four. And he attempted, first of all, to put down this young activist Democrat by saying you get hyper when it's past your bedtime. But Adam Mochler, who appears on the Midas Touch Network, who are, you know, do great work and I know, Joanna, you've been on with them, kept and persisted. And he kept asking a really significant question which ties back to a lot of what we've been saying. What political concession has Donald Trump secured from Iran after these weeks of war? And he just kept persisting in asking it. And that is when Scott Jennings absolutely lost it, as we have just seen so really very public blow up.
- [36:23]
Joanna Coles
So the other interesting thing about Scott Jennings is because he's so personable. And I think it's, I don't know if he's been on one of the weight loss drugs, but he certainly lost weight since, really since Donald Trump won. And he's become so omnipresent on television is people are now calling on Scott Jennings to run and saying, oh, Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott should run for Senate, Scott should run for Congress. I think some people are even saying Scott should run for president. Do you think it's possible that Scott Jennings could be selected for something?
- [36:57]
Hugh Doherty
Oh, I think that's totally possible. He has made a lot of money, let's just be honest about this out of bringing it to the libs. He has a syndicated show on the Salem Radio Network, which is a conservative network which puts him in the cars and in the ears of, you know, a very large audience. That is the Republican base. There's no doubt that he has raised his profile in a way that, you know, other people have benefited from here before. Go on the media, go and fight and bring energy and yeah, he's, you know, he's a presentable person. Right. As I said, 48 year old, father of four, lives in Kentucky. He has, as you say, become thinner. Perhaps he's just on TV so much he just never gets near his dinner. But he has a lot of the things that would make a good candidate in the modern world. So there's no doubt that's got to be in his mind. The question is finger pointing and F wording at a 23 year old. Is that a good, good thing or not?
- [38:05]
Joanna Coles
Well, and it's interesting in terms of him coming from Kentucky because it makes you think of the fight in Texas between John Cornyn, who's been a senator for four terms, now being challenged by the much, much noisier. Ken Paxton, who was the attorney general of Texas, got impeached. I think as attorney general, very controversial figure. But because he makes a lot of noise, people are aware of him and what he's done. And John Cornyn actually is supported by George W. Bush. I mean, he's pretty right wing as Republicans go, but he's prepared to work across the aisle with the Democrats. He's known to be conciliatory, to look for common ground. And he is now really suffering from Ken Paxton coming after him. It's gone to, what's it called, not a playoff, it's gone to a runoff at the end of this month. And Donald Trump has yet to support either candidate. I mean, I think he feels more constitutionally sympatico with Ken Paxton, but Ken Paxton might lose. And there's, I think there was 3% in it as they were competing at the last time round in the first round. So we'll see what happens, not in the playoffs, but in the runoffs at the end of the, at the end of the month. But it is interesting that there is a very much a different kind of, of Republican candidate now, and Scott Jennings might well fit that bill if people want to continue with these rowdy, sort of troublemaking, noisy candidates.
- [39:46]
Hugh Doherty
Yeah. And I should say, actually, Scott Jennings literally ruled out running for the Senate in Kentucky, not because he said, you know, he didn't say, that's absurd. Why would I do that? He just said, no, no, I'm very happy doing what I do. And that's kind of the talk you usually hear from people that really are quite interested in something. And clearly for him, he thought maybe this wasn't the right moment, but you would not rule it out in the future. Having said that, Democrats now know how to push his buttons if he does end up running and he gets into debate again. So at the very least, this is a very helpful reel for anybody prepping a run against Scott Jennings, someone who
- [40:28]
Joanna Coles
loses his temper occasionally. I've always, I've sometimes run into him backstage at cnn and he's always been very pleasant, but I know he doesn't like us writing about him. He was very sensitive at the beginning. I think he's probably gotten a bit more used to it now. Hugh this time last week I had just taken a flight to the uk I was hoping to be your plus one at the White House Correspondents Dinner, but I wasn't able to make it this year. You had just probably unpacked your tuxedo and were getting ready for a night of parties in D.C. before the big annual dinner, which is a celebration of the First Amendment reflections a week on from what turned out to be a crazy, unpredictable evening.
- [41:19]
Hugh Doherty
Well, first, let me just make it's a correction and I know in the comments people hate when men correct women, but Joanna, I was your plus one. Just let's be clear about that. Yeah, it was a very crazy dinner. I took the train down on Friday and one thing I should say is that many people listening and watching are going to say, why were you even there? And I just want to say we put a lot of thought into our presence there and we decided after a lot of debate and a lot of thought that it was the right thing to do to go. And I don't want to plug myself too Much. But if you go. We actually did a live stream on Thursday, which is obviously available on the YouTube channel. And I addressed this at the end and explained our thinking at length. And I'm more than happy for people to, you know, come at me, comment, whatever. Anyway, on that Friday, I went down, I checked in, I went up to my room, I went to room 10235 and I mentioned that name just because it'll become significant. I went to parties. It's one of the great privileges and, you know, part of the weekend that you go and meet people from all sorts of different outlets and organizations and bodies that are going to be useful for your reporting in the future. I went to a party hosted by YouTube, who obviously we're coming to many of you on YouTube, so we wanted to show our support for them. I went to a party at the British Embassy, which is a great privilege. It's one of the most incredible buildings in Washington. And when you walk in as Joanna, you know very well, because you've been there far more than me, as somebody that the Royal family have themselves honoured, you could walk in and there is a portrait of all people, King George iii. So I went to these things on the Saturday. I was going to be accompanied by our brilliant DC team, David Gardner, Farah Thomsen and Sarah Yo Weiss, and by our global editorial director who came in your stead, Joanna Nicole Hynes managed to make it all the way from London and, you know, went downstairs. Well, I tied my bow tie. I just like to say it was a real bow tie, unlike Kash Patel's, and tied my bow tie, went downstairs and eventually went into this ballroom. And everybody has seen what, you know, what happened. Everybody has seen the chaos, the incredible scenes of a SWAT team rushing onto the stage, of Cheryl Hynes being left behind as RFK Jr. Was grabbed. I saw a lot of the Cabinet and other senior officials go by, like 10ft from our Daily Beast table. Pete Hegseth, he did not look like a strong man, I have to say. He looked, to be honest, pretty shaken up. I saw Kash Patel and again, he did not look that great when I saw him. He was taking his phone out of his pocket and doing like that. And, you know, we all do that, right? But this is the director of the FBI. Judge Jeanine, as she is nicknamed, Janine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the. For the District of Columbia, rushed past in a ball gown. It was really this incredible scene. It was very chaotic. It was very unclear what was happening. And it was a reflection I think of how even if you are the most powerful man in the world, you can't control things, you can't be the Supreme Power. Things happen and they cause downstream effects and they cause chaos and they are beyond Donald Trump's control, particularly.
- [45:02]
Joanna Coles
And of course, you mentioned the room number because.
- [45:07]
Hugh Doherty
Well, because it turned out that in fact the alleged would be assassin, certainly the attempted shooter was next door. I went up after me and my colleagues, we were gathered together, we were reporting, we were filing, we were on our phones, we were on devices. And eventually my phone was beginning to run out of power. I went upstairs, back to my room. And just to make the scene slightly, the Washington Hilton is a huge hotel and loads of people have been. It's the sort of place that school parties go. They've modeled United nations, there are sales conferences and huge hotel. I was in the very top floor at the very end of a corridor. And as you know, when you get to a hotel, you go, oh, my God, I'm so far from the. So far from the elevator.
- [45:54]
Joanna Coles
So those corridors are really long in that hotel.
- [45:57]
Hugh Doherty
They are very long. And they're dark, they're very long, they're very dark, and they're kind of sinuous as well. So I went along and I turned on the last curve and I had my key out and then there was a hilt, a uniformed Hilton security guard who said, oh, I'm sorry, sir, you can't come any further. I was like, kind of odd. I said, oh, I just need to get to my room. It's right there. And there was an officer in front of it. And I said, just, I just need to get my phone charger, to be honest with you, thinking, you know, sure, they're going to let me in. And he said, oh, well, you know, just come back in 20 minutes. You know, it's for your own protection. And I went, okay. And I thought at that moment that somebody that they protect was in one of those rooms, because, Joanna, as you know, we've both stayed there before these other dinners. People book rooms, people who hold cabinet rank book rooms just so they can get changed. So that's what I thought. Oh, how wonderful it is. But this has been an odd night. It could be anyone and I'll be fine. So I go downstairs. We watched Donald Trump's extraordinary press conference in the White House briefing room, and about an hour had gone past and I thought, I really need to get my phone charger because it was heading down to zero very rapidly. And I went back up and I didn't get quite as far along the corridor, same Hilton security guard. And there were a lot more police behind. And at least one of them was carrying a tactical helmet. And I said, what's going on? And one thing I should have said was that in that hour when we were downstairs, sources were suggesting to us and to other outlets that it was possible, possible that the shooter, Cole Thomas Allen, had been a guest at the hotel. And obviously we didn't know. Nobody said this was definitely the case. And when I went upstairs, this security agent, security guard said, oh, you really. No, you really can't get to your room, sir. And I said, oh. And before there was any further interaction, a detective standing to his, just behind him to the left said, we are waiting for a judge. This is going to be an FBI crime scene. And at that moment, waiting for a judge means you need a warrant. And I had a flash of realization that this must be the room that the shooter, the alleged attempted assassin, had taken. And it was just an extraordinary moment, a bit chilling mostly, just really surprisingly that this guy had been next door. And at that point I didn't know when he had occupied that room, but I thought, oh my God, he was probably sleeping next to me. Is not obviously technically accurate, but that's the thought that goes through your mind. But just through one wall, which was, as I say, incredibly surprising.
- [48:49]
Joanna Coles
Well, you think of all the times you check into a hotel and you give no thought to who's in the room above you, below you, or on either side of you. Well, well, thank goodness you were able to write about it as effectively as you did, Hugh. And what an incredibly depressing evening. I mean, it was a gathering of journalists and young journalists and of course the Cabinet, to celebrate the First Amendment and to understand and acknowledge that the pressure, the free press is a vital part of American democracy. And this was not the right way for the evening to end, obviously. Do we know if they've rescheduled it? Donald Trump said that he wanted it rescheduled within 30 days. It's not his dinner, so it's not his. It's not within his power to do that. But I wondered if you'd heard of any efforts to reschedule it.
- [49:50]
Hugh Doherty
Yeah, well, I'll just point out 30 days is even longer than the usual 2 week period when everything is going to be sorted out. So the White House Correspondents association is holding talks on how, where, when it would have another event. Those talks have not so far offered any firm booking date. The new Secretary of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne Mullen on Friday said he did not believe it would be in the Hilton. That raises a good question of where do you put two and a half thousand people? Because there's actually no other spaces in D.C. that are just quite as large for dinner. There's one thing I want to say, Joanne, if you just allow me, one just brief point as a spoiler to those who are wondering. I never saw Alan, and obviously I've told the officers who I spoke to that. The other thing I want to say is that everyone who was there had such an immense sense of gratitude and respect for those officers and agents who ran towards a man armed, as we've seen in the video, with a shotgun and also a handgun, which I don't think they could have seen at the time, who had clearly the intention of causing grave harm. And it's up to the courts to work out exactly the nature of that. But their courage was exemplary. And there are obvious questions, and I've written about the failures of security here. Those were not failures of courage. They were not failures. All of those officers and agents and the other people that we were all so grateful to is the hotel workers, because as this happened, they had been serving dinner. The clatter of plates that you can hear on videos is because they were just bringing out the main courses and they went and they cleaned up that ballroom and outside where this guy had been brought to the ground and where shots were fired, and we have the privilege of checking out and they have to be back there every day. So they have an immense. My personal. My friends, my colleagues, people I don't know who I spoke to that night, just feel so much gratitude to them.
- [51:57]
Joanna Coles
Well, it'd be very interesting to see if they do figure out where to hold the evening. And I'm sure if they do, obviously security will be high. Perhaps Oz, the mentalist, who was the entertainment this year because they decided not to have a comedian, will have some insight into it. Interestingly, they didn't have a comedian last year either. Amber Ruffin was booked to do it and in fact did an interview on the Daily Beast. And after her interview, the White House Correspondents association decided to uninvite her to be the comedian. So that's two years in a row they've not had humor. When I think actually humor might be the very thing you need.
- [52:43]
Hugh Doherty
Maybe what we need.
- [52:45]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, to broach the gap between Donald Trump and his cabinet and the press. But, Hugh, it's always good to talk to you and I look forward to seeing you when I'm back in New York. You're about to go off for a week. Have a great trip. And we will. We'll get back together again when you are back stateside. And I am too.
- [53:07]
Hugh Doherty
Cannot wait. Thank you, Joanna for having me.
- [53:14]
Joanna Coles
Hugh, don't forget about us on holiday. And just a final reminder, please press the subscription button and you can become a Beebeast member. A Beebeast Tier membership gets you all sorts of exclusive content and it gets your name read out. So we know and your friends know, know that you are supporting us because independent media these days is under threat from all sorts of all sorts of arrows. And this is a way that we appreciate your support if you have been. Thank you for joining us. Big thanks to our production team who are dealing with some serious delays from my 4G neighborhood in the UK right now. Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Pasa, Heather Passara and Neil Rosenhaus. Have a good rest of your Sunday. 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.