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- [00:00]
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- [01:02]
Kurt Andersen
Acast powers the World's Best Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend.
- [01:10]
Rachel Tippograph
Welcome to Creative Commerce. I'm Rachel Tippograph, the founder and CEO of Micmac. And I'm Sarah Hofstadter, chairwoman of Profitero plus. And this is a show that talks about what's relevant in commerce for the world's biggest brand. Every week we talk with C Suite executives from the brand shaping our world. Unilever, PepsiCo, Colgate. So many more. We get into the strategies behind their most impactful moves, from digital transformations to new product launches. And of course we always end with our famous last question. What's the bravest thing you've ever done? Each conversation is real, insightful and always surprising. So if you want unfiltered lessons on leadership and growth, plus a laugh or two along the way, hit subscribe and join us on Brave Commerce.
- [01:57]
Kurt Andersen
ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com well it's the one and only time in my life I ever bought cocaine. I was a boy from Nebraska. I went to Harvard. There was Bobby Kennedy, the celebrity in our class. He was early in his drug using and dealing career relatively. We got back to our dorm and I don't know, maybe we did our own lines then. And and so I get a call on the phone. The of course only landlines at the time and phone in my our dorm room rang and he said yeah it's Bobby. Oh hi. I said you took my straw man.
- [02:41]
Joanna Coles
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast and we have a wonderful conversation for you today with our guest, the writer, the humorist the former media soothsayer, Kurt Anderson. And as Donald Trump was surfing the wave of fame that would land him astride the world stage, Kurt has been chronicling him and the fuckening of America, as he calls it, in multicolor detail. I urge you to stay for the entirety of this conversation because we start with a very compelling scene of him purchasing cocaine from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. When they were both at Harvard together. And I demand every detail of that transaction. We have a total recovered memory session. And that somehow feels like the perfect prologue to the America that Kurt has been writing about ever since. Now, before we get into it, just some background on Kurt, who is of course the co founding editor of Spy magazine, the brilliantly satirical magazine that first labeled Donald Trump a short fingered vulgarian. And Kurt's the creator and the longtime host of the now defunct but brilliant show for 20 years, Studio 360. He's written best selling novels, cultural autopsies and political takedowns, including you Can't Spell America without me, which is a delicious collaboration with Alec Baldwin as Trump's ghostwriter. And long before President Obama mocked Donald Trump at the White House correspondents dinner, Kurt had already diagnosed him as the patient zero of our national derangement. So let's get into it. I know that Donald Trump is going on a congratulatory tour of the Middle east this weekend, but I think he's going to feel a little hungover over.
- [04:32]
Kurt Andersen
One disappointment, and that would be not winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Joanna Coles
Oh, he didn't win it. And come on, he solved seven wars, some with countries that weren't even at war with each other.
- [04:45]
Kurt Andersen
That's true. And only started, or tried to start one or two in the United States by sending in the National Guard to various cities.
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Joanna Coles
Now you're being cynical, Kurt Andersen.
- [04:55]
Kurt Andersen
No, no, the thing aboutand as he goes through Israel, which he's already doing, as people watch this, I suppose you can bet he will be saying, you know, you know, he will mention the Nobel Prize, I guarantee you he will find wayswithout, you know, directly, explicitly dissing the, the heroic Maria Carina Machado in Venezuela, who has supported, who has made at least lip service support of his, thanks to him, and thanks to him, puttingfor putting a $50 million bounty on Maduro.
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Joanna Coles
How is it possible that no one's come forward with that, by the way? 50 million bounty on the head of Nicolas.
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Kurt Andersen
Well, it's not killing him. You have to get him. You have to, we have to bring.
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Joanna Coles
Him to the state, report it to.
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Kurt Andersen
The dea, and they have to convict him. So not just some Joe in rockets.
- [05:50]
Joanna Coles
$50 million is quite an incentive for.
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Kurt Andersen
Just one of his minions, I guess, to snitch or something.
- [05:57]
Joanna Coles
Life changing. It's a life changing sum.
- [05:59]
Kurt Andersen
And maybe Trump will repeat that. But anyway, he will, he will. He will find it difficult and he will find it. If I'm wrong, okay, come back and tell me I'm wrong. But I bet he will more than once repeat something about the Nobel Peace Prize and why he should win, if not this time, the next time.
- [06:19]
Joanna Coles
Right. And that she's a nice lady. Yes, a nice lady, but he's actually stopped seven wars. I wonder if, because Marco Rubio has been a big fan of hers and I think wrote in support of her getting the Nobel Peace Prize, that actually he will face some backlash from Donald Trump.
- [06:35]
Kurt Andersen
Well, you wonder about Marco Rubio, who was until, you know, the day before yesterday, in terms of his foreign policy opinions, everything. Trump is not, you know, I mean, he was a conventional conservative interventionist. Right. So, yeah, we'll see. I mean, you know. Yes. Did you work to prevent me from getting it while Netanyahu was doing his best?
- [06:58]
Joanna Coles
Right. And also, of course, Netanyahu put out an AI version of an enormous Nobel Peace Prize medal hanging around Donald Trump's neck.
- [07:07]
Kurt Andersen
No, it's amazing. It's, you know, Trump is a cartoon. And people, people like Netanyahu know that the cartoon, larger than life. What is this? Forms of flattery is what he likes. It's like when Trump himself, when that AI video came out of Gaza as a resort that Trump and Netanyahu are running, he shared that. I mean, you know, again, as I've argued and written a book about the blurred line between fantasy and reality in Fantasyland, of which Donald Trump is the lord and master, is harder and harder to suss out what's real and what's not. There will be people who see this Netanyahu distributed picture of Trump with the, you know, foot wide Nobel Prize hanging from his neck as real.
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Joanna Coles
So you mentioned that Donald Trump is a cartoon president. We have obviously a cartoon head of Health and Human Services, a man that I referenced in your introduction today because you bought cocaine off him at Harvard. I want a blow by blow account of that transaction. Please spare no detail. I need to understand. It was in a dorm room. Was it outside, off campus? I need all of it. What was his hair like? What was your hair like?
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Kurt Andersen
Good choice. Blow by blow.
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Joanna Coles
Well, that was just your Joyce in Natural Affinities.
- [08:39]
Kurt Andersen
No. Well, it's the one and only time in my life I ever bought cocaine. I was a boy from Nebraska. I went to Harvard. There was Bobby Kennedy the celebrity in our class.
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Joanna Coles
Was he the celebrity in your class?
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Kurt Andersen
Of course. And as handsome as could be. I mean, you know, I felt. He made me feel gay. I mean, he was so handsome. He was. And he was cool. And you know, Bobby Kennedy and you know, the Kennedys in 1972, 73, my freshman year, were still, you know, the dynasty that they are now, whatever.
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Joanna Coles
And also a tragic figure because his father and his uncle had been killed.
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Kurt Andersen
In cold blood within the few while he was, you know, not many years ago, his father four years earlier. So anyway, he was also. I said, my roommate and I said, oh, we should try cocaine and where do you get it? And well, Bobby Kennedy was the answer. And so. And I knew.
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Joanna Coles
And why was he the answer? Was he a notorious drug dealer or.
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Kurt Andersen
Well, whoever I asked said, yeah, go to Bobby. And you know, and we had, I guess a mutual friend or two already. And so the connection was the phone call was made and he said, yeah, come over in his laconic preppy Bobby Kennedy way when his voice was still not whatever destroyed by years of cocaine use or the illness that he says he has that has done his voice. Anyway, and my roommate and I went over there, you know, four minute walk from our dormitory with our $40, which was a lot of money in 1973, right.
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Joanna Coles
And he over to Bobby's room, to.
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Kurt Andersen
Bobby Kennedy's rfk, the future Health and Human Services Secretary. His room in Hurlbut. The dorm Hurlbut and went in and he, I wouldn't say welcomed us, but, you know, said, come on in and offered us. His brother Joe, future congressman from Massachusetts, was also in the room. So, you know, if I'd snitched, I, you know, I could have whatever taken.
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Joanna Coles
Them both, the family down.
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Kurt Andersen
And so there. There they were and we were talking and he, as one did, or as he did anyway, offered us some weed and showed us, opened a backgammon case which was so perfect in this preppy Ivy League thing that people did is play backgammon, of course, back then at least.
- [11:06]
Joanna Coles
And it was full of free Internet.
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Kurt Andersen
Of course, just full of. It was just like, I don't know, like probably a pound of marijuana in there. And he said, oh, have as much as you want. I'm going to go get my stash or whatever he said. He left the room. He and Joe both left the room. So Mark, my friend and I were up there. And we started looking around, you know, he was gone for like five minutes. And for instance, we looked in his address book. I didn't put this in the Atlantic magazine article. I wrote about it because it was irrelevant to the serious case I was making against Bobby Kennedy last year in my piece. But in his address book, oh, there's Jack Romeo Kennedy Onassis, there's, oh, look at these phone numbers. And there it was, I swear, Pope Paul vi. It said Pope Paul VI and had a number in Rome. And we wrote it down, you know, we wrote all these numbers down in the minute we had before he returned. So that was, that was a bit of color. You wanted color, you wanted blow by blow.
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Joanna Coles
That is a great detail. You got the Pope's number and you got his number while you. I'm glad your early journalistic chops served you well.
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Kurt Andersen
Well, I don't know about journalistic. Just nosy little brats, but yes, indeed.
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Joanna Coles
Well, and how strange he would leave it out there. I've since actually seen his sex diary. Someone at the Daily Beast has a copy of it. Yeah, which is. So it's interesting that he leaves his things around.
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Kurt Andersen
Yeah, well, he certainly did. Well, he's a reckless character. And the other thing about him, I.
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Joanna Coles
Well, I don't want to interrupt the transaction. So you're busy scribbling down number.
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Kurt Andersen
We scribbled down. One of us scribbled down the numbers and he came back and you know, and he put out a line of coke and we tried it with his little. He handed us his little piece of, you know, one inch straw, that one he'd gotten from the freshman dorm next to. Or the freshman eating place next to his dorm. We did the thing. Okay, what do we know? Sure, fine, great, we'll buy it. We did, you know, he said bye.
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Joanna Coles
And did he give it to you in a little packet? Did he measure it on a scale?
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Kurt Andersen
You know, I'm an unreliable witness. I don't remember. Yes, he gave it a little packet. It might have been just a little tin foil packet rather than like a full on drug dealer little tiny 1 inch baggie which probably didn't exist 53 years ago.
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Joanna Coles
They've professionalized since.
- [13:31]
Kurt Andersen
Yes, exactly. And he was early in his drug dealer. A using and dealing career, relatively. So anyway, so we took it and that was that. And about. We got back to our dorm and I don't know, maybe we did our own lines then. And suddenly I get a call on the phone. Of course, only landlines at the time. And the Phone in our dorm room rang and he said, yeah, it's Bobby. Oh, hi. He said, you took my straw, man. I said, what? He said, you took the straw. And apparently I had pocketed, not wanting to steal Robert F. Kennedy Jr. S special cocaine straw. But it turned out it was his special cocaine straw because he believed, as he explained to me, it had crystals growing in it. It has crystals in it, man.
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Joanna Coles
Meaning somehow the what, the repeated use.
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Kurt Andersen
The repeated use of mucus and cocaine buildup made it something that was very precious to him. And therefore now he's the head of the health system of the United States. So there you go. It's a line drawn. So anyway, so I said, okay. He said, bring it back. I said, okay. And I did. And he took it and, like, almost virtually slammed the door of his dorm room. So that was the end of my relationship, my drug dealing relationship with Bobby Kennedy. But I saw him around and we were in concentric circles of people. Many of his friends and roommates and things were mine. And so I saw him and heard stories of him. And he was, he was a reckless, entitled guy. And they all, even though they were, you know, he had that celebrity radiance of. And, you know, there was nobody. Well, actually, Amir Bhutto, the son of the then dictator president of Pakistan and a pal of Bobby's, naturally. But anyway, he was a reckless character. And one of my friends tells me the story of driving with Bobby. Driving because he had a car none of the rest of us did, driving through this tunnel in Cambridge, Mass, in Harvard Square at night, turning the lights of the car off. So it was like, what are we doing? What are you doing? And it was that kind of thing. There were many stories like that of him just behaving recklessly and heedlessly because, well, he was young. And when you're young, you don't think you can die, but, you know, this entitled, you know, rich Kennedy brat. So anyway, that's my experience of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
- [16:00]
Joanna Coles
Okay, well, we'll come back to that and why you think Trump chose him in a bit. But you've also had a ton of interaction with Donald Trump. I mean, he's been around in the media for 40 years. So have you. You're younger, but you've had a lot of interaction. And very early on when you were at Spy magazine, you recognized that he was a character that certainly needed lampooning.
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Kurt Andersen
Yes, he wasyes. I am younger. I'm much younger. I'm in fact younger than Trump, than you are, than me.
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Joanna Coles
Just for fair, fair comparison purposes.
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Kurt Andersen
Anyway, yeah, when we, by two years we started Spy magazine, this satirical magazine influenced by all kinds of magazines, including Private Eye, which is, yeah, the British.
- [16:50]
Joanna Coles
Magazine, which is still going.
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Kurt Andersen
Which is still going and different than we were doing. We were doing more journalism and less kind of sheer humor than Private Eye does. But anyway, so we started this thing, it was based in New York, was about New Yorkers for its first year or two before we kind of went national. It was successful and influential and it was the pre Internet age so you could actually start a magazine and be central to the conversation as you.
- [17:14]
Joanna Coles
Well, and as one person said, you were the zeitgeist when Spy came along. You changed the conversation.
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Kurt Andersen
Well, it was. We were lucky in very many ways and I think we did what we did well anyway, right away because my partner and co founder Graydon Carter had done a profile of Donald Trump in GQ magazine as we were plotting and scheming and trying to start Spy. And he came back to me and said, yeah, he's, you know, said I'm not sure I had even heard of him at that point. He was not that well known in 1984 or 85 as we were, you know. Anyway, he said he's, you know, he's a bully, he's a liar. He didn't say bully at that time, but he said, a liar, braggart. A bridge and tunnel, you know, want to, you know, make it in the big Manhattan world, guy. And he said, and he just, you know, made fun of his cufflinks and things, but he said, you know, for a guy who's, I don't know, six one or two or whatever he is, he has the smallest fingers I've ever seen. He has just weirdly small fingers. So then cut forward a couple, three years and we're thinking of the epithet we would attach to him as we did all recurring figures, whether you're Henry Kissinger, whom we called every time we mentioned him in the magazine, socialite war criminal Henry Kissinger. And so we came up with various, couple of different ones for Donald Trump which we decided didn't stick. And then we came up with short fingered vulgarian Donald Trump and called them that again and again and again. And people still say it today and still know it today. Marco Rubio, who stole the Nobel Prize.
- [18:54]
Joanna Coles
From Donald Trump for his friend Machado.
- [18:57]
Kurt Andersen
When he was running for president in whenever that was 2016, I guess. Yes, he brought up on stage short fingered Bulgarian and as we had honestly never done, never intended, never thought of related to the size of his penis.
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Joanna Coles
I mean, like, which became at the time a new low level of campaigning. Right. There was so much outrage that Marco Rubio had somehow alluded to that.
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Kurt Andersen
Well, he alluded to it. And again, I was watching it on TV and thought, I mean, people talk about, oh, it's like an acid flashback. Well, yeah. Suddenly this silly thing that we'd done, you know, 30 years earlier is like on a debate stage for the Republican presidential nomination was incredible. Of course, Donald Trump, being Donald Trump, went right into it and said, no, I'll tell you, in that department, meaning his manhood, I got no problem on the stage. So it was. The cartoon had begun.
- [19:58]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, the cartoon had begun. Well, and also, didn't he at one time send you a note saying how good you were when you left Spy magazine and you went to edit New York magazine? Didn't he send you a note saying that you were very good?
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Kurt Andersen
He did. Well, and he'd sent Graydon and me notes and letters threatening lawsuits while we were doing Spy. You know, that, you know, he said we were trying to extort him to get spy carried on his short lived, unprofitable failed air shuttle. He had his lawyers send his letters.
- [20:32]
Joanna Coles
I'm forgotten about his shuttle. The shuttle, the one that lasted to.
- [20:36]
Kurt Andersen
And a half years and lost money. One of his many unsuccessful businesses.
- [20:39]
Joanna Coles
Well, like Trump University, Trump Stakes, Trump War Shuttle.
- [20:41]
Kurt Andersen
Well, this actually had airplanes and it was flying, you know, it was the Eastern Air Shuttle until it became the Trump Air Shuttle. I mean, and he bankrupted it once again. But he also, and he'd heard, he knew that we were doingworking on a big story cover story, as it turned out, about his wife at the time, his first wife and his lawyer sent us letters threatening suit over that. So. And he never sued us, of course. Or not of course, of course, then because, like he was sensible then, because why waste money on a lawsuit, you know you're going to lose and everything. So anyway, yes, we'd had interactions with him and then so I lead Spy, become editor of New York magazine shortly thereafter. And there's in a trade magazine about the media. There was a big story about me and my new editorship and here's what he's doing and blah, blah, blah. And they quoted Donald Trump at length about how great I was doing, how exciting I'd made the magazine and all this. And there was a big poll quote, you know, these large quotes from him about that, how exciting Kurt was. He tears out that page of that magazine with his presidential pre Presidential famous Donald Trump Sharpie writes, circles the poll quote and says so true about the quote of him.
- [22:06]
Joanna Coles
And then signs it's his own quote.
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Kurt Andersen
His own quote, and then signs it Donald Trump in that familiar, you know.
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Joanna Coles
Ekg, sort of pubic hair type wolf.
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Kurt Andersen
Yes.
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Joanna Coles
From the birthday letter.
- [22:18]
Kurt Andersen
Yes, yes. And sends it to me. And I'd forgotten about it. And I found it when I was moving a couple years ago and was happy that I about to discover it. So there it is. There was that then when I did a story in New York magazine where the great writer Lisa Birnbach went down to the New Mar A Lago to spend a weekend there and just talked to him and wrote this piece that was hilarious and wonderful. That was almost entirely him talking verbatim. And she did it as a, you know, a weekend with. At Donald's in three acts as screenplay writing, you know, dialogue. He writes me. And like, it's as though he wrote. Maybe he dictated it, but it was like as if he wrote it and typed it. And it was not bullying, it was not angry because I was in this position as editor of New York that he feared in some way or wanted my benediction, didn't want to alienate me. Right. Because he was just a real estate guy. I mean, whatever. He wasn't, he had no power. And so he wrote me this. I say, he was just complaining, he was sorry, he was sad, it made him unhappy. It wasn't good. And I said, but. And I wrote him back and I have all this correspondence. I wrote him back and I said, donald, you know, it was all verbatim. She didn't really say. It was just you and, you know, Ivana and stuff and people talking. He said, yeah, I know, but it was still so unfair. Which, again, I mean, it's all these aspects of Donald Trump that we see now, like, no, they're just mean to me. They make me look bad, even though it's just my words. You were saying you used my words to make me look stupid. Well, yeah, yeah. So anyway, so I had many, many. And then when I lost the New York magazine, when I was fired from the New York Magazine job, he immediately went to the New York Post to say what a bum I'd been and how shitty I'd been as an editor and how awful. Anyway, so that's, you know, again, the Donald Trump pattern 35 years ago was clear. And.
- [24:18]
Joanna Coles
Kurt, hold on one second. We're just going to take some ads.
- [24:21]
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- [25:21]
Joanna Coles
And I'm back with Kurt Anderson discussing, well, just discussing the weirdness of this moment and of Donald Trump. You've written about this and you came up with another great phrase, the fuckening of America. How did we get here? Because people knew from the beginning that he was a braggart, that he was probably showing off, that he'd lurched from, you know, he was constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. How did we get from there to here?
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Kurt Andersen
Yeah, well, you know, he had talked about and flirted with running for president since spy was around 1988, I think was the first time, which I think.
- [26:07]
Joanna Coles
Is important to say because people often situated back at the 2011 White House correspondence. But it was very clear he had bigger dreams.
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Kurt Andersen
Well, he had bigger dreams and they were like all of his dreams, like winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, they're like preposterous at the time, right? So we actually commissioned polls to say who wants Donald Trump to be president. We found that 4% of Americans did. And we made a big thing out of that. Look, he's got a 4% groundswell. But no. So heand he did it again and again and again. Every four years he would do it. Because I'm Donald Trump, I'm a great businessman. And of course, as for instance, the Trump air shuttle and his football and his professional football league and all these businesses large and small, which all fail. So he's not a good businessman at all. What he was was a good guy playing a businessman on the Apprentice, which made him a bunch of money and made him famous and got him elected president. Got him elected president, as I've also written over the years, because, you know, starting with John F. Kennedy in television and certainly through Ronald Reagan, an actual movie star turned president, you know, politics, especially presidential politics, became this kind of subset of show business and performance. I mean, you Know, yes, FDR was on the radio and stuff, but like, like with TV and then and all that came with Ronald Reagan through Bill Clinton being on talk shows and then Donald Trump taking it to the next level. That's partly how we got here. That celebrity and this kind of show business performance ability got us here. And in his case, as a really successful television writer, friend of mine said to me in early 2016, before when he was still like, really? He's not going to be nominated or elected. Said, nope, he is. He's going to be nominated. He's going to be elected because people hate politicians and he doesn't come off as a normal politician. And I have never forgotten that my friend Paul Sims said that to me because it's exactly right.
- [28:14]
Joanna Coles
So how do the Democrats sort of countermand that? Because arguably Joe Biden was almost pre television as a candidate that took over from him and arguably if it hadn't been for Covid, he might not have done, but he squeezed through and he very much felt like the last of a line of politicians. How does the Democratic Party or any opposition to Donald Trump surface at this point?
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Kurt Andersen
Yeah, well, I mean, Joe Biden, as I said when he was running, I mean in 2020, I mean, you know, the pollsters often run generic Democrat, notnot a specific person, but a generic Democrat against an incumbent. I thought, well, Joe Biden is the embodiment of generic Democrats of a certain age and still won because the generic Democrat beat this freak who was President Donald Trump the first time. So how do we do it? Well, you know, just as the media have stumbled around for a decade, like how do we cover this guy? And still stumbling around like, because it's hard. It's a new thing. We are in a new period for, I won't say for better or worse, for worse and horrible, you know, in every way, including this. And you know, at Huffington Post, I think covered it his first campaign as you know, we're just going to put this in the entertainment section. Ha ha ha. Well, no, you know, so nobody has known how to cover him and Democrats haven't really, I mean, tried and you know, in the first term behaved as just normal Democrats as though this is a momentary blip away from an anomaly and it will return to normal and we haven't entered a new era. Well, we had and we have in so many ways. And so, I mean, you have to look at what he did and what he's done and what he does, which is to say, understand a presidency in addition to one hopes substantive legislative accomplishments and stuff, which, yes, the Biden administration had as a show, as Zelensky did in Ukraine, in a very different way. I mean, Zelensky, you know, actor, played president, became president. Right. And has been a heroic, amazing president of a country at war against a much bigger aggressor neighbor. So Donald Trump in his and he as a young man, as a 20 year old said, yeah, I thought about a career in show business, but I'm going to be in real estate, but I'm going to turn it into show business. He said that. And so that's that. He does that. And you know, I mean, he's an idiot about many things, he's stupid about many things, but his basic performative show business instincts are incredible and how to keep the attention every day as much as he can. And again, one of the things that struck me when we were doing spy, you know, 35, 40 years ago was I'd never seen anybody so craving, yearning for any kind of attention possible would, you know, call up, talk to reporters on the television, pretending to be his.
- [31:29]
Joanna Coles
PR guy, like John Barron.
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Kurt Andersen
Very good. Yes, indeed. And just craved it. And like, you know the old phrase no publicity, all publicity is good publicity. I mean, Donald Trump lived on that premise unlike anybody I'd ever seen. Like an addict is addicted to drugs. To me, his need and desire for attention of any kind now, preferably, you know, the kind of attention that the New York Post gave him with a front page headline saying best sex I ever had, said Marla Maples, about, you.
- [32:03]
Joanna Coles
Know, I'm sure she was surprised to read that headline when she saw it because he'd obviously just phoned it in.
- [32:08]
Kurt Andersen
He literally. And that was recounted. He was telling them this, but she was somewhere in the background, said Marla, that's true, isn't it? And she said, yes, of course, but no any, I mean, so breaking norms and being the ultimate publicity horror of our time was his M.O. from the get go.
- [32:36]
Joanna Coles
And also what I think is interesting is your analysis of him as a television star. Clearly 14 seasons of the Apprentice and then obsessive chronicling of who was taking over from him. Arnold Schwarzenegger did a season, Martha Stewart did a season. They both got fewer ratings than he did. And he was beside himself with.
- [32:58]
Kurt Andersen
He loved talking about how he then when social media existed, which again.
- [33:02]
Joanna Coles
Well, that's what I was going to ask you about, the segue to social media. Obviously he's got his own now. After he was booted off Twitter, he created Truth Social, just his sheer skill in managing to stay on top of whatever the dominant media is at the time. What is that about? What is that, as you say, addiction to attention about? Because most people would just be in the fetal position with a hundredth of the attention he gets.
- [33:29]
Kurt Andersen
Yeah, no, it's entirely true. Well, because, you know, we, I mean, spy treated him as effectively a cartoon character from the beginning and he kind of treats himself as a cartoon character. And again, one of the great profound problems in my way of thinking about social media is that it and the Internet is it makes all of us treat our adversaries, the people we don't like, whatever, as not real humans. Part of that we talk about dehumanization, that's a real thing. And it could lead to, has led to violence, will lead to more violence, no doubt. But that thing of like, well, this is not a real person that I'm saying these savage, horrible things about online, they're just somebody online. They're just like in a game or cartoon. And so the sociopathy, the psychopathy of Donald Trump, which is, you know, all about no human empathy for anybody. I mean, and social media, great. I'm just spewing my lies and fantasies and insults and there's no accountability. It doesn't matter. They're not real people. They don't matter. So it was a natural sort of infrastructure for his pathologies really, in a way.
- [34:45]
Joanna Coles
Right. That's an interesting way of thinking about an infrastructure for his pathologies. And what does it, I mean, you've met and you've known over the years lots of moderate Republicans, lots of people.
- [34:55]
Kurt Andersen
Who are the child of moderate republic. Well, I'm the child of conservative Republicans, but who would now be the worst kind of rhinos on earth. Yeah.
- [35:03]
Joanna Coles
Right. So what do you think about the people around him that initially understood he was a cartoon and thought this isn't serious, and then watched their party co opted by him and then all his ministers around him, all his cabinet secretaries around him, fawning over him even when they know this is nonsense.
- [35:24]
Kurt Andersen
Yeah. And. Well, they didn't do that the first term. Right. The difference between the first term and the second term is so striking in so many ways. Not just that he is now actually exercising power rather than just, you know, using his bullied pulpit to failing to really do much. He surrounded himself the first term with the people you're supposed to. He considered Mitt Romney to be Secretary of State.
- [35:48]
Joanna Coles
You know, all General Milley, all of.
- [35:51]
Kurt Andersen
Them were just kind of normal.
- [35:54]
Joanna Coles
You know, remember Rex Tillerson fired sadly.
- [35:57]
Kurt Andersen
On the toilet, you know, and, you know, and he was still playing by the rules, sure, breaking the norms, but nothing like thelike the truly terrifying and historic horrors that he's doing now. So he was still, you know, you know, he was stilleven though he had been elected not as a normal Republican, he'd been elected aswell and lied and was brilliantly a brilliant liar about like basically running as Bernie Sanders economically. I will give you better Medicare. Wall street is picking your pocket, they're destroying your towns. So he was truly, look at the last two minute A.D. he did in his first campaign. It could be Bernie Sanders. And so, okay, this guy is different than other Republicans. You know, he's a tough Republican who hates the same people we do, you know, Right.
- [36:58]
Joanna Coles
The swamp of Washington, he's going to drain the swamp.
- [37:00]
Kurt Andersen
Well, that and he doesn't like black people and he doesn't like immigrants and he doesn't like gay people. You know, the cultural thing that had been the, you know, part of the Republican strategy for since Richard Nixon really, the Southern strategy was called back when he first did it. So he had that, but he was still, he was playing, pretending to be a different kind of Republican in that he washe wasn't for Wall street, he was for Social Security and for Medicare. Well, you know, it was a perfect pitch to the white working class. So that was, that wasi mean and Steve Bannon was around who really, you know, to my mind, had it right. If Donald Trump had governed like Steve Bannon wanted him to, he would have been, he would have been reelected, no problem. Because if he had reallyif he had really said, I'm not a regular Republican and I think Medicare is great and I think we should expand it and Bernie had a good idea and let's have mass deportations and let's stop dei. Those two together, which is basically the Steve Bannon platform, would have beenwould have like, worked wonders. But he didn't because the Republican Party, except for Donald Trump and now his, you know, various MAGA people surrounding him in Congress are still, you know, are not, you know, they are not a working class party economically. So that contradiction still exists. And he's given it up. He doesn't even lie about it anymore. He just, just, he doesn't really even pretend that he's, you know, against Wall street or against big business. So, you know, and that's how we got here and the ability to, because it's now all about paying attention to me. I'm a man of action. I'm a President of action. And he is in a certain way. Right. I mean, whether it's, you know, I'm having this summit with Putin in Alaska that does nothing. I'm going to Israel because of peace. Well, it's not peace. It's a ceasefire. And good, but like, we'll see.
- [39:11]
Joanna Coles
I'm calling all the generals together with my head of the war Department.
- [39:14]
Kurt Andersen
Yeah. To tell them they shouldn't be fat. And now I'm sending in the National Guard to Portland because it's a hellhole. I mean, and again, you know, it's a hobby horse of mine, but this not just blurring a fictional reality but like, but we have a media sphere that allows full him toif people don't look beyond him or beyond Fox News to think, well, I guess Portland is burning. I guess we should send the National Guard there. Just this basic falsehood fabrication that is the basis of this probably unconstitutional deployment of military forces.
- [39:59]
Joanna Coles
Kurt, we're taking a quick break for some messages.
- [40:04]
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- [41:15]
Joanna Coles
And I'm back with Kurt Anderson discussing the madness of America. And now we've got your old college buddy, RFK junior in Health and Human Services.
- [41:27]
Kurt Andersen
Not my dealer. Not my buddy.
- [41:29]
Joanna Coles
Well, you're just your dealer. I love that. Just your dealer. Now telling people that not only does Tylenol in pregnancy cause autism, but our circumcision causes autism. He also appears to be an addict for attention. He was certainly a drug addict for a long time. What do you think? So why do you think that Donald Trump found him so Compelling.
- [41:52]
Kurt Andersen
Well, compelling point. He's a Kennedy. Donald Trump, born in 1946, 14 years old when Jack Kennedy is elected president. I mean, he is in that first boomer year and the boomers are the people, you know, who were young people during the Kennedy Camelot magic. I mean, and actually the older generation as well. But that's why, because he's a Kennedy and a good and a good looking one. They're not all good looking. You know, he's pretty good looking and you know, for.
- [42:29]
Joanna Coles
Married to an actress. Married to a Hollywood actress.
- [42:31]
Kurt Andersen
Married to a Hollywood actress and you know, and buff and built and looks great for 71, you know, so that's why. And I don't know how crude or clever he was about this kind of California New Agey now called Maha, part of the coalition of people who don't want vaccines and think, you know, additives to food are bad. All the things which many of us could agree with.
- [43:00]
Joanna Coles
Right. And that people are too obese and out of control in America's sort of food industrial complex.
- [43:05]
Kurt Andersen
You know, 20% of Bobby Kennedy's prescriptions for the health system. Good. Sure, but that's so he, but it was just, it was the celebrity, it was the. He's a big handsome guy who's already famous. Good. You know, central casting. I mean, Pete Hegseth or Kristi Noem or, you know, they are like people in some third rank television show. But they're, they're pretty in their ways, they're good looking, they're, you know, like characters in a video game or something. But Bobby Kennedy, I mean, is Bobby Kennedy and he has his own, you know, comes in pre marketed with fame and had been, I say, because I once ran a very adoring cover story on him in New York magazine. You know, he was doing good work as a lawyer, as an environmental lawyer, basically.
- [43:59]
Joanna Coles
Right. Cleaning up the rivers and things.
- [44:00]
Kurt Andersen
Yes. You know, but. And then, you know, at the turn of the century as the Internet came and you know, you could, you know, you could start have all kinds of falsehoods and conspiracy theories like vaccines cause autism. And he took advantage of that and became the poster boy for that, as I wrote about in my book Fantasyland. Anyway, so he was a Kennedy and he obviously had a flexible view of, you know, of empirical reality, you know, which, you know, the whole MAGA thing is this like, you know, island of broken toys of all kinds of different conspiracy theories that come together. You know, whether it's Jeffrey Epstein, plausible conspiracy theories about his pedophilia or Bobby Kennedy and about, you know, the vaccine industry working with Fauci and the pharmaceutical industry to cause the pandemic, all that stuff. So, I mean, believe what you want, you know, it's your plot, your own adventure.
- [45:07]
Joanna Coles
So when Donald Trump gets up there and does his Tylenol spiel, which has no science behind it whatsoever and consists.
- [45:15]
Kurt Andersen
Of simply saying, it's bad, it's bad.
- [45:17]
Joanna Coles
Don't use it. Tough it out. Tough it out. I longed to ask, ask Melania, did she tough it out when she was pregnant with Baron?
- [45:25]
Kurt Andersen
Yeah, I don't know. You should ask her.
- [45:27]
Joanna Coles
Well, what do you think he's thinking in that moment? Is he thinking anything? Why is he doing that? It's just the attention.
- [45:37]
Kurt Andersen
Drug, I believe. I believe it's just the attention. And, you know, Bobby says this, so I don't know anything, so I'll just repeat it. Yeah, I mean, it' syou know, and, you know, he's taken it and all of his children have taken it, and his wife, Wives have no doubt, all taken it. And.
- [45:59]
Joanna Coles
Well, and also the weird thing is that the one thing that worked from his first administration was Operation Warp Speed, which suddenly, in the moment now he's hanging out with Bobby Kennedy, doesn't work so well, so he immediately walks back from it, which also seems crazy.
- [46:12]
Kurt Andersen
Well, it is crazy. No, it is. I mean, you know, he had a couple of things that he could take credit for, that being the biggest one being not getting in the way and letting the government properly fund this incredible new technology that got us an incredibly effective vaccine in a matter of months, in a year.
- [46:29]
Joanna Coles
Right. And was the envy of the world.
- [46:31]
Kurt Andersen
Correct. And so. But, oh, these anti vax nuts that are part of my coalition don't like that. Okay. I gotta, you know, play both sides of that, as he does on so many things. Right. I mean, he's. Because he's Donald Trump, who' swne of whose political superpowers is, you know, contradicting himself within 24 hours or within an hour or within five minutes and like, it doesn't matter. And in a certain way, because. And in this, one of his overwhelming, successful things in this administration is doing so many different things every day. A new thing, a new thing, some new atrocious, horrific violation of the Constitution or norms or whatever. So there's just too much. It's what Steve Bannon said years ago that we're going to, you know, the whole strategy is to flood the zone with shit, you know, and my God, he's done that. And so the Media, the news media and Democrats, like, ha, how do we focus? What do we focus on?
- [47:36]
Joanna Coles
So the one thing that does seem to stick to him and unnerves him and unnerves the people around him is Jeffrey Epstein and the story of Jeffrey Epstein and their friendship for 15 years. Did you ever come across Jeffrey Epstein?
- [47:50]
Kurt Andersen
I didn't have that privilege of coming across Jeffrey Epstein, although, you know, people I knew did. And you're a contributor, Michael Wolf, and my friend at the time and still certainly did. And people were aware of him as this interesting, highly interesting, unusual rich guy character. But no, I never did. But they obviously were, you know, they had much in common as Bridgerton Tunnel boys who made money in their variously shady, sketchy ways and came from Brooklyn and Queens and moved to Manhattan. And you know, as Donald Trump said of Jeffre, Epstein likes the girls really young. So no, but I never, I should.
- [48:38]
Joanna Coles
Be laughing at that. I don't know why I'm laughing at that. And every time I do, people write in and say, this is about young girls, don't make it funny. But it's hard not to because it's such a peculiar situation. Final question then. Do you think that Jeffrey Epstein. Well, how do you think Jeffrey Epstein died?
- [48:57]
Kurt Andersen
Well, if I had to bet money.
- [49:02]
Joanna Coles
And again, I mean meme coins or.
- [49:05]
Kurt Andersen
No actual cash, I haven't studied it carefully, but I've read fairly carefully about the circumstances and I disbelieve extraordinary conspiracy theories theories until I can be persuaded that they're real. And this one seems a plausible conspiracy theory that somehow, just as you know, the speaker of the House is now keeping Congress, the House out of session in order to prevent Epstein's, the Epstein files from being released. That somebody thought like Epstein better die or you're in trouble, Mr. President. You know, I don't know. I don't know that that's true. But as allegations or suspicions go along with so much of the unusual connections and coincidences around Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes go, it's plausible. But if I had to bet $10,000, I'd bet, yeah, he killed himself.
- [50:09]
Joanna Coles
Kurt Anderson, such a treat to talk to you. I love hearing your sort of vision of the world and your observations and also your strange interactions along the way with the people whoi mean, Donald Trump really stands astride the world, Nobel Peace Prize or not, he's the most talked about man in the world, which is all he ever wanted.
- [50:28]
Kurt Andersen
It is exactly right. And yet, yet I think he' st the hole in his soul and his inability to be satisfied or happy or content with. Life to me is still manifest and apparent. So I mean, that's at least I take some consolation in that belief.
- [50:49]
Joanna Coles
Will you come back and talk to us again?
- [50:52]
Kurt Andersen
Sure. Happy to.
- [50:58]
Joanna Coles
I found that a wonderfully stimulating conversation with Kurt and I really want him to come back because it's so helpful to think about the rise of Donald Trump on the world stage as not just politics as normal, but as a cultural phenomenon that we have all been privy to. And of course we've watched it happen through television, through social media, and it's just, it sort of says so much about all of us. Anyway, if you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to join the Daily Beast community and please subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. If you're on YouTube, you can press the button to join the community below. Don't forget to be Beast, as our first lady would have us say. I want to thank our special bee Beast membership tier Karen White, Heidi Riley, Connie Rutherford, Sharon Shipley, Andrea Hodel, and Free dc. Whoever Free DC is, it's a great nom de plume. And just to remind you, we'll be back on Monday with David Rothkop and Tuesday we'll be going back Inside Trump's Head with Trump chronicler Michael Wolff. Thank you to our production team, Devon Rogerino, Anna Von Erssen, and our editor Jesse Millwood.
- [52:15]
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- [54:18]
Kurt Andersen
Want more? Great listens Check out our comedy podcast the Last Laugh and our Star Studded the Daily Beast podcast@thedailybeast.com podcasts if you.
- [54:27]
Rachel Tippograph
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