Why Even Trump Insiders Admit He’s 'An Idiot'

Summary

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The Daily Beast Podcast

Episode Title: Why Even Trump Insiders Admit He’s 'An Idiot'
Host: Joanna Coles (plus Michael Wolff and unnamed co-host)
Date: March 27, 2026

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Overview of the Episode

In this episode, Joanna Coles and journalist Michael Wolff (with contributions from a regular, unnamed co-host) delve into the contentious question: just how smart—or not—is Donald Trump? Drawing on years of reporting, inside anecdotes, and analysis from key Trumpworld figures, the hosts explore Trump’s intellectual insecurities, his unique approach to information (or lack thereof), and how he’s weaponized his deficits into political strengths. The conversation ranges from personal interviews with Trump confidants, debates over dyslexia, and sharp contrasts with other public figures, ultimately probing what happens when the most consequential job in the world is in the hands of someone characterized by insiders as “an idiot.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s Intelligence and Insecurities

• Trump’s Sensitivity to Intelligence ([02:35]–[03:17])
  • The hosts note Trump’s compulsive need to declare he has a "big brain" and is "the smartest person in the room."
    • “Donald Trump thinks he has a very big brain.” — Michael Wolff [02:33]
    • “It’s a point of real sensitivity…if you say, what are Donald Trump’s chief insecurities…that he’s not smart enough, but that everyone knows he’s not smart enough.” — Unknown male host [02:46, 03:04]

2. The Importance of Intelligence in the Presidency

• They underscore the complexity and information density of the presidential office:
  • “The presidency...is probably the most information intensive job on earth…so much of that information is consequential in a very significant way.” — Unknown male host [05:43]

3. Firsthand Insights from Trump’s Inner Circle

• Sam Nunberg, the “Trump Whisperer”
  • After observing Trump post-inauguration, Wolff sought understanding from Sam Nunberg, an early Trump political advisor. Nunberg’s blunt assessment was revealing:
    • “He’s an idiot…he has so systematically blocked out virtually all information in his life. Not only is he unfiltered, but he’s non-sequential. He’s inarticulate, often incoherent. It’s jaw dropping.” — Sam Nunberg (as recalled by Michael Wolff and co-host) [01:00], [10:12], [10:48]

4. Trump’s Cognitive Style: Evidence from Allies and Enemies

• Steve Bannon's Take ([15:31]–[16:02])

  • Bannon believed Trump had “otherworldly instincts,” possibly compensating for “extreme dyslexia,” but “in terms of knowing anything, in terms of being able to process information, [Bannon] would be rolling on the floor now.”
  • “It became the experience that made [Trump] reject all further learning.” — Unknown male host [16:02]

• Jeffrey Epstein’s Take ([20:25]–[20:34])

  • Epstein was “shocked and appalled” by Trump’s presidency, asserting Trump was not only illiterate but “innumerate”—causing him to bungle facts and numbers constantly.
    • “[Epstein] would point out he couldn’t read a balance sheet, was innumerate. Not only illiterate, but innumerate.” — Unknown male host [20:34]
    • Example: Trump’s promise to lower healthcare costs by “600%." [21:14]

5. Trump’s Relationship with Reading, Speech, and Learning Disabilities

• Dyslexia and Beyond
  • Trump’s possible reading deficits are discussed, noting how staffers never give him written material; whether it’s dyslexia, illiteracy, or choice, his coping strategy is: “not to read.”
    • “A lot of people have dyslexia…they develop strategies. His strategy is not to read.” — Unknown male host [14:42]
  • Trump only reads off a teleprompter “from time to time” and quickly wanders off-script. [13:58], [14:05]
• Repetitive Speech and Limited Vocabulary ([11:00]–[12:36])
  • Trump’s speeches exhibit an extremely limited, hyperbolic, and repetitive vocabulary, “as if he has the vocabulary of a 12-year-old.”
  • “He also repeats himself all the time…it’s as if he has a very limited vocabulary…everything is maximalist, everything is hyperbolic or paranoid…there’s no nuance.” — Michael Wolff [11:00–11:35]

6. Performance Skills: How “Stage Presence” Hides Deficits

• Trump’s 14 years as a reality TV star gave him skills that “hold the stage,” making him the center of attention despite intellectual weaknesses.
  • “Maybe it’s his performative abilities…a moron [who] has literally turned being a moron into an advantage.” — Unknown male host [28:36], [29:31]

7. Anti-Elite Populism: Turning “Idiocy” into Political Capital

• Trump’s identity is built on opposing “elites, the smarty pants, the people who wear glasses, the Ivy League,” channeling anger toward those he (and many followers) find intimidating.
  • “He has come to represent the stupids.” — Unknown male host [30:34]
  • On Harvard: “The first place he went after was Harvard, which represents everything that he finds intimidating…that sense of rejection and wanting to take it down.” — Michael Wolff [30:34]

8. Psychological and Neurological Speculation

• On Dementia:
  • Wolff insists Trump’s eccentricity is not new:
    • “He has always been like this…It may be getting worse…but the oddness you’ve always had is just sort of magnified.” — Unknown male host [33:45]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He’s an idiot. He has so systematically blocked out virtually all information in his life…It’s jaw dropping.” — Sam Nunberg (via Wolff/co-host) [10:12]
• “The presidency…is probably the most information intensive job on earth…” — Unknown male host [05:43]
• “He can’t follow an idea…That was always Jeffrey Epstein’s point about his friend Donald Trump.” — Michael Wolff [20:25]
• “This moron…has literally turned being a moron into an advantage. I mean, it’s almost an ideological advantage.” — Unknown male host [29:31]
• “He has come to represent the stupids.” — Unknown male host [30:34]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:00–02:13: Sam Nunberg's defining judgment on Trump
• 02:22–03:17: Trump’s insecurities about intelligence
• 05:07–06:55: The presidency and its intellectual demands
• 09:56–10:48: Life inside early Trump White House; encounters with Nunberg
• 11:00–12:36: Trump’s speech patterns and cognitive style
• 14:33–15:47: Speculation on dyslexia, illiteracy, and coping by not reading
• 15:31–17:18: Steve Bannon’s and others’ observations about Trump’s refusal to learn
• 20:25–21:19: Epstein’s critique: innumeracy and illiteracy
• 23:24–23:59: Trump’s compensation strategy: endless talking
• 25:10–26:52: “Stage presence” and the power of performance
• 28:36–30:34: Trump embracing his outsider status and “idiocy” for populist appeal
• 33:45–34:16: Is Trump’s behavior dementia or enduring personal oddity?

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Conclusion: Engaging and Alarming Reflections

The episode closes with sobering reflection: Trump’s lack of executive function and intelligence is not merely quirky, but profoundly consequential—something his allies and enemies alike have acknowledged. His survival and triumph in American politics, the hosts suggest, are products of both performance skills and a society increasingly suspicious of expertise. Ultimately, “how did America manage to elect this idiot?” remains a core question, reinforcing the episode’s blend of alarm, dark humor, and incisive critique.

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Transcript

[Michael Wolff]

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[Michael Wolff]

Michael Joanna Michael Wolff, chronicler of Donald Trump where are we going?

[Unknown Male Host]

Not only are we going inside Donald Trump's head, but we are going to reflect on the nature of his brain.

[Michael Wolff]

I think Donald Trump thinks he has a very big brain.

[Unknown Male Host]

Well, I think he probably has doubts about this because he has to say it so often, that he has a

[Michael Wolff]

big brain that he's the smartest person in the room.

[Unknown Male Host]

I think It's a point of real sensitivity with him. I think if you say, what are Donald Trump's chief insecurities? And I think that there are undoubtedly many, but I would go put this one at the top.

[Michael Wolff]

That he's not smart enough.

[Unknown Male Host]

Yeah, that he is. Not only that he is not smart enough, but that everyone knows he's not smart enough.

[Michael Wolff]

Oh, so scary. Okay, so we're going to devote an issue to this because the quality of Donald Trump's brain matters enormously because it's a government of one and it's now a world of one.

[Unknown Male Host]

I would say we're gonna devote a show. You say issue because we come out of the magazine.

[Michael Wolff]

Yes, sorry, sorry.

[Unknown Male Host]

We come out of the magazine business.

[Michael Wolff]

We're in the podcast world now, and

[Unknown Male Host]

it makes me nostalgic. I would rather. I would rather be putting out an issue.

[Michael Wolff]

No, no. It's fun putting out episodes. It's fun putting out episodes. And if you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to the Daily Beast because we're independent media, so we really appreciate your support. We're almost at 600,000. I think we've got, like, 12,000 more to get to, and it would be great to get there, and then our next goal is a million. But starting with Trump's brain. Gavin Newsom brought out a book recently, which is obviously his calling card for 2028.

[Unknown Male Host]

But I would put this differently. I would say that Trump has raised the issue here. He's put it on the table, on the political table. How smart do you have to be to be the President of the United States?

[Michael Wolff]

Okay, well, let's listen to the clip which triggered both of us.

[Unknown Male Host]

Gavin Newscomb has admitted that he is a. That he has learning disabilities. Honestly, I'm all for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president. I don't want. I think a president should not have learning disabilities. Okay? And I know it's highly controversial to say such a horrible thing. The President of the United States, Gavin Newscombe, admitted that he has learning disabilities. Dyslexia. Everything about him is dumb.

[Michael Wolff]

So are you positing that actually Donald Trump was talking about himself there?

[Unknown Male Host]

It certainly seems. It's a pretty accurate description.

[Michael Wolff]

Isn't it fascinating?

[Unknown Male Host]

I mean, it's kind of like, oh, my God, what is he saying? Does he know he's saying this?

[Michael Wolff]

I think a president should not have learning disabilities. Okay? And I know it's highly controversial to say such a horrible thing. I'm all for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president.

[Unknown Male Host]

Okay. But let's Literally discuss this because it is an issue that actually doesn't get discussed. How smart do you have to be to be the President of the United States? What's the nature of the intelligence? You ought to have to be the President of the United States. What would happen to us as a nation if perchance a ranked dummy were elected? I mean, these are, I mean, I think that these are kind of overriding questions. Forget maga, forget issues. How it's a complicated world. Well, and also let me go on because I think the presidency of the United States is probably the most information intensive jobs on, on earth. And it is not just because there's a lot of information, but because so much of that information is consequential in a very significant way. It affects people's lives. It actually keeps them alive or not.

[Michael Wolff]

And globally, I mean, this is across the world, obviously, not just America.

[Unknown Male Host]

So we have Donald Trump. I mean, Donald Trump. Now I can go back to a kind of foundational moment in my relationship with Donald Trump or my understanding of Donald Trump. So Donald Trump gets elected in 2016, shortly, actually the day after, on January 21, the day after the inauguration, go into the White House and spend basically the next seven months there with everyone else. Nobody knows Donald Trump. Everybody's working for them. They don't know him. Everybody's trying to figure, figure him out. And I had really no preconception, actually, if I had a preconception, it was, this could be interesting. This guy is a disruptor. He's a showman.

[Michael Wolff]

He's a wild card.

[Unknown Male Host]

This could go in all kinds of ways. He's a guy who wants to please an audience. You know, I was actually kind of, kind of, I thought this would be an interesting show, which is why I was there to write about it. But I was also kind of optimistic about, about this. And as the weeks went on, I was trying to figure this out. It was hard because it didn't. I mean, nothing seemed to make sense and nothing that he, that he was doing, you would have done. That's not the way anyone, any kind of logic you would have brought to this and say it should be done this way, but still maybe just trying to figure it out. Now, there was a guy who everybody within the kind of greater Trump circle kind of acknowledged was the great Trump whisperer. This is a guy by the name of Sam Nunberg. And to this day, I think one of the guys I think is the most acute about Donald Trump. And Sam had worked for Trump, was really his first political hire, and was with him every day. And then they had had, as with all people, they had fallen, had a falling out. But everybody turned. If you didn't know what he was doing or what was going on or try to interpret that, people in the White House would call Sam. So I called Sam and I sat down with him and I went, this is, this, I don't quite understand. What is he trying to do? And I remember Sam looked at me and he said, you don't get it, do you? And I was like, tell me. And he said, he's an idiot. And then it came absolutely clear to me and nobody allows us. He's been elected the President of the United States. So you don't acknowledge. He must be, I mean he's, he

[Michael Wolff]

must have some kind of cunning intelligence, something.

[Unknown Male Host]

Yes, he has a mastery over, he must have a mastery over so many things.

[Michael Wolff]

Right. That he's speaking on a different frequency to the rest.

[Unknown Male Host]

So. But then Sam, this was utterly reduced. And as soon as he said it, you recognized it. I mean, this is a man he just doesn't know. First thing, he doesn't know anything. He has so systematically blocked out virtually all information in his life. And then if you listen to him, if you spend any time at all listening to him, not only is he unfiltered, but he's non sequential. He's inarticulate, often incoherent. It's jaw dropping.

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[Unknown Male Host]

And also, where do you go with that? I mean, you've just defined a true existential predicament in the history of democratic norms. So what do you do? And I don't know.

[Michael Wolff]

Well, and can we just say that the first time, perhaps it was Trump won, felt less serious because he was surrounded by normal people. What this idiot has managed to do is not only get elected the first time, sit out and resist all efforts to jail him for four years in Mar a Lago in his political wilderness, then win again. Again, completely unparalleled in American history, given what he went through in those four years when he was in the wilderness and then come back and this time surround himself by people who are even more idiotic than he is.

[Unknown Male Host]

Well, let's go. I mean, so Newsom is a dyslexic. I mean, we can talk about Trump's version of dyslexia, but I think it's more complicated and we should speculate on that because he may not be able to read at all. So he may be. There's dyslexia and then there's illiteracy. So these are. This is a complicated.

[Michael Wolff]

To be fair to Donald Trump, doesn't he read off a teleprompter from time to time? I know he wanders off.

[Unknown Male Host]

Yes, he has some, obviously some reading abilities, but.

[Michael Wolff]

But it could be very prim.

[Unknown Male Host]

But again, the people around him know you cannot give him written material. If you give him written material, that is a very bad strategy for communicating with your boss. So it is either that he can't read, he can't be bothered to read, or his reading comprehension is pretty limited. Right, but the other thing is, because

[Michael Wolff]

there is that thing that some people have where they read things and there's a gap between what they're reading and the meaning. I mean, it's a proper learning disability.

[Unknown Male Host]

Yeah, all of that may be present here, but the way he has chosen to deal with it. And a lot of people have dyslexia and they have a lot of. And they develop a lot of strategies for dealing with it. The way his strategy is not to read.

[Michael Wolff]

Yeah, of course.

[Unknown Male Host]

I mean, duh.

[Michael Wolff]

Yeah.

[Unknown Male Host]

And it's sort of. It's sort of a rich guy strategy. I mean, what is the ultimate. The ultimate response of all rich people? I think this isn't like 100%. I don't have to do what I don't want to do.

[Michael Wolff]

Interesting. This might also be why he struggled at school.

[Unknown Male Host]

Well, let's go to the school thing, because that's really interesting. I've spent a considerable amount of time with Steve Bannon talking about this. Bannon was captivated by the subject.

[Michael Wolff]

Did Bannon think he was an idiot, too?

[Unknown Male Host]

Absolutely. I mean, he thought that Trump had some kind of otherworldly

[Michael Wolff]

instincts, which may be compensatory for having extreme dyslexia.

[Unknown Male Host]

Right. But in terms of knowing anything, in terms of being able to process information, in terms of following a chain of logic, Bannon would be rolling on the floor now. And he was interesting on this because he would say it was not only that Trump had problems with school, that he was a lackluster student, but he was so lackluster that he was always rebelling against school, so that his entire life after school then became resistant to anyone telling him anything, anyone suggesting that they had more expertise than. Than he did, anyone putting him in any situation where you had to measure up a test he would reject and rebel against. So it was not only school was not only a bad experience for him, but it became the experience that made him reject all. All further learning.

[Michael Wolff]

Mm.

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[Michael Wolff]

Staring at your screen. Take a break. Get free items with TikTok and free pick items. Share a link and watch the price drop to0. Download TikTok. Search free. Start slashing now. It's unfathomable that someone. And didn't you say that when you went to his house, he had two books? He had the Art of the Deal and the Bible. Wasn't it you that told me that?

[Unknown Male Host]

No. No, that was not.

[Michael Wolff]

Maybe that was someone else. But you never see him surrounded by books. We do our parts.

[Unknown Male Host]

I did once go to. I won't say who this was, but this is a man both you and I work for.

[Michael Wolff]

I know, right? So maybe I'm thinking, I'm getting confused.

[Unknown Male Host]

And that man had Jack Welch's book and my book.

[Michael Wolff]

Someone told me they'd been to his house and he had two books on his shelf, and it was the art of the Deal, and it was the Bible. The Bible he famously held upside down and couldn't remember what verse or chapter he liked from it. But it's sort of unfathomable that someone can get through the system. And he has six bankruptcies in his wake, too, because some people are dyslexic. And in fact, I think it's actually, I think I read that there was something like as high as 23% of the CEOs of Fortune 5000 had some form of dyslexia. But they create incredibly effective compensatory strategies. I mean, Ari Emanuel is famously dyslexic. He talks about it.

[Unknown Male Host]

Well, Molly, John Fast has a column just the other day about dyslexia in the New York Times about dyslexia and about the strategies for dealing with dyslexia. She's apparently a dyslexic, which, by the way, is not a recommendation for the advantage of dyslexia.

[Michael Wolff]

But that's interesting because she has a lot going on visually. She has the stripy hair. She has the big glasses. That does actually explain something.

[Unknown Male Host]

Yeah. No, no. She actually looks a little like Donald Trump.

[Michael Wolff]

She doesn't look like Donald Trump. But when you understand people's coping.

[Unknown Male Host]

But it's the same thing to avoid people saying. Focusing on what you say, because most of what she says is, you know, completely banal. But she looks like it should be more interesting than it actually is.

[Michael Wolff]

Compensatory strategy. Interesting. What are Trump's. I mean, the other thing that I find interesting is that. And we've talked about this before on the podcast, but he has zero executive function. He can't follow an idea that.

[Unknown Male Host]

Follow a conversation. That was always Jeffrey Epstein's point about his friend Donald Trump.

[Michael Wolff]

His friend Donald Trump and why he

[Unknown Male Host]

was more than anyone, because they had been such close friends and he understood him so well, more than anyone. Jeffrey Epstein was shocked and appalled that Donald Trump had become the President of the United States. And would always point out that Donald Trump, who became this theoretically because he was such a great businessman, and Epstein would point out he couldn't read a balance sheet, was innumerate. Not only illiterate, but innumerate. We've seen that again and again. Obviously, numbers have no relationship to numbers, to reality of numbers.

[Michael Wolff]

Right. Remember when he said he was gonna bring the cost of healthcare down by 600%.

[Unknown Male Host]

No. And the first minutes in the White House, you know, there were, you know, a million people had attended his inauguration when it was, you know, about 60,000.

[Michael Wolff]

Oh, God.

[Unknown Male Host]

I mean, that was always. He can get to a million faster than anybody else.

[Michael Wolff]

Right. Cause it's a number that he knows is a big number. That's an impressive number that he's gonna.

[Unknown Male Host]

You know, there was a moment in the first administration when he was. He became incredibly paranoid about his transcripts, his college transcripts, and he went to.

[Michael Wolff]

Why have they never been released? Astonishing.

[Unknown Male Host]

Well, he threatened. He threatened them. I mean, this was serious. A serious business, to threaten the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania about these. These transcripts. And it's also the Wharton School. Wharton is an MBA program, and that's what it's famous for. But there is a undergraduate Wharton business program, which is not a Wharton mba. And he's always conflating that and mixing that up.

[Michael Wolff]

Right. And also, we should remind people, he went to Fordham first. He always talks about Penn. He never talks about Fordham.

[Unknown Male Host]

Right. No. I mean, incredibly resistant student. His father really had to take this in hand and get him into Fordham first and then get him into the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, not the MBA program.

[Michael Wolff]

I mean, so, to some extent, incredible coping mechanisms that get him to be the president. There were also issues, weren't there, when he was making the Apprentice, that he couldn't stick to a script, which I'm very sympathetic to, because I have difficulty sticking to a script, but that he would just talk and talk and talk, carry on talking, and they would edit it in reverse.

[Unknown Male Host]

Right. And that's another one of the Bannon observations about him, that one of his ways to compensate for not knowing anything is just to keep talking, therefore nobody can tell him anything. And to compensate for not being able to process information and also to compensate before this big problem with authority, with teachers, in Bannon's interpretation, that if you keep talking, no one can tell you anything.

[Michael Wolff]

So how does he go from being an idiot to being the president? What are the skills he does possess that he manages to outfox everybody else on the primary stage when they're all competing, because we know that he's up against smarter people, and it turns out that smart here is not particularly useful?

[Unknown Male Host]

Well, I don't think. I think smart is useful. I mean, smart is useful. I mean, that's. How do you do the job if you're not smart? And he doesn't you know, I think on the evidence, he hasn't done the job. Smart is required to do this job.

[Michael Wolff]

No, but I meant in terms of, you know, he's an idiot. He's on a stage with people who are far smarter. He still wins.

[Unknown Male Host]

Okay, well, let's talk about the stage, which I think is the whole point here. There are many, many, many, maybe all actors who are stupid, and yet they are. Those are the people who, on a stage, you look to who you believe are smart and you want to identify with.

[Michael Wolff]

But that's because they're reading other people's words. Right? I mean, the famous story about Kevin Spacey is that Kevin Spacey thinks he's super smart. I have no idea if he's smart or not because he's played smart roles.

[Unknown Male Host]

I think that that's not true. I think you're always looking. Even if an actor has no law, nobody has written the lines. You're looking at them. You're looking at them because. Partly because they're looking at you. I used to live in a building in New York that had two. A couple who went on to be very famous.

[Michael Wolff]

Are you gonna tell us who they are?

[Unknown Male Host]

No.

[Michael Wolff]

Why not?

[Unknown Male Host]

Yeah. My guess, it's the actor William Hurt and his wife Mary Beth Hurt, which were very famous at the time because they're not so famous now because their careers went.

[Michael Wolff]

I think our viewers and our listeners know who William Hurt is. I mean, come on. It's the great broadcast news.

[Unknown Male Host]

Yes, yes, exactly. So. And anyway, these were. Both of these people were nobody then. And nevertheless, you would get on the. You couldn't stop looking at them. You were. I mean, you. Actually, I began to time my. When I went out just to get a glimpse of them. And they're perfectly normal people, but there was something magnetic, the way they looked at you. The way they look. I don't know. It's what an actor. It's what an actor does. I mean, it is the requirement.

[Michael Wolff]

I hold the stage, I hold the attention.

[Unknown Male Host]

And Trump as, remember? And 14 years as the star of a top rated reality television show. This is some incredible learning experience for a politician.

[Michael Wolff]

Mm.

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[Michael Wolff]

I used to live in a building with Richard Dreyfus. He lived in the apartment above us. And he used to dress up as the Santa for the lobby Christmas party. And the children would go and sit on his knee and he would bounce them up and down and say, have you ever seen a Jewish Santa before? He was good with the one liners. Actually, I came away thinking he was pretty smart. Also in the building was Judy Collins. Also smart, seemed very smart. It was a good building, actually. And Suzanne Vega

[Unknown Male Host]

in my building was the woman who played.

[Michael Wolff]

No, I'm kidding. I don't.

[Unknown Male Host]

Who played the building in the original Peter Pan. Oh, played Tinkerbell.

[Michael Wolff]

Oh, okay. I don't know who that was. I was going to go for the original Peter panel. All right, that's stretching it a bit. That's Mary Martin. Okay, now we're really stretching. Okay, let's get back to inside.

[Unknown Male Host]

Because somehow, maybe it's the compensation, maybe it's his performative abilities, but so this moron. Let's use that. I mean, I am not exaggerating. This is. I think if you met Donald Trump just without any preconceptions, without knowing him, if you had to sit down with him and have a drink or a meal, you don't know who he is, you'd say, that guy's kind of a moron.

[Michael Wolff]

Would you say he was an attention seeking moron? Because the other thing that's so fascinating about him is this craving, this deep, deep need that everybody sees that he is the center of attention.

[Unknown Male Host]

No. I mean, clearly.

[Michael Wolff]

And he'll say anything to get it. And he'll be abusive or offensive. He has no filter.

[Unknown Male Host]

Absolutely. And I think one on one, if you didn't know who he is, you would find that appalling. But on a stage, on a national stage, on a worldwide stage, it takes on a whole different effect. But then there's the other thing that he has literally turned being a moron into an advantage. I mean, he has. I mean, it's an almost an ideological advantage.

[Michael Wolff]

Well, he hates experts. He knows more than the generals.

[Unknown Male Host]

Exactly. And the elites. Who is he against? Who has he most clearly positioned himself against? And that's the elites, the smarty pants, the people who wear glasses. The Ivy League. Yes. The people who most of the country, or at least a good part of the country, seem also to be against. So he somehow has come to. He somehow has come to represent the stupids.

[Michael Wolff]

Right. And of course, almost the first Place he went after was Harvard, which represents everything that he finds intimidating. And we did an episode of he applied to Harvard, didn't get in. So that sense of rejection and wanting to take it down.

[Unknown Male Host]

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, most, the truth is most people aren't intelligent and that's his secret handshake with them.

[Michael Wolff]

Well, Michael, that's illuminating and alarming.

[Unknown Male Host]

And the other thing too is there's a whole set of politicians who hide behind their intelligence. And that's also off putting Barack Obama, in a way, hid behind his intelligence. Well, Trump is not going to do that because he has no intelligence to hide behind.

[Michael Wolff]

And also, it doesn't stop him. I mean, arguably, Barack Obama's intelligence stopped him from doing things because he could see round the corner and what might not go right, which is probably why he didn't go into Iran. Trump loves the impulsive decision, the impulsive move.

[Unknown Male Host]

And his way of compensating is you make an impulsive move, it doesn't turn out, but. So you make another impulsive move.

[Michael Wolff]

Well, you just keep moving. Right? You keep moving. And it's one of the things that I notice viewers and listeners comment on all the time, especially when they're living abroad, is how did this happen? How did America manage to elect this idiot, this orange idiot, as a lot of people refer to.

[Unknown Male Host]

Well, I mean, this is going to be the subject that will be debated for 100 years at least, but one of the answers is 14 years as the star of a top rated reality television show.

[Michael Wolff]

And yet Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also the star of a television show, a comedy show, but where he plays the president and he turns out not to be an idiot. Everybody thought he was going to be an idiot and then he turns out

[Unknown Male Host]

not to have been, but he was actually. You may be right in this may not be worth. It's just the luck of the draw. But he was a comedian and it does take a kind of intelligence to

[Michael Wolff]

be a funny person and bravery to be a stand up comedian.

[Unknown Male Host]

Indeed. My son is a stand up comedian.

[Michael Wolff]

Is he?

[Unknown Male Host]

Yes. You knew that?

[Michael Wolff]

I didn't know he was a stand up comedian. I thought he was a comedy writer.

[Unknown Male Host]

My daughter.

[Michael Wolff]

Okay, a lot of comedy going on in the Woolf household. And I'm assuming by this you mean your adult son is the comedian, not your little. Not your five year old. Right. Or your four year old. All right, so there we have it. Trump's brain, it's full of holes like an old Swiss cheese. Do you think he's actually got dementia.

[Unknown Male Host]

Well, I've known the man for a long time and he has always been like this, Right?

[Michael Wolff]

So he's either always.

[Unknown Male Host]

That does not explain. I mean, it may be getting worse. You know, one of the problems with people with dementia is that it just turns out to be. I mean, one of the ways it can manifest is what you have, the oddness that you've always had or the weirdness that you've always had is then just sort of magnified.

[Michael Wolff]

Right. Right. Well, your oddness isn't magnified.

[Unknown Male Host]

Well, not yet.

[Michael Wolff]

Not yet. Not yet. If you have been. Thank you.

[Unknown Male Host]

Let me know.

[Michael Wolff]

I will let you know. I will let you know if you have been. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to sign up for the Daily Beast. Please subscribe. We're independent media, so we appreciate your support. As you know, as our first lady likes to say, you can be Beast tier membership. 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. Thanks to our production team. Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.