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- [00:00]
Michael Wolff
This person who I was speaking to yesterday described it as. He said, everybody's plotting. Marco Rubio is plotting, Hagseth is plotting, Jared Kushner is plotting, and J.D. vance is plotting. But J.D. vance doesn't really know how to plot well.
- [00:21]
Joanna Coles
And I think they have J.D. vance saying, I'm against this. I don't think it's a good idea, but if you want it, Mr. President, I will support you.
- [00:29]
Michael Wolff
And I don't know how he comes out looking loyal, because it's gonna be clear that he was a source on this. The only one not trying to retreat is Pete Pegseth. Too dumb to know that he has to retreat.
- [00:48]
Joanna Coles
Okay, so after Michael and I recorded today's Inside Trump's Head, we had sensational breaking news that Melania Trump has made a long and frankly astonishing statement about Jeffrey Epstein. It's the first time we've ever heard from her in person about the biggest scandal of her husband's presidency. She claims she never met Epstein until the year 2000, said she knew nothing about his crimes, and even explicitly denied having a relationship with him. So it really is all quite sensational. And of course, even more sensationally, Michael is actually suing the first lady himself about Epstein. We're going to dive into it and analyze every word on our next episode on Saturday. But don't let the Trump's ability to drive the narrative divert our attention from what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz and the peace talks going on in Pakistan led by JD Vance. Let's get into it. And just a reminder before we really get into it, because goodness knows there's a lot of urgency today, don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast. We're independent media. We appreciate your support. You can smash the subscription button wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to the Daily Beast for up to the moment news on what the hell is going on, Michael?
- [02:19]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, Joanna?
- [02:20]
Joanna Coles
Oh, my God. I have no idea what's going on. Nobody has any idea what's going on.
- [02:25]
Michael Wolff
I think that I do, and I think it's interesting. And I think there's sort of a beginning, middle and end here. And it begins with his threats, I'm going to destroy civilization. And what that meant as soon as he said it is that he was. He was not going to destroy civilization. And so he got himself into the end point of something he could not do. I mean, he could not do because it was morally reprehensible, because everybody around him, because it was just an unsustainable threat. Also, he didn't know how to do it. How would you destroy civilization?
- [03:13]
Joanna Coles
And, and also it's a childish threat. It's like when a child says, well, I'm gonna leave you all, and storms out of the house. And then they're hiding in the garden.
- [03:21]
Michael Wolff
Totally. But that meant, at that very moment, it meant effectively the opposite of what he was threatening, because it meant, because he couldn't do this, that he had to get out of the situation. So immediately he was ceding the absolute high ground to the Iranians. I mean, it means he had to accept any deal, because what happens if it got to be 8 o' clock and there was no deal? Well, then he was going to be then shown to be a fraud and a fool and a naked emperor. So he had to do a deal. And the deal that he did was essentially, you win, we lose. So there is no other way to see the outcome at this point as that the Iranians have significantly bested the Americans. Now. I mean, he did this thing, this two week ceasefire, now that's within the Trump circle. That's a kind of running joke. Whenever he's in doubt, whenever he's in trouble, whenever he's asked a question that he can't answer, he goes to the two week response. We're looking at that. We're gonna get back to you in two weeks. I'm gonna have an answer for you on that in two weeks. I mean, everybody goes, they look at each other two weeks. And he actually has discussed this. And this is not just off the top of his head. It's a week. People still remember two weeks. They never remember now where he came up with that formula, I have no idea, but it actually tends to work. And so at this point, the two week ceasefire means that in two weeks it'll be a situation in which the smoke will. There will be enough smoke so that he won't have to directly face the issue that he has achieved nothing in this war.
- [05:38]
Joanna Coles
Right, he's achieved nothing. No regime change. They took out the leadership, but it stayed the same. They still have the enriched uranium, which they said, which the Americans said they were after. And strategically, the Strait of Hormuz that hadn't been in play now appears to be entirely in the control of the Iranians. So in effect, this has actually been yet another shit show.
- [06:05]
Michael Wolff
No, I mean, I think there's, I mean, just. And I think it's worth making the point, the thing that he cannot do after this two week ceasefire is go back to war. So he is Locked in. He has locked the Iranian gains in. And I mean, we're so. We're in a thing. A lot of people are talking, throwing around the Suez Canal example for the Brits, but it actually is much closer to George Bush, mission accomplished, or for Joe Biden's exit from Afghanistan. It's that moment, those tipping points, moments in which you cannot recover. I mean, the Biden administration. There's only really one story in the Biden administration. You know, it has nothing to do with Joe Biden's senility, has nothing to do with anything. It has to do singularly with the exit from Afghanistan at that point, which was, you know, a debacle. He couldn't recover. His numbers never recovered after that.
- [07:18]
Joanna Coles
And also the imagery. Who can forget the people clinging onto the planes as they took off and then falling from the planes and the dreadful loss of life and the very quick rolling in of the Taliban undermining everything America had spent 20 years.
- [07:36]
Michael Wolff
Yes. So at that, these are those moments which are unforgettable. I mean, you can't. I mean, war, war, war has the attention of the world, and it's the attention of the world in victory, which never comes, or ignominy, at which point we have arrived.
- [08:01]
Joanna Coles
Well, on both those moments, Afghanistan, a mission accomplished are moments that Donald Trump has himself repeatedly mocked as mistakes of previous presidents. And his whole thing was, I'm not going to do that. We'll never have a forever war. I would never do that. Look what he's gotten himself into.
- [08:21]
Michael Wolff
No, I think again, and we've started to have this conversation, I think we should have this conversation repeatedly. Now that this is the moment, everything has begun to come apart and it's not going. It's the Humpty Dumpty moment. It's not going to be put back together again.
- [08:40]
Joanna Coles
The Humpty Dumpty moment. I love that. So where does this leave his cabinet? Michael, what are you hearing from inside the White House about what's inside his head? On it.
- [08:53]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, totally. And I had this kind of. Kind of fascinating discussion yesterday with, you know, let me be careful in how I characterize this. This person. But I would say that this is a highly placed, deep state person who has a daily interaction with the White House. And this person's. This person's critique of the moment is that this person, let's avoid gender here. This person has never seen so many people in the seat of power, let's say, who are so rattled, I mean, rattled about everything, rattled about their own careers, rattled about what happens tomorrow. And at some level rattled about how the government continues to operate and then at some level rattled about the fate of the of of the country. And, and this person also says that no one is getting a clear message from potus. That's quote unquote. And which, which that he POTUS the President of the United States. Donald Trump is also probably rattled. He doesn't know what's going on. He does not know what to do. He at some level recognizes that he has gotten himself into a corner which he can't get out of.
- [10:40]
Joanna Coles
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- [12:13]
Michael Wolff
Let's get to that in a second because I have some clear views on that and I think it actually helps. It's kind of a roadmap, not the way the authors intended, but nevertheless a roadmap to what's going on. But this person who I was speaking to yesterday described it as, see, he said everybody's plotting.
- [12:39]
Joanna Coles
Everybody's plotting.
- [12:40]
Michael Wolff
Marco Rubio. This is what this person says. Marco Rubio is plotting, Hagseth is plotting, Jared Kushner is plotting and J.D. vance is plotting. But J.D. vance doesn't really know how to plot. So that was the thing. And I think you saw so the New York Times did a big lead up to war. Now the context of these kinds of pieces is pure Bob Woodward. I mean Bob Woodward has written at least I think multiple books about various presidents going to war. And that's what sort of the preeminent newspaper reporters tried to emulate that. And they got a lot. Maggie Haberman and her acolyte Jonathan Swan got a lot of people to talk to them, apparently, which is an indication, one indication of people plotting of them
- [13:56]
Joanna Coles
planning how they're going to exit this, how they're planning their futures. When you say plotting, do you mean they're plotting their own futures and they're plotting others down from it?
- [14:05]
Michael Wolff
Yes.
- [14:05]
Joanna Coles
And they're plotting because they know they're in a mess and they have to figure out their own way out of it without being blamed.
- [14:12]
Michael Wolff
That's quite the definition of plot. You got it? Yes.
- [14:16]
Joanna Coles
I'm just.
- [14:17]
Michael Wolff
And so everybody is in this mix. And you can tell a good part of this story is coming from, from J.D. vance. And the Vance point of view is clearly not me. I was not the one who did this. I was just at best trying to be loyal while I told them again and again and again this was a bad idea.
- [14:43]
Joanna Coles
Well, and I think they have J.D. vance saying, I'm against this. I don't think it's a good idea. But if you want it, Mr. President, I will support you. So he's trying to look loyal, supporting the president, but also advising against.
- [14:57]
Michael Wolff
Right.
- [14:57]
Joanna Coles
And I don't know how he comes
- [14:58]
Michael Wolff
out looking loyal, because it's going to be clear that he was a source on this. The only one not trying to retreat is Pete Hegseth. Too dumb to know that he has to retreat, but in the middle.
- [15:13]
Joanna Coles
And Pete Hegseth's saying that they can go back in anytime they like. And although there was one, one line, and I think it was from this story where he says they have the enriched in uranium still, only the president knows how he can get it out. What did he said? Oh, I know. He was asked how they will retrieve the uranium. And Hegseth said that's something the president will resolve. I think you're going to have to try there, Pete. You're going to have to try a bit harder.
- [15:42]
Michael Wolff
Yes. And then overall of this is that you have Bibi Netanyahu in the Situation Room. So why do we. The answer to why we went to war is because Bibi came to Washington and Trump was like, oh, my God, these guys are so smart. They know everything. They're Mossad. And here's the thing, which is always a kind of Trump thing, that Mossad, the you don't want to mess with Mossad. It's Mossad. I mean, it's Really? I don't know. It's gotten into his head that this is the knee plus ultra of spies and intelligence.
- [16:31]
Joanna Coles
So alongside us, inside Trump's head, we're alongside Mossad.
- [16:36]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Bibi, he seems to have known, he seems to have played this exact exactly right with everybody else saying, you know, I mean, you know, the Israelis, you know, they're, I mean the Israelis are there only for one account, which is their own, as well they should, I suppose. But in this situation, and they, and the Israelis are always trying to get the US into, into backing their, they're positions that are, that are fundamental, I mean, are good for them and bad for everybody else essentially, including certainly in this instance the US So also there's Tucker Carlson, pops up in the middle of this and that's interesting because he's a direct quote. So he went on the record here and we should talk about Tucker because Tucker has been almost more than anyone on the MAGA side out front on this. I mean he's been devastating in his critique of the president. Tucker is without question, I think, setting himself up for a presidential run. I mean he is the anti war candidate, the anti war MAGA candidate. So that's all interesting. And the other, to me interesting thing is that this is another example of another demonstration of the New York Times failure to portray what's going on because essentially it's all there. They've laid out the fact it's a portrait of a president who won't listen, can't understand, overly impressed by the people around him who he thinks knows more than he does and who lives in a place separate from Cartesian reality that's there. But at the same time they write this stuff partly because they're such terrible writers. I mean, it's essentially AI could have written this and it produces a Bob Woodward effect that you know, that this is a kind of deliberation council process and within a range of options a fair minded one is selected rather than a president who is totally out of the. We're not in, we're so far out of the realm of normal statecraft and even that is normalizing it. Just to use those words. The man is a bloody incompetent who does not know what he's doing and who has committed us to a war that, to an incredibly costly and destructive war which will gain him nothing because he can't do it. He can't, he can't process. Yeah, I mean, but the New York Times have and they've done this repeatedly. Why Are we in the Trump message? Partly because of the New York Times, because they don't have the intellectual capability to express what's going on. They don't have the courage to express what's going on, but mostly because they literally don't have the intellectual tools to describe what's in Trump's head.
- [20:21]
Joanna Coles
Well, what's also curious about it is that they. They go round the Situation Room table, they have descriptions of where everybody's sitting, and Trump is sitting to the side. He's not sitting at the table because he wants to watch the video that the Iranians have put together or the PowerPoint. And Netanyahu is also sitting to the side. And basically, everybody after Netanyahu has left goes round and says the Israelis oversell, Particularly John Ratcliffe, head of CIA, says, well, this is what Netanyahu does. He just oversells. And then there is the reference to, you know, Trump weighs it all up and then goes with his instincts.
- [21:02]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, what is it?
- [21:03]
Joanna Coles
And you're like, well, what is his instinct? What is this?
- [21:05]
Michael Wolff
It means he has no thought process, no way to evaluate this. He's just a fucking fool. And they can't say this. I mean, they've masked that, and that's produced grievous consequences that we continue after all this time. And let's, you know. And Maggie Haberman has been a constant reporter on this beat. She works for the most important and influential news organization, and she fucks it up all of the time because she is, you know, and she's perfectly reasonable, nice person, a decent person, and a good reporter. She's just a terrible writer and a terrible thinker. So she can't express this kind of what needs to be expressed here, which
- [21:58]
Joanna Coles
is the President's brain is missing.
- [22:01]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, it's.
- [22:05]
Joanna Coles
Well, I'm sure the book will sell. Well, I found the piece pretty riveting reading, actually, because I love all that detail of where people are sitting. But again, it's that thing that the President trusts his instincts. And you're like, he has no instincts. His instincts for what? He's a man whose businesses have repeatedly gone.
- [22:23]
Michael Wolff
I mean, I think it is so far behind the eight ball at this point in time. And I think the reading public and the voting public is so far ahead of this, and understanding there is something really radically, phenomenally wrong here. And to treat this as though it is just another Bob Woodward. The President goes to war. A. A typical President goes to war is wrong and more importantly, unhelpful.
- [23:02]
Joanna Coles
Well, and what is interesting is that the Republicans themselves are now coming out and saying 25th amendment. The president's lost his mind. There's no appetite for this in the MAGA base. We talked on Tuesday about Alex Jones, who's ironically calls himself a truther, is horrifyingly untruthful most of the time, but on this apparently has got it right. Similarly with Marjorie Taylor Greene calling everybody in the Cabinet, which of course, she was never invited to join. So one has to weigh up her personal animus about that. But her saying, you are all complicit, you are all complicit, you know, he's lost his mind. You're not doing anything about it. You have the results of the election around the country, various seats up for grabs and a big swing to the Democrats, even when the Republicans won. A Republican is replacing Marjorie Taylor Greene, but with a much, much, much smaller majority in Georgia there. And as you mentioned, you have Tucker Carlson, who I've now added rumble to my stable of social media platforms. And he was talking for two hours this morning. I was watching him about what a terrible mistake this is.
- [24:13]
Michael Wolff
I mean, I've known Tucker for a long time, and I like. And I like Tucker, and I think Tucker is often smart and Tucker is often the whisperer behind any between how to. Tucker is a great source. It's been a great source for me. I'm sure he's been a great source for many other journalists. But the thing about Tucker, and there's many things you can say about Tucker's level of ideological opportunism, but one of the things that he has been for many, Many, many years, 20 years consistent about is having been in Washington, been around the people who make the kinds of decisions that have almost inevitably resulted in mistakes when it comes to military engagement. And it's not the military so much as the arrogance of the civilians who are directing them. I mean, he has been consistent saying that this never, ever, ever, ever in any circumstance works well.
- [25:34]
Joanna Coles
And it's always a tendency for leaders of countries, any country, Putin no exception, that when things are going badly at home, which obviously they are for Trump, you start meddling abroad. And as if somehow by doing that, you will shift your own population, your own voter base's attention from what's going on at home to abroad. Nobody in America wants to focus on Iran. Nobody cares.
- [26:02]
Michael Wolff
No.
- [26:02]
Joanna Coles
Well, this is another one of those
- [26:03]
Michael Wolff
things people feel actually those things that used to work. I mean, George Bush in 2004, you know, manage this to his advantage. I mean, this all went a cropper,
- [26:19]
Joanna Coles
but that was because of 9 11. So we'd had 9 11, a truly shocking event. We were both here, we were working together at New York magazine. So that set the stage in a very different way. This attack on Iran, especially after the 12 day bombing, apparent obliteration of Iranian nuclear facilities last summer, we thought we dealt with that. And then suddenly, because Netanyahu got intelligence that they could take out the leadership is really why we went in. Apparently that worked, but this is not something anybody cares about at home.
- [26:59]
Michael Wolff
And the only reason it happened is because Donald Trump is. Can't deal because is an incompetence, utterly incompetent. I mean, this is just utter incompetence of someone who does not have the intellectual skill set to have parsed this on the most basic level. So here we are with a justification from the New York Times, essentially.
- [27:31]
Joanna Coles
Well, and the thing I, everybody I talk to, I hear is how can one man have this much impact? Congress has just given up the ghost, it appears. And how can he have so much impact? Even when his back is up against the wall, he's still somehow enjoying it, enjoying playing President of the world.
- [27:56]
Michael Wolff
Well, of course, I mean, the center of attention for him, he still gets a piece of what he wants, which is to be at the center of attention. What he doesn't yet understand because attention has worked so well for him in the past, his fundamental political calculation is, if I get the lion's share of attention, nobody else gets any attention. And it's just not gonna work on this situation because. Because actually the war itself gets the attention and the failure gets the attention. And the fact that the Iranians are going to continue to declare victory and make him look like a fool.
- [28:46]
Joanna Coles
And there are 450 tankers in the Gulf idling as they try to figure out will they be one of the tankers allowed through by Iran. There's normally a passage of about 100 tankers a day. At the moment there's between four and eight. And that is completely unresolved. And it's unclear how that is resolved in two weeks. And I understand that he thinks, oh, people will forget in two weeks. And actually it's quite a good theory. I'm going to start doing it, but the world isn't going to forget because there's the physical need for tankers to get out of the Gulf.
- [29:27]
Michael Wolff
I mean, so I'm just speechless.
- [29:33]
Joanna Coles
I mean, it's, I've never seen you speechless. This is our, what is this? Our 98th, no, 97th podcast. And I've never seen you speechless, Michael? I just can't never seen you speechless.
- [29:45]
Michael Wolff
This is such a cock up. And it's a cock up that occurred so quickly. I mean, the interesting thing is so unnecessarily is these messes that usually happen. I mean, there's kind of COVID I mean, you go into it with a coalition, international coalition, you have goals, manageable goals that can be set, and then a year later or X number of months later, you think this is not going well. I mean, so that we've compressed this, we've compressed this now to five weeks, a disaster, a historic international disaster. In five weeks. We've seen the beginning, middle and end.
- [30:35]
Joanna Coles
And literally he's handed the strategic victory to Iran with the Strait of Hormuz. So how significant was it for her own career? And I'm sure she's plotting, too, that Tulsi Gabbard, the head of National Intelligence, wasn't in the room where they were sitting around trying to figure out what to do about Iran. No.
- [30:58]
Michael Wolff
Well, I think she's on thin ice now. This Deep State person who I was speaking to said actually in this conversation, we can test this person, that the next person to go is the Secretary of Labor.
- [31:17]
Joanna Coles
That is Laurie Chavez de Ramire, who has had a bit of domestic turbulence since she's been at the Labor Department. First of all, I think she was the first one to unfurl a huge portrait of Trump on the outside of the building. Her husband got accused of sexual harassment and was actually banned from the building, banned from visiting his wife in her place of work. And then, interestingly, one of her bodyguards was recently removed after it appeared that they had developed a close relationship. I wrote a piece about this on Substack, actually, about women having inappropriate relationships with their bodyguards, the very people who are supposed to protect them. That would mean that he would have fired. The first three firings would all be women, because we had Kristi Noem, then we had Pam Bondi, and then we might have Laurie Chavez Derimeaux. So I'm sort of assuming that he's doing that for attention and that he's sort of poking at women and his whole anti DEI initiative.
- [32:26]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, I mean, my feeling would be that he doesn't really care. I mean, he's just irritated. He just goes down the list.
- [32:34]
Joanna Coles
But why is he irritated with her? There are more people to be irritated with than her.
- [32:40]
Michael Wolff
Yep. What's in Trump's head that he is particularly irritated with this, this, this person? You know, I, I would say, I think that the answer is he wants to fire someone and she's probably expendable.
- [32:57]
Joanna Coles
She's expendable. She doesn't seem to have made very much of an impact. And of course, what we do have
- [33:02]
Michael Wolff
is, as I, as I recall, there may not have been a secretary of labor during the Biden administration.
- [33:10]
Joanna Coles
That's a good question.
- [33:10]
Michael Wolff
I think. It's not a, you know, it's one of those things I'll get rid of, you know what anyway.
- [33:16]
Joanna Coles
But I'm sure she must be disappointed because in one of the cabinet meetings she was one of the first to a talk about did he love the portrait that they had unfurled outside the building. And it was a particularly egregious piece of suck uppery.
- [33:32]
Michael Wolff
But let's be, let's, you know, I mean, I think this is not a very. Who he fires at this point is not a very important story. It doesn't really. He has so moved the attention on his own incompetence that there is one person who should be fired here and that's him. That I think it marginalizes everything else. I mean, he comes out of this five week war in which the world clearly sees him as a much bigger menace to peace than Iran.
- [34:17]
Joanna Coles
Right.
- [34:19]
Michael Wolff
Iran, which used to be the chaos and instability age. He clearly is the chaos and instability agent. He is the existential event which everybody in the world clearly recognizes. This is the central problem in the world. It's not Vladimir Putin, it's Donald Trump.
- [34:53]
Joanna Coles
It's truly horrifying when you put it like that. It's truly horrifying. And I think those conversations are certainly going on in other countries around the world. How do we manage him? And then his having the head of NATO here on Wednesday evening, we're recording this on Thursday morning and saying that he doesn't really have any use for NATO anymore, that various of the NATO countries wouldn't support him partly because he hadn't told them in advance what he was planning to do and that he would be punishing them from now on. Iran and maybe removing American military bases from their country.
- [35:32]
Michael Wolff
Let's look at that because that's part of the question what happens now? I mean, he's gonna understand he's in a corner here and he's going to react. And one of the things he's going to do because this is the Donald Trump playbook, is look at who to blame. So, okay, we're gonna get NATO, we're gonna blame, definitely blame NATO, we're going to blame the Democrats,
- [36:03]
Joanna Coles
we're going to blame Spain, we're going to blame Germany, we're going to blame France. I mean, he's gone after Macron, he's gone after the Prime Minister of Spain, he's gone after Keir Starmer. You'll know Winston Churchill withering criticism of Keir Starmer, the UK premier.
- [36:23]
Michael Wolff
So I'm going to make a prediction.
- [36:25]
Joanna Coles
Go on.
- [36:28]
Michael Wolff
He's going to blame Israel, partly because there's a case to blame Israel on this, but also because he's going to realize that he has to make amends with the MAGA base. And one of the things, things that more and more the MAGA grail is that Israel is the root of all bad things. There's a fundamental piece of antisemitism there and then there is a fundamental. This is two things can be true at the same time. It is clearly anti Semitic, but clearly Netanyahu and Israel have positioned themselves as the bad guys.
- [37:22]
Joanna Coles
Well, and he may have the opportunity to do it. As everybody argues about whether or not part of the ceasefire arrangement is Israel stopping bombing Lebanon and Israel is saying, well, we're not part of that ceasefire agreement. We can carry on doing what we want. And the Pakistanis and everybody else are saying, whoa, wait a minute, of course you're part of the ceasefire agreement. That makes no sense. You're not allowed to go on bombing the Lebanese.
- [37:51]
Michael Wolff
Absolutely. That's just one part of a ceasefire agreement in which has a whole set of terms which it turns out no one has agreed to.
- [38:02]
Joanna Coles
No one has agreed to. And the 10 point plan that Iran has put forward that Trump said they could work with includes them running the Strait of Hormuz.
- [38:13]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, I mean, this was literally a ceasefire. Let's agree to a ceasefire without any terms, because we need a ceasefire. I will agree to any ceasefire.
- [38:24]
Joanna Coles
So JD Vance has been dispatched to Pakistan after going and doing his rallying cry for Viktor Orban in Hungary. Does this mean that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have been demoted?
- [38:38]
Michael Wolff
No, not at all. I think it means.
- [38:42]
Joanna Coles
So what's the signaling of sending JD in, though? Because they very clearly said JD is going in to lead negotiations.
- [38:48]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, I think it means that JD is being pushed into harm's way.
- [38:56]
Joanna Coles
Can you imagine being J.D. vance right now? Can you imagine? He's got his book coming out on Communion, he's being attacked by the Pope and by the Pope's emissary in Washington, by the Pope's ambassador, and here he is being sent off to Pakistan to do the impossible, to try and come up with a deal.
- [39:19]
Michael Wolff
I think JD is shaping up to be everybody's fool.
- [39:25]
Joanna Coles
Go on.
- [39:26]
Michael Wolff
Well, I think everybody now, they've taken the measure of JD And JD Is not a sophisticated player. He's not an experienced player. He's gotten himself all tied up in knots over what he has said before and how he has had to justify this and his need to suck up to a man who basically doesn't represent any of the things that JD has built his own base around. So I think people more and more realize he's in over his head. So he can be used in any possible way.
- [40:07]
Joanna Coles
But it's also so interesting because the thing that everybody says about JD Vance because he went to Yale Law school is, oh, J.D. he's so smart. He's so smart. And you're like, really? Is he so smart?
- [40:16]
Michael Wolff
Well, I mean, obviously there are different kinds of intelligence. I mean, I think actually JD Vance is a pretty good writer, which is completely rare in these kind of circles. I mean, but I think he's inexperienced. I mean, this is a craft like any other craft, and he doesn't, he doesn't have it. And why should he? You know, I mean, he was in the. I mean, he has a. I mean, before he became the Vice President of the United States, he had a two year political career.
- [40:50]
Joanna Coles
Well, and he's never done anything for more than two years. He's literally never done. He's never done a job for more than two years.
- [40:57]
Michael Wolff
But he's a young man. I mean, just to say he is a young man. And, and if he doesn't become the next President of the United States, if he doesn't become the next nominee, he still has a long future.
- [41:15]
Joanna Coles
How does Tucker Carlson get on with J.D. vance?
- [41:18]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, I mean, that's one of those questions. Does anybody with these kinds of aspirations get along with anybody? JD Vance has certainly been useful to Tucker and Tucker has been useful to J.D. vance. So I think you have to see this not on the get along scale, but on the usefulness scale. Tucker has promoted J.D. vance. Tucker gave J.D. vance, as he did RFK Jr really his, his first national platform. And because J.D. has largely represented the Tucker view of things. So where does that leave them now? Well, I think more and more, as they become competitors, it leaves them as competitors.
- [42:20]
Joanna Coles
Okay, so we have competition in the podcast space from a member of Trump's cabinet. Would you like to take a guess as to who it is? Because I would have thought this might be one of the least likely people to do a podcast from the Trump Cabinet.
- [42:43]
Michael Wolff
Well, I know who you're referring to. I was gonna try to try to be surprised by that, but I do.
- [42:50]
Joanna Coles
I thought you might not have seen. I do know who you're referring to.
- [42:53]
Michael Wolff
And it is. Is clearly the voice that everyone is dying to hear in podcast form.
- [43:02]
Joanna Coles
Go on.
- [43:05]
Michael Wolff
The Mr. Crack Pipe himself, RFK Jr. Mr.
- [43:12]
Joanna Coles
Crack Pipe himself. Mr. I snorted Coke off a toilet Seat. That's why I should be the Minister for Health or the Secretary for Health and Human Services. I mean, fascinating. So he's obviously building a post Trump media outlet for himself. I think he's probably thinking, hell, where is my next stream of income coming from? And so he's now trying to build himself a podcast.
- [43:40]
Michael Wolff
You know, he was once a radio guy. Do you remember the. God, I have to think of this. There was a radio network that was put together to compete.
- [43:53]
Joanna Coles
Was it Air America?
- [43:54]
Michael Wolff
Exactly.
- [43:55]
Joanna Coles
Yes, Air America. And it had Al Franken and Catherine Lampert and. Yes.
- [44:00]
Michael Wolff
And that MSNBC person who went on to great to dominate the left wing airspace, whose name I can't remember.
- [44:15]
Joanna Coles
Okay, you're gonna have to give me.
- [44:16]
Michael Wolff
No, she's the most famous person on left wing air. How can I not.
- [44:20]
Joanna Coles
Mika Brzezinski.
- [44:22]
Michael Wolff
No, she's not a left winger. She's a.
- [44:25]
Joanna Coles
Well, she's on msnbc. Ms. Now.
- [44:28]
Michael Wolff
Rachel Maddow.
- [44:30]
Joanna Coles
Oh, Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow was on it. Okay.
- [44:33]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, no, Rachel Maddow.
- [44:35]
Joanna Coles
Well, she's only on it once a week, though.
- [44:37]
Michael Wolff
She does. No, she was on Air America every night. She was their main anchor.
- [44:43]
Joanna Coles
Right. But she's only on Ms. Now once a week. Cause she managed to do herself a fantastic deal where she gets, I think $25 million for appearing on a Monday night pull off those deals.
- [44:55]
Michael Wolff
But that. So I mean, there are a lot of people who came out of Air America not actually RFK Jr. I don't really think that was something that. Well, I wonder what's happening that remade his career.
- [45:14]
Joanna Coles
I wonder if, like Katie Miller, he's just going to be interviewing.
- [45:17]
Michael Wolff
But there was an interesting thing because I remember I sort of knew those Air America people and they would talk about RFK Jr. Because he had these enormous, I mean, he had a lot of women problems.
- [45:27]
Joanna Coles
Well, that's why I'm thinking that he's looking to a post cabinet future, realizing perhaps that he's being talked as someone that Trump will let go of before the midterms.
- [45:38]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, no, I'm not popular. That's true. And I think that he is looking for. I think he will be a candidate for the Republican nomination. That would be literally, why not? And.
- [45:53]
Joanna Coles
Right. And he's got further than he ever thought he would do. Why not? Why not? But then a lot of people I know are now saying, well, I think I should run for president because look at Trump. Look at what we have. You mean.
- [46:06]
Michael Wolff
You mean me?
- [46:07]
Joanna Coles
No, no, absolutely. I don't mean me. But I'm talking. I feel like I talk to a lot of quite serious people who are now thinking, well, maybe I should run because the country needs saving and it's all a shit show, and if he can do it, I can do it. Yeah. Which I think is probably a misconception. Well. Because he was so famous.
- [46:24]
Michael Wolff
Well, at the same moment, I mean, in the political timeline, this is when people have those kinds of conversations before the midterms, and then they have those conversations, and those conversations are largely theoretical or fantastic. And then somebody says, are you crazy? This is what you have to do. You have to go out and raise a billion dollars. Could you do that? Do you want to do that? Are you capable of doing that? And that's the point at which everybody goes, yeah, yeah, I'll do something else. But I think we should be keeping in mind that timeline. And this goes also to Trump's current position, because this is the. The war is going to significantly impact on the vote in November. The vote in November is going to be catastrophic for Trump, which will then make him very, almost officially a lame duck guy. With the people in his party suddenly, for the first time in 10 years, starting to put a meaningful distance between themselves and Donald Trump.
- [47:49]
Joanna Coles
Right. And the Republicans looking for a post Trump future.
- [47:52]
Michael Wolff
So, again, I just want to say. And we should, you know, and direct our focus to this. This is the beginning of the end.
- [48:01]
Joanna Coles
This is the beginning of the end. All right, well, you heard it here first, Michael. Joanna, we should remind people please, to subscribe to this podcast. This is, as we said, Our 97th episode of Inside Trump's Head. And when we started, we didn't know that we were going to spend 97 episodes in here. And we're looking forward to celebrating our hundredth episode next Thursday. And we're still looking for suggestions for how to note it. We haven't quite figured it out yet. I feel we should do something significant, but I'm not sure what that is. And it'll slightly depend on what Trump's head looks like this time next week.
- [48:43]
Michael Wolff
Yeah, no, and it is so volatile at this point. I mean, he doesn't know where he is going. He doesn't know what tomorrow is gonna be like. He doesn't. And I think this is an important point. Cause we discussed this moron psychopath having so much control, but we're at a moment in which he doesn't have control. I mean, events are beyond him.
- [49:13]
Joanna Coles
And talking about Tucker, there's an anecdote where it says that Tucker warned Trump about the war, who said it will be okay. And then Tucker says, well, how do you know it's going to be okay? And Trump says, well, because it always is.
- [49:26]
Michael Wolff
That's in the Times piece, and that's clearly from. That's Tucker's report on the conversation. Clearly, yes.
- [49:35]
Joanna Coles
But just the idea that Trump reassures him by saying, it's always fine. It's gonna be fine.
- [49:42]
Michael Wolff
Yeah. No, I mean, that's the interesting thing about what's inside Trump's head is that he does remember he's a survivor. So whatever happens, he comes out. He sees himself as coming out of this, as. As it's okay. He doesn't ever see himself as being defeated by something.
- [50:07]
Joanna Coles
But sort of horrifying that the president goes to war on his instincts, because his instincts at this point. What are his instincts? What have his instincts ever been other than for attention? And it'll all work out, because it all always does.
- [50:21]
Michael Wolff
And just let me add, because I can't help myself, it is also horrifying that after 10 years, the new York Times does not know, still does not know how to report this.
- [50:30]
Joanna Coles
You can't stop yourself. All right, we have some poems. We've got a limerick from Paul Watson. 8,000, 809. Don flies by the seat of his pants when he crashes, he raves and he rants. This verbal assault goes. It's all Biden's fault and Obama's chime in his sycophants. I thought that was pretty good. Well done, Paul Watson. And then we have one with Garfried. Garfried's gone completely off limerick rhythm this way. I mean, the point of a limerick, I think, Garfried, you tell me. You're the limerick laureate, is actually to stay within a specific rhythm. But I'm gonna read it anyway. With Michael Wolff sparring with Joanna Coles. On air, they warned Donald Trump was juggling doom with a dare. Hormuz started shaking, oil markets were quaking, while JD Vance look primed for the blame chair. So both complicated ideas squeezed into a limerick.
- [51:31]
Michael Wolff
I like the. Maybe we should put someone in it every episode.
- [51:36]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, every episode, there should be a blame chair. I wonder if we should actually start. This was suggested by a viewer who wrote into me today a limerick competition that at the end, actually we should have a competition for the best limerick every week because we get a lot of limericks and poems and we don't have enough time. And actually, because we showed the remarkable monkey shaped plaster craft that arrived called D.J. epstein, and we haven't mentioned Epstein at all today, we've started receiving all sorts of arts and crafts gifts. And I've got a huge democracy mug that someone sent which is like, well, I'll bring it onto the next episode. But it's very kind of people and it shows that people are being. Trying to be super creative in a difficult time.
- [52:31]
Michael Wolff
Is that what it shows?
- [52:32]
Joanna Coles
I think so. I think that's what it shows. I hope that's what it shows. People have to have some outlet for the madness. An outlet for the madness. And this is ours, Michael. This is ours. 97 episodes in. All right, well, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, I will buy a copy of your book, even if Michael doesn't.
- [52:52]
Michael Wolff
You know, Jonathan Swan, who was somewhat helpful to me when I was writing Fire and Fury. I mean, modestly helpful, but I generously thanked him along with a whole list of others. And he went crazy about being thanked because that meant that anyone who was thanked in the acknowledgments of Fire and Fury immediately earned the antipathy of the White House. And Jonathan Swan was busily trying to suck up to the them.
- [53:27]
Joanna Coles
Well, Jonathan Swan's done just fine. And I'm glad he helps you on Fire and Fury. He's got a very nice accent, actually. He has an Australian accent.
- [53:36]
Michael Wolff
You find Australian accents nice?
- [53:38]
Joanna Coles
I find his voice nice. He has a soothing voice when you listen to him. I don't like all of them. I don't like Rupert Murdoch's, but I like John.
- [53:46]
Michael Wolff
See, I like Rupert Murdoch's accent.
- [53:48]
Joanna Coles
I can understand what Rupert. I can't understand what Rupert Murdoch speaks in a mumble.
- [53:56]
Michael Wolff
All right, I've told that story before, right?
- [54:00]
Joanna Coles
What? Where you go to his. Where you would visit him once a week, right, when you were writing one of your books about him.
- [54:05]
Michael Wolff
And I got on the elevator and he then lived in a Trump building, the building that Ivanka and Jared lived in. And I was with Murdoch. And we left. We had coffee in the morning at his apartment. We left together. And as the elevator descended, then stopped and Donald Trump got on and Rupert Murdoch said some neighborly ish kind of thing to Trump. And Trump turned to me and said, do you ever understand anything he says.
- [54:40]
Joanna Coles
What did you say back? You did your shrug.
- [54:43]
Michael Wolff
I bet you did your wolf. I didn't want to say because it is very hard to understand Murdoch.
- [54:50]
Joanna Coles
I wonder if that's one of the reasons that Trump was fine with you being in the White House. Because he clocked that you'd written a book about Murdoch.
- [54:58]
Michael Wolff
I'm sure that's part of it. Yes, of course.
- [55:01]
Joanna Coles
Okay.
- [55:02]
Michael Wolff
Well, not that he read my book about Murdoch, of course.
- [55:06]
Joanna Coles
Well, he hasn't read any books, I don't think, has he? He might have listened to it on tape.
- [55:09]
Michael Wolff
But you can. No, that was long ago enough that you. That you could not. But you can now because I have just read the book.
- [55:21]
Joanna Coles
Oh, right. Okay. So that led. That was a very nice segue for you to promote the fact that you've got an audio edition.
- [55:32]
Michael Wolff
The man who Owns the Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch.
- [55:36]
Joanna Coles
Ah, the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch. Well, if you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe. We'll be back on Saturday with another episode of Inside Trip. If there's anything left in there for us to poke around. 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.