The Daily Beast Podcast - How Trump Just Proved He's an Idiot: Wolff

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Trump chronicler Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to examine a week where Trump’s world collides with scandal, faith, and science. From Epstein’s secret photo stash and Kash Patel’s embarrassing congressional testimony, to Trump’s jarring rage at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, Wolff dissects the cracks in MAGA’s political and spiritual future. Erika Kirk’s moving forgiveness speech, Trump’s uninformed vaccine rants, and Sam Nunberg’s blunt “Trump is an idiot” verdict all point to a deeper question: how much longer can Trump’s anger and anti-science rhetoric hold his MAGA movement together? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's a guy by the name of Sam Nunberg. And Sam was Trump's really first political advisor. All Trump people would say, well, if you need to understand anything about Trump, you've got to go to Sam. And I go to Sam and I say, okay, help me understand. And then Sam looks at me. There's a big pause, and I can still feel this. And he said, you don't get it, do you? And I'm like, okay?

And he said, he's an idiot. And at that moment, it all came clear to me. Because Trump is, in very classic terms, an idiot. Michael Wolfe. Joanna Coles. You are back in the house. I feel like you got... In the country.

And in the country. I thought... And I had, there was a moment as I passed through customs where I got a second look. Well, they probably thought you had Fred Armisen. Yeah. And I feel like your appearance on the side of Windsor Castle probably resulted in an honorary knighthood. I'm waiting. There is so much has happened since you've been away.

I almost don't know where to start. Except that, as you're always saying, Epstein. Well, and as Trump is always saying, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. And he, because, you know, and they call me, people around Trump call me and says three times. did it again. That's what he says. So it must dwell in his, in his head. Well, and where are we going today? Yes. Inside Trump's head. Inside Trump's head. So we're not going to spend any more time discussing Britain except for the fact that Prince Andrew's former wife, Fergie, Sarah Ferguson, has now had to resign from seven charities because she is another scalp that has been collected by the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein.

And another person who was a genuine, long-term, real friend of Epstein's. I mean, Epstein bailed her out. I mean, she was, she was, she owed him. And then, actually, that's a sort of an interesting thing because, you know, then when, when the, the, the woman came, she threw him over. And then disgracefully came crawling back through the back door. I didn't really mean it. I never called you a pedophile. That seemed to be the thing that her friendship,

she was pleading to come back because she knew he was an ATM for her. And a friend. I mean, that's, you know, I mean. Can you be a friend if someone lends you money, though? I wonder about that. Do you lend friends money? Have you lent friends money? I haven't, but I would if I could.

Okay, fair. All right, well, that's useful to know. Anyway, she's had to resign from her seventh charity. Most of them were involved in children, and of course she's had to resign them. But she's got no one to go to now as an ATM. I guess maybe she turns to the Middle East. Yes, yeah, didn't she suck toes of?

Well, that was some time ago. an amazing anecdote that I read in Tom Sykes's column, the Royalist, now on Substack, and the Daily Beast, which is that Prince Margaret in particular was furious with her, and she had sent some flowers to Princess Margaret, who was the Queen's younger sister. And Princess Margaret sent her the flowers back with a note saying, how dare you send me flowers? You have bought nothing but disgrace on this family. So many people in this family have brought nothing but disgrace upon this family. Not least Fergie's husband, Prince Andrew.

Anyway, we've got Charlie Kirk to talk about. We've got Jimmy Kimmel to talk about. We've got Cash Patel to talk about. Have you got your affirmation notes, your self-help notes with Instagram affirmations? This is extraordinary. Be strong. This is where he sat at his selectivity. Right.

Yeah. Be strong. Right. Fight hard. I mean, this is just another aspect of another one of these people in this administration who knows nothing about nothing. And shouldn't be in the job. Obviously should not be in this job. I mean, let's get this.

The podcaster then is now running the FBI. You're being unfair because he has got experience selling T-shirts. He was a T-shirt hawker. Yeah. This is a fundamental skill to be in the FBI. You need to understand a balance. But it's just, you know, again, you just peel a little back and you just see that these people are complete amateurs and they know it.

I mean, why else would you have a little thing said, be strong? I know. And all they're clashing them. Good idea. Go before Congress in. Be strong. Be strong. And then attack, right?

The Kavanaughization of all these select committees is kind of crazy in the way he was shouting at Adam Schiff. Poor Adam Schiff. It was just, and how stressful for Cash Patel? Because there's nothing more stressful than being a new job that you shouldn't be in. Especially when the eyes of the world are on. No, no. The thing that is more stressful is being called up in front of Congress. That is the ultimate stress point.

Have you ever been called up in front of Congress? Congress. I have not. You know, and it makes me feel like I've lived a wasted life. Okay, well, I'm sure they will call you. And it were mentioned in his ears. Actually, I was. I was something I had said he was confronted with this. And it was a very relevant point because I had pointed out the pictures that I had seen that Epstein showed of Donald Trump. And this is Donald Trump with topless girls sort of leaning in on him. Yeah, about a dozen pictures, all taken in the back, around the pool of Epstein's house in Palm Beach, the scene of the crime. And no one has seen that. They were in, Epstein kept them in his safe. And, I mean, it's not unreasonable to assume that they were in the safe when the FBI came and raided Epstein's house. I do not know that for certain, but I do know Epstein kept the pictures in this, in his safe. So Cash Patel was confronted by, I think, Congressman Raskin. Jamie Raskin? Yes, who said, you know, what about this?

What do you know, do you know about what was in the safe? Were these pictures in the safe, Michael Wolf says, et cetera. And he, you know, just basically didn't respond, just stonewold on that. Well, he probably doesn't know, right? Because he doesn't seem to know very much at all. Yeah, I mean, they may have disappeared at any point. I mean, remember, this happened. Epstein died in 2019.

But nevertheless. So his house was raided in 2019 before he was arrested or after he was arrested? Basically simultaneously, that was all happened on that Saturday. Well, the pictures have gone somewhere, right? The pictures have gone somewhere. Yeah, they have gone, assuming that they were there. And again, I don't know for a fact that they were there. I know only for a fact that they were there.

And when were you shown them? What year, roughly? Probably, I mean, he had been elected president. So 17, I was writing Fire and Fury. So probably, 2017, 2018. Okay. So either the FBI has them or someone else has them in the household, maybe, who is working for him.

Or Cash Patel has them in his jacket pocket. Well, just as well he didn't pull them out in front of Congress instead of his affirmation notes, right? Can you imagine? There's something very humanizing about seeing someone's affirmation notes like that, but unfortunate that he put them in front of the camera. A lesson we should all remember. A lesson we should all remember. No notes.

No notes. I have notes here, but only because there's so many subjects I want to cover. So obviously the memorial for Charlie Kirk, huge stadium, incredibly impressive speech by Erica Kirk, Charlie's widow. And I thought when I watched it, oh, I'm watching the future of the Republican Party. Because I always try to think about who takes over from Trump. What I've spent some time thinking about this, and I realize that Charlie Kirk is not a political figure. He's just, that's just the pretense. I'm a political figure.

I'm a MAGA guy. I'm a right-wing guy. He's not, he's a religious figure. I mean, that's what he's doing. And you can see everything he does. This whole campus tour is like an old-fashioned evangelical. you know, preacher in the 10 revival meeting, that's what he does. And there's little pretense otherwise, by the way.

It's all about, you know, if you're not, if you don't believe in in Jesus, in the traditional place for the traditional role for women, the superiority of men, then you're outside of the circle of salvation. And, you know, I mean, the interesting thing is that, I mean, the truth is that religion in the United States is not very popular. Right. Far few people are going to church. They're going far fewer people are going to temple to mosque any of it, right? And that accelerated during COVID, too. Totally. So what he's done is repackage this as politics.

Oh, interesting. That is an interesting way of looking at it. So, you know, and I think, I mean, I mean, to me, this is a gift to Democrats. I mean, it can be a central issue because if you confront people, if you offer people and say, do you think that there should be a separation of church and state, people say, people say yes, because they do believe that. And suddenly, this is the exact opposite. This is trying to merge the two in a very real thing. theocratic way. So are Democrats going to be able to respond to it? Well, Democrats can't seem to respond to anything, which is why we are in the mess we are in. Right. And now Carmelah is out

there with her new book, throwing everybody under the bus. Governor Shapiro was too ambitious, started asking how many bedrooms were there in the observatory where he would live as vice President. Pete Buttigieg got annoyed that she said the country wasn't ready for a gay vice president and a black female president. So he came out swinging against that and saying that's not true. And then, of course, the Jimmy Kimmel decision, I think, came on the day of her launch. So she's not had much luck with the book. Alas. But I mean, I see no reason to spend much time talking about Kamala Harris. No, we can move swiftly on.

I'm just raising it. I'm just raising it. Yes, yes. No, let's, because you raise an interesting point. Let's register it, but it's. And I think one of the things that was so appealing to many young people, especially young men about Charlie Kirk, is the same thing that actually on the flip side of the coin, Scott Galloway is talking about, which is a pattern for life, a place that

you know your place in the world, especially if you're a young man. you're the head of the family, you should have children. He produces a, you know, he has a beautiful wife, they have angelic-looking children, but it's all through the lens of Jesus Christ. Yeah, it is a religious depiction of the world. It is an evangelical argument and not a political argument. It is all about faith and belief and higher authorities and And an evangelical, let me not say Christian, because it actually doesn't involve the Roman Catholics,

it's strictly an evangelical view of the world. Well, and there was something extraordinary about Erica Kirk saying that young man, I forgive him, especially at a moment of extraordinary political tension. You weren't here, actually. I mean, you missed two very interesting weeks in terms of just the feel of the country. and she took some of the steam out of or the air out of what felt like a very over-inflated balloon that might pop with a huge bang. And I thought it was very smart of her to do that. And then you have Donald Trump speaking at the same event, you know, saying, I can't forgive my opponent.

I hate my opponent. And he suddenly felt out of keeping with the people in that room. And I, or people in the stadium, I should say. And I suddenly thought, oh, she's 36, she was older than Charlie, she could run as J.D. Vance's vice president. She could absolutely do it. She's a very compelling figure. And to be able to address a huge stadium like that, 11 days after your husband has been

killed, I thought that was, I thought we're, oh, we're witnessing the changing of the guard. And Trump seems out of, he just seems out of touch with the people in the room. and when she said the thing about the forgiveness, the crowd got up. They all gave her a standing ovation. I mean, it's another interesting aspect of this that Trump becomes the agent,

the key agent of this religious revivalism because obviously Trump believes in nothing. Well, I was going to say the least religious person. And also just the fact he got up there and said he hated his opponent. It just felt it was the wrong. moment to say that, even for Trump, who's good at reading the room? You know, I never discount Trump's instincts here. So maybe he was off, but.

Well, or maybe he was seeing something that he felt, it felt to me like he was trying to pull the room back to him. And he was funny, you know, he was funny when he was saying. It was a moment of levity. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean, yeah, I hear what, I mean, I, I mean, she, her, her forgiveness aspect of this, but that's always coupled with something else in, evangelical terms, damnation. And, and certainly J.D. Vance delivered this. You know, it's, I mean, talking about evil. You know, I mean, that very clear kind of hell. brimstone kind of thing. You're going to hell. That means, let's make no mistake, who is going to hell. Half of the country, liberal. We're not going to hell. We're going inside Trump's head.

We're going inside Trump's head, which is his own special kind of hell. All right, moving swiftly on to our friend Tylenol and the press conference where Donald Trump gave his medical theories. It was unbelievable. I mean, I was like, and I flashed back to there was, there was a moment in when I was writing Fire and Fury. There's a guy by the name of Sam Nunberg. And Sam was Trump's really first political advisor came on and had worked for Roger Stone and then came on in 2015. They ultimately had a fight of Trump and Sam Nunberg. Of course they had to fight. Of course.

But throughout those first political years and into the White House, all Trump people would say, well, if you need to understand anything about Trump, you got to go to Sam. Sam is the Trump whisperer. He really knows what's inside Trump's head. And at one point, so I'm writing Fire and Furian and trying to figure this out. And I have go into that book having no preconceptions. I actually thought, well, Trump might be an interesting president. He could, he has as much chance of doing the unexpected in a good way as in a bad way. But I'm trying to figure this out, and I go to Sam, and I say, okay, help me understand.

Let me, and I'm sketching this out. And then Sam looks at me. There's a big pause, and I can still feel this. And he said, you don't get it, do you? And I'm like, okay. He said, he's an idiot. And at that moment, it all came clear to me. Because Trump is in very classic terms, an idiot.

He knows nothing about anything. He listens to no one. He's just off half cock this way and that way. And that was a perfect moment of this yesterday. during this Trump on autism. And there was this kind of thing. Well, you know, everybody has a theory. Right, but we don't want theory.

We want science. This is ridiculous. And then there's always this thing. He is always an expert. And because he has this thing against other people who are experts and actual experts, he then has to one up them. And he won up them with a level of certainty and a level of extremism. And a word from our sponsors.

And we're back. What are we talking about, Michael? We're talking about what goes on. I mean, what? Extraordinary, unimaginable leaps. of logic go on in Trump's head. When he was saying yesterday, go, don't

give your babies, these fragile little babies, don't give them the mumps and the MAMR, Mumps, measles, Rubella. And he couldn't remember the third one either. So he was like, mumps, measles, whatever. I mean, they're little things. They're giving them the size of horse, horse, horse injections.

And you're like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? And the thing that upset me actually was seeing, well, RFK Jr, let's come back to, but seeing Dr. Oz standing behind him. Dr. Oz, who I ran into from time to time at Hearst Magazine, highly regarded as the surgeon. I remember someone there saying, if you ever need a heart operation, Dr. Oz is your guy. He was head of cardiac surgery at Columbia. And then the idea that he's standing, nodding behind Donald Trump, who is saying,

saying that Tylenol causes autism. Yeah, I mean, I am not going to begin to try to explain why Trump has been able to surround himself with so many people of reasonable credentials who just fold. Why is the autism thing so personal for Trump? Well, I think you have to frame it in two ways. First, it is a very potent political issue. It is a foundational MAGA position. Why? I'm not certain. I think it has to do with with doubts about, about, I mean, broad doubts about the health care in the U.S.

And this extraordinary propaganda moment in which, which comes about, I don't know why it comes about. I mean, it's completely counterintuitive. I mean, vaccines, and I'm old enough to come from a time when vaccines were in their infancy. And when people got polio. And people, when people got, I mean, I was the first generation not to get polio. And I remember the vaccines. I remember the great, I mean, it was a great moment of science and health. and suddenly freedom from this thing.

I mean, we couldn't go into, we couldn't go swimming when I was a kid because they were afraid. That's how you got polio. Yeah, my boss, the editor of the Guardian, had polio, and he had one side that just didn't work very well. And he'd spent years and then I had lung. So that then became, you know, mumps, rebella, All of these things.

I mean, this is one of the great leaps in human progress. So for this to be, for people to have turned on this, it's really, it's really a difficult on any logical basis to understand. But having said that, for whatever reason, it is a, it is a powerful, piece of the MAGA identity, which, you know, RFK Jr. has zeroed in on. And that's an interesting thing because RFK Jr., which who gets to this really separate from the MAGA thing, he just, he joins that later. But RFK Jr. is a crazy person. You cannot spend two minutes with a guy and not think, oh my God, we are in a different reality. But there's also the oddity here and the irony here that Donald Trump, possibly the one remarkable thing about Donald Trump won, his first presidency, was Operation Warp Speed, that he told the medical companies get on with it, create a vaccine, and the American vaccine was the envy of the world.

Well, and let's remember, it's, yeah, I mean, he exists in the moment. What is the expedient thing to do? at that moment with COVID everywhere, with the whole world shutting down, he responded. He did the politically expedient and smart thing. Now he's doing the other thing, just the fact that it is the opposite of what he has done before. Well, that doesn't bother Donald Trump's head. And is there any other reason why it's personal for him? You know, there has always been this discussion of his son Baron.

And this was a discussion coming from many sides, but including from the White House. From the White House, the Donald Trump White House? Yes, from people around him. Because nobody knows, you know, I mean, that's the other thing about the Trump family. Nobody is really understands what that dynamic is about. I think that they now seem to have father and son seem to have a reasonable relationship. And Barron has just moved down from NYU in the city to the NYU campus in Washington. And there was a moment during the trial, Trump's criminal trial.

And Trump had asked to be allowed to go to Barron's graduation. Oh, right, graduation from high school right night. Didn't they say no? And they said no at first. But then and then Barron had said to Trump, well, I won't go to graduation. I will come and sit next to you for the trial that day. And then they then the judge in New York said,

okay, yes, you can go. And then Trump said to his lawyer, Todd Blanche, can we get him to reverse? his reversal because he thought it would be a great idea if Baron, in fact, came and sat beside him. So I think whatever the tensions were between father and son, they seem... Well, they seem to have patched it up. And certainly Melania, and I've got the bit here, because I wondered if we were going to talk about this, so I wanted to prepare myself. She said, she talks about the cruelty of people saying that he might be autistic on social media,

In particular, she calls out Rosie O'Donnell. And she says, I was appalled by such cruelty. It was clear to me she was not interested, i.e. Rosie, in raising awareness about autism. I felt she was attacking my son because she didn't like my husband. It all began when Donald extended a helping hand to Miss USA, offering her the support she desperately needed to overcome her addiction. I'm not quite sure what the addiction is about, but she addressed it in her book, which is an interesting book because she doesn't acknowledge anybody in it.

I was looking for acknowledgments and I was looking for thanks and there are none. It's because it's AI written. Is it written by AI? It's literally, I've never seen a book. I've never seen a book with no acknowledgments and no thanks even to the publisher or the editor. It's bizarre.

There's photo credits but there's literally no thanks in it. Anyway, if you want to read Melania's side of how Baron suffered from accusations that he was autistic, it's all in this book. Melania, be best. It's in the chapter, Be Best. All right, Michael, there's a new character on the horizon I want us to talk about, too. And that's Lindsay Halligan, who is there. I want to get this right, the U.S. attorney for Maryland. Yeah, she's not a new character for me.

Uh-huh. We go way back. Do tell. Can I just observe she has hair like Melania's and Hope Hicks? Of course. And Margot Marston. Well, I will get to that. Oh, okay.

But just to clarify, so she's been put into this job, the former U.S. attorney, Seabert, Mr. Seabert, was removed from this job because he was not moving fast enough to prosecute James Comey, the former. former head of the FBI and the long-term Trump antagonist, and Letitia James, the attorney general in New York who prosecuted Trump. So these are both very, there's not even any pretense. It's going after he has, Trump is using the Justice Department to pursue his personal enemies. And he's removed the person in that job who was, who was responsible. for this because the person said, oh, you know, they didn't really do it. You know, there's not really a case here. And a word from our sponsors. And we're back, Michael. We want to thank our sponsors, but just orient the listener, please. Where are we?

We are in Trump's head, Joanna. He posted it on truth social, but it appeared to be a personal memo to Pam Bondi because it started Pam and then it went into a history of his, of all the times. Right. So he was saying, yes, he was saying you've got to do this because these people did bad things to me, so we have to do bad things. And then he took it down from Truth Social. So there is, and because it was sent on late in the hours of Saturday, night slash Sunday morning, it was thought that perhaps he'd sent her a memo, but by accident posted it on Truth Social. So anyway, so that they've put in, and again, this is a temporary

appointment because because in fact the Senate, which and U.S. attorneys need Senate confirmation tends to reject these people who Trump puts in because they're not just unqualified, but preposterously unqualified. So Lindsay Halligan, who started, she started acting, you know, with Alina Haba, who became the the, the, the, the, the, um, the, um, the, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey and then who, um, uh, who the courts have essentially thrown out of that job. And who was his personal lawyer during the stormy, during the E. Jean Carroll case? Yes. And, and, and Lindsay Halligan was one of those lawyers who followed him, too.

although Lindsay Halligan was even less qualified than Alina Haba, completely unqualified herself. And Lindsay Halligan, she didn't do anything. Matter of fact, everybody would say, oh, yeah, she's just part of the entourage. Was this one he said, I may not have the best lawyers, but I have the hottest lawyers. Yes, and so, yes, and that was what. So Lindsay Halligan and Alina Haba then became his, you know, I may not have the best lawyers and then he would show them on the phone but I have the hottest and then there was

one point when he took them took them both to a I think a UFC fight right Dana White type in event yes and then he made them he made them critique the various bodies of the men who were who were who were fighting to Elena harbour who he hired from bedminster where she used to lie around the pool in a bikini? Yes, in which she told me if anyone says that I am going to sue them. But she went on to point out, as it happens, I did lie around the pool in a bikini, but that has nothing to do with why I became the president. But anyway, Lindsay Halligan, for her to show up.

Okay, tell me more about Lindsey Halligan. I mean, she was even, she's, she's even far outside of the lowest rungs of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, the, of the, of the, of the experience or appropriateness in a job. So for her now to surface in this very key position means a few things. It means that no one else would do this job. Right. Um, and. And.

She's got. No prosecutorial experience, right? None, none whatsoever. And it means that Trump doesn't, he doesn't really care about anyone's aptitude or fitness or capabilities in this job. It doesn't make any difference to him. He's calling the shots. He's going to tell her what to do and all he does is need a body. and always preferably a good-looking body.

With great hair. Great hair. She has great hair. Well, Michael, I'm not sure I can take anymore. Let's come back on Thursday and discuss more. I mean, it's going to take us some time to wrap out of Trump's head. Will I come back? I think I've committed.

So we're going to grapple ourselves out. Grapple, raffle, who knows? not good on climbing terms, apart from, what was the outfit I said we needed? A cagoole. Well, I don't know. You had us in the minds of the north of England recently. Yeah, I went back to my Yorkshire roots. Spalunking, I think was the word. We've been spalunking inside Trump's head. Anyway, we need to come back and I want to talk to you about the government shutdown when we come back. Great. I'll see you on Thursday. So if you have been, thank you for joining us. We'll be able to be able to be.

back on Thursday when we'll be going through your comments. Don't forget to join the Daily Beast community. Please subscribe to the podcast. Don't forget to leave us a comment on YouTube. And what else do I have to remind people to do, Michael? Floss. Floss. Don't forget to floss.

And don't forget as our first lady who was happily spotted at the UN this week. She's sort of out of hiding. Is it because Barron's back in town, back in D.C.? Because she's definitely been around more. Well, she's always in New York, and events in New York, she doesn't have to travel. Oh, okay. So that's why she was there. Yeah, she's not in Washington.

She's not in Washington. She was in New York. Anyway, as our first lady would have us say, be beast. And thank you to our production team, Devin Roderino, Annival Nerson, and editor Jesse Millwood. And thank you to our Be Beast level of members. Karen White, Heidi Riley, and Connie Rutherford. Thank you. And we will see you on Thursday.

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