The Daily Beast Podcast - I Know Exactly Why Trump's Base is Finally Turning

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Terry Moran joins Joanna Coles on the Daily Beast Podcast to discuss his recent trip to Iowa, where voters are growing increasingly frustrated with Donald Trump over the rising cost of living, soaring energy prices, and a shrinking sense of possibility. Moran reveals what he learned from farmers and young people in a state that once embraced Trump, and why their dissatisfaction may not translate into renewed faith in the Democratic Party. He also opens up about his departure from ABC News, the pressures facing legacy media, and why fear and corporate interests are shaping coverage of the White House. Moran and Coles examine the questions surrounding Trump's health, the influence of Natalie Harp, and Melania Trump's conspicuous absence from public life before turning to the chaos inside the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth's future, and the growing role of social media in the administration. As the conversation looks ahead to 2028, Moran weighs the potential of figures like Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, and Jon Ossoff, and explains why the next generation of political leaders may need to restore something Americans are increasingly missing: a sense of seriousness and possibility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Adion, FinTech built for your next move. They're not fooling anybody. Even the staunch Republican farmers that I spoke to, they understood why diesel is as high as it is, why fertilizer is as high as it is. They're gonna get creamed by the Trump inflation. They hired Trump for a job, and it was very clear what the job was,

reduce the cost of living, make the country more affordable, reopen the possibilities for young people in particular, help people throughout. the lifespan who are struggling with these costs. He is responsible. There's no question about it. People are not happy with him. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And before I forget, don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. You can join as a friend of the Beast. You can become a Bee Beast tier member, lots of advantages. But it's your support that we appreciate and rely on to bring you the kind of conversations that we do. And we have a wonderful

conversation for you today with Terry Moran. Terry Moran has sort of been hiding in plain sight as a correspondent for ABC News for 28 years. A year ago he got fired or he says his exit was accelerated by a tweet he put out about Stephen Miller, calling Stephen Miller a world-class hater. But what Terry Moran has done is basically blossomed into his own thinker. He's no longer tied by the straight jacket of network news. And he's got opinions galore. So we're going to get into the Natalie Harp of it, the president's health of it, the grift of it,

and what's happening to America. So no time to waste. Hit the subscription button and let's go with Terry Moran. Today we are joined by Terry Moran. You will know him because he did every job at A. ABC news from White House correspondent to chief foreign correspondent, Supreme Court correspondent, you name it. Terry has done it. And then he left ABC. He has set up on his own as more independent media. But Terry and I actually met 29 years ago on the very first story I really

covered when I moved to the US. I was Bureau Chief for the Guardian and Terry and I covered the story of Louise Woodward in Boston. Terry, do you remember, and you seem to me the ultimate smooth American television correspondent. And then you told me the other day, it was your first job for ABC News, the Woodward trial. That's right. That was the first story they sent me out on. They'd heard about this story and they said, you know, this is a nice, easy story for you to get used to ABC News. We'll put you out on that. And then, of course, it blew up into a huge national story at that time. It was a huge national story and you don't actually look as if you've changed very much.

Your air is still immaculately in place. Well, it's, yeah, it comes with the head. It comes with the head. It's all good. So, Terry, I want to get into the politics of it all. You have just come back from Iowa where you've made a mini documentary about what's happening there. What is happening there?

What did you find when you went to? for the heartland. It was fascinating. I got to tell you, Iowa, Joanna, is the state that swung the hardest and the fastest from Obama to Trump. Obama won it twice, the first time by almost 10 points, the second time by six points. And in 2024, Trump won it by 13 points. That's a almost 20-point swing.

Trump won it every single time he ran. And it had dramatically turned red. Well, not anymore. You go there, you can read the poll numbers yourselves, but when you actually are there, you can feel it, you can feel the dissatisfaction, the frustration, the anger about their lives and how this administration has made them worse. Okay, so there were two things that I took away from the documentary, that people in Iowa are very concerned about cancer because last year they were the number one state for cancer

cases growing and obviously, you know, healthcare around that. And secondly, they were very concerned about the water supply. Can you explain what else they are concerned about? So those two feel very local issues. What are the other issues that people are concerned about? Well, the cost of living as everywhere in the country, especially with farmers. You know, they're now going to get it even worse, given the fact that there's no end in sight, that Iran is emboldened and that the price of diesel continually goes up. The administration is trying to blame Ukraine for its war with Russia, which has damaged Russia's energy exports. But the real reason, they're not fooling anybody. Even the staunch Republican farmers that I spoke to, they understood why diesel is as high

as it is, why fertilizer is as high as it is, why it's going to mean a loss for them, right? not a total loss, but they're going to get creamed by the Trump inflation. So the cost of living is significant for that. It's one of the biggest agricultural states in the country. Of course, it's dominated by agriculture. Went there at a beautiful time, just as the corn was topping out and tassling out at nine feet. You know, you can almost hear it grow. But people, you know, in all walks of life are getting it bad. Talk to young people. They have no possibility of buying a home or even remaining in Iowa, which has become an expensive state for a lot of young people. And that combination has made people deeply frustrated and angry at Trump.

Well, I was going to ask you, do they actually align the policies around affordability with Donald Trump? Or is this one of those things where they sort of think, oh, you know, know, it just always gets worse. Everything just always gets more expensive. It's inflation. I mean, is there any sense in which this is actually connected to Donald Trump? 100%. But you do add an important qualifier. 100%. I think Iowans like most American voters, they look at the presidency as a job that they get a chance to hire for. And they hired Trump for a job. And it was very clear what the job was, reduce the cost of living, make the country more affordable. reopen the possibilities for young people in particular,

to get a start in life, to start a family, to get a decent job, to find a place to live, all those things, help people throughout the lifespan who are struggling with these costs. He is responsible, there's no question about it. People are not happy with her. But the second part that you touched on is something deeper that I found

that actually distressed me a little bit. That's that people aren't. turning to Democrats as the ones who will solve their problems. I think it's going to be a very bad election for Republicans right around the country, including in Iowa, where they have been dominant for more than a decade. But it doesn't mean the Democrats get their votes, and it's not for culture war issues, although that matters for some people. It's a cynicism that has crept in about the system in its entirety. People are losing faith that these problems. can be fixed through their politics, through the political system.

They'll vote, I think they vote in big numbers, but you don't get a sense of, hey, we've got candidates, we've got people who are going to fix things. They like the Democrats a little bit more than the Republicans, but I was concerned about, yeah, that sense of a shrinking of possibility in American life. That's interesting because one of the candidates they have running is Josh Churick, who seems highly inspirational. Born with spina bifida, had 12 surgeries before the age of, well, I think, or maybe it was 20 surgeries before. 21. 21 surgeries before the age of 12, spent a lot of time in a body cast. So a remarkable upbringing, a Paralympian basketball player endorsed by

Barack Obama. He seems pretty inspirational. Was there no enthusiasm around him as a candidate? There is. The people who are drawn to him are drawn to that story and what lies behind that story, which as he says in this mini documentary, he says that the Congress, the Senate, needs more people who have lived struggle, economic struggle, health care struggle. There are 73 millionaires in the United States Senate. So that figure caught me up short in your piece. 73 millionaires in the United States. Senate. That means there's only 27 non-millionaires, 27 people who can maybe understand the struggle of many of their constituents. Yes, and he grew up. That way, obviously, the family was spending a lot on health care. They weren't wealthy to begin with. And so, you know, he lived the life that a lot of people live. And his progress is admirable. His parents raised him to believe, you know, he can do anything despite not having the use of his legs. And he became a two-time

Olympic Paralympian gold medalist, you know, and beyond that, now a leading politician in the state because there is that kind of can-do sensibility about it, but there's also a real grit and toughness. And I think part of the cynicism that I was talking about, that I could feel a kind of weariness with the constant raging political debates that don't make any changes in people's lives. The waste of time, the social media ranting and raging. when people have real problems, in somebody like Josh Turek, and there are other candidates like that

around the country on the Democratic side, they sense somebody who at least gets it. He's not living in some alternate reality where everything is hunky-dory. He's living, you know, with the kind of struggle and the kind of issues that they face. And I think that's one of the reasons that he's neck and neck in this race.

The Republicans have a good candidate. In a lot of states, they have crazy candidates. In this state, they have a member of Congress, Ashley Hinton, and she's solid. She's not, you know, renter. She is tied at the hip to Donald Trump. She had campaigns saying, I will be Donald Trump's biggest ally in the Senate. And she said that at the beginning of the year, it's looking a lot more troublesome for her to have said that now. But it's a neck and neck race. So, Terry, you left ABC News because you tweeted out, that Stephen Miller was basically a hater in chief. He was a world-class hater. You'd been at ABC News for 28 years. You later

described it as a velvet coffin. And I'm really curious. I'm curious to know on the outside of network news, what are the freedoms you are enjoying? And then I wanted to talk to you about some of the stories that seem to me hiding in plain sight, which don't get enough coverage by the networks and by the White House correspondence, possibly because they're constantly trying to negotiate access. But I'm thinking of the importance of Natalie Harp, not from a gossip point of view, but in terms of the fact that she seems to control information and access with the president. I'm talking about the president's health, which is very, very, clearly as we can see, similar to Joe Biden, he's failing in plain sight. Why is it that these

stories don't get covered more by White House correspondents? There are reasons of access. Those are the traditional reasons that some legacy corporate media reporters at the White House have gone soft on presidents because they like to dine or have a lunch with the chief of staff. That was never my thing. I tried it once with Carl Rove, and that was enough for me. That's true. Nice, man. We just had nothing in common.

Right. And that way, he was George W. Bush's big advisor. Yes, yes. He was big in the Bush administration. And I thought, it was the first, I hadn't covered the White House. I had covered the White House a little bit under Clinton, but I thought, okay, I should really get to know these guys. And it was like, you know, I can cover it a different way because you don't want to get too cozy.

And that coziness can, you know, can create, problems of coverage, but not in this administration as much. This administration's posture is hatred towards the press mostly, although people like Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman are clearly connected with various figures very deeply. But aside from the access issue, it's fear, you know, it's fear that if they're on the wrong side, not just them personally as reporters who get screamed at and yelled at, and I'm dismayed by the lack of solidarity.

You're standing there in front of the president who is just a man, just an old man. And he's screaming and spitting venom at some woman reporter. And no one will say, well, sir, that's not fair. She's actually a good reporter. And catch it yourself. Who cares?

What's he going to do? I was going to ask you, because you say fear, but surely, or at least my days in the newsre, I was much more afraid of coming back without a story because the news editor was just as capable of shouting as loud as any politician. And I remember having politicians, you know, poking me in the chest. Peter Mandelson, actually, who recently got fired as, you know, Ambassador, Britain's ambassador in Washington. I remember one time him coming up to me in the lobby of the Houses of Parliament and physically poking me in the chest because I'd written something that he didn't. You get used to being shouted at by both sides, don't you?

So why in particular do you think the Natalie Hart story hasn't gotten more attention? Michael Wolfe wrote about her in his book, All or Nothing, about Trump's, you know, coming back and winning in 2024. Why is it taken so long for her to get any attention? And even now, she doesn't seem to get the attention she deserves. I can't imagine someone with those qualifications, i.e. none, having such access to either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton or Obama or Joe Biden, are not getting endless attention. It's a great point. And I'd say there's two reasons. To be fair, you know, you actually have to

get into the relationships. And once again, not talking about anything but work relationships here. Set aside the possibility of anything else, the work relationships are difficult to get that is sometimes if you're going to say she has, she has overweening authority, she's got authority that is unearned or whatever. You really want to, you're going to want to nail that down, okay, journalistically. But that's just work. You just, you try to develop sources or you, you eyeball the situation in a way that's reliable, that you can show in television journalism, what's going on, the proximity, the, you can get certain stories from, other sources about her influence, you can develop a portrait of a person with power.

Maybe she shouldn't have it. That would be the question. Now, the other reason is that they're afraid. And, you know, you mentioned the news director or, you know, somebody who would, who would be much tougher on you to get the story than anybody you had to face down at the White House. And I do think that has changed. It felt to me, partly under the pressure of the decline of ABC News and the other legacy news organizations, they got more cautious.

They started reporting only what everybody else was reporting. I mean, it was very frustrating to me, and to others, you'd be out in the field somewhere on the campaign trail or in a conflict zone or a disaster. And at the end of the day, what they wanted was the same pictures that AP or that somebody else had put out. They wanted the best scenes. You weren't at the scene that everybody else is looking at. So we want that, you know, in your story.

And it was like saying and reporting what everyone else was saying and reporting in the same way that everyone else was doing it. And, you know, it always had that temptation. But I think by the end, it was more that way. And now you have the corporate pressure. And so those combined to make getting a story like, Natalie Harp, which is an important story substantively, not just the frisson of gossip about it, but what is her source of authority? What does it tell you about this presidency, which is chaotic in the extreme, even to the people who are participating in it? And that's part of that

story that you can make very substantive. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for somebody to do that story out of any of those legacy in these organizations. So the other question alongside the Natalie Harb stories, why aren't more of them reporting that the First Lady is barely in evidence? She turned up for the day when they were having the car race around the city and she said, Hello, I think you'll miss me. Alluding to her own absence, I mean, she's referring to her own absence and yet you wouldn't know she was absent from watching network news coverage about the president. wife who's supposed to be, you know, the person who at the end of a long day when hopefully

he's been doing serious presidential duties, who knows, will provide him solace. I mean, this is a man that seems to spend a lot of time on his own or with his aid, Natalie Hart, but not with the First Lady, who we are paying for. Yeah, that's a great point. I don't see that story anywhere. She isn't even trying, right? Remember that raincoat she wore? I don't care to you. And it It seems like that's her, this time, that's really who she is. She isn't even trying to be First Lady to the United States. She wants to show up at a couple of fancy dinners. She does look great in clothes.

My wife says she's got a great sense of style. So whatever. And that, I suppose, has some PR value for the United States. But she's not doing a damn thing as First Lady because she doesn't care. And it does say something about the relationship, which is, you know, none of my business. But it does say something about this is a family where everybody's out. for them to sell. He didn't go to his son's wedding. His wife barely shows up. He's hanging out with Natalie Harp half the time. They're all fleecing the country wildly. They all are getting rich

off the position. Trump is exercising the power of the presidency in such a personalized way. Really, nobody, he says, I've got all the power. Nobody, I can do whatever I want. Nobody can stop me. And I don't think, I think people are too busy getting. rich off of the power of the presidency and doing their own thing, that this is a presidency that doesn't look like anything we've ever had. And a first lady who's AWOL. AWOL. She's AWOL. So another story that seems to be hanging out in plain sight, and we talk about obsessively at the Daily Veast, is Trump's health. He's in his ninth decade, he celebrated his 80th birthday this summer, this past summer. He has 10th.

terrible bruises on his hands. He has chronic venous insufficiency. So, you know, the blood struggling to pump as effectively as it used to do. Because he's been in the media for the last 40, 50 years, we have a record of how his own speech patterns have declined, how his range of words, his vocabulary has declined. He seems to have very disordered sleeping. We know he's posting in the middle of the night. He seems to have frenzied posting sprees. He seems to display mania. Most recently, we've seen him really getting angrier and angrier, especially with female news correspondents.

We've heard screaming rouse, that people leaking there are screaming rouse going on in the White House. Do you think he's in good health? No. I mean, it's ridiculous that this story is not at the top of the news. This guy's constantly. I mean, we see that all the time now. seriously, Joe Biden would close his eyes and it'd be it'd be nonstop on Fox News for 12 hours. Now, I will say this.

In 2020, late 2023, early 2024, you know, it was pretty clear that Biden was fading rather quickly. I had seen him. I had actually traveled with him to Japan in the spring of 2023 and kind of eyeballed him there. And I thought, okay, he's still functioning. But man, he's frail. looked like he'd blow away in a stiff wind, and his voice was getting lower and lower,

a lot. He'd whisper most of them. I thought, somebody in Christmas, 2023, somebody who loves him a lot, I said this to Hunter Biden a couple weeks ago, should say, Dad, you know, it's over. Let's just spend some time together. His wife, they didn't, whatever. I tried to do the story of Biden's health before anybody else did in network because I'd seen it.

Mm-hmm. And I got shut down very hard. I wrote an email to everybody as gently and as respectfully as I could. I think I still have it. And it was like, you know, this is legit, legit issue for Americans to be interested in. I'm not a doctor. I'm not diagnosing, but we all know what we know when we see people fading. We all have had grandparents.

We're all getting old ourselves. And so there's no doubt about it. This is a legitimate concern for the voters of America. And I said, this is the medical units business. It's not yours, basically. And that was that. So it's hard for that. I guess it is difficult to diagnose somebody at a distance

if you're trying to do it in a journalistically sound fashion. But come on, you can see what you see. And with this guy, it's happening fast. You just described it. Right. And also, I think people have their own experience of elderly relatives. They know what decline looks like. Donald Trump is clearly on a path to decline.

The issue is, is he competent to lead this country? I mean, he's starting wars that no other president has started. He was advised not to by his, as far as we know, by his vice president, by Dan Kane, who, you know, has had to lead operations. But this was an unwise war that he's now in the middle of. And it seems like there is no exit strategy for him, which has the whole knock-on effect of gas prices, of affordability of rising inflation. How does Donald Trump, do you think, get out of this mess that he's in?

At the end of his term, I'm afraid we're going to have it. Maybe if he listens to Democrats in Congress and realizes he'll be irrelevant if they do take both houses, and that's still a big if, right? But if they do, and he's reckoning with the Congress that will have leverage over him, And he wants to be relevant still, which you may or may not. You know, he's going to have some kind of last two years. If the Republican told one of the houses, you know, he won't care at all. But I think more deeply, you know, there's a line.

He's certainly in decline. He's unwell, right? And he's in decline. They're telling us the truth. All those things should energize journalists to go after this story. And they aren't in any meaningful way. And yet I would say that the insanity, fair word, not in a medical sense, but the craziness of his actions, launching this war, the manner in which he says nobody can stop.

And he's talking about demolishing the Kennedy Center in the teeth of black letter law in the U.S. Code and a judge's order. I would not be surprised if they take wrecking balls out at it any night in the next. couple of weeks. He clearly wants to, because they won't put his name on it. Now, is that, is that intellectual declines, that mental decline? That I don't know. He certainly has, clearly has inhibition, loss of inhibition control. But here's the other thing. This is a megalomaniac. A megalomaniac. A diseased mind in that way where clearly he could not get enough attention. he could not get enough power,

he could not get enough glory. He could not get, he was, he's giant hole in him that nothing will ever fill. And now, after a first term in which he was cabined and restrained by traditional American patriots and officials, this lot that he came in with and was planned and plotted carefully are patriots for him and him alone.

And he is, drunk on this power. Now, is that a mental issue or a character issue? To me, we have given a megalomaniac in the unbounded powers of the presidency, almost unbounded, especially given Supreme Court rulings, and the number of emergency powers that Congress has thrown into the presidency's lap over decades. We have a guy with no moral boundaries and all this power. And I think that's the danger. He's drunk on it. So one of the loyalists that you're mentioning is Pete Hegseth, the secretary of he likes to call himself the secretary of war. We like to call him the secretary of forever wars, but technically Congress calls him the secretary of defense. His wife, Jennifer Hegseth, former producer at Fox News, where they met, appears to be in almost every single meeting with him. She has no classified clearance, but she's there all the time. are pictures of the two of them all over the Pentagon. The Pentagon has been leaking this too.

Her nickname and Hugh Docty and I discussed this on Friday's Daily Beast podcast. She's now known as Yoko Ono because she's sort of separated Pete Hexze from the rest of the Pentagon and she's in control and very much the way that Yoko Ono was apparently in control of John Lennon and it led to the breakup of the Beatles. I know you. your wife works with you on your podcast actually and you know certainly it's not unheard of for couples to work together but I think it is unheard of for a former Fox News producer to insert herself at such high levels at the Pentagon to have photos of the couple everywhere for her to put her best friend into the Pentagon as a senior advisor and for the Pentagon to be leaking all these

details. Is Pete, is Pete Hegzeth? Do you think Pete Hegzeth survives the midterms? Do you think Trump will throw him overboard understanding that this war has been terrible for America, clearly terrible for the Iranians, and terrible for the Republicans? Yeah. I do think that Hegseth's head is on the chopping block simply because any president who is in this much trouble in a war of choice, you know, the defense secretary, whether it's Don Rumsfeld or anybody, or Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War, not defense secretary, but he was head of that operation, which wasn't going well. And at some point, the president needs a scalp to give to the party and to the public.

And I do think Hegseth is likely that. But this situation gets at something deeper about Hegseth at the Pentagon and the entire administration. So one of the things I learned covering a couple of White House, two, three White House, whatever. The White House is like every organization. Every organization, to some degree,

a lot or a little, often a lot, takes its tenor, its practices, its morality from the top. Mm-hmm. Right? So the Clinton White House,

Clinton would call reporters at two in the morning. He would be, you know, an hour and a half late. The whole place, everybody leaked, right? There were a lot of backstabbing going on in that, in the administration. It was freewheeling, open, you know, you had a lot of sources.

People would converse about policy, about gossip, all that stuff. Bush came in. It was like access shut down in large ways, especially after 9-11. It ran like a small business, right? Everybody was on time. Bush started early and went to bed early. And then you're right. So with Trump, you have a man without.

discipline in any way, shape, form or fashion, a completely undisciplined man, who does not recognize the systems and structures that have been built up over decades, which sometimes can be sclerotic and block a president, but can also support a policymaking operation and support information flow to make good choices for the American people. And you have chaos. You've got you've got a bunch of, you know, you've got Cash Patel, Pete Hegseth, okay? You know, they're all third raiders who have no experience with that kind of operation. And I think one of the reasons you're seeing leaks from the Pentagon is because the military knows that those processes, for which militaries have been infamous throughout history, right?

Too much paperwork, too much process before we actually do what we do. keeps people alive sometimes, and sometimes it makes the operation successful, which is the most important thing. This is all freewheeling, back dealing, behind the scenes, evade the actual people who know a damn thing about the policy you're trying to achieve, off the top of your head, temporary, walk away from it if it doesn't work. It's an administration that functions chaotically because the guy at the top is chaos. So you mentioned Cash Patel. I'm very surprised to think that you don't think he has the qualifications to run the FBI,

given that he had a very successful t-shirt business, Dari, a t-shirt business. He was hawking t-shirts with slogans on them, and now he's running the FBI and looking absolutely terrified. That kind of wide-eyed stare he has. He looks completely terrified in it. Did you watch him in the most recent hearings? I did. I did. They all have the same playbook.

It's tiresome. It's trollish. We have an administration of trolls. That's their response to any dialogue, to any criticism, to any debate, is to say something that a 15-year-old would say on social media. And they think they're great. Stephen Chung, the communications director of the White House, is a child and a dumb one, you know.

He's, he's, yeah, I heard Mark Carney, you know, and we're all, you know, the Maga hates Carney now. We hate Canada. But Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, gave a speech in Europe the other day, in which I listened to it and I thought, you know, American presidents used to speak like that, about the high ideals and obligations of leadership in the world,

about the morality of leadership in the world. And, you know, you could have challenged him on it, and he would have given you an answer, not a tweet. To see Cash Patel, all these people, that's how thin they go into understanding, you know, what decent government requires. As soon as they hit any block, they're running away from it,

or they're insulting people around them and the people who criticize them in the most childish ways. And I think that's, I think the American people are tired of it. they're tired, especially because it doesn't work, right? If it worked for people, if being an idiot troll, you know, with your stupid memes and your sixth grade, your middle school attitudes about people who criticize you, if that worked, prices came down, the war was successful, you know, we'd have a generation of it. I think that this administration, thank God, is killing

that style of politics. It seems childish, unsirious. and failed. Well, in your documentary from Iowa, you talk to a barber and he says, I'm just, I'm so over this politics. It's too much. And you can tell that the noise and the friction and the crazy tweeting has just gotten to him and he just wants a return to calm and business as usual or business as it used to be. I think one of the things that strangely motivates cabinet secretaries like Cash Patel is building a social media following. I mean, there were all sorts of leaks at the time of Charlie Kirk's murder

that Cash Patel had rushed over there and was frantically trying to tweet out information so that he would build his own social media following largely, you know, largely at the expense of the work the FBI was actually trying to do. To what extent do you think a lot of these cabinet Secretary is merely thinking about what am I going to do next after this White House ends? I have to have to have a social media following because I need to figure out my next business. I mean, it's impossible to think that Cash Patel will stay at the FBI.

It's very possible that they'll get caught up in endless investigations if the Democrats win the House and if they win the Senate. But what is the future for someone like Cash Patel other than scrabbling around on social media somewhere. Well, I scrabble around on social media. Well, so do we, and we love it here. So Cash, come back. Come back. Dan Bongino, his number two, went hurtling back to YouTube

the minute he did, what, less than a year as the number two for Cash Patel. I'm sure his eyes were almost as wide at Cash's at some of Cash's decisions. And there's something almost admirable in it. You could see how miserable he was. And I think because he understood he was in over his head, that this wasn't going to work out well for him. And he surrendered the position to somebody else who's probably no better.

This is a say, this wouldn't be the first cabinet in American history who was looking to make some money off of being Secretary of Energy or commerce or agriculture or whatever. But it's different in that it's performative. It's like if you did a good job at commerce, you know, the CEOs would be there for you upon your departure and you could be on boards and all that stuff. Who's going to put Cash Patel on a Fortune 50 board of directors? I mean, nobody. There's no reason to.

So social media is the destiny for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., too. Well, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who started his own podcast, cooking with chefs where he couldn't look less engaged. I urge anybody who hasn't watched his podcast. He goes, hello, I'm here at Secretary of Health and Human Services and I'm here to help you cook. And it's just shocking. It's shockingly bad. It's shockingly bad. But he's very clearly, A, building himself a platform for 2028 and B, trying to get his numbers up, I think. I mean, we're all forgetting our numbers up. I get that bit. But do you think he stands a realistic, chance of, I'm sure he's going to run. It seems very clear he's going to run. Do you think it's possible he might get elected, Cabinet Secretary Measles, as I refer to him? Yeah, no, I don't.

For a couple reasons. First, I think he's a bad candidate. His positions on, while there's a very intense minority of Americans who don't trust medicine or, you know, don't trust vaccines, who want all kinds of alternative supplements and diets and all those things which, you know, are faddish or unconventional and, you know, people can, it's their lives, they can do what they want. But most Americans are going to listen to their doctors. And most Americans are going to give their kids vaccines.

And to be the guy who says, don't listen to your doctors and don't give your kids vaccines, no matter what he claims, that's basically his message. Go to the crack pottery barn. and that's where you'll get your medical advice. And because that's who he is. I don't think that guy wins the presidency. And I'd also say maybe it's time for the Kennes

to find a new line of work. You know, just because your last name is, Kennedy doesn't mean, I mean, look, the bloodline clearly is thinning on that side. Well, I think that to be fair to the Kennedy family, I think many of them didn't want him to run, right? Caroline Kennedy came out and said, this guy is a crazy person.

He's a former drug addict. He tried to get his cousins addicted. It used to put live animals in a blend. and turn it into a smoothie for his falcons or whatever he was doing there. I mean, he's an odd, odd guy. And as he said, he had his brain eaten by a worm. And he used to snort Coke off a toilet seat. So he's really not afraid of any kind of germs.

Great person to have his health and human services. It's catastrophic. And we're laughing. So, no, I don't think he's a serious candidate for president, although you never know. But once again, because of the failures, the colossal failures which have really just begun to roll out, America's standing in the world.

I mean, Trump, should he leave office when his presidential term ends, will have made the country without question, poor, weaker, dumber, and more despised around the world. There's just no question. I mean, that's the track they're on. And no amount of flim flammery is going to fool people because they'll feel it in their lives, and they do feel it.

And the serious thing about all these third raiders and weirdos and juveniles in power is that it is now the identity of the American people, not the American government. The American people can do this. They've done it twice. That's American people, at least a significant number of them,

enough to make power happen. are unserious themselves or uneducated about the realities of the hard work of making America great. That's not, you don't do that with a rally and hurling insults and slapping tariffs on everyone in the world. You actually actually have to think and work hard for that. And I think most Americans are going to come back, not back to what was. That's gone. but they'll want to build a more reliable and serious politics than the age of Trump. So let's end on a note of hope then, Terry.

When you look across the landscape in terms of potential alternatives to Donald Trump, who do you feel excited about for 2028? It's two and a half years off, or not quite two and a half years off. So I'm not expecting you to come up with a top candidate, but do you feel excited about the opportunities, or do you think that politics itself has suffered such a body blow from having someone like Donald Trump and his cabinet of goons, that it's put good people off going into politics?

Well, no, I think there are plenty of good people who are in politics. some of the Republican side and a lot of Democrats who have been fighting this disaster of an administration who are ready to step forward and run for president and I think the Democrats

of this very deep bench as we all know I was born in Chicago I like the governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker I think he's whip smart and I was there in Chicago when Trump put the troops

on the streets and it was freaking people I was very early in the administration if you remember it was I think it was last May May or June. And, I mean, the Mayor June of 2025. And people were rattled and afraid, of course, because it was the first, not the first time,

but we were seeing, again, in a major American city with National Guard troops helping out, ICE agents ripping nannies out of their cars and tackling them in the streets, pulling roofers out, you know, off the job and disappearing them into some foreign prison without any access to any meaningful process. And Pritzker was steel in those times. He was reassuring. He was strong. He was defiant.

He knows how to jab Trump. I was very impressed with his character in that time. Now, you know, being governor of Illinois is a hard thing. But I have a kind of hometown loyalty. In fact, I'm drinking out of my Chicago Cubs glass here. I noticed that. I was going to ask you, what that was. I didn't recognize it. Someone based in New York, I had no idea what that was.

I had my suspicion. That's my ball club. So, but the Democrats have a lot of people. And the thing is, this is why it was so unfair for Kamala Harris. The only way you know, really, who the class of the field is, is through the actual weeks and months of debates and issues that rise, stories that come up that need addressing. And you get a sense, think of, think of the Republicans in 2024. You know, for a few minutes, for a hot minute or two, polls showed that in the early part of 2023 or 20, yeah, in the early part of 2023, Republicans were looking around.

I mean, DeSantis was up in the polls, in a few polls above Trump. And then he came roaring back. So there was no real race. But they did have those debates, right? there were eight or nine candidates up there. And if you think about it, at the beginning of that process, well, at the end, I thought the clear class of the field,

aside from Trump, it was going to win, was Nikki Haley. And I would not have thought that at the beginning of the process, right? It would look like DeSantis or these others. And it was clearly Nikki Haley, because I got a friend, a political reporter, he says there's a push test that voters do. If you push this person, what would happen? And Nikki Haley passes the push test, right? She's strong for herself.

So you don't really know. But I mean, who would have the inside track? I mean, everybody likes John Ossoff, a bit young, maybe, bit untested, but certainly very serious guy. Gavin Newsom has what it takes. And a brilliant policy mind. He's briefed and he is fluent like almost Clinton, Bill Clinton, if you remember him, who could talk about policy on anything

in a way that was interesting and practical. And the two of those things are very, very valuable in a presidential election. I like to say that Gavin Newsom has tried to accomplish a very difficult thing, and I think he's succeeding because he was very slick and shallow, he seemed to me. And then this crisis of our country came,

and it's like he's becoming more authentic, which you wouldn't think it would be possible. It's like you are or you aren't, right? But I think he's going to be a strong candidate. He's certainly running. And, you know, the others that are out there. Terry, what did you make of Governor Newsom's comment that he wasn't going to run if Carmelah Harris was running? That he wouldn't do that to her, that he wouldn't run against her. What was the subtext to that? Well, there was a political subtext and maybe a personal one as well. The political subtext is clearly that if you're the guy who comes from her state, who's her governor, and you step on her

effort to actually have her own shot at the presidency, not in a weird and dysfunctional way that Joe Biden left to her, but an actual campaign, you're going to pay a price with her voters, with some of her voters, if you backstab her, which is how it would be interpreted. But the other thing, they go back a long ways, right? They've known each other. They're buddies necessarily, but they were all in that DA's office in San Francisco. And so they've, maybe they've had a conversation or two. Or maybe he knows something based on that long relationship that maybe she's like,

eh, doesn't look good for me. Do I really want to take another L like this? Is there something else I can do? I don't know, maybe they had a conversation. But there is, it's an interesting statement. It looks gallant, I suppose, for. him, but I kind of don't believe it, do you? He can sense his appetite for the presidency.

He's ready. He knows he's ready. This is his moment. I interviewed Barack Obama in 2006 during that midterms. And he was considering running for president. And he said, you know, somebody said to me, the moment doesn't come around again. If it's your moment, go. And it feels like it's Gavin Newsom's moment to try.

Newsom's moment to try anyway. So interesting. Well, Terry, it's a joy to speak to you. We're glad that you're sprung from the velvet coffin of ABC News to the world of independent media. Welcome. Welcome. And I very much hope that you will come back and join us again. Oh, I'd love to. I'd love to. You guys are great. Where are you going for your next mini-doc? Maine. I'll be in Maine in a couple of weeks just to get a look at that. one, that's a very interesting relationship. I mean, the story there is Susan Collins is the

great escape artist of American politics, right? No matter how bad it has looked for her over the many elections up there, she manages to eke out a victory. Can she do it again? Can she do it again? And it's funny because people talk about Graham Platner as being a threat to women. And of course, he had to leave the race because of all sorts of accusations from previous girlfriends, but you can't help thinking the real threat to women was Susan Collins, who voted for Brett Kavanaugh and who voted to take away women's right to have an abortion in many states across this great country. Terry, fantastic to reconnect. Looking forward to seeing you again soon.

Yep. Thank you, Joanna. Give Susan Collins our love from The Beast. I will. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did with Terry Moran. What's interesting is when he's just been. covering all those stories globally and in the US and spending a lot of time in the White House and now finally gets to tell us what has been going on behind the scenes. I find that of enormous value. Anyway, if you have been, big thank you for watching, don't forget to leave us a comment

about what your favourite part of the conversation was, where you disagree with Terry and where you think he didn't go far enough. And I will be back with David Rothkopf tomorrow for more. Daily Beast takes on the crazy that is going on in the world. Until then, have a very good rest of your Sunday and back with Dave Rothk of tomorrow. Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Pissaro and Neil Rosenhouse. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.