The Daily Beast Podcast - I Know Just How Bad Trump's Decline Is About to Be

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

Kurt Andersen and Joanna Coles revisit the Donald Trump that Spy magazine spotted 40 years ago: a blustering New York celebrity who claimed he could master nuclear missiles in an hour and a half. Andersen explains why Trump was a joke then but became president, and why today’s thin-skinned tech billionaires deserve the same sharp scrutiny. They consider what a midterm defeat could do to a president who craves attention, then size up JD Vance, Marco Rubio, RFK Jr. and the Republican who Andersen says would make a far more formidable candidate. The conversation turns to Pete Hegseth and the Iran war, Andersen’s increasingly plausible vision of an American breakup and the Kimberly Guilfoyle revelations that seem written for the pages of Spy. #ad Head to https://brodo.com/BEAST for 20% off your first subscription order and use code BEAST for an additional $10 off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

U.S. voters abroad, have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabroad.org and click request my ballot, as to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote fromabroad.org. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes.

While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. He obviously beyond whatever cognitive decline he had and has and more manifest craziness, if the elections go as one hopes they do. He will be more himself and God knows what forms that will take in terms of anger and depression. I'm a depressed old man and this crazy girl who, you know, will do anything I say, is the only one who loves me. You will begin to see on November, I don't know, 4th, 6th,

but certainly as the weeks go on, he will feel in that Natalie Harp sense. Everyone's love me, except Natalie. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, please don't forget to like, subscribe, share this podcast with your friends because it's a brilliant conversation, if I say so myself, with Korn. Kurt Anderson, soothsayer novelist, author, and of course, co-founder of Spy magazine, which he has just launched again on Substack.

So run and subscribe. What it does is take some of the very early pieces that Spy wrote about Donald Trump. It reproduces them, but it also, of course, updates the foreshadowing of these pieces and really brings that reporting 40 years ago to life in a new way. And, well, it really was incredibly prescient reporting. And hopefully more to come from spies. So no more time. Let's get into it.

If you haven't got your tickets for Inside Trump's Head, we're live at the Teragram Ballroom, October the 20th. Michael Wolfe and I will be doing a live podcast recording. We would love to see you there. And you can go to Ticketmaster for your tickets or beast.pub slash ITH live. but no time to waste. Let's get into it with cultural soothsayer as I think of him, Kurt Anderson. I always get up thinking I'm going to eat healthy today, but then I look at a sad bowl of salad leaves and I think, well, that's not going to get the job done. That's when I reach for Brodo.

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And actually I discovered replacing one of them with a clear chicken broth was a great one. of just improving my nutritional intake. It's rich, it's savour, it tastes like something from a great restaurant, which is exactly what it is. I love that it gives me a warm, nourishing option that's genuinely easy to work into my day. Shop the best broth on the planet with Brodo. Head to brodo.com slash beast for 20% off your first subscription order and use code Beast for an additional $10 off. Once again, that's brodo.com slash beast for 20% off your first subscription order and an additional $10 off if you use the promo code, Beast. Kurt Anderson is back. One of our favorite contributors to the Daily Beast podcast.

Kurt, welcome. And congratulations on the launch of Spy Magazine on Substack. Thank you. Always a pleasure to be here. And yeah, you're the last person. to try to revive Spine Magazine briefly 10 years ago, Joanna, when you were elsewhere. But yeah, when I was at Hearst, I just want to remind people, yes, I was at Hearst. We had enormous fun. It was 2016. It was the Donald Trump election, and it seemed the natural

thing to do. So I'm thrilled you're bringing it back to Substack. We did. And I remember I posted a final thing. I wasn't intending to post when we did that as an Esquire online pop-up about him winning, which, of course, none of us expected. We thought he was going to be over then, and now we think he's about to be over now again. So let's hope we're right this time. Yeah, so what we're doing is on marking our 40th anniversary, for which we had a lovely party last night, we are publishing every day, starting a few days ago and running for 40 days. days, a daily bit of spies' coverage of Donald Trump.

And he was in our first issue. We started with that. And so there's a bit of the real thing from the magazine reproduced on the substack. And then you can link to the online archive of that full piece. And there it is. And so what's interesting about it is one of the things that's interesting about it, in addition to showing that we were on him. you know, 40 years ago,

um, uh, is that it's, it's chronological. So the first installment was from the first issue where it goes all the way through the next, you know, what we call the funny years when the last of us left and let the magazine, let the magazine,

let other people publish the magazine. But anyway, seven years of these things, uh, over 40 days like, you know, Jesus is 40 days in the desert, I guess. And, uh,

so subscribe. It's free. And, We were interviewed about it last night on MS Now on Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell showed. He said, but you're not making any money from this? You're not, there's nobody making it. Now I said, no, we're just doing a service to humanity. So, yes, it's fun.

And it's fun to, and it was fun to go back in the archives and see, frankly, how well most of it aged. Well, let's start with the first piece, and I have subscribed, and I can strongly recommend it to everybody else. and you've already got 7,400 subscribers, which is really not bad, given that you launched a couple of days ago. Of course, the first episode had Donald Trump as one of the 10 most embarrassing New Yorkers. And I think it's fair to say he's only got more embarrassing.

Well, he's embarrassing and with all the other things, like having the nuclear codes, i.e. scary, which he was not then, and dangerous, which you don't know. slightly was then. But yes, indeed. And the amazing thing about, the most amazing thing about that entry is, you know, our description of him was pretty good about his, his, you know, bridging tunnel stylelessness and bluster and lying and bullying. And like, you know, though we had his number properly. But also we just, what we did is spent most of it just

quoting him, just the Trumpian quotes. But again, back then, nobody was doing, right? I mean, these quotes would appear here and there, buried, whatever, but to foreground them and spotlight them was something nobody else was doing. And the one that, you know, foreshadowed his, well, I shouldn't laugh. He did become president, didn't he, foreshadowed but his presidential ambitions with which he flirted from starting then he was talking about, hey, he could be president one day. But he said this thing. Of course, it was 1986.

there was a Soviet Union. They did have nuclear missiles. There was talk of a, you know, had been for years talk of a nuclear missile treaty that Ronald Reagan was then negotiated and did a pretty good job of doing some of a nuclear control agreement. He said, you know, this thing with missiles, I could do that. I can learn everything I need to know in an hour and a half about missiles. I mean, yeah, just like he could, he was going to, you know, win the war in Iran in a couple of days. So it's just, it's remarkable to see back then when we were trying to kill the, kill baby Hitler in its crib.

It was already, it was already what it became now as president. I've got that quote in front of me, actually, and it struck me as literally, you're exactly right, exactly what he says now. It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles. I think I know most of it anyway. I mean, he's literally saying the same thing. So, I mean, Kurt, looking back, it's exactly 40 years ago since you started the magazine. Trump is in the first, the very first list of people you home in on. Was there anything about him that you actually missed?

I mean, you mocked him, he was a figure of fun, you kept coming back to him. Did you ever imagine he might be president not once but twice? Certainly not. And in fact, evidence under the degree to we simply thought that was a good part of the joke was two years later we did a special section on politics of 1988, the beginning of 1988. And we commissioned a legit poll by this, at the time, a big polling firm called Penn & Shone. And both Mark Penn and Mark Shone went on to other. careers in politics. And we found, and we were at, we asked people in general, and it was like

not a condentious thing, just who are you disappointed isn't running for president. And maybe we, maybe we gave them Donald Trump as a possible choice. Maybe, maybe people just came on, came up with themselves. I don't know. But four percent, four percent of Americans in 1980, said they're disappointed that Donald Trump is the right for president. Because the point is, he was already talking about it. So, and that's ridiculous, of course, 4%. And he was like in 10th place. But we took that as a grounds.

We pretended to take that as a groundswell of support for him. And look, America's asking, America's deeply need Donald Trump. So you look back at that and go, well, yeah, it was funny then. But, you know, and so it indicates what the, one of the changes between 1986 and 88 and now is, is what so many things did to the American psyche and psychology, right? I mean, the Internet, obviously, reality TV. I can go on. But, like, I don't know, in a certain way,

America's brain was softened up sufficiently and embracing, you know, falsehoods of various flavors and kinds enough that... Conspiracies. Conspiracies. There's all that stuff that by 2000, you know, 15 when he said, I'm going to try it. It's a measure, the fact that he in his you know, idiotic, ignorant, but also

a brilliant world historic genius way understood like, no, the time's right. I mean, he couldn't have articulated it to us, I don't think. But, you know, the guy does have practically magical instincts. And the fact that he, you know, after flirting with it, just in a you know, Donald Trumpian, well, I can be president. I don't know if I want to be president.

I can be president. You know, which you said again, again and again, every four years. And like would pretend to run, pretend to run in the Reform Party, which was Jesse Ventura and party. And never did. It never did. Because he knew it was ridiculous until it wasn't. Until it wasn't. Well, and you've written about other characters in evil geniuses and fantasy land in America's sort of constant flirting with insane conspiracies.

So I feel like you've been chronicling this. I mean, one of the other things that Spy did so well was to skewer the rich and skewer America's fascination with them. And this sort of obsession that Americans have with assuming that rich people are all wise, that they have an opinion on everything and that they are somehow smarter than the rest of us, which I think is an opinion. A lot of rich people would also echo. But we're now living with our own oligarchy. We have a series of billionaires who have incredible influence, certainly with this current government. What would spy make of them?

And if you were launching spy today, who would you put on the cover, do you think? Well, I mean, I think a spy thing, a spy-like thing, whether it was print or not. And that's the difference. Talk about an age when there was only print. is, as you know, you lived in that age too. I did. I did.

It's so different. When a good piece... Can I just tell you, Kurt, when Spy Magazine came out, I was working at the Daily Telegraph. I heard about it. American friends were telling me about it. Everybody was desperate to get a copy, and I had friends in America send me copy. I was scouring newsstands in London. I finally found one. And I wrote about it and said, you know, I think there was an attack on British people.

and how terrible it was, having British people come and visit you because they would say things like, oh, I've forgotten my toothbrush. Never mind, I'm only here for two weeks. It's not a problem, which was very funny. But you're right, there was such excitement about getting something tangible in your hands. And Spy felt like a missive from the American future.

Well, there you go. Thank you. No, and, you know, it began as a New York magazine, but within a year, because people were wanted in London and Los Angeles and Omaha, wherever they weren't. We almost went bust after a year because it was so, it was too successful. Like we had to print too many copies and we were undercapitalized.

So we had to raise a bunch more money and did, thank goodness. But yes, there was a demand. And again, in one of the couple of beauties of the print age that it embodied, I think, is one, you know, a magazine or even a daily paper, but a magazine especially, was the editor. view of a package from an individual head, whether an individual editor, a group of editors, here's a thing I'm going to give you, this carefully constructed artifact of this week or this month. And, you know, it had a coherence like a good novel or a good nonfiction book or a good movie. It was a coherent thing. As a, you know, things, there are still magazines. There are still

good magazines, but they don't have that same like here. Here's a piece of our sensibility geared to this month and next month or this week and next week. So that's gone. And as well as simply, as you say, the kind of the waiting for it rather than like the 24-7 that, you know, here we are, 24-7. Here we are. You know, and again, I mean, Donald Trump, wanted us to think about him every second, and here we are thinking about him way too much of the time. And when back in the pre- Internet day, you know, yeah, you'd think about him, and people loved Spies' treatment of him, which is why we're focusing not on everything Spy did, but for these 40 days, just the Trump coverage. But, you know, you didn't have, you didn't think about it more than

for the couple of hours you're reading Spy magazine once a month, you know? Right. And now we're thinking about it all the time. But to go back to the oligarchy. Oh, yes, the oligarchy. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious as to know, you know, who are the people that you find most interesting in the oligarchy? And if you were starting spy now, and it were still magazine days, who do you think are the more interesting of those characters? Well, I mean, the people around Trump, since there are just other freaks and clowns to an extreme degree, it's too easy, right? I mean, yes, you would do something about Hagseth and Bobby Kennedy and all the others, you know, JD, Vance.

But, I mean, it's just like that's just ready-made, you know, auto satire, really. So I think the people in Silicon Valley are kind of under-overed in the way that Spy Magazine did it. And an equivalent could do it again, do you know? I mean, yes, there are there's good jobs. journalism about AI and good books about, oh, this AI and oh, Sam Altman versus Elon Musk and all that. Fine. But just as there were stories about Donald Trump and rich people 40 years ago, they didn't, there was no journalistic, satirical approach to him, just as there is not enough or maybe even any practically about these guys.

And again, the scale of the wealth of Zuckerberg and Musk and the rest of, these hundreds of billions trillion, in Elon Musk's case, dollars. Well, that's a whole other scale thing. And as you say, by oligarchy or plutocracy, where that gives you not only confirms your faith in your genius in all things, but the brazenness with which they seek political power to turn that trillion into two trillion, you know? That is new.

Whereas in the 80s, in the late 80s, when we started to spy. The money's good. No, America's backing. Money's being rich is great. Was a new thing. Now, has that run its course 40 years later as inequality has gotten so extreme

and the evil geniuses, as I call them, are so greedy that they may destroy the very source of their fortunes? We'll see. But it, you know, and I don't want to suggest, like, oh, we've run our course. But, yes, putting Zuckerberg, doing a cover story about Zuckerberg, Mrs. Zuckerberg, you know, Musk, all the various Mrs. Musks, or at least, you know, mothers of his children. Mama Musk. Yeah, baby Mama Musk. I mean, the kind of, the great satirically inflected or full-on satirical reporting that could be done. And just isn't that much today is something I think, is a, is a, is a, is a.

It would be a set of ripe targets, right? I mean, it's weird that in this Internet day, when everybody can do whatever they want, do substacks and do this and start, you know, coverage and pivot to video and all of that, about everything. Like, the smart people with that sensibility about these people, like, they're not, I mean, yeah, everybody says every day on the internet,

oh, they're not so smart, they think they're geniuses, they're this. But it's these little tiny, tiny little jolts rather than like, well, let's send somebody out to Texas where Elon and his, you know, whatever, Colt have their businesses in their homes. Or whatever. I just don't, I, you know, so if I were starting a spy magazine, that would be one of my foci as opposed to, you know, because they're not just rich, right? There's not just, I mean, yeah, rich people are always entertaining, but, you know, and Jeff Bezos in his way. And speaking of people in Spye, I mean, Mrs. Bezos, I mean, would be, I mean, she would be irresistible to put on the cover. But I think there is, there is, there's, it's a, it's a weird lapse of media coverage in, in America, I think, of getting these people in, because fully, fully covered, because the other thing.

is they would hate it so much. I'm curious to ask you, because I've thought about this a lot, and we have covered them to a certain extent at The Daily Beast, and I certainly would love to cover them more. One of the things that feels different now, as opposed to 40 years ago when you started spy, is that the protagonists themselves post about themselves. So no one has posted more about Lauren Sanchez Bezos than Lauren Sanchez Bezos,

you know, the pictures of her wedding, the pictures of her corset, the pictures of on the vapparetto, the pictures of the biggest yacht in the world, followed by the next biggest yacht, which is the kind of tugboat to Cora their biggest yacht, with, of course, the mastead of Lauren herself. And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, do you remember when Mark went through a phase of he was going to visit a state a month?

And then he was reading a book a week and he was telling us about the book. And then there were endless pictures of his dog, which was very, very hairy. He was effectively, by the way, running for president at the time. Imagine. Right, right, correct. And then you have Elon Musk, who's just split up with his girlfriend, well, I guess baby, most recent baby mama.

And Chivon took to X his platform to actually write about what had happened. And so I was wondering how one, what difference does it make, the fact that they are actually writing their own narratives in a way that 40 years ago people were. and they didn't have the ability to because there was no social media. But also there was still the idea that if you were rich, for the most part, you kept your head below the radar. Donald Trump being the exception. Yeah.

No, it's true. He is a model in that very thing. I mean, again, he's not, he's a what, you know, he has now that he's, you know, illegally or improperly made several more billion in the last year and a half two. He's got, he's probably doubled his wealth, right? But he's still like, what, one percent, less than one percent of Elon Musk's wealth. So he's not that rich. But yes, in terms of the ostentatious, blingy, flashy living that most rich people, most very rich people did not do that. And certainly not in New York City, didn't do then.

That has gone by the wayside. And he has been a leader in that. as he has in so many unattractive behaviors that he's legitimized or at least made people able to get away with. You know, and someday there will be a turn against that, I think, but we'll see. And the thing about covering that, yes, they all do it themselves, but that doesn't mean, like, for instance, just, you know, ballroom pictures. I immediately think of, and maybe I posted, actually, I did. the mansions of the of the Saddam's and the Assad's and the Chowchescu's in Romania before they were brought down. I mean, there are ways to say, hmm, let's think about this building monuments to oneself in one's capital.

Or, hmm, let's think about building additions to a mansion that is beyond unnecessary and full of gold. I mean, partly, of course, in his case, in Trump's case, that's probably a function of, well, there's so much to cover every day. We've got, oh, the zone being flooded with new things. People, it makes all kinds of journalists, including the kinds of journalists we were at spy, unable to or less willing to focus on one thing and nailing it and getting it right rather than just getting today's thing and saying, oh, look, what Hankseth did today or what, what, what, how unhappy Marco Rubio looked in this meeting or whatever, uh, you know, and again, you know, there is the whole attention span issue that social media and the internet has, has

exaggerated. But I still say, I think there is an appetite for, uh, getting a whole, you know, if not a whole meal, at least a whole dish rather than endless nibbles of this kind of coverage. Yeah. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings. The end of jobs or the end of human struggle.

We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. So I wanted to ask you, you talk about attention. Trump is the master of getting attention. He thrives with attention. I don't think he exists if he doesn't have attention. Assuming the midterms go the way that certainly the polls indicate they will do

and that there will be some kind of a blue wave. What do you think the lame duck Trump is like? What is he, you know, once he knows that he's lost and he's got two more years and the people around him, i.e., his cabinet, are all starting to hustle for their place on the platform for 2028. What does that do to Trump's psyche? Well, that is the question.

And I think we already see evidence that as you and Michael Wolf have talked about, of, you know, he's, he, he obviously beyond whatever cognitive decline he had and has and more manifest craziness. I think the kind of elderly kind of, as they call it, dementia sundownerism where people who are with dementia late in the day, like just get angry that, I mean, which I always take, and, and the, this may just be a poetic conceit, but as like, you know, in his case, and in old people's case, like a kind of, the sunset itself is his a daily foreshattering of, you're going to die soon. So I think once, once, if the elections go as one hopes they do, and we have reason to believe they will, if not as amazingly as some of the polls say, he will be. more himself and God knows what forms that will take in terms of anger and depression. I mean, the thing is, too, about him in figuring out inside Trump's mind is he is for a guy

who has gotten everything he ever wanted, most of all, you know, fear, respect, and as you say, attention, attention. I want to be the star of every episode of the news every day. well, I want to be in everybody's heads. Well, I mean, he's got it all. And yet, he is so manifestly miserable. And even when he's talking, how does he couch his whatever love for Natalie Harp? Well, he says to the people around him, you know, she'll be with me even after you've all left.

I mean, so it's, which is to say, I'm a depressed old man and this crazy girl who, you know, will do anything I say. is the only one who loves me. I mean, so it can go anywhere. And it's, you know, it's like so much. It's, and it's, it's dark comedy. It could be awful or it could just be, you know, dark and comedic. But I do think, I mean, especially, you know, he'll say it's rigged and he'll do all that stuff that we know. And thank goodness, you know, we've had some years to build an apparel, legal apparatus.

us to, it's prepared for that. But he will be blamed. And he, and, you know, we already have Ken Paxton on his hot mics say, yeah, Trump's bringing me down here. You know, the most, the most unlikable, unpopular Republican candidate in America. So, yeah, this guy, he's so unpopular. He's bringing me down. You know.

And so, you know, that's obviously, you know, and this is, this is misphobic. Mr. Amaga, who's only got one that is running, has the nomination for Senate in Texas because of, you know, Trump's petty, petulant dislike of John Corny, who no doubt would be, you know, sailing to re-election today. So, you know, he will, you will begin to see on November, I don't know, fourth, fifth, sixth, but certainly as the weeks' go on, I think a kind of, it'll be, he'll go steps further. And I, it just won't be, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, which way, which way, he's life. He's on, I don't know. Um, uh, but he'll, he will, he will feel in, in, in that Natalie Harp's since. Everyone's left me except Natalie, you know? Everyone's left me except Natalie. So among his cabinet, who, if you were to make a short list of the people that you thought would be taken seriously as Republican successors, who do you think will actually end up running in 2028? I mean, we can see that Rubio in Greece this week

was laying out his, his, bonafide's with the MAGA crowd until he was monstered by the press on the behavior of Kimberly Gilfoyle. And I want to ask you about Kimberly Gilfoyle. We've got Pete Higgs there who used his state of the force speech. J.D. Vance banished to Alaska to do some last minute electioneering over there. So he's out of the way. But when you look at the cast of characters through your lens of evil geniuses and fantasy loud, and the understanding that America doesn't always do what's in America's best interests, who do you think will emerge? It's hard to say.

I mean, to me, they're all deeply, forgetting the Republican nomination, let alone being elected president, but getting the Republican nomination will be very, very difficult this time. Once Trump goes and isn't even say, well, maybe I will run or whatever, I don't think that nonsense. is going to happen. But they're all not just flawed candidates with their strengths and weaknesses. What are their strengths? Right. I mean, J.D. Vance, his strength is that he's vice president. I mean, that's it, right? And vice president to Donald Trump. Well, exactly. And incumbency, as we see again and again in political analysis of this election, And incumbency is of dubious value right now in America and the world where incumbents are hated for being incumbents, right?

So I don't know if that helps you. And yes, he's set himself up, you know, in, for instance, the way he's depicted in the wonderful book regime change as being, I was the one against the war. I was the one against the war. Okay. Does that really help you, though? You also were the vice president during the war, during this incredibly disastrous war that may go on. while you're running for president. So he's obviously running.

And just, but I was going to say, in the post-Trump world, it's been kept together in this incredible party-disciplined way only, only because of Donald Trump being this cult figure that they all, you know, their whole behavior

as politicians has been about how do I not get on his wrong side? How do I not get on his wrong side? And then for his cabinet, how do I make him love? I love me. I don't make him not fire me. That's it.

So they haven't had 10 years to like figure out what they are and what they should be and what they shouldn't be as the Democrats have, right? The Democrats have gone through a normal 10 years of, oh, God, we lost, we lost again, what are we going to do? We should be this, we should be that, we should be maybe this, more of that. So they've had a normal political evolution for a decade. Republican Party hasn't. The Republican Party is just like, oh, okay, okay, we gotta put up with this, okay.

We gotta say we like this, okay. That's it. So they're, they're, so, and they are obviously have all these different factions, as every party always has and does, but those will just, boom, come out. There will be the, you know, Tucker Carlson faction of, you know, all that he is. There will be the, you know, old fashioned Republican faction that I guess Rubio is going for and being part, you know, by giving a speech in Athens in front of the Parthenon, Western civilization. Like, yeah, good luck with that one.

I thought that was him very clearly signaling to the Maga base that he was not, you know, he was not all things to all men. Well, that, you know, the future that this next decade would be about what would happen for the rest of the century. And it had to be that Western values led. Yeah, but Western values, I mean, Western values to a Magan is not about, you know, Euripides. I mean, or, you know, Eisholus or something. I mean, you know, it isn't. And like, really?

What's that building? Oh, yeah, that's that building in Nashville. I've seen that. I don't know. Who knows? I mean, no, I don't think, I mean, whatever his faints, he can say to the Maga base, I guess, oh, look, I helped the dictator in El Salvador make a deal with us to get our, you know, illegal aliens in his gulag.

Aren't I good? Look, I'm one of you, right? I think he will run as the, you know, I think he will run as the, you know, normie. And, you know, I don't know that that may be there's enough Republicans to give such a person the nomination. But, you know, neither party, but the Republican Party especially has no like, well, it's that she or he or he has it. That's the frontrunner. There is no frontrunner, except by default of J.D. Vance. But I think he's as bad a candidate, just inherently, as say, Ron DeSantis was when he ran against Trump for the nomination last time, right?

He's unlikable. He kind of gives the Trump script, but like nobody likes him. And it's not convincing and it's not amusing and it's not exciting. It's not any of those things that Trump made his ugliness and stupidity. Right. So and then, you know, Marco Rubio, I mean. I mean, in the clown car, he is the adult, right? He is the most like a normal guy who says intelligent things sometimes.

But, you know, the excitement for him, I mean, again, I can imagine a don't lot. I can imagine raising a lot of money. But I can imagine any advance raising a lot of money. But excitement among the people, hard for me to imagine. and then Bobby Kennedy, of course. Oh, well, yes, I was just going to say, what about Bobby Kennedy, the man who sold you cocaine when you were at Harvard?

How is he doing, do you think? Well, I mean, he, I will be surprised if he doesn't run for the nomination. Now, and it's just crazy enough to work. I mean, I don't know. I think, I don't think he'd get them. I don't, there's nobody I would say, it's hard for me to even give Oz.

Like, I think he, this, or this, I mean, you'd have to say J.D. Vance at this point because, again, you know, just in these early polls, inevitably, just like Kamala Harris is well-rated, because nobody really knows about politics or cares about it, and they just say, I've heard her, I'll say her to the polls. Jay D. Vance, I mean, it's just, I mean, one could see any of them, but I, none of them are, none of them scare me as candidates. Now, Tucker Carlson, if he became a candidate, that would scare me. You know, because he's, you know, he's, he is a skillful communicator, you know, and these, and he's famous, you know, and he's never been. And he would scare you, he would scare you more than Donald Trump. Why would he scare you?

No, he would scare me more than J.D. Van, or Marco Rubio. He would scare me that he would be a power, he would be as, he could be a very strong Republican candidate. Okay. And a strong opponent for the Democrats. Correct. Now, in my novel, he, in 23rd, he starts a new. Hardy in 2030s as after our

finished the novel he started talking about doing. So that could happen, which would be some kind of, I don't know, a party that is actually pro-working class economically and deeply anti-immigrant. And all those things,

all the ways that, say, Steve Bannon wanted Donald Trump to govern in his first term and he didn't. Anyway, I can imagine that. And I can imagine him as a, yes, as a stronger candidate. So they'll all be running. Kurt, what about Pete Hegsafe? Because Pete Hegs clearly used his state of the force speech. No beardos, no weirdos, no trannies, no fatties. And then that picture, no wimps, yeah, only warriors, only warriors, only warriors,

lethality of the force, his very macho language, the tea injections for everybody. And then him working out in San Diego last week, which Donald Trump said, you know, if it's collateral damage for the Iranians, so be it small price to pay. I, the state of the force. I was talking to a friend of mine who was in the Navy for a long time, and he's still very close to many of his, and he's still in the national security business. And he's close to one admiral in particular. and a guy who's just, I think, retiring as an admiral.

He's not that old. I was saying, really? He's 54 or whatever you are as an admiral. Anyway, he said you won't believe how loathed Pete Hegseth is in the, in the, in the, I mean, he's, you know, he's, you know, he's, this person he's quoting is a flag officer, a high, high, high up guy. And he was at that thing, that original, hegsst meeting. Well, the state of the force last year. Well, that one where they call all the, generals together and he did his first version of this speech. And I was always struck by that speech

that he comes out onto stage and he's clutching a metal cup and I've learned that, I mean, obviously he's got a background struggle with alcohol and there's something very odd about someone that comes out with what is ostensibly a coffee cup to address an entire room of generals. Why would you do that? That felt very odd to me. I wonder what was in the cup. Interesting. I didn't notice the cup. very, you're observant, Joanna. But so anyway, I mean, again, you're in the middle of losing a war and there's no way out and the losses of which have been understated and and the degree to which it has exposed as a fantastic New York Times, David Sanger, Eric Schmidt piece just talked about.

Actually, America's weakness, all about the Trump and Hengseth intention. Oh, America is strong. America's so powerful. America's the most powerful military force ever. Well, suddenly, not so much. You know, we're running out of, all of it. We're running out of ammo, can't project force. We're scaddling out of, you know, England to get our B1 bombers away or B2s, whatever they are.

And, you know, and moving the aircraft carriers back, maybe closing down our bases in the Gulf State. You know, I mean, it's the opposite. So, yeah, he, Tegseth is this cartoon G.I. Joe character. But, you know, the guy who led this completely instantly unpopular, unsuccessful war effort is going to get the nomination for presidency. I don't think so. Okay. Okay. So you mentioned your novel.

I thought with extraordinarily restraint, you didn't give us your title. the breakup, which came out in August. Oh, thank you. Yes, the breakup. The breakup. And we talked about it. And it's about the breakup of a relationship. It's also about the breakup of America. I know it's, you know, sold out. I think you're in your fourth printing. So many congratulations. People are very excited about it. I was going to ask you what sort of feedback you'd had to the notion of America going through a civil war and literally splitting up. And you started the book three years ago. Do you think post another two, years of Donald Trump's second administration. Do you think a breakup actually is more likely now

than when you started the book? Oh, I think it's definitely, I started in the end of 22, and it seemed kind of far-fetched to me at the time, but not too far-fetched, just, you know, like certain speculative fiction ideas. Like, oh, yeah, I can imagine that happening. It probably won't, but, and I still think, I guess, I probably won't, but my probably won't has gone from, like, you know, 5% to 40%, you know, I mean, or, or let's say. So, yeah, I think it's, I think it's more plausible as, as a way it could all go, you know, I mean, people say to me, people say said several things in response to my story in the breakup. One is, well, I find, I find it chilling sometimes, but fortunately it's also funny and along the way. And it's weirdly hopeful.

So I said, well, that's exactly not my intention from the beginning, but as I finished, I thought, okay, I think that's right. It's because it, you know, I did enough research and thought through it enough to imagine, you know, to, I sort of researched it as I would a nonfiction books. I would one of these big histories I wrote, right? And then said, okay, I'm not saying this will happen, but what if it did? What if it did? What would it entail? How would you break up the country? How is, so I think rather than just being, you know, the Marjorie Taylor Green or the Rush Limbaugh or whomever saying, oh, we need a national divorce, we need a national divorce, actually going beyond that soundbite and, you know, figuring out in detail, like how this could

happen? What would that be like? Who would go where in which country? I think it, you know, for many readers, beyond all the other pleasures that people take, and I've gotten incredibly nice feedback, that sense of, oh,

okay, now this is on the table as a scenario. And again, not that this is the way it's going to happen, I'm a profit. But it could, and it has, I think for people who read it, they say, oh, If there is a breakup, this could be how it is, which goes beyond, again, we were talking earlier about long form versus sound bite, you know, journalism or social media posts or whatever.

I think by giving a kind of an architecture, kind of, and, oh, this is how it would be. You know, people would get used to it. And oh, it's not bad, bad. And then this state does it. I think the detailed scenario, I don't know that makes it more possible. I don't think that, but for the people who read it have felt like, okay, okay, I can see how this actually would happen. It's not, it's not, you know, it seems less far-fetched. I mean, again, nothing is certain, but so I think that's the reaction.

And the people who find it not hopeless and ultimately, you know, I won't say anti-dispopian, but not dystopian in the conventional way that speculative fiction is done, which is like, you know, it's bad now and it gets worse. That, you know, I don't think it's that. So that's where we are. Well, I think it's interesting how when the history of this time is told, your novel may well be one of those documents that a bit like Thackeray's vanity fair illuminated the time and the ambition in the time

and I was thinking of the character of Becky Sharp who when you read Vanity Fair you think oh this is just she's larger than life this can't possibly this would never happen and then of course

you have someone like Kimberly Guilfoyle who's gone from being married to Gavin Newsom to leaving him ostensibly because he wasn't ambitious enough or that's at least

in the swirl of why they broke up to landing on Don Jr. to being dumped by Don Jr. and then exited from the Washington slash Mar-a-Lago scene by her almost father-in-law, the president, to Greece where she's now taken up residence at the ambassador's residence. She is our, you know, ambassador to the Hellenic Republic. Let's put it like that. all over the news today because it turns out that she's been accepting, shall we say, lobbying fees for services which she doesn't appear to have provided, not least introducing

one poor ex-lawyer to Kid Rock. He'd written a song and he was very much hoping she could get the lyrics of his song to Kid Rock. Have you been following her story? Because she feels like a very spy character to me. If she had been around 40 years ago, she would have been on the most embarrassing list, too. A woman who accused others of me-toing her when she was at Fox News, and then it turned out she'd actually meet me-toed people. Correct. No, I couldn't agree anymore. She is a perfect spy subject. And again, the fact that she was married to one of the leading Democratic candidates for president next time, Gavin Newsom, is like, again, can't make it up deliciousness, right? And there's a, in particular,

there's a famous, or to me famous, picture of her and Gavin laying down together on the carpet of one of the Gettys, maybe Anne Gettys, a rich person in San Francisco when they were married, just in kind of sprawling in this posh apartment is extraordinary. And her version just physically of, you know, her, Lauren Sanchezian kind of remaking. You know, I know that's an insult to Lauren Sanchez, to say Kimberly resembles her, but it's the same scary, you know, remolding and the makeup and the all the surgeries and all that.

Anyway, she's extraordinary. And again, the brazenness of this, oh, can I call her a tart of this tart in the, in the, in the, Pay me $100,000. And pay me $100,000, she said to this guy, put it somehow in my American Express account? Like, whoa. It had an extra frisson of brazen corruption in it. And again, you've done her a great favor

by comparing her to a Thackeray character. We probably have. And I want to give a shout out to the Wall Street Journal because it's done incredible reporting on Kimberly. And one of the most astonishing things in the story that it ran, I think, on Thursday about her was that they got the texts between her and Eric Dieter's, a struck-off lawyer and a former, someone who tried and failed to get elected to Congress and is a sort of businessman. And he was complaining he'd spent $300,000 on her services,

and she hadn't managed to deliver on any of it. And amazingly, we have her saying, for goodness sake, stop putting this in. text. If you want to talk to me, you signal because she's terrified of it, of it surfacing, and miraculously it has surfaced and it's such an interesting look into how certain people operate in the Trumpian world. And again, a perfect spy character. Absolutely. And yes, shout out to the Wall Street Journal, which, you know, I mean, despite, you know, the Murdochian ownership, I still does amazing, great, essential journalism like that. Also, that story and other stories like this.

You know, the, however the political, assuming the Democrats win the House of Representatives, at least. The deciding what should we focus on Congress in terms of, you know, fixing what needs fixing, preventing the further destruction of what needs prevented. Like, say, if God willing, the Democrats take the Senate, the ability to say, okay, judiciary, no more, you know, we're not going to, first of all, we will stop the trumpification, the mageification of the federal judiciary. That will be huge if that's possible, if they were in the Senate.

But deciding what will be explored. the media, the press, the Wall Street journals, and everyone will have such a, I believe, once he's done, once he's out, once people are out and willing to tell stories and the reporting will be, you know, easier in a sense. I mean, to find, well, look at this thing we didn't know about and look at this thing. I think one of my reactions to the Kimberly Gilfoyle revelations in those, as you say, Mark, amazing texts is like, oh man, there is. is so much stuff just there barely below the surface that will wonderfully necessarily burst open through the hard work of journalists, of course. But people will want to talk.

And also in the election, people will want to say, well, look, no, I wasn't part of that. And I don't know what say J.D. Vance will give up to show that he didn't have anything to do with the world. There will be so many new incentives in the 28 election, as well as just people who no longer have to be scared of Donald Trump to leak, leak, leak, and give and give and give to journalists. Well, The Daily Beast will be covering all of it, Kurt.

Very much looking forward to it. It's wonderful to have you back on the podcast. Many congrats, as I said before, on the breakup. And please come back and talk to us soon. And for those who haven't yet subscribed to spy, run to Substack and subscribe not only to The Daily Beast on Substack, and you can subscribe to me on Substack, but now you can subscribe to spy to spy and get the original spy reporting on Donald Trump. And I hope perhaps this will stir you to do more, to stay. To stay where, Joanna? To stay on Substack.

to stay on substack. Well, no, I am. I mean, I, I mean, again, it's tempting. Social media is tempting. But, you know, if I want to keep writing books and plays and maybe movies and things. Yeah, books, plays. There's only so much time in the day, you know. But yeah, no, it's, it's, I mean, again, and kind of feeling the spy love out there for,

and having younger people discover it and go, what? What? This was there? before I was born, is very, very, very gratifying. All right, we will see you soon, Kurt. Thank you, my dear. I always love talking to Kurt. I think he brings in so many different themes

and wraps them up and thinks about things in a completely different way to anybody else. And I really do remember roaring around trying to find that first issue of spy because it landed like a little, you know, bomb among British news publications. when it came out in 86. And again, it was so difficult to get a copy.

People were fighting over copies and lending each other copies. That was the joy of a magazine. And of course, again, that sense of it coming out once a month and one, building the anticipation to what was going to be in it. Who was going to say what? It felt so, well, just completely different to anything else that was out there. Anyway, if you have been, thank you for joining us. Write and let us know in the comments what your favourite part of the

conversation was, was it his observations about Donald Trump, about the oligarchy, about Pete Hegz, about Marco Rubio, about J.D. Vance, I would love to know. And as you know, we read all our comments, or at least as many of them as we can. I reply to as many of them as I can. And I know that Kirk looks at them too. And a big thanks to our production team, Brian Murray, John Romero, Rachel Kasser, Heather Pissarro and Neil Rosenhaus. So the good news is we have so many be beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings. The end of jobs

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