The Daily Beast Podcast - I’ve Seen Trump Up Close. Why I Know He’s Failing

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Katy Tur joins Joanna Coles to parse how a once forceful Trump, who called her “little Katy,” is now plagued by health concerns, prosecutorial incompetence, and an ever-growing Epstein scandal. Tur, Host of MS NOW’s ‘Katy Tur Reports’ digs into the deep fissures in Trump’s public persona: slowing energy, slurred speech, and shifting routines that raise questions about his health and stamina. Tur also breaks down the ongoing implications of the Epstein files, Trump’s handling of journalists, and the political fallout from rising healthcare costs. From the personal to the political, this conversation captures a president—and a country—under intense scrutiny Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Isn't it interesting that the New York Times has delved into this? There was so much hand-wringing over approaching it during the Biden years, and they got so much flack for it. And there was a question of when is somebody going to really tackle Donald Trump's slowing down? Because you can see it. He is different than he was. He doesn't have the same amount of energy. He's not as coherent as he used to be.

He's always been not entirely coherent, but it's different now. He's slower. his speech is slower. You can see him falling asleep sometimes or appearing to fall asleep in the Oval Office. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And today we have the host of Katie Turre reports. Katie Turr, you will remember, really made her name during the first Trump election. She was assigned to cover him. The assumption was that he was a joke of a candidate. And of course, he became president not once, but twice. and Katie Tour has reported doggedly throughout the 10 years that Donald Trump has been dominating our political cycles. So let's not waste any more time. Let's get into it.

Katie Turr, welcome to the Daily Beast podcast studio. I can't believe this is the first time that I'm here. I can't believe it either. And I want you to come back regularly. I would love to. So listen, you've been covering Donald Trump since he descended his golden staircase in Trump. House. Since he was a joke. Since he was a joke, and now, of course, he's still a joke, but in a different way. He's the president of the United States. He's the president of the United States. So what difference do you notice now between his current term and when he first

started? He's much more, I mean, Donald Trump has always been very much himself, but he really is himself now in a way that feels pure. And I think that's partially age. I think when you get older, you just become much more yourself. You don't care any longer. And you're less willing to, I don't know, to suffer the niceties of the world. So that's part of it. But also he's surrounded himself now with people who say yes to everything he wants to do. People who compliment and and help him with his deepest urges. Whatever he wants to do is right, whatever he thinks is right, he is brilliant. He's like AI chatbot.

He's like chat GPT. He surrounded himself with people who are chat GPT. You type in chat GPT. Is Katie Turr wonderful? And chat TPT will tell you Katie Turr is the most wonderful person who has ever existed and here are all the reasons why. That's what he has surrounding him now. So he's a bit like a sort of fable in a way.

He's sort of mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest of the wall. I think that's a very good description. Right, and everybody is around him. So let's talk, I mean, in his first term, when you were following him, he would frequently single you out. You wrote a fantastic book about this, unbelievable, where it was a memoir of your covering him for, what, 515 days? 510 days. 10 days. Come on, I have to tell you.

That's not bad. Every once in a while I pick it up and I just flip to a random page. And it is, it's a good book. It's a really good book about a moment in time that does not, still to this day, feel real. And yet here we are 10 years later. So here we are 10 years later. He used to pick on you and call you Little Katie. Today he's picked on a different Katie, Katie Rogers of the New York Times, who's written or co-written, a long piece about his flagging energy, I think, and his work habits.

Aging in the White House is what they've called it. Aging in the White House. the New York Times has delved into this. There was so much hand-wringing over approaching it during the Biden years, and they got so much flack for it. And there was a question of when, when is somebody going to really tackle Donald Trump's slowing down? Because you can see it.

I mean, you could see it during the campaign even. I was talking to Maggie Haberman about this. He is different than he was. He doesn't have the same amount of energy. He's not as coherent as he used to be. He's always been not entirely coherent. but it's different now. He's slower.

His speech is slower. You can see him falling asleep sometimes or appearing to fall asleep in the Oval Office or I think it was a national prayer breakfast. Well, he saw when Dr. Oz was in the office and the poor man who'd come to talk about GLP ones, reducing in price, collapsed. And literally his legs were up in the air

and Donald Trump was sort of standing there in a daze. But earlier in that press conference, he'd been asleep. But then earlier in the year, during the beginning of the administration when he was at the National Cathedral in D.C., I forgot what the event was for, but I believe the priest, it wasn't the national prayer breakfast. The priest was admonishing the administration

for its treatment of immigrants. Anyway, during that sermon, he appeared to be falling asleep there too. He's different. I mean, he's what, he's 79 years old. He's about to be 80. Anybody at that age is going to start slowing down. So were you surprised that the top,

times suggested that his day now starts at midday. That it's basically he's working hours a midday to five. No. I mean, in the first administration, he pushed it back to 10, or even sometimes even later in the afternoon. He had executive time. That became a big point of jokes. What's he doing during his executive time?

He's watching television. Right. He's tweeting. No, he's watching all the networks. I think he has them all in his dining room. were in the residence. Remember when Fox and Friends could tell he was watching

because there was one light on in the White House? They would monitor one window and that one window with the light on. They would call him out and say, Donald, I know you're watching. Oh, how funny. I didn't know that. And I remember him calling in.

Yeah, but he would be up at those hours calling in. We're not saying that quite as much. I think part of it is, yes, he is slowing down. Yes, there are questions about his cognitive ability. Sometimes he slurs his words. Sometimes his speeches make even less sense than they used to. There's a lot of chatter and gossip online over some physical things like the dragging of the leg, the bruise on his hand, the swelling of his ankles. I'm not a doctor.

I don't know what any of those things add up to. But he is 79. Right. And also if you saw them in a relative, you would be concerned. I would say, are you okay? Anything going on? Right. What's up with your hand?

Why is it a bruise? And he claims that the bruises are to do with the fact that she shakes. hands so much. And listen, I'm on aspirin every day and I've got a bruise on my hands. Why are you on aspirin every day? Because I've got a family history of heart disease, so I'm on aspirin every day. Okay. But would you like to know more about it? No, but I'm curious that you're on, you know, should we all be on aspirin every day? But so there is some validity to that. I can't tell you how it adds up with, I can, I'm not a doctor, but I can't tell you how it adds up with the the swelling of the ankles or the dragging of the leg or the falling asleep in the Oval Office. But, you know,

Well, this is, it's a new thing for us to have presidents who are this old. Right. We had Biden and now we have Trump. Biden was a few years older. He really started to decline in the last few years. He was starting to decline. So what happens with Donald Trump? Is this just the beginning of a precipitous slope down in terms of his health?

I don't know. But he, he's 79. Is Trump the new Biden? We're going to have to see. There was Shane Gillis. the comedian who does a truly brilliant Trump impression was saying on one of the bro podcasts. That's the best way I can describe them, that I think he used the term Trump has Biden brains or he's getting close to Biden brains. He's got Biden brain.

Yeah. So, I mean, the narrative is bubbling. Well, and also because he's so visible, we can see it all the time. I mean, Biden didn't do as many press conferences. No. Donald Trump loves a press conference. He loves the center of attention. But the trouble is all our attention is on him. So we are watching this, you know, micro moment by

micro moment. I mean, when he doesn't appear on camera for a day or two days or three days, everybody starts to freak out and wonder if he's died. Remember that earlier this year? And he came out and said, I haven't died. I still. Yeah. But I mean, I think not to be, not to get on the bandwagon and to push back a little bit, he is doing much more than certainly Joe Biden did. He is out there in a way that past presidents haven't even been out there. He does give access. He's constantly on television. So, I mean, he might be slowing down for him and slowing down because he's getting up there in age, but he is still very much mobile.

I mean, he's doing overseas travel. He's coming back. He's handing out Halloween candy. Sometimes these trips are one day. I mean, he is very much still engaged. He's not doing the same amount of travel that he used to. I mean, the domestic travel has certainly declined. He's not doing those rallies.

He's not standing in front of a crowd for an hour, two hours, three hours in, you know, Grand Rapids, Michigan any longer. And I think that's telling. But this has got to be relative to him and not necessarily relative to Joe Biden. I went to the Christmas party during the Biden years. And he came out at like 8 o'clock and he gave a speech to the assembled room of journalists. And you could not understand a word he was saying. Right. It's different.

And do you think that journalists have learned from that moment and are now going to be less afraid of actually covering things that are sort of evident in plain sight? I think so. I think it is still tricky to wait into because, again, we're not doctors. And it's really difficult to diagnose somebody from afar. And you want to be careful with that. But I do think that there is, we have a job.

to acknowledge the reality in front of us. And when somebody is behaving different or slowing down or doesn't make sense or is hiding information, I mean, he talked about his MRI and we've given you all the information about his MRI, he says, but doesn't give you actually any information about the MRI. I think it's a reporter's duty. I mean, it's part of the job to point out, hey, you got an MRI, we don't know why. Right. Right. And it's the second time you've been to Walter read this year, I think. Yeah, exactly. So you've been very... And remember, he was very cagey about his COVID diagnosis as well during the first administration. Right. And how sick he was. And the needing of the monoclonal antibodies. So he's gone after Katie Rogers, who wrote the piece,

said she's ugly inside and out. He called you little Katie. He called a Bloomberg reporter recently Piggy, quiet piggy. First of all, I was quite surprised that nobody in the I think it was on the airplane that he called the reporter Piggy. I was quite surprised that none of the male correspondence, or perhaps they didn't, I didn't hear it, just say, hey, Mr. President, that's not okay. What does it feel like when you are the butt of that angry presidential attention? Oh my God, it feels like a wave is crashing on you. You try to ignore it.

I certainly, it became so routine during the campaign for me for him to call me out that you just keep going about your job. You stand up, you smile, you give your report. I would wave to the crowd. Because I think if you show any weakness or you show you're offended, it's so much worse. But didn't you have to have security to get you to your car after he began picking on you?

Yeah, the Secret Service walked me to my car after one of the events where it got really ugly, which I think is insane. And then we, NBC, had security full. time with us wherever we went. That was a completely new thing. And at the time, it was a very big deal. What kind of country are we living in where reporters need armed security to go out and do their jobs? People would say this isn't Russia. This isn't some third world country. This is the United States of America. And it shouldn't, you shouldn't have your life threatened

when you're doing the basic job of journalism. And Donald Trump ushered that new era in. And it was scary. And there were a lot of people saying this was not okay. We can't live like this. We can't accept this. But then he was elected president. And so all of that now became normalized. So why don't the guys on the plane or the gals on the plane speak up in defense of the reporter? I think it's because it's become normalized. And does he do it as much after men as he does after women? No, I mean, the administration will say he's an equal opportunity insulter. And there's, I guess, some truth to that, certainly. He does go after men that he doesn't like.

Yeah, I mean, he went after Jonathan Carl recently in a sort of crowd of reporters. Yeah, of course. But the way that he talks about their physical attributes for women, I think is different. It's different. Or not physical attributes. The way that he puts a woman down. Well, it's the insults. Yeah.

Yeah. In a physical way. Right. And what do you think that's about, what is he actually saying there? I think he's saying, you know, you don't matter. You, why would you think that you have the authority to question me? He's diminishing them. Right.

And what is the, I mean, you said when he did it, you just keep on doing your job. There's nothing else you can do. Of course. What do you think Katie Rogers thought when she saw him sounding off in a fury, just saying she's an ugly person inside now? I don't know, but I imagine that she thinks the way everyone does, which is I'm not looking forward to the flood of threats that are now going to be coming my way. And it's not just angry vitriol online, although that can feel very isolating. It's the, it's what comes with it now.

It's the personal threats to your safety that any time he singles you out, you have to, or his crowd singles you out, you have to embrace yourself for. And then thinking about what you need to do to make sure that, you know, know, one crazy person in that crowd doesn't act on trying to silence you. Right. So let's talk about another theory which I didn't know about and which is referenced in Katie's piece today about Trump believing that we are basically human beings are like batteries and that we have a finite amount of energy. I can't believe you only just learned about this. I can't believe it. I mean, it's like it's like hearing about.

a theory from Victorian England. This is literally what the Victorians used to think that we were like batteries. We had a finite amount of energy. And this is the reason why he doesn't exercise. He also puts leeches on his body at night in order to suck out the bad blood. No, he doesn't. I'm joking. No, no, I know.

But I was going to say there's probably quite a lot of work for the leeches to do. Can you explain this theory? You knew all about it when I referenced it to you. So, oh, yes. This is one of the weird theories that Donald Trump has about health. he's been talking about it for a long time. Part of it was why is the President of the United States not exercising? Obama exercised, Clinton exercise.

You saw him jogging, remember. George W. Bush exercised. But why is Donald Trump not exercising? It looks like he needed to exercise, or that's what doctors would say. And his pushback to that was I move my arms a lot on stage when I'm... When he's doing that terrible time. Yeah, when he's doing that, when he's giving a rally speeches. But also, I don't need to exercise.

because exercise is actually bad for you because your body is like a battery and you have only a certain amount of energy in a battery the way you do in your body. Right. Or your body the way you do in a battery. And when that energy runs out, you're dead. You're gone. So why expend extra energy running a triathlon or playing physical sports or lifting weights? You're just hastening yourself to the end.

Right. Well, he's clearly got very good DNA because he eats McDonald's. he eats steak. He doesn't appear to eat any vegetables. I know it's so funny. My cardiologist says if you eat a hamburger more than once a year, you're going to drop dead. And yet I'm looking at the President of the United States housing McDonald's. Yeah. Yeah, it's remarkable. So this is not a great time for him. I mean, you made the point that he's surrounded by yes people, but he's got Marjorie Taylor Green, who was one of his biggest fans is leaving. His polls are bad, really bad, even though he keeps saying they're great.

Grocery prices are high, despite the fact he keeps saying they're low. And there's clearly a buildup of steam about the health premiums, which are going to, in some cases, double or triple for people. Or quadruple or quintuple, in fact. Geez. Okay. So that's even worse. Yeah, we highlighted a couple in Oregon, Eugene, Oregon yesterday, who pay around $400 a month now, their retirees for their health insurance. it's going to go up to $2,400 a month in order for them to pay for their health care. That's unaffordable. Well, it's unaffordable and also it's so foolish politically, I would think,

because this impacts people in every state. It's not just a blue state. Thank you for saying that. It is so confusing to me. I do not understand the basis by which Republicans do not want to give Americans health care. Right. Do not want to find. to fund health care. It doesn't make sense for the economy because just getting people sick

and forcing them onto the health care system becomes a drain on it. But then also, the people who use the Obamacare subsidies, most are in deep red states. We have a map that we show every time we talk about this. And it's kind of become tired, but I want to show it every time because the deepest red places are the places where the subsidy subsidies, you know, the subsidies, are used most. So you see Texas, lots of people on the Obamacare subsidy in Texas, but Republicans in Texas, by and large, don't want to extend it. It doesn't make any sense because your electorate wants it, and you're there to represent your electorate. You're there to make sure that your electorate gets taken care of. And yet this is an arena where you say, no, I'm going to,

I'm going to ignore the needs of my voters, and I'm going to instead prioritize the needs of who. Is it the special interest? What is it? Well, it's, as a consequence of the big, beautiful bill, right? And it's about giving the ultra-rich a tax break. So they get a huge tax break and the way they finance the tax break is by not continuing with the health care subsidies. But again, that is not representing their constituents. I mean, I think that's why Marjorie Taylor-Green says there's going to be a democratic win of the House and the midterms, right? I mean, healthcare has been kryptonite for Republicans. The last time the Republicans were swept out of the majority

was during Donald Trump's first term midway through, and it was because of Obamacare. They tried to repeal Obamacare. They said they had a plan to replace it. They never had a plan to replace it. They were not successful in doing that, and the Democrats ran on that. They ran on Republicans trying to take away your health care,

and they lost. And this looks like it's going to be a repeat of that. I mean, he campaigned saying, oh, I have a concept for health care, but we haven't seen the concept. Well, there was going to be an outline. day. They went from a concept to an outline, but never revealed it after a big GOP revolt, Speaker Mike Johnson calling the White House and saying nobody wants this. That being said,

there is reporting out there from a number of outlets that say that what we're going to see in this next year in Congress are going to be a number of discharge petitions, including ones on health care. From Republicans. What is the discharge petition? It's what happened with the Epstein file. So in the House, you need the the leadership to, or even in the Senate, you need the leadership to bring a bill to the floor. Okay. They've got to put it on the agenda. In order to circumvent that, you can get a majority of House members signing off on a petition to force the bill to the floor.

Okay, which is what happened with the Epstein. Yeah, in order for the Epstein bill to get to the floor, they needed all of the Democrats and I think four or five Republicans. Right. And they got that, and that's why it ultimately went to a vote. So we could be seeing more of those on health care, Democrats getting on board with it, and then are there going to be five Republicans, six Republicans, or even more, signing on to say, no, we think this is important. We need to extend those subsidies. It's not just Marjorie Taylor Green who's worried about it. There are Republicans in Congress who do see the tidal wave coming and do understand that these subsidies without them, people are going to get very upset. Life is already unaffordable. It will become even more unaffordable. acutely so when these subsidies go away in January. Well, I can't imagine any of them will get reelected because it's, and also this is a

payment that people make every single month. And if your healthcare premiums are going up, as you said, with a couple in Oregon that you talk to, 4x, that's literal money out of your account every single month. This isn't like a one-off payment that you kind of cringe for and then, you know, you forget about it for a year. This is every single month. Or you just don't get health care. Or you don't get health care.

And then you're just hoping that for this year, without health care, you're going to be okay. Right. And you wake up at three in the morning every night hoping that you're not going to get ill. And then you're worrying that the worrying is going to cause stress and you're going to get some sort of illness from that. Of course. It's shocking. It's just such a shocking state of affairs. So look, you speak to tons of people.

You speak to Republicans. You speak to Democrats. What are you hearing among the Republicans? about how they manage Trump. It's flattery. Flattery. It's always been flattery. Tell him he's great.

Tell him his poll numbers are wonderful. Tell him he solved and stopped eight wars, that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. It's always that. So when he says out loud, my poll numbers are the best they've ever been, they're absolutely fantastic, when we know that all the recent polls

have had him at his lowest. Does he actually believe they're good? He's always been shown selective polls, you know, during the first campaign. He watches television all the time. He does. So then he's shown like a Rasmussen poll or some other poll that shows the numbers are different or internal polls that are cherry-picked. I mean, he's shown different information.

He sees what we're reporting on television. That's why he calls us fake news. So he literally lives in his own information bubble. And he's not just saying this in a sort of denial way. That's generally how it's tended to be. You know, I don't have a full insight into exactly what's put in front of him on his desk, but that has been the standard operating procedure with Donald Trump now for many years. So he might be getting some bad-looking polls.

And you do see him acknowledge it to a degree because he's talking about affordability more. Right. He's now trying to claim the Democrats made up this word affordability. Nobody even talked about affordability for the Democrats. Democrats brought it up, but no, everything actually is great. So he's trying to will the country out of this feeling they have or the reality they have that prices are up by saying, no, they're not. Everything's wonderful. And he has had that power in the past to impose his own reality on everybody else. He has been successful at it. There are real questions about whether this time is going to be different because people are still very upset. They do feel like their lives have gotten more expensive. and their wages have not matched that. There was a really interesting analysis of the poverty line by an economist, and I'm going to be interviewing him soon.

But he talks about the hangover from COVID. And the reason why everybody felt better about their finances in COVID was because they weren't paying for transportation, they weren't paying for child care, too, the biggest expenses that we experience in daily life. Right. So suddenly, you know, they had an extra $30,000 because they weren't paying for daycare. They had an extra $20,000 because they weren't driving.

You know, they weren't they weren't commuting. And their $80,000 salary, their $120,000 salary felt flush. Flush. And now that we're back after COVID, all of those prices have come back. All those costs have come back. Health care is going up, but also childcare and transportation is back. And with food prices going up, you don't feel flush any longer. You feel angry about.

how everything has gotten more expensive and how you can no longer keep up with it. So you had a moment where you felt good and the taking back of that of that power, that financial power, that ability to save, the ripping it out of your hands really makes you pissed off. Right. And that's why Biden had to deal with it. And Trump is facing the same headwinds. That is interesting. And also people shopped less because you couldn't go out to the shop. I mean, there was just a lot of online shopping. There was a lot of online shopping. But it A lot of online shopping for slippers and robes and sweatpants. Well, that's true.

And also people doing up their homes. So there was a boom in the kind of home industry. I'm on the board of Sonos, and everybody was re-equipping their homes with better sound systems. But you didn't have that incidental shopping in the way that you do now. Now things are back and we're all out and about. And also people weren't spending on travel.

They weren't spending on restaurants. So all of that sort of extra spending. And you see a lot of spending on that now, too. And that's all gone up because food's gone up. Revenge travel. Yeah. Revenge travel. Revenge travel. That's a great term.

Okay, so the other thing that's going on with Trump and that it keeps coming back, despite all his efforts to distract, is the Epstein files. What do you have any sense of what even are the Epstein files? I mean, the Epstein files are all of the investigative material that the FBI and DOJ collected. when they were looking into Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged crimes, there's an idea out there among crazy conspiracy theorists

but also among a lot of regular people who are not totally looped into the conspiracy world that there's got to be more there. This is a guy who was exceedingly wealthy, can't really explain how he got so wealthy, who had a ton of powerful friends, was friends with presidents, was friends with royalty,

was friends with billionaires, the who's who of the 90s in the early 2000s. And at the same time he was friends with all these folks, he had his own private island where he was abusing girls. And everyone seemed to know about it. And he was Donald Trump's best friend for 10 years before they sort of had a falling out over a piece of property in I think 2004-5.

And there's a ton of video of the two of them together, partying, dancing at Mar-a-Lago. He was at Donald Trump's weddings. Like, they were very close. And this idea that everyone kind of understood what Epstein was doing. And some of them may have even taken part. And when he got arrested for it initially and then got that sweetheart deal, well, why did he get a sweetheart deal?

Who did he know? And what did he have? Were there, was he, did he make some sort of backroom deal on information? Or did he have leverage over some big, powerful people that, didn't want to see him fully punish because they were worried about what he might reveal about them. So there are these questions that have been festering now for a long time. And when Donald Trump came into office, he appointed his labor secretary, a man named Alex Acosta, who was the prosecutor in Florida who gave him that sweetheart deal. And then all of a sudden, the Epstein stuff started

to explode again. And the appointment of Alex Acosta came under scrutiny. And Donald Trump ousted him and tried to separate himself from Epstein and did so successfully, so much so that the belief among the Magor Worlds was that Donald Trump was actually the one who exposed Epstein. He was the whistleblower on Epstein and he was going to unravel this disgusting pedophilia ring that was operating in the highest levels of government, the highest levels of society. And Epstein was a part of it and Donald Trump was going to reveal it. that's why we have to elect him again in 2024 because he's finally going to get to the bottom of it. Right. And then he didn't. And then he came in and his DOJ said, yeah, we have the files. We're going to release them. And then didn't. Handed over a bunch of binders full of nothing to a bunch of these conspiracy theorists who had been chomping at the bed. And then there were renewed questions. Why exactly? Are they not revealing the information that they promised?

And does Donald Trump know about this? He must not know about this. He's always been insulated from it, which I find to be fascinating, totally fascinating, because there's all these images of Epstein and Donald Trump together, and he has the power, the unilateral power to release all the information. Right. If he wanted to, yet he's not going to do it. So I think the natural question is what is in there?

Is there more incriminating emails, more embarrassing emails? Are there financial transactions? What? I mean, the girls, by. large have said that they didn't see Donald Trump behave badly. There's one that has that says that she was groped or assaulted by Donald Trump. He's denied this. But if it is really, if there's nothing there about Trump, but if it really is all about the Democrats, why hasn't Donald Trump released it? Well, and why also, and by the way, that was one of the best explanations

of the Epstein files and the whole story of Epstein that I have heard concise. chronological, very clear. What do you make of the fact that Trump's former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, who's now the number two at the Justice Department, personally went down to meet Jeffrey Epstein's former partner in crime who was sentenced, Gillen Maxwell, obviously I'm talking about, who was sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking, and then moved her from her jail in Tallahassee for prison camp in Texas. I struggled to understand what the point of that was.

What was the point of it? What are you getting out of Galeen Maxwell that you haven't already got out of Gleine Maxwell? What do you want? Maybe it's a better question, out of Gleine Maxwell. And they released a transcript. And in it, she exonerates Trump. She says how nice he was and how she never remembers him doing anything. She doesn't even remember him much, really, in relation to Epstein or showing up at the various properties. but that's contradicted by the emails that she's sending to Epstein.

Right. The ones that were released by the estate. Right. The one in 2011 where he says Trump is the dog that hasn't barked and she says, I was thinking about that. And then he says Virginia Jewfrey, it's redacted in the email, but then the Republicans say it was Virginia Jewfrey. Trump spent hours with Virginia at my house. Yeah. And this was pointed out and Todd Blanche responded that, you know, it was George Conway, I think.

You don't really know how to be a prosecutor. You don't know what you're talking about. But, yeah, she was moved to a minimum security or lower security prison, club fed, as they call it. That place where it's white-collar crimes. It's not sex trafficking. You don't go there if you're a sex trafficker. Right. She's in there with Elizabeth Holmes, who was the founder, the Fordman.

The president of behind Theronaut. But you're not, you know, you weren't sex trafficking girls. You weren't raping girls. Yeah, exactly. So why? Why? I mean, I think those are all really big questions. And they do cast just another dark shadow over Donald Trump's involvement and over his reluctance to release the information. Katie, hold on one second. We're just going to take some ads. And I'm back with Katie Turd discussing really, well, it's a master class on Trump's second term. Why do you think he finally said, release the Epstein files?

He was trying to lead the parade. He saw a mob coming after him. And instead of allowing the mob to overtake him, he turned around and led the mob out like he was leading the parade. You had a jail break. What a fantastic analogy. You had a jail. I can't take credit for it. That's a great one.

I heard it a few times from a few people. Right. But it is great. That's why I used it. He saw the mob coming and decided to lead them. Exactly. Fantastic. Yeah. What happened in Congress was you had Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey just being completely headstrong about the Epstein files and standing with the victims and refusing to back down on it, refusing to succumb to the pressure of the president of the United States. Marjorie Taylor Green now is Marjorie Trader Green. Donald Trump is going after Massey, going after his marriage, making fun of him, and Massey's laughing at all.

He called the White House called Lauren Bolbert into the situation room. That was incredible. Why not into like just some office in the West Wing into the situation room in order to pressure her to try to take her name off the discharge petition? He kept calling Nancy Mace. The president of the United States was playing phone tag with Nancy Mace, who by the way wants to be governor of South Carolina. He couldn't get her on the phone to get her to take her name off the discharge petition. So when the... Imagine being Nancy Mace

and having Donald Trump call you and what's she doing, what she's saying to her assistant, oh, I'm not here, tell him I'm not here. Tell him you can't find me. Tell me you don't know where I am. Exactly. What a nightmare. Can you imagine that dodging a phone call

from the president of the United States? Well, I can if it's Donald Trump. Yeah, but if you're a Republican and you need him, especially if you need him to endorse you if you want to run for governor in South Carolina, that takes some real guts. So when the Arizona rep got finally seated after her special election, Rahalva.

The discharge petition has enough votes to go to the floor. And I had Don Bacon on. I asked him, is this thing going to pass? And he said, absolutely. There's going to be a jailbreak of Republicans, maybe a hundred Republicans who are going to vote for this. A jail break. Because that's what it feels like being, well, being imprisoned by Donald Trump's personality.

A jailbreak of Republicans coming out and voting yes, because they don't, they understand their constituents and they don't want to be the ones saying no to releasing files about a pedophile. Right. And then when, when they, when they was obvious, it was going to be a flood of Republicans. Donald Trump over the weekend suddenly reversed himself after all of this pressure, after months of calling anybody who wanted the informational loser and saying he didn't want their support anyway, he suddenly says, no, I think we should all. We should all see the files. And I encourage all the Republicans to get behind this. And so not only did you have all but one of the Republicans in the House, you had every single Republican senator as well saying yes to this.

He had no choice. Right. It slightly reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld, which I don't know if you remember where George pretends that he has a house in the Hamptons. And all his friends know it's not true. And so he hires a car and he says, right, we're going out to my house in the And all along the drive out there, you're trying to figure out how is he going to get out of this? Because at the end, we know that he doesn't have a house. And there's very much a feeling of that with Donald Trump here that we know he's in them. We've seen that he's in them. Elon Musk said that he was in them.

He tweeted that he was in them when they were having their spat. And he then deleted the tweet. So it's just very curious to know what we're going to find. And also odd for Cash Patel, who's the head of the FBI and his number two, Dan Bongino, who before they joined the FBI, were constantly stirring the conspiracy of the Epstein files, which now doesn't even feel like a conspiracy anymore. No, and that's true. We had reporting yesterday from Kandelan, Carol Enig, and I believe Laura Broan Lopez,

about Cash Patel's future and how the president was thinking of replacing him and doing so soon. Right. So let's talk about Cash Patel because obviously one of the things he used to do before he came in, he was a T-shirt salesman. But he was also very active on X constantly going after Christopher Ray, who was then. He's a former FBI. No, he's a former DOJ prosecutor. Right, right. But going after him for misuse of the government jet, which you have to take at a certain point because it's about your own security. He's now come under enormous pressure himself because he's got a girlfriend who's a country. singer and the government jet appears to be ferrying her. And she's got a SWAT team protecting

her, by the way, as well, which he is concerned isn't doing good enough job, right? I know that he says that she gets threats and that's why he justifies a SWAT team protecting her, which is extraordinary and not normal for a girlfriend to get, for a girlfriend of the FBI director. Listen, during the first administration, when we saw a turnover in the cabinet, it often was tied to misuse of government funds using a private plane that took a few of the cabinet members down the first time. So it wouldn't be surprising if Cash Patel's misuse of funds, you know, using that Jad, giving her a SWAT team escort, if that's what did him in, there's a history there of Donald Trump saying, you can't, this is this bounty is not for you. This is, this is,

this bounty is for me, not for you. You can't, you can't use it the way that I use it. You don't have that same authority. That being said, after we reported that, the White House put out a, or Caroline Levitt claims she showed the reporting to the president. The president laughed, called it fake, and then happened to have Cash Patel in the Oval Office and said, let's take a photo to show them that everything's great. And so there's a photo of them that she released to try to push back on the reporting. But Candelanian said that, even amid that after the reporting came out, he got a number of text from his sources within the FBI saying that it was true and that the rumblings were there and they were getting louder and perhaps his position was under threat and would come to an end

soon. But, you know, when Donald Trump feels like he's being pressured to do something or when he feels like it's been, you know, released, the information that he wants to get somebody out has been released, he'll backtrack and support the person in order to prove that the reports were false. Right, and that he doesn't want to do what the press is pushing him into doing, right? And yet at the same time, you know that a presidential hand around the shoulder offering support is worth nothing. Nothing. I mean, remember, he would say, I've got full confidence. Yeah, the words you never want to hear about yourself, someone's saying, oh, I have full confidence in them because you're like, oh, the end is near. Yeah, the end is near.

It's just a weird signaling. So the other thing that has laid Donald Trump a bit low, and you saw him sort of slumping off. from poor Melania in her wonderful high heels kind of trying to stay upright on the lawn as they go to Marine Force One. Espigils were made for, by the way. Exactly. Although I suddenly thought, oh, that's why they've ripped up Jackie Kennedy's rose lawn and paved it. So Melania can trot around in her very high heels, which she does admirably, actually. I can't do that any longer. Anyway, the point I was getting to was Lindsay Halligan's failure to nail James Coe.

And Tish James. Yeah. I explored this yesterday on my show. And whether the failures in court, including the Comey James thing, will damage him in Congress. This idea that he's invincible, this infallibility, and this inevitability that Donald Trump has, that he's all powerful, that he has full control over every aspect of government and is marching us toward authoritarianism. That for the first nine months of the administration has, scared people and lots of folks have gotten in line. You look at all the business leaders who have showed up at the White House bearing gifts,

but the way in which Republicans haven't said a peep about losing their authorities, like the power of the purse or the power to tariff, and the fear that's been pulsing through DOJ. Go against Donald Trump, you're going to get fired. These embarrassing moments in court, these embarrassing failures in court, these embarrassing failures in court, as evidenced by the Lindsay Halligan thing, doesn't it just kind of show that they're a bit bumbling and that they really don't have control? And that they are incompetent. They're incompetent.

And they can't get people to really, they can say they want somebody prosecuted. They can say that they're a crook. They can say that they're disgusting and should be in jail. But you need to present evidence in a court of law. You need to follow procedure in a court of law. And when you can't get somebody who is qualified enough to do the basics, that does kind of prove a measure of weakness. Well, she has fantastic hair.

I don't think that Donald Trump is going to call Lindsay Halligan, who was a runner-up in Miss Colorado, ugly or little, or any of the, or piggy. He's definitely not going to call her piggy. But she turned out to be pretty damn incompetent in the courtroom. Yeah. I mean, she didn't know how to get an indictment. And so bad, in fact, that they may never be able to bring the Comey case again because the judge dismissed it without prejudice.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think that means that you're allowed to bring the case again. But in the case of Comey, there's a footnote in the ruling that says you can't just bring a indictment against somebody to stop the statute of limitations. And it was about to run out on Coimmy. So I think there was five days. And so now because the case has gone ahead, the five days, they've run out the clock. They were trying to, and there's usually a grace period if somebody gets thrown out. But because the indictment was, I guess, not real, not valid, he's saying you've lost your time.

It's up, it's over. And there are now questions about whether the government would be successful if they did try to bring the Comey case again. They can bring the James case again. But if they lose the ability to bring the Comey case again because Lindsay Halligan messed up, because she didn't understand how indictments work. But that's not even what they ruled on. They ruled on her not being legally appointed. Because Donald Trump put somebody into that position

who was not allowed to be in that position. And was technically the second interim attorney, which shouldn't have happened. It's all very legally complicated, but essentially he's got to nominate somebody and that nomination has to get through the Senate. It's got to get through in Virginia a couple of Democratic senators who are not just going to rubber stamp somebody with no qualifications

or somebody who seems like a hatchetman hatchet man for Donald Trump. Or it's got to be appointed by, I think it's judges. Again, it's like, it's very legally complicated. Regardless, she was not legal. She couldn't even bring the indictment if she wanted to. Somebody else would have needed to sign their name. But again, they couldn't get anybody else in the office to sign their name to this indictment because they didn't think that the crimes Comey was accused of were actually prosecutable.

They didn't believe that they could get a conviction. And when you are a lawyer in DOJ, if you don't believe you can get a conviction, because the evidence is not there, you don't bring the case. Right. And it seems to me, you know, we talk a lot about Donald Trump being a brilliant television producer. And this is the sort of episode where he is forcing his will onto the DOJ. and in a television show that would be very dramatic. But in real life, there are consequences. It doesn't make sense. That's not how it works.

And it's been thrown out. So actually, it's a good example of the institution holding. We're constantly told, oh, the institutions are folding. There's no gatekeepers. There's no guardrails. But actually, that's exactly what happened. But don't hold your breath because if it goes to the Supreme Court, who knows? Who knows?

Who knows? So final question, because I feel like we've been very thorough on everything that's going on right now, is has there been, and certainly it feels as if there has, but I know you're watching it much more closely than I am, more grift in this second term. Oh, I took notes, Joanna. Oh, you took notes on this. There's been a lot of alleged grift. I'll be careful and I'll say alleged grift. Alleged grift. Okay, so look, Donald Trump has crypto behind him right now. The family has made $800 million from crypto sales in the first half of this year. Wow.

This is a man that's embraced crypto in a way no president has before. Well, I'm not sure any, I'm not sure Biden would have understood what crypto was. I don't know if Donald Trump understands what crypto is either. But he understands it enough to my 800 million. Do you remember the Virginia Golf Course auction earlier in the term? I do not. So Donald Trump held or his family. held an auction for holders of his meme coin. Again, meme coin. Yeah. It's a thing that's digital

and you can buy it. It's like whatever. And it's sounding like an NFT. I'm hearing echoes of NFT. The highest bidder, highest bidders would get tickets to this event at his Virginia golf course where he was going to make an appearance. The highest of highest bidders would get access to the president. You know, I think that in past presidents, we might lose our minds over that. Right. I mean, I think we'd lost our minds over that with the Trump Hotel during the first term and talked about the emoluments clause and gave everybody a crash course in a very

archaic term from the 1700s that nobody had thought about for 250 years. But not now. Now this is a two-day news story and then it goes away. The winners, by the way, went to the golf course. I think he made $148 million. dollars off this. Winners went to the golf course and were let down by the access that they got to the president. So it has Trump University, the stench of Trump University all over it.

Of course it does. There's the ballroom. There's the ballroom. $300 million raised for this ballroom, ripping down the East Wing and building this ostentatious gold and marble ballroom at the White House. And have the plans even been certified and approved? I don't think he cares. certified and approved?

Well, do you think he's actually going to build something there? Yes. Well, he has to. There's a hole in the property. I know there's a hole there, but, I mean, have we seen the beginnings of any building? I think they're still in the demolition stage, but I'd have to go in and see what we can find. And people at the Treasury were told not to take pictures. And you only get a bit of a smush view from the positions that reporters can see at the White House.

So I'd have to go see what the updated images are. But again, $300 million, it's raised by private donors. But a lot of these private donors have business with the federal government or have business with Donald Trump or want to get close to them. There are crypto billionaires. They're sports teams owners. They're financiers. Tech bros, the tobacco companies, media companies, Comcast, Amazon, Apple, meta, Google.

All these people who have business or have business. the federal government needs to sanction. Right. So it's pay to play. It's pay to play. There's that. The pardons, you know, the pardoned the finance guy. There's the Qatari plane, $400 million, which, you know, it's going to cost a ton of money in order to make safe for a president of the United States to fly in.

I think, God, by the way, that's 100 times more, 100 times more than every foreign gift given to the United States since 2001. Wow. A hundred times more. Yeah, he got a gold crown from the leader of South Korea, which felt very on the nose. And then there's, I think what is most egregious and makes no sense politically, Donald Trump talking, especially he did this during the shutdown when people were in breadlines, when they were at food pantries, when they were not getting their paychecks. He talked about how he deserved and might sue his DOJ for $230 million as recompense or restitution

for the investigations that Jack Smith launched against him. And, by the way, the Senate snuck in during the shutdown bill to end the government shutdown, a little provision that would allow senators to also sue the DOJ for having their phone records seized legally, by the way, by Jack Smith during his investigations, which just smacks of self-dealing. It potentially could be hundreds of million dollars that the DOJ, which, by the the way categorically believes that the 2020 election was stolen. That's what you have to believe to be at the head of the DOJ. And so categorically believes that these investigations were a hoax. Right. I have missed that detail about the senators wanting compensation. They would be in charge of saying yes or no to

paying Donald Trump and these senators and that money, Joanna, comes from us. It comes from taxpayers. I'm just thinking of how much tax I pay and I do not want it to go to Donald Trump's compensation fund. Yeah. So it's hand in the till. But they can have hundreds of millions of dollars. Katie, let's take a break for our sponsors. And I'm back with Katie Tur.

In theory, Katie, the Democrats should be romping home with this. In theory. In theory, do you feel they are on top of all this in the way that you've just laid it out? I think you see glimmers of it. I think they have been better at marshalling a response lately. on health care in particular. They were very good on getting on message during the shutdown. And even though they, you know, were the ones that signed on to ending the shutdown without the subsidies,

when you look at the polling, broadly Americans are blaming Republicans for the shutdown and broadly Americans are blaming Republicans for affordability issues, which include, or Trump, which include health care. So they've been better at it lately. They're still trying to figure out exactly how to go after Donald Trump in terms of the term oligarchy. I know Bernie Sanders wants to use it all the time. AOC uses it. Mom Donnie has been very successful in just hammering affordability, affordability, affordability.

But I don't know. I think there's still quite a bit of time. And who knows? Democrats have a tendency to chase the bouncing ball or the next sparkly thing. And Donald Trump, part of his success is that he flood the. the zone. Right. And just keeps the narrative moving forward. I mean, I'd forgotten about him trying to pay himself $250 million. Well, a quarter of a billion dollars for compensation for something that everybody's forgotten. Yeah, exactly. So when you have that much information

coming at you, a fire hose of information coming at you every single day, it can be hard to remember what to focus on. What to focus on. Right, except that the healthcare premiums doubling, trebling, quadrupling, should give them the perfect opportunity to head into the midterms. You would think with a real subject that's impacting real people and will already be nine months in by that point. It kicks in in January. There are lessons to learn from, there are a few lessons of Democrats, I think, should learn from the last election going into this one. And one of them is that voters didn't see them as caring about them broadly.

They thought Democrats were more focused on things like pronouns, small cultural issues that didn't necessarily affect them. And because of that, they weren't focused on affordability. They weren't focused on quality of life. They weren't focused on the needs of voters. That's what they said. That's what voters said in focus groups. That's what voters said in exit polls. It's what voters said about the Democratic Party.

They would say they're weak and they're out of touch. So Democrats need to focus on on things people care about right now, which is their grocery prices, if they're going to take the polls, and less on the cultural issues. Do they take that message? Because what the Democrats have always had a hard time doing

is separating out the Twitter class, the loud voices on Twitter, the cultural class from everybody else. Believing that Twitter is, and the bubble that you might live in is a real conversation. is where the country is broadly. Well, and I thought it was very interesting to see the report that came out this last week that said that a large percentage of political commentary going on on social media platforms was in fact from foreign agents.

Oh, yeah. That's interesting. How much of that is real and how much of it is not. Also, you know, I have Yaya Rosenberg coming on today to talk about that. And he says, don't underestimate it. Don't just say because these accounts are from overseas that the rise in anti-Semitism, for instance, is not real here, that it's all being fed and fostered by just bad actors. These accounts are being followed. They're being retweeted.

This information, this sentiment is being disseminated broadly. And his argument is that it is a real, despite where they are located, what they're tapping into is real. But I think what happens often is that they see small bonfires on social media. started by Americans and then immediately throw fuel on it to make it a larger conversation. They're trying to divide us. They're trying to disrupt us. Yeah. Yeah.

And they're being incredibly effective. Yeah, I think so. I think you're right about that. Although sometimes I wonder if we just all got offline and started talking to people again, whether we would feel those divisions as acutely as we do. Gallup had an interesting poll that showed broadly Americans agree on some core democratic values. Very broadly. 80% of Americans believe violence is.

not the answer to solving your political issues. Right. Well, and I think you see, whenever there's a crisis in America, I'm always sort of mindful of how neighbors immediately pitch in. You know, you're flooded. I mean, there was a great report on NPR this morning about the impacts of the floods in Texas and how the neighbors had all just pulled together to help each other. And actually, one of the guys were saying, actually, we're a better off as a community now than we were before, because we all talk to each other. Similarly, with the fires in L.A., neighbors helping neighbors, in a way, and yet we're living at a point where we think everything is in crisis. We all hate each other, and I'm sure that's driven by foreign access.

I'm sure. Well, Katie, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? Are you cooking? I have 23 people coming to my house. 23 people. 20 people. Okay. And are you cooking, or is Tony cooking?

I did my cooking already. I made 50 Spanacopoeita triangles. I'm Greek, so. Okay, that's impressive. And then Tony and some other of the dads and the grandmas are cooking the rest. Fantastic. I'm going to have a glass of wine and lay up on the couch. And chill.

So you're not broadcasting on Thanksgiving. No. Gosh, I think it's the first time in 15 years that I'm not working Thanksgiving. Well, you deserve the rest, enjoy the rest, and then please get at it. And then quick question about MS now. Does it feel different that you're no longer working for MSNBC, you're working for MS? I love it. I'm happy.

I'm really. I feel there's a real community spirit to the company now. we're all in the same space in our new location. It's nice. The studios are great. I've seen people. 30 Rock is a wonderful place, but everyone feels very siloed because it's a really old building and there's just pockets of newsrooms or news gatherings.

This, in this new iteration, we are all together. I've seen people I haven't seen in 10 years when there is a breaking news story. Like say the judge dismisses the Comey case, you can hear everybody talking about it in the newsroom, which I love. I miss that about a newsroom. So I feel great about it. I feel like we're breaking news. I like the new graphics package.

I'm surprised at how easy MS now rolls off the tongue. I was worried about that. But I'm happy. All right. Well, we can take that sentiment and roll into Thanksgiving with it. It's going to be great. Okay. Katie Tour.

Thank you very much. Joanne, I love being here with you. Good. Well, I want you to come back. Well, it's very clear that Katie Tour pays extraordinary attention to what's going on. That felt like a deep, dive into Donald Trump's first 10 months. And we've still got two more months to go before he calls it a year. Anyway, happy Thanksgiving. We'll be back tomorrow with Michael Wolf.

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