The Daily Beast Podcast - Michael Wolff: The Truth about Trump and Melania

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Joanna Coles sits down with author Michael Wolff, the man whose bestsellers including "Fire & Fury" and "All or Nothing" are the definitive guide to Donald Trump's presidencies. Wolff lifts the lid on what's really going on in Trump's marriage to Melania and what the report that she's only been at the White House 14 times should have said. He reveals why Trump is crazy about his $400 million free plane from the Qataris. And he predicts exactly what is going to happen to Trump for the next three years. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, I'm Joanna Coles, Chief Content Officer of The Daily Beast, and you are listening to The Daily Beast podcast. If you're used to the new abnormal, stick around because today's guest is one of the most maddeningly insightful chroniclers of American power, and one of the few writers alive who still makes Washington squirm. Michael Wolfe is with us. You probably know him as the author of Fire and Fury, the book that blew the lid off Trump's West Wing dysfunction. And most recently, all or nothing, his sharp unnerving dispatch covering the run-up to Trump's second term. But long before the bestsellers, Michael was already in the room where the secrets were whispered. He has the uncanny ability to get people, even presidents, to tell him things they absolutely shouldn't tell him. Michael also has a history with The Daily Beast. In fact,

he and the Beast broke a certain story just days before. the last election. Remember the Epstein tapes? The ones where the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein friend to many a rich and powerful man was caught on camera discussing Donald Trump, as he said, one of his best friends. Yes, those tapes. We ran them. That was us. That was Michael. So whether you believe Trump is a savior, a symptom or a catastrophe, Michael Wolf has become the go-to writer for the shadow version of that reality. The one whispered in the White House corners and media green rooms, the one people pretend they're not reading, but absolutely are.

He's provocative, he's polarising, and unlike most pundits, he's actually in conversation with the people in power, especially the ones who pretend to loathe him. Michael, you have taken to Instagram recently, which is a change of cadence for you. How are you enjoying the change of pace? Oh, I hate it. Social media, you know, I was dragged kicking and screaming into this,

and I would have much preferred it was still 20 years ago. But alas, it is not. But I have to give all the credit to this to my wife, Victoria, who is the one who has dragged me kicking and screaming. And also you're getting a lot of props for Victoria's decor. A lot of the comments I'm reading, about how wonderful and springy your house. Look, you always have flowers, you've got great furniture. I seem to be irrelevant to this. I'm the foreground to her background, but I am really the

background to her foreground. It is an interesting time and you were spotted, or your last post, you were sitting on the stoop of your lovely house in the Hamptons with your son, Jack, talking about the Qatar plane that is coming to Trump. Why is everybody so extremely? excited about it. I mean, it's clear why everybody's so excited about it. But talk about why the plane has a specific significance for Donald Trump. Yeah. So the real question is why is Donald Trump so excited about it? Right. And he is more excited than anyone else. And it's, I mean, there's a sort of thing among, among billionaires that the thing they get, one of the things they all get most excited about is their airplane. And they all get most agitated about because

these airplanes always break. And on the campaign trail, this was this was one of the, of the, of the persistent themes. The Trump plane, Trump Force One, was always breaking down. And it would, it would go out of commission for, for a month here, a month there, and he would go, he, he would freak. He would, as they say, lose his shit. And they would say this. They would call me up and say, God, he's losing his shit. And that's because the plane was old? Yeah. I mean, all, yeah, the plane, the plane was old, of course. And also, these planes always break down. These are complicated things. And I mean, you've sat many times in an airport waiting for your flight. Well, what happened? The plane broke down. And this would happen repeatedly. There was one time the windshield

cracked. And then there was another time the shoot deployed. It was actually, actually, someone made a mistake and deployed the shoot. That person was promptly fired. But the functional point is that his planes are pieces of Trump branding. So, in other words, he could at any point just at least get another plane, bring in another plane and then we go off. We charter a plane. But those planes don't say Donald Trump on them. Well, and indeed, he got into trouble because one of them had belonged to Jeffrey Epstein when he had to lease the plane on the last campaign trail, right? His plane broke down. Yes, and actually that plane, they slapped on the decal. So he was happy until he found out that it was Jeffrey Epstein's plane. And in matter of fact, that was a rocky ride.

And then he started to scream, I'm going to die on Jeffrey Epstein's plane. Now he's going to be traveling on a plane that the Qataris are giving him, which is this a substance? for Air Force One, we know there's a new Air Force One being built by Boeing. I think they were going to charge $5 billion for it, and he's bargained that price down. But now it looks like he's getting a free one. Yes, long delays on that. So he's desperate for a new plane. So he's going to take the Qatari plane. And then apparently we'll be able to take the Qatari plane with him after he finishes the presidency.

So can we just talk about the obvious corruption? implications here, but surely accepting an Air Force one from another country leaves you open to all sorts of security issues, not least bugging from a foreign government. Surely. I mean, it doesn't seem to matter. I mean, it doesn't seem to matter that he will be bugged. It doesn't mean it seemed to matter that he's clearly being bribed. It doesn't, nothing seems to matter. And there was a back and forth apparently today about him saying who wouldn't take up a billion dollar plane. So let's talk about some of the people that might be on the plane with him. Laura Luma, who's one of his advisors, has said she doesn't approve of him taking the plane.

Where is she in the pecking order right now? You know, there is no pecking order per se. There are people who come in and come out largely without plan. I mean, largely, it's people who slip in and then people who are pushed out. And she, she slips in from time to time. One of Trump's people, a woman who's very close to him and does a lot of the, the appointments, is this woman Natalie Harp, who is another story. The human printer. Yes. And she's a friend of Laura Loomer, so she gets her in there. And then, and then Susie Wiles, who is the chief of staff, pushes Laura Lumer out. So this is all.

all this kind of constant, I hesitate to even call it back and forth because that makes it seem more structured than it is. It's just a low level of chaos in which people can come in, grab his ear, flatter him, and then are pushed out, and then someone else comes in to undo what the other person has done, or at least try to undo. I thought Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, was supposed to have all this under control? I mean, the thing that they were messaging about Susie Wiles that she was bringing order to this chaos, is that not the case? Yeah, that's not the case at all. I mean, she is better than other people at, have been at controlling the lower level details. I mean, the problems with his chief of staff

in the past is that they want to be chiefs of staff, which is to say they want to basically be the person in charge of the West Wing, the C-O, if you will. So that would be like John Kelly from his first term, from Trump's first term. Yeah, Ryan's Prebis, John Kelly, I mean, each of those, and there were four of them, they tried to exert control over the executive branch and to some degree exert control over the president of the United States, or at least regulate what he did. or at least rationalize, at least give him some strategy. And Susie Wiles' virtue for him is that she doesn't try to do any of that.

She just tends to the stuff that he's not interested in, essentially getting the lower-level trains to run on time. She's the kind of the doorkeeper. Okay, so she's the doorkeeper. And you talk to people in the White House all the time. What are they saying to you about how the first 110 days have gone? There are two sides of the coin here. I mean, the first 110 days have gone brilliantly in one respect. I mean, he's dominated everything.

He is the only story. He is mostly happy about how things have gone, which would be the key measure for most people in the White House. The press has been overwhelmed by the march of events. Having said that, they are all equally on the edge of their seats about what can happen here. I mean, they're not stupid people. They know, what are the dangers here? And I've had this specific conversation with people who I think in the White House are pretty clear-eyed.

and their response is, you know, recession, a NATO-Russian confrontation, a breakdown in basic government services. You know, I mean, the substantial things that are, that loom on the horizon and that could ultimately bite them and defeat them. Michael, hold that thought for one moment. We're just going to quickly cut to these messages. We're back with the author. Michael Wolfe. Can we just talk about his craving of attention? You say that he's very happy after the first 110 days, that he's utterly dominated pretty much everything. What's striking is also that he seems to have dominated at a global level, which is different to his first term. In his first time,

he clearly dominated everything media-wise and the public conversation. But now it feels like he's gone on to a global level. Like if this is seen as, season two. It's season to the world. Well, yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure if that's, if that's true. I mean, it, or, or to the extent it is true, it basically comes from the tariff business. I mean, this, this almost operatic decision to impose these, these, these tariffs at a, at a, at a level, at an unimaginable level. And that, that was like, well, we've got everybody. attention, and of course we have. You know, at the same time, and this was, I mean, the headlines yesterday and today are basically, you know, having to do with China and a rollback of tariffs. So you have this. But it's all a created argument, right? He imposes a ridiculous tariff. There's a sort of phony back and forth, and now he appears to have saved the day. Exactly. So you get a

headline going in and a headline going out. He dominates the stories both ways. And now suddenly, I mean, the subtext of the stories and the subtext of Wall Street's response is he's a hero. He's a hero for removing the tariffs that he imposed. So we have this, again, this is he he dominates the story going up, going down, every aspect of the story he owns. It's just extraordinary. And the people that you say who are along the, cite him in the White House, who you say are not stupid people by any means. Are they trying to safeguard things like making sure that government services don't go down? Oh, I think that they understand they have limited capacity. Yes, they might. They might if they could, but they really can. They exist to service him, to facilitate whatever he wants, to keep him happy. I mean, It all flows from, it all flows top down. So there's very little. I mean, there's some we want, I mean, some of the crazies are trying to force their agenda. Yes, but they clear-eyed people are basically passive.

And is the goal that they're just trying to make him happy so he doesn't do even crazier things? Or it's very hard to understand the motivation of people who are around him who know that he's. he might do things like, to use your phrase, make a decision that leads to a Russian NATO confrontation. Is there nothing they can do or they're just walking on eggshells trying to keep him? Yeah, I'd say walking on eggshells. I mean, I think that if there's, to the limited extent that there is something that they can do and limited, you know, they would, they might well do it. But largely, they accept the reality, the Donald Trump reality. The Donald Trump reality is that it's Donald Trump, you can't pretend it is anything else but that. And the Donald Trump thing, this counter reality or bubble reality or anomalous moment in history exists because of Donald Trump,

because he gets out, because he actually wins. He loses two, but then he comes back and wins. And we're along for the ride, not we as in as in, as in, the people around him in the White House. And it's a kind of shrub. You know, what can we do? It's Donald Trump's world we just live in. Right. It really does feel like that at the moment. To what extent is it significant that Ivanka, his daughter, and Melania, his wife, appeared to want to have nothing to do with him at this point? Well, I would say, and, you know, his son-in-law, Jared, and, you know, I mean, just to go to Jared, Jared, was the most successful person, And I would say the only successful person in the first Trump White House.

And if I were in the White House now, I would kind of say, and realizing that Jared is nowhere to be seeing, I would say, what does he know that I don't know? And I'm sure there are many things. He knows that nobody else knows. And likewise, Ivanka and certainly Melania. I mean, the Melania story is, you know, is head-smacking. It is the most obvious. It is right there in front of our faces. And no one can quite, you know, find the language to express it.

Well, the story appears to be that she's just not there, right? She turns up for things like the Easter egg roll. She turned up for the inauguration. There's clearly no physical affection between them. Is that what you mean? Or does she have a whole separate life with someone else? Let's just proceed from the fact that they clearly are, they clearly do not in any way inhabit a marriage as we define marriage. And I think maybe we can more

specifically say they live separate lives. They are separated. The president of the United States and the First Lady are separated. That's a huge headline. No one will say it as in that way. Let's reduce it to what we understand, which is here's a marriage and the and the, the, the, the, the, the, The principles are estranged. They don't speak to each other. They're separated. The marriage is crumbling. The New York Times did a piece the other day, but it was all kind of coy about this.

Oh, you know, Melania is in you. I don't even know what the message was. I think the message was about how many times she'd been to the White House or how many days she'd been there in the first 100 days, right? And it turned out to be 14. Yes, that was the fact basis. But they didn't go and say, this is obviously a marriage in trouble. It is a marriage that is we, the American public has been sold a bill of goods here that, that, you know, Donald Trump and his glamorous wife. But that runs entirely counter to all of the facts here, including the fact that they don't spend any time together.

And the fact that people at the White House say that when she goes there, she's treated as if she is a visitor. In the White House, this is the way it was at Mar-Lago. it's the way it was in the first White House. Do you think people care? Why is it significant? Why does it matter? Just think about how it would, how it would read for any other presidential couple. If Jill Biden suddenly walked out.

If the Obama had to press. And that actually, the Michelle Obama story, that story now is a lurks all over the the un... Right, it's all over the internet. We can't yet say it, but we're on the verge. We're on the edge of our seats ready to say it. When you could say it, obviously, about the Trumps. All right, let's talk about Elon. Elon has suddenly disappeared. He was everywhere and now he's gone. He's been voted off the island. What is the White House saying about that? What are you hearing about that? You know, let me just make the broader point. Everyone will be

voted off the island. Everyone, every person who is close to Trump will not be close to him. Everyone will end up humiliated, indicted, fired. This is all 100%. Everybody, actually, in the first in the first term, except Jared. Is there a feeling that Elon did the right thing, came in with his chainsaw, that Doge was a net positive? From within the White House, the regard was that always that Elon was on his own island. He was, he didn't have really anything to do with the White House, didn't have anything to do with the people there. And he existed exclusively on Trump's sufferance, which is in a sense true, of course, about about, about everyone, except for the fact that nobody else had any input here. I mean, so everybody was just waiting.

And Elon felt, or at least it felt from the outside. side point of view that Elon had more power than many of the others, simply because he was the richest man in the world, and Trump responds to that. Yeah, I think Trump liked the fact for a while that Elon got the bad headlines. So he was a useful person for Trump. And then they were too bad. And then so it's, you know, get rid of him. In other words, here's the Elon chapter and here's the Doge chapter. And within a very short period of time, we will say, what?

Remember that? Remember Doge? Right. It's extraordinary how fast it's come and gone and the Sturman rang with it. So does Donald Trump make it through the next four years? Well, it's very possible he could keel over at any moment. But, I mean, barring that, I mean, I'll tell you what's going to happen. I will tell you the future.

Tell me. Tell me the future. Right back. So he will lose the midterbs. They've got, what, three seats in Congress. Remember, fundamentally, Donald Trump is self-destructive. So all of the kinds of things he's doing now will result in him losing, losing, certainly losing the House of Representatives. Investigations will begin impeachment, all of that. And he will become then the victim again of a role he is perfectly comfortable in and no doubt enjoys. There will be a proxy, his proxy, who will run for, who will be the Republican nominee. That person will lose because he will undermine them because he doesn't want them to win.

He will go back to Mar-a-Lago and he will say it's a stolen election and he will yet be the head of the Republican Party. And we will begin again, that whole Moralago phase of the Republicans rushing to, rushing to Pau Beach to get his endorsement. and nothing will change because nothing will ever change is in Donald Trump's playbook. Is there anyone, are you hearing any rumblings from within the Republican Party of any kind of challenge to his authority? You didn't really ask that question, did you? I'm just hopeful. I'm hopeful that someone somewhere is bubbling. I mean, you hear the signal chat with J.D. Vance.

saying he doesn't agree with what Trump is planning to do. And you think, oh, there is some independent thought going on. No, no, there's just J.D. Vance. He doesn't exist only as a Donald Trump proxy. And he will be, as I say, he will ultimately be undermined as they all are, as anyone in a Republican Party is. How big do you think the loss will be in the midterms? I think it will be impressive.

Well, Michael, we're going to have you back on to see if your predictions come true. But there is no one I enjoy talking to more about the Donald Trump phenomenon. And your point about him doing what he always does, which is he self-destructs. He has cycles of winning and he has cycles of losing. Yeah, and remember, because he wins, when he does win, it's also because of his self-destructive nature, because you can't take your eyes off of him because he is, whatever. he is more compelling than any other politician in the United States. He's more compelling than any other actor too or any other person who's in public life, right?

I mean, an extraordinary, an extraordinary creature. I've got one final question for you. Is he on a weight loss drug? He is. Yes. Which, do we know which one? Yeah, I think he's on a Zimpik. I mean, that's what the people on the Moralago terrorists say. and they monitor his intake.

Excellent. All right, Michael, you've answered a question that, again, I thought was happening in plain sight, that you can see that he's losing weight and he's wearing different suits. It was provoked by him wearing a blue suit to the Pope's funeral. Anyway, always a delight to talk to you. Thank you very much. And we will have you back on, certainly before the midterms,

to see what else will happen with him. Cool. And good luck with your insult. Where can everybody find you on Instagram? You know, I'm always a little vague on where even Instagram exists, but I think it's Michael Wolf, NYC. Join us on Thursday for the next podcast with Susan Domino's, the author of Family Dynamics, in which she explores sibling rivalries and sibling relationships and why actually birth order is not as much of a prediction of a child's success as we have hitherto been led to believe. and we'll be joined with the author and the actor from Hacks currently, Dan Bukotinsky, who rate the book, Does This Baby, Make Me Look Straight?

See you on Thursday. Until then, stay well. And be Beast. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover

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