The Daily Beast Podcast - The Real Reason Trump Talks Like an Idiot: Author

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code beast at https://www.oneskin.co/beast #oneskinpod Kurt Andersen joins Joanna Coles to trace Donald Trump’s rise from Spy magazine punchline to the ultimate show-business president, arguing that Trump didn’t invent the con so much as perfect a distinctly American tradition stretching back to P.T. Barnum’s “clever humbug,” where attention matters more than truth and audiences happily play along. Andersen dissects Trump’s maximalist language—everything the “greatest,” the “best,” the “like nobody’s ever seen”—and warns that the same improvisational instincts that fueled his celebrity now shape foreign policy, including claims of negotiations with Iran that didn’t exist and a presidency run like an endless next episode. They close on Epstein, conspiracies, and the blurry line between con and belief—asking whether Trump the salesman now believes his own pitch, and what it means when politics becomes a spectacle with global stakes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

P.T. Barnum, obviously, the greatest show on Earth, which made me start thinking about the language that Trump uses. Everything is maximalist. Like nobody's ever seen before, the greatest, the best ever. Does he believe this? I don't think he does in the end, but I think effective salesmen and con men do kind of sort of have to believe in the moment. Just like actors have to, in their method way, believe they're really playing this person.

It's a similar thing. Welcome to The Daily Beast podcast. I'm Joanna Coles and I'm joined by author, journalist and I think of him as the Trump soothsayer, Kurt Anderson. You may also remember him as a co-founder of Spy Magazine and the longtime presenter of Studio 360 on NPR. But before we jump into the show, I'm just going to ask you to share this episode with a friend. we are almost at 600,000 subscribers, which is just incredible. And we're dying to actually hit that number. And then our bigger goal is a million. But if you want to support independent media, please do and subscribe on our subscribe button.

This is like a public radio fundraiser. It's really not. It's really not. On today's show, we're going to talk about Trump saying that he was having negotiations with Iran. And then Iran saying, yeah, no, we're not. We're going to talk about his strange lexicon and the weird way everything is just hyperbole all the time. And I know you have lots of thoughts on that. I thought we should also referring to the title of one of your books I've been rereading recently,

evil geniuses about how the elite basically captured the economy for themselves. Is Jared Kushner an evil genius? We'll come to that. But we have a fantastic video that really. Well, I use the term soothsayer that really analyzes Trump's remarkable abilities and projects, in fact, what goes on to happen. What if Donald Trump were to get his own Saturday morning cartoon show? Trump, Trump, Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, he's the Trump, don't forget Trumpy do. So good. You sent me that video and I just couldn't stop laughing.

Where does it come from? It comes from the first spy magazine, primetime NBC special called How to Be Famous in 1990, that we got this literally newcomer that nobody knew. We said, oh, okay, named Jerry Seinfeld to host. But NBC said, hey, this guy is good. Anyway, he hosted, he gave that introduction to it. And it was a distilled version of spy magazine. And Donald Trump had from literally the first issue of spy.

been one of our regular characters. First issue was the ten most embarrassing New Yorkers. And he was one of them. We didn't number them. So he could have been one. He could have been one. Who could have been more embarrassing than Donald Trump, even back then? And the great thing in that, one of the quotes we had to show what an, you know, bully,

bluster guy, he, ridiculous fellow he was, as he is, was, he said, you know, he said, you It was the time when we were negotiating, when Ronald Reagan was trying to negotiate with Gorbachev, a nuclear arms deal. He said, I could do that in an hour and a half. I can learn everything I need to know about missiles, he said in the first issue, an hour and a half. So there we are, and he's still firing missiles and thinks it's going to be great. Or now he's firing missiles, I guess I should say. Yeah, he really is. You know, three million dollar missiles, a lot of them, as we speak, in fact.

And this morning he said, we are, we're negotiating with Iran, and it's all going swimmingly. And then the Iranians came out and said, yeah, we're not actually negotiating at all. And then he's like, well, we're going to talk to them this week. And I guess it's going to be on the phone because they can't really get out. You're like, what are you talking about? You have no idea what you're talking about. He has ad-libbed us into this war. Could you have prophesized that, is that the right word prophesized?

I think it's the right word. Propheesied, perhaps. Propheesied that he would ad libby us into war, having sort of adlipped his way into the presidency. Well, it is the next episode, and he's all about every day as a new episode of the Donald Trump show. You know, because Venezuela went so well, relatively speaking, and no disaster befell it,

and it had next to no military to fight back, and nobody liked Maduro, so they gave him up. And then, you know, so that went fine. So, this is easy. Well, I didn't ever anybody ever do that. I can do this, too. And, of course, he has no clue about the Persian Empire or the Iranian history or that they put up with eight years of horrific war with Iraq in the 1980s and became more entrenched.

He knew nothing. So he said, oh, I'll just drop a lot of bombs. And they'll, as he said, cry uncle. He's an idiot. He's always been stupid, and his stupidity has been an under-remarked upon, under-heralded part of his, along with the lying, along with the mental disorders. The stupidity is important. Well, maybe it hasn't quite mattered as much, although it's incredible that he got elected twice. It is, of course, one of the incredible things that none of us, you know, as we used to be called, reality-based people, can get our heads around. But which is one of the reasons, not one of the reasons, actually, because I wrote this book, Fantasyland, before he was elected. But it was a history of America's weakness for being conned and kind of half-enjoyment of it.

and just because of the incredible religious history of Americans, which is really part of the national character, I can believe what I want because it's the truth and it feels right, all that stuff, which is not uniquely American, but it is definingly American. And we, like many things, America has always been the world leader in that kind of weak-mindedness and slippery sense of the sense of the world.

difference between reality and fiction. So I loved Fantasyland when it came out. It gives such an interesting perspective on America and frankly whether or not a character like Donald Trump could actually exist in another continent. I mean whether or not he could exist in Europe. One of the characters you talk about in the book is P.T. Barnum. And by happenstance, I was in Bridgeport over the weekend where P.T. Barn became mayor. There's a big statue to him, which I drove passed. But he's almost like the forefather for Donald Trump. I mean, his first freak show was 161-year-old woman, obviously not true, who was the nurse to George Washington, obviously not true. And yet people lined up to see this thing which they knew wasn't true. And the sort of sophisticated

nature of P.T. Barnum having the audience in on the con and yet still paying to see her. Absolutely. And he did that again and again and again. And he did normal entertainment, little plays and stuff. He created this incredibly successful museum in Lower Manhattan called Barnum's American Museum, which had all this stuff and more. It was just fun of any kind. And he said, you know, he was still in the middle of it. And he said, and it was this great epiphany, obviously, that the good nature with which, it was something like, the good nature with which Americans accept a clever humbug. A clever humbug, yeah, it's such a good, such a good analysis.

And so he didn't hide it. He didn't pretend it was true. He said, how do you know it's not? It was basically his response to people. He said, well, if you can't prove it's not, and people enjoy it, then that's entertainment. Right. And his understanding, which you say in the book, that actually it's a tension that matters, not whether or not it's true, but the fact that you get people lining up for it. And he was able to do, and he did this with Jenny Lind, he was able to create the sense of a sensation before you'd even experienced it, which is such an interesting, smart thing to do. And also what Mark Benet went on to do, as you've also talked about, with his reality shows. And obviously he, he, he, went from Survivor to the Apprentice and gave us all Donald Trump.

And then to making docu dramas, I guess you could call them, if you believe the docu part, about Jesus Christ, because he is this super Christian character along with his wife, Roma Downey. And so, again, they're Brits, or he is, I don't know what she is exactly, but. Is she Canadian? Some Commonwealth thing. I think you should take credit for her. I sense you're distancing yourself from the two of them.

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That's 15% off oneskin.com forward slash beast. And be sure to use code beast at checkout. And after you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. So please support our show and independent media by telling them we sent you. The combination of sanctimonious Christians and incredibly successful hockstery, And I had him on my radio show, and he was talking about how, well, he was talking about how the survivor, one of its proofs and one of its moral lessons, he told me, was that people don't like liars. You could be sneaky and everything, but they don't like the contestants who are actual liars. And if you pretend to be something, then people will never forgive you, which, of course, in this day and age, one thing.

thinks, well, what about the man you made? The man whose career you made, you rocked back for nothing, Donald Trump in The Apprentice, of course, that's him to a tea. And I said, and he was going on and on about this and about Donald and how great he was and wonderful. I said, well, wait a minute, I said, he's the most un-Jesus Christ-like person I can imagine. And he was, and his wife were just like, that's harsh. You know, he gives money away. He's got this nice Scottish wife, or rather mother. And so it's just it's such an American story, this combination of religiosity, I guess, sincere, and this kind of huckstress. And that's part of the story of America and how Trump came to be, even though he is irreligious and a non-believer, I think, pretty clearly, but his most

devoted supporters are evangelical Christians. Because once you get a country in which so much belief in any old thing you want and hear and disbelief in things that are true, anything goes. And that wasn't always the case. It was always tended to be the case in America a little bit, but then it got out of control the last 60 years. And along with the Internet gave us Donald Trump. Right. And also conspiracy theories, and I want to come on to Epstein as well. Because at the moment, we've got the huckster of all hucksters in the world.

White House and then the world is consumed by the biggest conspiracy theory. I think it's fair to say America's ever seen. I mean, maybe the assassination of JFK comes close, but really the Epstein conspiracy is sort of remarkable. But you've been covering, or I mean, you really spent some time observing Donald Trump up close in the 80s and 90s. How has he changed? What change do you see, if any. Other than getting all, he was, he could keep, as they say, the shit in the bag better when he was younger. And his, his lying was still plain. Oh, everything he is today, he was that. He was a bully. He was a liar. He was a bluster. He, he, he, all of it was absolutely true. I'm the best. I'm the greatest. My mistress says, she had the best sex in the world.

whatever it was, you know, was there as soon as I was aware of him. When my partner and spy came back from an interview that he'd done doing a profile of Trump for GQ magazine and just told me stories about what a, what an ass this guy was that he just spent days with. And also how short his fingers were. Right. And then you've termed their short fingered vulgarian. Right.

into his epithet that we used many, many, many scores of time. Yeah, which was very funny. So one of the things you talk about in fantasy land, which I'd love to go into in a bit more depth, is just that sense of what does it say about America that they do elect him twice? And notwithstanding the catastrophic debate for Joe Biden and his very visible decline,

what does it? say that we knew what we were getting and America still voted for him. Well, you know, why they voted for him the first time and why or why a close, almost not a minority voted for him, but he won the first time and a small majority voted for him or a small, I guess, plurality, whatever it is, whatever, however he won the second time. It does say a lot and it's partly because people, Americans, I think, and not just Americans, hate normal politicians, the normal politician who is inauthentic and hedging and, you know, we see them every day on certainly Republicans in Congress to an extreme of people who, you know,

don't tell the truth and pretend to be people they aren't and aren't authentic and all those things about politicians that people just hate. This guy came along was unlike any politician ever. Right. So not any person ever. Well, I don't know. Yes, I guess, but certainly unlike a politician. A friend of mine in show business appropriately said to me early on before he got the nomination, no, he's going to win, he's going to win the presidency because people hate politicians. And he's entertaining. And that's the thing.

And he understood that. His biographer, Tim O'Brien, said, or Trump told him, he said, when I was even a teenager, I knew I was going to go into real estate. I was going to go into real estate, but I'm going to go into show business too. I thought about it, but I'm going to combine them. And it'll be the best of both worlds. It'll be real estate, but it'll be show business. Well, it'll be politics, but it'll be show business.

Right. And he didn't come out of nothing, right? I mean, he couldn't have, he joked about, or a joke, no. He talked about, teased about running for president in 1988, in 1992, 96. Again and again, again, and it was a joke. And Spy Magazine made fun of it back in 88 when we said, he has 4% support. Maybe it's time to make him present, we said. But, you know, the time came when it was possible.

And I think in his feral, brilliant way, he sensed that, that America had changed sufficiently that a guy like him in reality TV age and all the rest maybe had a shot. And if nothing else, it would be good for the brand. Right. Which is what he really thought. Yeah, because I think he was surprised the first time he actually got elected, that he'd managed to pull it up. But again, it was the end of evolution, devolution, whatever it is.

But, you know, as soon as TV came along, and then Jack Kennedy was an amazing performer, right, at TV in a way that Nixon wasn't, and arguably one of the reasons he won in 1960. Ronald Reagan, a movie star. He was a real movie star, and then a TV star, and used all of that to be the president. I'm the president. And it was good at that. And then Bill Clinton in his way, playing sacks and wearing, you know, wearing shades. And wearing shades and saying, you know, telling an MTV audience that he wore boxer is not briefs.

And, you know, all this stuff. What? This guy's running for president? Then I really had my epiphany was when I, in 1998, when he got in trouble for having sex with his intern, Monica Kloinski in the White House. And his approval ratings went up. Right. Because it was suddenly the second season, as I said in this piece that I wrote then, of the Clinton show, and now it's exciting. This is new.

This is interesting. And I realized that for some years, through all those various presidents, politics and especially presidential politics had become kind of a category of show business. Because, again, and that's going back to the 19th century. In America, and this is, was certainly then and remains, if not unique, about America, defining about America, everything becomes show business in one way or another. You know, hospitality becomes, restaurants become themed, all this stuff that we take for granted now. That wasn't the case. Restaurants were restaurants.

They weren't, you know, Joe Blow from outer space, you know, chicken barn or whatever. And religion, too, in America, the thing that makes it. it different, you know, itinerant preachers out on the frontier was that they were entertainers where there was nothing else to see or watch. And so here we are. And there was, so there's a history of Donald Trump. And there was, and there was obviously this group of people who were willing and remain eager to be members of this cult. And, I mean, cults survive because they have people around them. Obviously, they survived. because they have followers, but they also often survive because they have a group of people around them,

the sort of disciples, if you like, literally taking the example from the Bible. Who are the worst disciples around Trump, do you think? I mean, there are quite a lot of contenders, but if you were to pull out the worst and the biggest enablers, who do you think they are? Well, you see, there's disciples who are true believers. For instance, I think Marjorie Taylor Green was a true believer. believer and why she's turned on him because she's a true believer and my Messiah has lied to me and I've lost the faith. Now, is Steve Bannon a disciple? No, there are no, I mean,

we shouldn't get bound up in the comparison to Jesus Christ and his disciples, but those disciples believed, I believe. Right. J.D. Vance is not a disciple. People are, wow, this is a man. Wow, this is a man. what he's done and look at what he's done. This is a new kind of Republican, a new kind of politician. All those things are true, and he has changed politics. But disciple, I mean, the worst people around him, I mean, it depends on the year and the obvious that we could all name like Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller is kind of a disciple. I guess he comes close to being a freakish true believer in his version of Donald Trump. He comes close. Whereas, you know,

Jady Vance and Pete Hegseth and most of them are, you know, higher on the cynicism axis, I think, than the credulous true believer. Right, and it was, they're opportunistic. No one else is going to give them a cabinet job. Well, no, indeed. Well, we hope. And no one would have given Christy, a cabinet job. No one would have given Tulsa Cabber.

No one would have given Bobby Kennedy. All of them. Right, Bobby Kennedy, your friend who sold you, Coker. at Harvard. People loved it when you came on to discuss that. And the peculiar thing where he calls you for people who didn't hear it, you bought, well, you tell the story, you just tell the story. For the 10th time on this program. But it's such a good story, especially the straw bit. Just give an abbreviated version of it, because it's so fabulous for those who haven't heard it. I bought cocaine one time in my life, a freshman year with my freshman roommate.

We went to, we walked over at Bobby's dorm. We tried the Coke. When he was gone, getting his stash, we looked in his address book and saw the Pope's phone number that we wrote down. Did you ever call him, by the way? I think we did. I don't think we got through. But I know it's several popes ago, of course. Anyway, so we did the Coke. We bought the gram from him and went away.

It turns out, I realized when he called me, that I had taken his little straw, this little inch of straw or half inch of straw, whatever it is. that he gave us to sample his cocaine. And he was really pissed. And he said, come back. You took my straw, man. It's full of crystals. It's full of crystals. And so, okay, I'll bring it back.

And he was really angry. And he just, like, took it out of my hand, fingers, and slammed the door. And he wanted it because he thought the crystals were sort of organic and in some way healthy, right? His nasal juices combining with the cocaine that created the crystal. I'll leave you to that. disgusting recitation. But yes, indeed, exactly. And he thought there was some scientific thing.

He was growing special, you know, personal cocaine in his straw that I had destroyed. In fact, I hadn't added this detail until now. I was like, whoa, maybe we did. Like, we were a crush her or something. I mean, he ruined his crystal farm. And so we put like a spit or so. We put it like a little bit of the cocaine, it's a little bit of, I don't know, mucus. I don't know what we put in it, but to like try to reform the little crystal before it.

So he wouldn't be upset. Oh, my God. That's what boys did back then. So disgusting. Well, maybe you were the, the, maybe that's how the brainworm came to be in there. Oh, who knows? Well, as he said recently, when he's saying he doesn't mind germs, I did cocaine off of toilet seats a lot.

Well, you know, yeah, I guess I guess he probably did. Unlike Jeffrey Epstein, who I want to come to us in a moment, who. was a germaphobe but managed to get STDs all the time. It was constantly, as we see from the tranche of emails, getting gonorrhea. And yet he was a germaphobe. Well, Trump was famously a germaphrop. And he, one of the reasons he didn't want to run for president

is all the hand-shaking. Right, and yet he didn't use a condom according to Stormy Daniels. I'm like this, it's very strange. All I'm saying is men have a way of compartmentalizing, but it's very peculiar. Anyway, P.T. Barnum, obviously, the greatest show on Earth, which made me start thinking about the language that Trump uses. And he does have this sort of strange thing where everything is maximalist. Everything is the best. He's the only

person that knows. And I wrote it. I wrote it. I wrote down some of them. Joanna. I do. Like nobody's ever seen before, the likes of which we've never seen, the greatest, the best ever. I'm trying to give him, at least I'm giving him the benefit of an English accent, but is adenoidal, which I'm hoping is diminishing the value of a British accent. But this sense in which he knows more than anybody else, does he believe this? Do you think he believes it, the nature of a kind of huckster like this? Do they have to believe it in the moment when they're selling it? That is the operative question with all of them, all of the great ones.

Do they have to believe it? You know, I don't think he does in the end. I think his deep animating feature as a person is the most horrible, unpleasant, miserable, wretched cynicism about human behavior and that there are no good people. There are just suckers kind of thing. So does he know? But I think, you know, as you say, I think effective salesmen and salespeople and con men, a more extreme version of salespeople, do kind of sort of have to believe it in the moment, just like actors have to, you know, in their method way, believe they're really this, playing this person. It's a similar thing.

But, you know, it's hard to know from second to second where he believes. And to me, he gets scarier when you sense he really does think this. He really does think he can just do this. And when, you know, he really, like, did he, you know, he famously said it was reported at the time when he lost the election in 2020, yeah, why this guy beat me? He said that privately, but never admitted it publicly. And I wonder, it's scary to me, and it may be a part of his. mental decline that he believes this stuff, he believes his bullshit more and more.

I mean, he's a bullshitter. I mean, and just a constant one as well as a liar, and those are slightly distinct things. But I, you know, I think it's a good bet that he believes more of it than he did, you know, in the past. Right. And also it's more acute for us, especially if you look what he's trying to do. to do with the Save America Act, which we're recording this on a Monday afternoon, and it appears that it's never going to make it through the House. But just the sense in which it's come this far

that he might actually impact elections by saying you have to turn up with an idea. And it's not going to happen. And it, you know, John Toon's not going to get rid of the filibuster. But nevertheless, it's sort of brinkmanship. Well, it is. And his whole, I mean, Early on, I remember in his first term, somebody comparing him to the horrible little six-year-old who just keeps pushing his glass closer and closer to the edge of the table, closer and closer until one of his parents smack him or it drops off or whatever. He's that kind of just pushing it. See how far I can push it.

Who says I can't do this? Who says I can't do this? And again, he's shown us the fragility of our system, which is so based on norms rather than laws and regulations. Right. Nobody says I can't do this. And then the Supreme Court says, yeah, nobody, in fact, you can do anything. And you can't be prosecuted.

So, you know, and, but do, does he, did he really think, does he really think he's the smartest guy on Earth and all the thing, all the maximalist things he says about himself all the time? Well, you wonder and you worry because he really thought that in days he would have victory in Iran. And that's just, I mean, the ignorance and stupidity of that belief is that stupidity, is it ignorance and I conflate them? Is it or is it some kind of, you know, believing your own headlines of your anointed by Jesus. Speaking of Jesus, he said, I think today, he said about the Save Act, Voter Registration Act, and the ICE thing, which he's now combined, you have to, you know, you have to. Right, he wants funding for ICE to get a moving. He's trying to make another big, beautiful

bill where all these are lashed together. He said, do it for Jesus. He actually said that today, which is weird for him. That's a new version. So new. I heard your great talk with Michael Wolf the other day about the Christness of his coalition, certainly. But him come out of his own mouth. That was, wow, that was a new Hexethian, Vanceian version of Christianity. And maybe he does believe more, again, as he gets closer to the end.

There was a period last year where he was talking about going to heaven or is he to get into heaven a lot. And repeatedly, it was clearly a little for a while, a hobby horse of his. So who knows? Maybe, you know, he sees enough pictures online of, you know, AI created pictures of him with God and him with Jesus and him, all these things. You know, who knows where the line between delusion and the con ends. There was a famous, the great, in my view, one of the great Charleston, American Charleston's, and a highly peculiarly American guy was Joseph Smith who invented Mormonism based on all kinds of remarkable claims that he made.

And there's a great quote from him, though, that makes me make one respect him, which is, I'm only slightly paraphrasing, is, if I didn't, if I weren't me and I didn't see what was going on, I wouldn't believe this stuff I'm saying either. It's just an insane world. Yeah, but it's leading the church. He's leading the Mormon. I mean, and ran for president. Right.

And amazing to me that Mitt Romney of all people who seems like the ultimate rationalist would be a Mormon. Well, and Mormon, I am a big fan of Mormons today, actually. I mean, they are the least bad of the Republicans. They really are. As a group, I mean, Jeff. Senator Jeff Flake, forced out because he was too honest and good. Mitt Romney basically forced out because he was too rationalist and honest. No, exactly.

They are good people. Well, then Governor Cox, too, who was in, you know, who runs Utah and tried to calm everything after Charlie Kirk. Right. And John Huntsman, the previous governor from Utah, great guy, moderate Republican, ran for president briefly. So. So who could, but it's just still so hard to get your head around a religion where someone said, where the founder said that. Where the Messiah says that?

No, I know. Well, but it's back to what we were talking about before where is this true, is it not true? Is it, did George Washington's 165-year-old former enslaved nursemaid really go on tour? P.D. Barnum or not? Well, probably not. But like, yeah, it's fun to believe it. She's an old woman. That's for sure. I know. And is that a sense of being in on the joke, on the con, of wanting to be part of a cultural moment, which is, I think, what Trump has created and what Barnum created too, right, that you're part of something. True. It's tribal. Well, and politics, not only were politicians boring to people and useless, you know, grifters and liars and hedgers.

And hypocrites, I think. And hypocrites, exactly. All the reasons people hate them. Also, politicians, politics was boring to most people. And they never liked it. And they don't like it. And they paid no attention to it. Which is another reason Trump gets elected because most people don't pay attention

to what all this means. They just know, oh, my gas prices are high or, oh, you know, crimes worse or better, or whatever it is. So the fact that it can be this show, this, wow, look what he did today. What's he going to do tomorrow for, you know, 10 years now, 11, almost 11 years now. It's, it's, and you think, again, like people get sick of shows after a while, well, you know. That's one reason, I think. I mean, there's the pathological thing of seeing what he can get away with.

Oh, I can do this. Can I do this? Can I do this? There's also just the having to, you know, jump the shark every so often in order to make people talk, make people watch. And if we're in season 10 or season 11, just given the years he's been doing it, also not only do you have to jump the shark, but it's gone global, right? It's now global. We're at war. That might be nuclear.

I mean, it's hard to it. The stakes are so high. And of course, in entertainment value, it doesn't matter, except it really matters if you're going to, A, which has already done, disrupt the global energy supply chain, but also antagonize a country that's got whatever it's got, however many tons of enriched uranium. In the case of Iran, yeah. And apparently, according to the reporting, is in the last, with this war, effectively ended up antagonizing his buddies. in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. No, no, no, no, this is not good for us, Mr. a reckless friend of ours.

Mr. Person, who we've given a $400 million new Air Force One. Yes. Or invested several billion in your son-in-law's business. Speaking of the son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the great negotiator of both the end to the Ukraine war, which has happened, hasn't? And the end of the Iranian war. He's, I worked with, he bought a business that I was co-founder of a media business called

The Very Shortlist. And I wrote about that once. And he was, he was, he's much, much more intelligent and normie-ish than his father-in-law. But he's, he's also, you know, my experience, my experience, of him as a business person who is basically untrustworthy. I see how he fits into that family. So how is he untrustworthy? Oh, it just keeps stringing along about these little things.

It's a little deal that, no, I really want to do it. Oh, we'll have to look into this. Oh, no, this problem has come up. Just, you know, an annoying. inability to close this little, little deal, actually for buying this media daily newsletter, very short list, that was owned and published by Mr. Barry Diller and the IAC company. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that.

Okay, so you're taking me back to history. I didn't know. And what happened to it? We sold it to, or IAC sold it to the Observer Company, and they, you know, published it for a while. while, along with the New York Observer, put it out of business. So, interesting. So is Jared one of the evil geniuses? And let me stipulate that I call this book Evil Geniuses.

Some of them are not geniuses at all. And certainly Donald Trump is not, nor is he an evil genius. He's used by the evil geniuses and then has to come back to bite them in their various asses in various ways. But, you know, he is, he certainly is part of, yes, in the most broad. sense. I wouldn't have ever included Jared Kushner in that book. I'm talking about the coax and the and the bigger characters. And Elon Musk would be in it now. A hundred percent. Elon Musk would be in it. And it's it's the people who in the 1970s decided we got to we got to take control of this

economy and this political economy because it's getting basically I mean equality is inequality has gotten too low. It's too fair and Basically, they decided we want more. We want more. And let's set up a counterestablishment, a right-wing counter-establishment. Let's set up the federal society. Let's set up all these foundations. Let's do all that they did starting in the mid-70s, the Heritage Foundation, all of it,

in order to basically hijack the economy. And then, oh, Obama Reagan, this guy, really? Okay, we'll try. And, you know, they had their, you know, a predecessor to Trump. really, and a guy who could mesmerize the rabble, if you will, and my parents and lots of people who liked Ronald Reagan. I don't know. I never hated Ronald Reagan.

He was, he was, you know, but he was used by and willingly used by because he was a genuine conservative, the evil geniuses who wanted lower taxes and no regulation, and that was it, and that was their obsession, and still it. and still is. And those are the people, the donor class, we now call them, and some of them are the Epstein class. Well, I was going to ask you, I mean, Jeffrey Epstein fits perfectly into evil genius, doesn't he? He does.

And again, and yes, he does indeed. And I barely known about him at the time. But he was. But he's an ancillary player. I mean, he's a guy making tons of money, oddly, for himself. But he was never, for instance, very politically involved or engaged, and unlike the true evil geniuses who basically... Well, probably if he'd been politically engaged, his nefarious underworld business would have come to light. I think that's good.

I've never thought of that. You're absolutely right. It would have been in somebody's interest to expose it. Right. I mean, can you imagine the opposition research if you're... if you're thinking about running against Jeff, or if he's thinking about running. But he was certainly friendly.

I mean, you think of him being friendly with Kathy Rumler, who was Obama's chief counsel, so America's lawyer. I mean, he certainly had, I mean, Peter Mandelson, who was business minister in Britain. So he certainly had his fingers in political pots. As, you know, in this system, like any system, really, where political power and financial power are intertwined in all kinds of ways. And he was living in the largest house in Manhattan

and having Noam Chomsky, Mr. Socialist and Woody Allen, and the liberal lead over. So, of course, he wasn't going to become a fierce libertarian right-winger. And also back then, for much of his life, 90s and aughts, politics were not what they became. Right, it wasn't as entertained. And presidents were quite celebrities either in the same way that Obama's, they became a huge celebrity.

Correct. No, absolutely. Or the very different way in which this guy is a celebrity. No, and again, in the way that, and Obama's a good example, he was still dignified and intelligence and all the wonderful things that Barack Obama was. but he was wow he was a star right and you knew that or i knew that immediately and and and swooned for it like you know crazy immediately even knowing like wow i'm just i have a crush on this guy um and and and but but you know and beautiful looking and performed well and and all you know he he was he was

kind of the Jack Kennedy reincarnation. Right. It's so interesting. So I mean fantasy land which I've said I mean it's such an interesting book about the psyche of America. What does the Epstein conspiracy tell us about it? And I'm very curious because you know you have great clarity in the way you write about it and you mentioned earlier, you're a reality-based person. And yet the fun about conspiracies is that every

now and then they start, you know, they start eating themselves in from the edges. And I wondered if you'd actually changed your mind about whether or not Epstein had died by suicide or if he'd been murdered. I've never had a firm conviction about that. My view of basic view of conspiracy theories is that There are some conspiracies, but that it is that are true. And unfortunately, the proliferation of nutty conspiracy theories, where that becomes 96% of conspiracy theories, is unfortunate because, like, it basically people don't see the, no, that's a real one.

And the thing about conspiracy theories and appealing conspiracy ideas is that they often, the good ones, the successful ones, have a germ of some kind of truth, right? They're not nothing. They're not, you know, and so, you know, whatever people, I mean, and Epstein had more than a germ, obviously. And Epstein is the thing about the Epstein thing, whatever, it's, however, you know, conscious how many of those men were of the underage.

pedophilic sex trafficking ring in which they were adjacent, if not engaged. It was, it was, you know, it was, it was happening. It happened for a long time, and it was covered up. And to various degrees of, oh, I'm just going to look the other way. So. All the coded language in emails of like Snow White. Yeah. I mean, weird that once you read them knowing what you know about him is hard to read any other way.

She was naughty and all that stuff. Right, right. No, it was disgusting, of course. But, no, you... New shipments have come in. I think that was one that Peter Oteer said, referred to drugs. You know, yeah. So it was, it's real.

And again, as somebody who, you know, I, for instance, still, I've read a lot, not as much as many people have about the Kennedy assassination. I still don't think, you know, Lyndon Johnson or the CIA killed him. I don't. But it's clear there was a cover-up by the CIA to cover their ass, and they didn't want the world to know that they had met with Lee Harvey Oswald and all this. There was a lot they didn't want the world to know. I don't believe it was that they arranged for the assassination.

The Epstein one seems. to me, and increasingly, as now we study it, now instead of just QAnon being the proponents of it, has more more truth than I knew or I was willing to admit. And I, you know, I still think it's, my problem with conspiracies, too, just from my basic understanding of the world, is that as soon as more than three or four or six, or whatever small number of people know about anything, it's really hard to keep it a secret if it's a big, awful secret,

like killing the president or even killing a guy in federal prison. Right. I know. You would think, I always think that, too, that at some point you can't possibly keep this secret that Jeffrey Epstein was killed. And yet, the more you read about it,

the more strange. Well, there are just lots of unanswered questions. Well, no, there are. And it's, the thing about conspiracy theories, too, I write fiction, right? And so it's, it always struck me as mostly bad, like bad fiction. Like where you're, right, right. This is not plausible.

Okay, fine, it's fun and it's entertaining. But come on. It strikes me as they bear some resemblance, as does in a way, the whole Christian religious theology, eschatology history is, is a magnificent, you know, the most magnificent conspiracy. theory of a kind with the Antichrist and Armageddon and God and his son and all of it. It's like, well, and it all fits together, right? It all, you know, it all fits together in a too neat of a kind of way as conspiracy theories tend to do for my taste because so much in the world, as we both know, is inexplicable and not obvious and it looks like this connects to here because she met him.

and maybe, but, you know, but like, you're, the conspiracy-mindedness that leads one to see everything is meaningful, meaningful, that's not a coincidence. That's the problem, is being willing to see them when they exist, but being skeptical until, you know, you become less skeptical. As I admit, I've become less skeptical in the case. of Jeffrey Epstein, and not just because it's bad for Trump, because of the various fishy facts, like the prison guards, you know, reporting about searching for Googling Jeffrey Epstein. Right, five minutes before it was announced.

And days after she got 10 grand. Right, in her bank account, the weird regular payments in her bank account. Those kinds of things. I mean, those, you know, I mean, That's not just random connecting this dot to that dot. That looks suspicious to me. So, yeah. I mean, and again, this is not, I mean, God knows, you know, people in all cultures and all

nations and all places have believed all kinds of untrue conspiracies and have a weakness for that. That is not uniquely American. But compared to, you know, the Netherlands or something. I know. And this one has been all consuming. and it sucked up the president to. Well, Kurt Anderson, it's fantastic to have you on the Daily Beast podcast.

Promise me you'll come back as the Epstein conspiracy continues to unfold. We've got another three million papers to go, I think. Yeah, and it sounds like, I mean, you've become a regular scholar of this thing. You've read, well, no, I hear you talking about. I'm a scholar of Jeffrey X's. I hear you talking about the emails. Like, wow, she knows so much. So between your scholar, your Epstein scholarship and your ability to do a Melania Trump

impersonation that makes me. me laugh every time I heard it. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Kurt. Thank you for coming to studio. Thank you. So many favorite parts of that conversation for me. I love the, I love the understanding of P.T. Barnum is the forefather for Donald Trump and his ability to understand that actually all that matters in the end is attention. And as long as you have someone's attention, no one else has it. And that's what you want. Anyway, leave us a comment about your favourite part of the conversation. We'll be back tomorrow with Inside Trump's head. Michael Wolfe and I will be at it again in those dark cavernous spaces. And big thanks to Kurt Anderson.

And don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. And don't forget, as our first lady would have us say, Be Beast. 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. Thanks to our production team, Rogerino Ryan Murray Rachel Passer Heather Pissarro Neil Rosenhaus