The Daily Beast Podcast - The Real Story Behind Elon And Trump

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Joanna Coles sits down with Michael Wolff, the best-selling biographer of Donald Trump who has become his definitive chronicler. Wolff reveals Trump's the real reason for the president's pick-me-energy hair. He tells how Trump has been making an extraordinary racially charged observation to West Wing visitors about modern college students—and Wolff reacts to Trump going after him for saying that the war on Harvard was a revenge attack because 18-year-old Donald didn't get in. Wolff reveals what's really being said inside the president's inner circle about the Lucifer-like fall of Elon Musk and explains what it really means about the prospects for anyone who put themselves in Trump's orbit. And he resurfaces Stormy Daniels' very telling anecdote about who blew up Trump's phone when the two were engaged in their tryst—which of course, Trump still denies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Joanna Cole, Chief Content Officer of The Daily Beast, and you are either listening to, watching, possibly dancing, to fencing, jousting to The Daily Beast podcast. This week we're going to get straight into it because we are joined by your favourite guest and mine, the obscenely best-selling Michael Wolfe. And we're going to go deep into the mind of Donald Trump, our favourite place.

And who knows what we will find? So Michael, I noticed a video of Donald Trump talking about how hot he was. And also, obviously, during the campaign, he remarked that he thought he was much hotter than Carmelah. What do you think, as someone who studied him intensely for the last 10 years, what do you think Donald Trump sees when he looks at himself in the mirror? Well, he sees Donald Trump.

So, I mean, he sees this creation, which I think he's, I suppose, rightly very proud of. it is the creation of our time. The whole thing, what you see is by design. He looks that way because he thinks that's an effective way to look. There's a moment in the Stormy Daniels book. I mean, there are several kind of key moments there. In her book on her whole situation. Yes, you know, including when they're lying together,

he gets a phone call and it's from Hillary Clinton. I'm going to stop. there because I have not read Stormy Daniels' book. What is the conversation like with Hillary? It's a flattery session. All Donald Trump's conversations are flattery sessions. And that says, Hillary, you're wonderful. We're so lucky that we have you, that kind of thing. And this was before they were running against each other. Yes, and as Stormy is lying beside him. Gripping, absolutely gripping. But then there's this another point, and I have never heard this before. you cannot mention Donald Trump's hair.

Nobody does. It's like Melania. We don't talk about that. It's so glaring and so in front of you. But, you know, don't go there. But she goes there. She says, what's with the hair? And what does he say?

And he said, well, you know, I once had it. It was really great hair. I started to get older. And then I started to have to color it and I had to fashion it so that it still looked like I had a lot of hair. But then he said, it worked. People notice this. It stands out. They look at me. Right. And it's true. And, you know,

one of one of the things during the, during the campaign, that comparison between Biden, who looked just, just great, Biden is arguably more physically healthy than Donald Trump. He takes care of himself. Let's put aside what's going on in his head, but put aside what's going on in the head of each of them. Biden is probably a healthier guy, but he looks, I mean, he looks gray. He's washed. He's washed out. You know, his hair is what's left of it is gray. The skin is gray. The suits are gray. Well, he has cancer now, too. This was before. And Trump would would point out, look at him. Nobody even sees him. Everybody notices me, which is absolutely true. And side by side, you know, who do you notice? you notice this guy, this appalling-looking guy, who is Donald Trump,

and not just the relatively normal old-man-looking guy that Biden was. Last time you were on, we talked about the then-running joke, which was among his advisors, why has Trump gone after Harvard, and the joke inside the White House that you kept being told was because Barron got rejected. You then pointed out, in fact, Trump himself, applied to Harvard and didn't get in, which stimulated either Stephen Chung, his spokesperson, who we also discussed, or Donald Trump himself to Truth Social. And I'm going to read the Truth Social. Please. Because it came out. But this came from the president's account, and you can tell me

whether or not you thought the president wrote it or whether or not Stephen Chung wrote it. Michael Wolf, a third-rate reporter, Capps, who is laughed at even by the scandals of the fake news. is recently stated that the only reason I'm beating up on Harvard is because I applied there and I didn't get in. That story is totally false, all caps. I never applied to Harvard. I graduated from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania.

He is upset because his book about me was a total bomb, all caps. Nobody wanted it because his reporting in inverted commas and reputation is so bad. What was your response? You know, well, thank you was my always response to... The world's most famous man, all his attention on you. I would claim that as something special, except that that attention moves on very quickly.

But it is interesting that he is supposed to be running the country, and yet this was the thing that got under his skin. Well, I would look at it in a broader context. He's supposed to be running the country, obviously, yes. but what he is also doing is running truth social. So this is very important to him. It's very important because he is making money off of truth social. And he is the only one on truth social. So this is a social network of one. It is entirely powered by Donald Trump.

He has to fill the space. He has to create traffic and drama. Yeah. You know, so it's, and it was probably like, oh, what are we? Oh, Michael Wolf. And did you think that he wrote it or did Stephen Chung write? Well, Stephen Chung probably would not. It would have been Dan Scavino or Natalie Harp.

Those are the social media people. And so it probably would have been a combination. Or they may have suggested, you know, there's that Michael Wolf thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's good. His book is a bomb. Say his book is a bomb. And then he'll repeat bomb about 20 times. And of course your book debuted in the New York Times Best Service.

Yeah, it was. All your books have been obscenely best telling. All right. So what is the joke going around the White House this week among his advisors? It's actually almost his joke. You know, and I'm not even sure people take it, are reporting it as a joke so much as kind of like, okay. He goes around saying, since he issued this announcement,

trying to ban Chinese students from American universities, He's gone around saying, I remember a time. Don't you remember a time when you can go to an American college and not see any Asians? When I went to Wharton, there were no Asians. Where do they all come from? What that says, I mean, let's deconstruct that. Please deconstruct it. I think you could say he's a racist, but that seems way too obvious here. Yeah, he's making a deeper point. And also, going back to his favorite era, right? You said on our last podcast, Roger A.L. would say to you, Trump's audience were 1965 pre-the-voting rights. Exactly. Yes. So I think that he lives in that world. And a lot of Americans live in that world. I think it strikes him as a very profound point. Hey, something happened here. What is all this

change about? Asians, where did they come from? But you're right. And the way he goes, something happened? What happened, i.e. America somehow got screwed in this process. Right. This is being presented, you know, everybody is running around. What do we do? So then this becomes a, you know, a geopolitical, political, strategic point. Let's keep Chinese students from American universities. Let's keep them from taking our intellectual goods. When it really is not about that, it's just about the look. You know, Trump, it's all in the look. Either his look or how other people look or how American college campuses look. Where did all those Asians come from? And he wants American campuses to look like they did in Love Story, where people carried books in a leather

strap and everybody looked like Ali McGraw and Ryan, Ryan O'Neill? Yeah. I mean, he wants them to look like he looks. It was a, you know, what was the world like when, he went to Wharton. Let's remember. He went to Fordham first. He went to Fordham first. And then he went to Wharton as an undergraduate, which is very different to graduating with an MBA.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, he went to Fordham, his father was really pissed off at this. I mean, it was a terrible high school student. They had to send them to some military school, just terrible. I mean, just a terrible student, ADD, etc., etc. But his father was nevertheless completely pissed off. Why can't you get into a better school?

Why can't you get into an Ivy League school? And he couldn't and didn't. But he got into the undergraduate Wharton division of the University of Pennsylvania is one of those things that's always referred to as one of the back doors to the ivies. Right. So it slipped into an ivy eventually but via the back door. Right. And it remains. I mean, it's a very pressing thing on his mind. The fact that people might think he's dumb, the fact that he didn't get into these other schools overshadowed by this, was a terrible, terrible student.

Steve Bannon used to do this kind of thing about, you know, Trump was the guy in class who would just, you know, five minutes in, we'll just get up and leave, which he did in the White House. You know, when the generals come in, give those PowerPoint presentations, he's out of the room. He can not pay attention. Michael, hold that thought. We're just going to take a break for some messages. And we're back. Thank you to our sponsors. We're back into it with Michael Wolfe.

Okay, so is he paying attention to Elon Musk? We're recording this on a Wednesday. Last week, Elon was given a key to who knows what, the White House. And since then, he held off for a couple of days. and then he suddenly did a blitz of tweets about the Big Beautiful Bill and how he thinks it's absolutely terrible. You had said in a much earlier podcast, if it came to Donald Trump and Elon must, Donald Trump would inevitably win that fight.

What do you think about Elon's most recent tweets, and how do you think Donald Trump will respond? Well, I think we should step back a minute. You know, this Elon thing, and I think a lot of people have been, certainly have taken note that Elon has been pushed out and find that in some way extraordinary. Is that true he was pushed out? Yeah, completely.

Nobody leaves the White House voluntarily. But the thing is, and it's important, this happens to everyone. There is no one around Donald Trump who benefits from the relationship. You know, it all ends in tears of some kind, humiliation, disgrace, public firings, getting fired on social media, getting indicted. Going to jail.

This will happen to all of these people. It just happens to Elon first because he was the most high profile. You know, and there is this other thing that Donald Trump does. Donald Trump is lazy. I mean, he really doesn't, he likes to play golf. He doesn't really like to work. So anyone who's willing to step up and do the job, that's great. Right, have at it. And that goes on until other people start to notice that this is the person who is really doing the job and then not Donald Trump. And then as soon as that happens, then that person is no longer in charge. And is there relief in the White House?

I mean, we certainly reported on the fight with Elon and Scott Besson. And there was some shoving going on and they were overheard sort of shouting, fuck you. We know that he got into fights with Marco Rubin. is there relief among the more normal or the political figures around him? Of course. But you shouldn't mistake that as the non-Elon people over here breathing a sigh of relief and then Elon over here. That just means that we've eliminated the Elon fissure

and then we go on to all of the other fissures. So it's not as if anyone without Elon is going to like their lives better. better. One of them will now come into the Elon spotlight, right? Yeah. There's always one person that's been... Everybody is against everybody else in Trump world. And Elon was always this special case. I mean, no one quite understood what he was doing there.

And no one quite understood his relationship with Trump. And how did Trump talk to Elon? When the two of them were just together or when they were actually trying to decide what to do around Doe? Were there always... All a misunderstanding. Go on. First thing, Trump talks to everybody the same way.

Okay. His audience is fundamentally undifferentiated. The fire hose of Trump verbiage just comes out and is pointed, wherever, you know, it's like his head moves, and it doesn't matter. He doesn't alter what he says for the individual. person standing in front of him. Right.

So Elon, like anybody else, never got a word in edgewise. And as we're recording this on a Wednesday, Donald Trump has as yet not replied to Elon. Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC last night suggested that was because Donald Trump was scared of Elon and didn't want to antagonize it. Because Lawrence O'Donnell knows so much about what's going on in the White House. To be fair, he was a writer on the West Wing, which is still our best version of the White House. Well, but it actually is the opposite version of the White House that exists now. So if your reference is the West Wing, you can't understand the Trump White House.

Do you think that Donald Trump will respond to Elon? He was creating a diversion about something else? Since Elon arrived on the scene, August, really, last year, Trump has been alternatively amused and confused by Elon and has gone around saying, oh, he's crazy. You know, he's crazy. Now, Trump can say that in both a positive and negative way, he's crazy or he's crazy. and so I don't and I think and I think now he's probably weighing this which crazy is it Elon you know just the person he can dismiss as crazy or crazy in a way that Elon is trying to accomplish something by what he's saying the first would be easy for you know Trump can just dismiss him

the second he has to then come to terms with that and probably confront him or at least publicly confront him. But I'm sure he hasn't quite decided that. Okay, so the other thing that happened in the last week, since we last spoke, was the emergence of this nickname for him, Taco. Trump's always chickening out. It came from the F.T, and we're being told it's what,

A, his advisors are using, and B, what people on Wall Street are using, and people are claiming it's really getting under his skin. What think you, Boswell? there's two assumptions. Assumption number one that he actually wants to accomplish something, that he actually wants to get to a world in which there are all of these tariffs. And then the second assumption is that if he doesn't, if he pulls back on these tariffs, that's a win for the other side. So the first assumption, the idea that there is an end game here never exists for Trump.

Because he's just lurching for a moment to moment. And also what his interest is is that there is not an end game, that it keeps going on. The show keeps going on. So the fact that it might devolve into actual having to execute on a plan, implement details. Boring, boring. Yes, not only boring. And who knows what would happen. I mean, Trump, well, you know, Mattaris, they might be bad.

But he doesn't have to deal with that if it just continues to roll. forward, as all things do. And you can go back to the first administration and remember those things, the big beautiful wall. I mean, of course these things were never going to be accomplished. And that was never their intent. The intent was to capture the attention of the public. Overwhelment, actually. So to exist constantly in a state of chaos is the Trump advantage. And again, everybody else looks at as a cause and effect. That's what politics is, or that's what politics traditionally is. And Trump's no plan plan does not include that.

It just is, we exist in the moment. And it's performance, right? It's performance. And it appears to be vigorous. And at a time when people have lost confidence in government and think government can't get anything done, it seems as if he is getting a lot accomplished. Yes.

Although let's just note that it is the exact opposite. Yeah, he's getting nothing accomplished. But the appearance, the television show of it, is that he is getting a lot of companies. I mean, all of that, all of what people do not see about government. I mean, government, remember, functions in 99% is things we don't see. Right, silent. It's just going on.

It is an administrative function. Right. Government is, by its nature, boring. Trump, by his nature, has to reverse that. I love listening to Michael's take on Donald Trump. It's different to everybody else's, and he knows this is not the West Wing of Yore that we saw on NBC and dreamed of living.

It's a very different place. Thank you for listening if you have been. Don't forget to subscribe to The Daily Beast. It's fantastically easy. It's just DailyBeast.com. Please leave a comment. We read them all, and it's very helpful as we think about the questions that we want to talk about.

And I love the mini threads and the internal conversations that many of you are having with each other. Don't forget, Be Beast this week. And this podcast was produced by Devin Rodgerino, Anna von Erson. And it was edited by Jesse Willard.

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