The Daily Beast Podcast - The Truth About Barron Trump, Harvard and Melania

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Joanna Coles welcomes back Michael Wolff, the bestselling author of “Fire & Fury” and “Siege,” to dissect the latest act of the Trump show—this time targeting elite American universities. Wolff unpacks the curious logic behind Trump’s crusade against institutions like Harvard, suggesting it’s less about policy and more about showmanship, headlines, and perhaps even old grudges. He weighs in on the persistent mystery surrounding Melania Trump’s absence and the transactional nature of the Trump marriage, and explains why every public outing together appears to be the the result of a strict negotiation. Wolff also shares how Trump has transformed the Oval Office into a bizarre open-call performance space—complete with gold décor, packed audiences, and surprise video screenings for world leaders. Also, Wolff dives into why accusations of racism are viewed as a sort of badge of honor in the Trump world. Follow @MichaelWolffNYC for more of his inside takes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Joanna Coles. I'm the chief content officer of The Daily Beast, which I forgot to say in our last podcast and several of you pointed out. So thank you very much. Today's guest is Michael Wolfe. We had thousands of comments from you last time he was on discussing the Trump marriage. She's going to talk about it again today. You probably saw that Melania posted a picture of herself on her own in a cemetery, clutching a lily on Memorial Day. But she definitely wasn't with her husband. The president will be getting into it. And I love talking to Michael because he just has. incredible insights. He talks to people in the White House all the time. His book All or Nothing was such a good insight into how Donald Trump went from losing the last election to winning the most recent election. So let's get into it. Michael, welcome back to the podcast. So good to see you. I've got so many questions. We had 4,000 comments last time you were here. So I want to get into some of those. But first I want to ask you, I spent all weekend talking to friends around the world, none of whom can understand why this current administration is going after elite American universities, which are one of the great things about American life. I mean, they're centers of

extraordinary global excellence. They've helped us get ahead in the tech race. The president of China sent his daughter as an undergraduate to Harvard. So what is behind this attack on so-called elite institutions. Well, let me just take one exception to this. You know, Harvard is kind of a mess and has been kind of a mess for some time. I mean, I think if we went to Harvard, we would take exception to a full range of things or a measure of what's going on, as a friend of mine pointed out the other day, only Donald Trump could make Harvard look good. Trump is basically. Trump is basically trying to destroy Harvard and as Harvard goes, so would many other first-class universities. You know, so again, I just don't want to put this down on Harvard. It is on Trump,

and it should be at this point on Trump. So why is he doing this? You know, it's true formula. He needs an enemy. Who is the enemy? That's what makes the show great, the Trump show. He picks fantastic enemies, actually. And Harvard, for all it represents, fits right into this, into the Trump show. So this is about the drama of going after an enemy that nobody can believe he's going after. Absolutely. You know, and again, you know, what's the thing that Trump has to do? Getting up in the morning, I have to make that my headlines. What are my headlines today? Going after Harvard has proved to be an incredibly reliable headline. So he's, He's on the money. So he's done what he's set out to do. Dominate headlines. Where do you do? You go after Harvard. And you go after Harvard in a way that is draconian dramatic and existential. It's threatening Harvard on that level.

Does he move on? Because one of the things you pointed out in the last time we spoke is that Trump has very little attention span. He wants the headline. Then he moves on to the next. episode. Could this all pass if Harvard just sat it out? Yes. You know, X number of months from now will say Harvard, oh, remember that. Right. In the same way that we talk about Elon Musk, remember Doge? Elon seems to have cycled out of the picture. Right. So it is just all living in this dramatic moment. So it's the best way for people to respond to this to basically do nothing. I mean, if you're running Harvard, if you're Alan Garber and you're sitting there thinking, well, I've got graduation next week, what do I, what do I do the week after this? And you were advising them. Would you just say, hang on in there and just don't overreact? Yes. And no, because, I mean, the no part is that all of the, everything that Trump is saying would happen if it is not opposed. So they will oppose this and therefore the courts will stop this from happening. But at the same time, that becomes another aspect to the Trump show.

He forces them to play their part, which is to oppose him. So there's been speculation in the media that one of the reasons that Donald Trump has been going after, particularly the Ivy League elite institutions, is because his youngest son, Baron, applied to them and didn't get into them. Yesterday, Melania came out and actually said yesterday that Baron hadn't applied to her. Harvard. Do you think he applied to other institutions and didn't get in? That nugget comes from me. So that exists because I reported that that was the joke within the White House. So you mentioned this on your Instagram, Michael Wolf, NYC, what a week ago,

two weeks ago. A joke that's going around the White House this week, what do all the universities that Trump is targeting have in common? Barron didn't get into them. So it's now got picked up and it's sort of out there. Right. I actually don't know the, know if there is any truth in this, which and there very well might be. But within the White House, that became the joke.

So that's what people around Trump was saying. Right. You know, I mean, because they're like, what, what is he doing? What? This is, you know, this is, this is crazy stuff. Why would this be happening? And then they tell the barren joke. And it's also odd because so many of the people around Donald Trump went to Ivy League University. Several of them went to Harvard Business School. Obviously, J.D. Vance proudly went to Yale.

So it does seem particularly odd. But perhaps he's also trying to stuff it to them too. It's important not to lend too much calculation in planning to anything he does. But the other thing is that, by the way, he didn't get into Harvard. Donald Trump didn't get into Harvard. You know, so one of the Trump things is always, you know, holding a grudge against the Ivy League. You know, I mean, Steve Bannon used to say he held a grudge against school. He couldn't sit in any classroom. Well, I'm sympathetic to him on that.

I hold a grudge against school to awful place, awful place and it goes on for so long. That is, again, again, picking the enemy. You know, I mean, many people have somewhere in their souls a visceral reaction against schools. So when you last came on, you talked about the thing that's obvious and happening in plain sight, which is that Melania is missing. She's missing in action when she turns up at the White House she treated as a guest. And Stephen Chung, the White House spokesperson,

person came out afterwards and said, this is a complete fabrication. He said before, you are a lying sack of shit. He's certainly called me a piece of shit. And I think he's called both of us blithering idiots. Who is Stephen Chung? Does he matter? But it's also important to go back to that. He doesn't really deny it. I mean, he calls me names or calls you names. I think we may have been jointly called names, but he doesn't deny it. I mean, he doesn't. I mean, he calls me names. I mean, they're very careful not to deny the Melania thing, A, because it's true, and B, because they have no idea what's going on. And the Melania thing among people in the White House is no one ever discusses it. No one ever asks questions about it. No one ever even speculates. It's just a

weird thing. Where is Melania? She certainly isn't where she otherwise, one would expect her to be. So two things. I was really alerted to it after last time you came on. She appeared at Memorial on Memorial Day in a photo that she posted of herself in black and white clutching a lily at a cemetery. We're not sure what the cemetery was, but it certainly wasn't Arlington Cemetery where her husband, the president was. And then when he was giving his speech to West Point on Saturday, the commencement address, he sort of, gave a sort of what felt like a strange drive-by against trophy wives and his friend Bill Levitt who'd gotten divorced and had a trophy wife, but did it make him happy or not, made him happy for a little bit? And he sold this company and he had nothing to do. He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife?

I guess we can say a trophy wife. It didn't work out too well, but that doesn't work out too well. I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives doesn't work out. But it made him happy for a little while, at least. It was very strange, and it reminded me of when Princess Diana and then Prince Charles, now obviously King Charles, used to use the media to lay veiled threats against each other. And in particular, Melania's picture clutching the lily in the cemetery, reminded me of a picture that Diana had posted of herself sitting outside the Taj Mahal on her own,

which was her way of trying to tell people there's something else going on with Charles and it's not with me. What are the Trump signaling here? You know, well, I don't think he never signals anything against her. And he may not feel anything against her. You know, I mean, someone in the White House one said to me, Well, you know, it may be the most successful marriage in America on its terms. Its terms being they just never see each other. She seems to send messages, but they seem so opaque that you never know what she's suggesting.

If anything, they simply don't live together. They simply exist in a marriage that may be good for both of them in its transactional way. But the most important thing is that just they're not together. Somebody was asking me recently, well, are they going to get a divorce? And I'm thinking, that's just misunderstands the whole nature of this marriage. Why would they even have to get a divorce? That, again, they live the lives each of them appears to walk. So great.

Last week, I think they were together when he signed an executive order about revenge porn. And he was very, he seemed very supportive of her. Well, all, in the White House, they point out that every time they are together is a negotiated time and that they have to be careful with her not to limit the asks. Do you think there's actually a contract between them, a written contract? Well, I think that there's an understanding whether there's a, you know, I assume there's a pre-nup. I assume something there. The question is, do we, okay, here is.

is here is the president and the first lady and the American people come with a set of assumptions about what that that means. And the Trump White House certainly doesn't say those assumptions are inoperative, but they are inoperative, obviously. So do we have a right to know that? Okay. So one of the things I love talking to you about is your ability to refer to this as the Trump show. And there's now a new set piece in his arsenal, which is the Oval Office visit from another president. So we've obviously had President Zelensky, we've had the President of El Salvador, then we had Mark Carney from Canada. And last week we had Cyril Ramaphosa from South Africa, who was then apparently blindsided by Trump's sudden decision to darken the lights in the Oval

office and play some form of video which suggested that there was genocide going on against white farmers in South Africa. Can you talk to us about that? And this goes back to the first Trump administration. He uses it different from any other president has used the Oval Office as a, you know, as a moment of enormous importance, usually a confidential moment, usually at the highest level, of intimate, confidential statecraft. He has used it always as a kind of, you know, an open call. An open call, an open call, great description. I have seen him in the Oval Office when, you know, and he's always behind the desk. Because that signifies power? I don't know. I mean, it's the Oval Office. Everything signifies power, but why do you have to sit behind the desk? And he never allows anyone to get

behind him. So what's that about? I don't know. Well, apart from Elon Musk's child, we should say. And he looks kind of crammed in. He does look crammed in. I don't get it. I mean, Steve Bannon used to describe him as a kind of a giant shrimp. A giant shrimp sat behind the resolute desk. That's at the residue desk. Then the other thing is there, it's always filled with enormous numbers of people. I mean, 30 people, not not unexceptional at all, just sort of sitting there and he's talking, talking, talking, going on and on. So kind of like a talk show.

And everybody sits there and listens or tries to discreetly look at their, look at their phones. As he goes on, you know, what is he talking about? Why is he talking about it? I mean, something else. Everybody averts their eyes and nobody can ask. But clearly now, and then having rejigged the Oval Office into, you know, Mar-a-Lago Deco or whatever you want to call. With all the gold cherubs and the gold filigree everywhere. You know, I think he sees it as a great set.

Everybody, you know, he force people come in. Yeah. And then he kind of owns them. in a way. So it's to everybody else's disadvantage. You know, obviously Zelensky, that was the classic case of the case of that. Well, and clearly other leaders have learned from that, right? So they're all coming in and they're trying to, they're trying to figure it out. Hold that thought. We want to get these messages from our sponsors. Huge thank you to our sponsors. We're now back for our conversation with Michael Wolfe. Talk a little bit more about how he's managed to almost sort of

I mean, there's just no balance. When they come in and he's sitting on his yellow or his gold chair and they're sitting next to him, it's as if they are auditioning to be the president of their own country. Yeah, well, again, you know, just go back to reality show staging. I mean, this is what this is. He's just doing the apprentice thing again. And, you know, nothing changes. Trump is a simple machine. He does what he does. He does. what he has done before. He does what he knows. He just adapts it. So he's adapting the apprentice to the Oval Office. So you said in one of your Instagram posts, you know, you talked about his misunderstanding of genocide and thinking about the DEI that he's doing. Trump's campaign against DEI and civil rights protection and his campaign against electric vehicles. It's to go back in time on the way. on the one hand, a time when the time of white people, and on the other hand, the time when the

gas and oil industry rule. Is Trump racist? I mean, the word racist, which now becomes in the Trump world a kind of high praise, and because it's meant to suggest the liberal overreach and the liberals call anybody racist, therefore if you call him a racist, he's not a racist. in that in that in that weird kind of logic.

But what is he? Well, clearly he has some issue with black people. What we might

conventionally call racist, but we're looking for another term on this. The world

is a better place to him without black people or without having to be

aware of black people without having to be, without black people somehow in what he considers a zero-sum game with white people. I mean, it's, it's, he has an issue there. And an issue that is that, again, trying not to use the word racist here, that that is, that, that, that certainly regards black people as profoundly different from white people. Right. You know, and it is that kind of thing. You know, I often go back there.

There is a Roger Ailes, who I spent a lot of time talking to and. Roger Ailes before my head of Fox News. Fox News, right. And Roger, who, one of the people who claims his part in creating Donald Trump. But Ailes used to say that, you know, liberals and, you know, people like me lived in the present. whereas whereas his audience, the Fox audience, lived in, and then he would pick the year, 1965, and then he would point out before the Voting Rights Act. Right. So he wants to just take America back.

It's in the same way that he's trying to get all these manufacturing jobs back into America. It's as if he loved it then. And that was his golden period and he wants us all to go through it again. You know, and the Ails point was that an audience, a big audience, in America responded to that. I mean, there's this other aspect of this, you know, and it's on the same kind of level. Trump's the war that is going on against electric vehicles. I mean, electric vehicles will probably pass out of existence now.

And, you know, what is that good for? Well, that's good for the oil and gas people who are also a kind of fixture of, you know, 1965. Does he have a single black advisor? Does he have any black cabinet ministers? No, I don't think so. Actually, good point. Just absolutely extraordinary. So Michael, last time you were on, we talked about the Qatari plane. What is it about Donald Trump that people still believe in? I mean, actually, by the numbers, they are believing less and less. But who knows? But they, you know, I mean, that's, they believe in Donald Trump. They believe in the show. They believe that he is an honest man, curiously. The man who has told more lies in public life than conceivably anyone in history, nevertheless, is a what you see is what you get guy. I mean, there is very little artifice, if any, there. He says what he, what he, what. what is in, what is on his mind. He does what he wants to do. There is no, as though no politics to Donald Trump. And I think that is one of the incredibly appealing things to many people about him.

So he's the anti-politician politician. Obviously, yes. I mean, he does what he does. I mean, he behaves like no other politician has ever behaved. And that, That is, you know, I don't know, for many people, certainly a breath of fresh air or perhaps just a novelty. That is, that is, you know, you just keep your eyes on this because you've never seen it before. Or a train wreck. It's just a train, another part of the train wreck, and it's headed for the wall and you can't stop looking. Can we just go back to Stephen Chung as the White House spokesperson? person. He's got a reputation for being very pleasant when you meet him in person and sort of teddy bearish. And yet he issues these vituperative comments about people, which are actually relatively limited. I went through a series of his insults and they're all pretty much the same.

Actually, he's got limited, very limited. It's all boilerplate. You know, and it's not, you know, and it's all being sort of in on the joke here. I mean, so before they called me blithering the other day, somebody from the White House called me, so we're going to call you blithering. Oh, they gave you a heads up. So it's sort of like Jerry Springer, where they gave people, where they told people what was going to happen before they went out there. It's performative. Yeah, it was like litter of blithering. You good with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm good with with blithering. And Stephen is actually a very sweet guy. And he's kind of, there's a sort of tragic feel about him. Tragic in what way?

Well, you know, he's so heavy. I mean. Physically heavy. Yeah. I mean, he is literally 400 pounds. And he's a candidate for a GLP one. Yeah. No, no.

But so he can't be the press secretary. You know, that, so he has to be hidden away somewhere. And then he issues these, you know, these kinds of vituprative comments, which Trump likes. Oh, that's a good one, Trump will say. And, you know, and that's literally all he does because he can't do anything. And then, you know, through the campaign, it was always, you know, he was always collapsing somewhere. Collapsing from being so heavy. You know, Union Station, you could always see there was Stephen Chung being and having to be carried out.

You know, Trump has now crafted this new concept. The press spokesman, you know, has to be a young woman. Has to be. That's it. So we've got Caroline Lever now. and then there's presumably a line of young women who would love that job after her. And so Stephen Chung's role is largely performative that he goes after people when they're making, well, points that hit home with Trump or points that annoy Trump? Yeah, no, it is for whatever Stephen says or does is directed to an audience of one.

Very good to see you. Thank you. For those who want regular updates, they should check into your Instagram, which is Michael Wolfe, NYC, where you have daily, or almost daily, insights into your, what I like, actually, is the insights into your decor, your lovely study that you're in now, and then all the flowers that you have around you, your children skipping in and out, this ideal life that you appear to have while you're wrestling with America's 47th president. And then, unless I could sell some books, perhaps here.

All or nothing. Highly recommended, if you want to know, what's, actually going on. What's going on in Trump's head? I'm the person inside the head. That's a very strange place to be, and it's so good that actually, physically, you're surrounded by flowers and you're idyllic Hampton home. But in your head and in Trump's head, there's just, it's, it's terrifying. Thank you so much for coming, and please come back and give us your thoughts.

Okay, Michael onwards and talk to you soon. Great. Thank you. I love talking to Michael. I think he always comes back to this central point that Donald Trump is a performer and that the White House is simply an extension of his apprentice show that the Oval Office is just a new set, that he sits behind the resolute desk to denote power. He sits next to the president of whatever country, fill it in here. And it's just that sense of an open call. This is all auditioning for. Donald Trump's attention. So if you have been, thank you for listening or watching on YouTube, please subscribe to the podcast, whatever the platform you prefer. You can also subscribe to the Daily Beast. If you want to be kept up to date with the madness that is going on right now, just go to the Daily Beast.com and subscribe. And this podcast was produced by Devin Rogerino, Anna von Herson,

and it was edited by Deanna Chapman. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Last Last, 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 what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.