The Daily Beast Podcast - This Is How Trump Staged His Own Political Funeral

Episode Date: September 13, 2026

Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles unpack Donald Trump’s trip to Ireland, his apparent struggle to stay awake at a 9/11 memorial, and the increasingly conspicuous signs that the president’s hold on his party may be starting to weaken. They dig into JD Vance’s careful balancing act between loyalty to Trump and positioning himself as his successor, including the growing machinery behind a potential 2028 campaign, before turning to RFK Jr.’s surprisingly commanding performance at the Republican mini-convention and the extraordinary political path that brought him into Trump’s orbit. Ted Cruz also makes his inevitable return, while Trump’s own reaction to the prospect of a Republican successor looms over the entire discussion. Finally, Michael and Joanna take a close look at the new E. Jean Carroll documentary, her decision to come forward, the consequences she faced, and why her story takes on an even more powerful dimension when told in her own words. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotify advertising connects you with an audience that's engaged and ready to discover your brand. Launch a campaign with Spotify Ads Manager. It suddenly gave a platform to the people who are going to be running to replace him. And I wonder if actually he realized that. Because the one thing that is going to, as we go past the midterms, into the final two years of this presidency, the one thing that is going to most bedevil him is the idea that someone in his party would actually want to

and believe they can replace him. The idea a Republican might become president and overshadow Donald Trump would be the tragedy of his life. Michael. Joanna, don't forget the CTA, the call to action. The call to action, please subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. Just smash the subscription button wherever you get your podcasts. Apple, Spotify, where else is there?

Oh, YouTube, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. And you can become a special member of the Daily Beast community. You can join in our live conversations when the podcast drop. and you get extra content and exclusive content and content early. Listen to that. All you have to remember to do is remind her and she goes on our CTA. Brilliant. Brilliant.

And we should remind people that inside Trump's head will be live at the terragram ballroom, our own ballroom, Michael, in Los Angeles on October the 20th. And if you would like to get tickets and come and join us, possibly even meet us, go to beast.combe slash ITH live. That's beast.combe slash ITH live. Treat yourself to a trip to Los Angeles and come and meet me and Michael. Yeah, no, and we're good live. I mean, we are really good.

I mean, we're good here. But doing it live is really fun. I find it fun anyway. Yeah, it's totally fun. fun. And you see all our flubs. But also it's the run-up to the midterms. So it's going to be very on point. And we'll have the latest info from the White House on what level of panic they are. Are they at DefCon 2 or 5 or Defcom 1? I don't know the difference between 1 and 5. I'm not sure which is most serious. Is DefCon 1 most serious? Yes, it is most serious. Okay. So we'll give you a

sense of that. But I'm very much looking forward to being in L.A. and talking to people and getting people's questions, too. No, and I feel that live, I say things that I'm really not supposed to say. Help. I'm helpless. So come. Our poor lawyer has probably got his head in his hands as he speaks. But Michael, what a weekend? What else should one do this weekend? But play golf in County Clare in Ireland. at Doonbag. So we're going to be talking about Trump's golfing weekend, and happily he's accompanied by not the First Lady, but the human printer.

We're going to talk about Trump falling asleep at a memorial. I just want to interject there because I'm going to forget to say it otherwise, but I think it's important as a background to Trump presidency, that prior to the presidency, he never went to Europe except to go to his. golf courses. Of course. Well, why would he? Why would he?

So we're going to talk about him falling asleep at the memorial and signs of, unfortunate, signs of droopy mouth about you. You may remember a year ago, the right side of his mouth was drooping. And we have some photos of that we want to show people because it doesn't look great. I thought Melania looked a little droopy too beside him. I mean. Really? Yes.

Yeah, I think they had sort of mirroring droops. So we're going to talk about mirroring droopy mouth and Melania's outfit. What's she saying now in her business clothes? What's she saying to people? And then, of course, we're going to talk about Trumpaloosa. J.D. Vance versus the absent Marco Rubio versus RFK Jr. who gave a very interesting speech. And then Ted Cruz, who's emerging.

saying not so fast, the Cruz is back. Emerging is a funny word to apply to Ted Cruz, I think, because he's always, that sort of thing, he's coming, he's unexpectedly rising or unexpectedly inserting himself. He is always there. He is the perpetual Republican loser. The perpetual Republican loser and roundly humiliated by. Trump, especially when Trump went after his wife, Heidi, in such an unpleasant way.

But Cruz came crawling back. And then went after his father, too. Remember, he accused his father of killing JFK. Well, and RFK used JFK in his speech to win over the crowd and show that he could, you know, attract the MAGA audience once Trump has gone. And you have always maintained that he was going to run as president. And I just thought, well, there's no way in hell that's going to work. And then his speech at the mini convention, or as Pod Save America put it, Donnie does Dallas, which I thought was pretty good, was actually pretty good.

I felt it got undercovered RFK Jr's speech because J.D. Vance got cheers of 48, 48. But actually, I think R.F.K. Jr. is the one to watch. No, your modifier, no way in hell. No way in hell basically defines American politics at this point in time. If you say no way in hell, there it is. There it will be. There it will be. Okay, so a lot to get to.

But fascinating news from Dunebeg, some light investigation unveils that Trump is trying to build another ballroom in Dune. Dunbeg, in Dunbeg where he bought a golf course out of financial difficulties in 2014. He's there to play this weekend and he had some diplomatic meetings this morning. And I hope we can show the photo because Natalie Harp is greeting people at one of the diplomatic meetings. I have seen this many times before. She's not only always the greeter, but she is the person who people in the know, try to greet first. I mean, she is. I mean, that's a, it's a mark of her importance. Oh, let me say hi to Natalie. Oh, oh, there's a Natalie. I mean, I can't really express and I don't

think people understand how pivotal she is in her role as the president's, you know, chief person. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac

definition of luxury. Well, she's chief personing in Dunbeg as we speak. And it's possible that environmentalists are trying to nobble Natalie because there is resistance to the ballroom because of the narrow-mouthed whirl snail, who it's apparently an endangered species of tiny snail. These things are very small. But is this a particular Irish species, do you think? It's very possible. I mean, the narrow mouth world, snail, it sounds specifically Irish, doesn't it? Anyway, they're an endangered species. Expansion of the premises at Dunebeg may threaten them, endanger them.

And so there are protests about the expansion of the facilities, something that will be familiar to him. The Ballroom Dilemma. The Ballroom Dilemma. So from teeing off in Dunebeg, he was dozing off at the memorial at the Pentagon for 9-11. Well, I'm just trying to see him. In the, always the context of Trump at an event as a spectator or as a listener is problematic. He can not listen. I mean, there's something about it. He just shuts down at this, at this point. He has no capacity, and I put it this way, and this is actually Steve Bannon used to

say this, he has no capacity to absorb information. So therefore he reacts. And I think, I think then I'm going to shut my eyes, or my eyes are just going to reflexively shut because I, I can't listen to someone else. Well, it seemed in particularly bad taste, but what it did give photographers the opportunity to do was study his face. And if you look at the photos, and I know we're showing some here, it's very clear that his droopy mouth, which was in evidence last year, is back. I wonder if he's had, I mean, droopy mouth is unfortunately often an indication of some kind of

stroke or stroke-like activity. And he really didn't look well. His cancels are back. He looked swollen. He was dozing in plain sight. And we can go on to Melania in the moment. And the end of the- There's a lot of this, you know, when, I mean, I spent a lot of time looking at this,

at this, at Trump's face in repose, let's call it, during his trial. So that was six, I think seven weeks of him city. there, forced to listen, forced by law to listen. This was a criminal trial. He had to be there. And the cameras in then, so there was always a camera on his face that you couldn't see people outside the courtroom couldn't see, but people inside the courtroom, everybody was focused on this because he couldn't rouse himself to, just as obviously an inability. to put on an expression of attentiveness. So, and you could just see over the course of, like, the morning,

he would slide into, I don't know, wherever he went, wherever he went in his own mind. Clearly, he was not there anymore, though. Did he keep his eyes open in the court? Not always. Right. Because I remember there were accusations that he was falling asleep at his own trial. Yeah, and I'm not sure he ever was kind of that it was so much falling asleep as just a kind of retreat.

Is it possible he was meditating? Yes, very possible, Joanna. I would say that that's top of the list, yes. He was considering the cosmic nature of his position in the world, definitely. Definitely, definitely meditating. And then what did we think of Melania, who, you know, came out of hiding for a public, well, what did she come out for? Because she's not gone to Dunebeg with him. No, I'm sure.

This is one of those things. And they have to, they put these things on the calendar. These are negotiated long in advance. So everyone knew, you know, 9-11 would be a thing. And then she only, you know, they have to, they have to parse these things. When do we need her? What is this moment? We can't have her at all moments.

We can't have her at most moments. And every moment that we have that we can get her has to be a significant moment. That's, you know, when would, when, at what point would it look most, most glaring if she's not. there. Now, there are those points, but this is the point that most glaring, and I probably 9-11 was one of those logical moments. She really, we really, really need her there. Well, she turned up and she was wearing a suit, a pant suit. She's very much favoring the pantsuit now, as opposed to certainly any kind of short dress. And the way she dresses, and actually, Nell Scavelle pointed this out to me, who

who's a writer for the beast, the way she dresses now is in stark contrast to how Natalie dresses. So Natalie's in bright pastels, short skirts, hair up. Melania's hair, she's basically hiding inside her hair, which as I think we've talked about before, but has gone blonder at the sides and darker at the root. So she's gone blonder and darker at the same time. And A, she looked furious, though perhaps that was just,

a sort of solemnity at having to be at such a solemn event as the 25th anniversary of night. So you think that was Melania doing solemn? What do you think it was? I think it was Melania, the usual Melania, why am I here? I cannot stand being here. How much more time do I have to spend here? and if that wretched creature gets one more inch closer to me, I'm going to scream. Interesting.

Well, yes. So I also thought her dressing, I wondered of her dressing. And we've talked about this before as her dressing as armor against Trump. But it really seems marked now that she's actually wearing an outfit that Hillary Clinton made famous the pantsuit for women, or certainly made famous in politics. And here she is in what feels like a business suit, and it feels like she's just saying, stay away from me. It's as if she's sort of like this, stay away.

And of course, she would be aware that his first wife, Ivana, in her divorce papers, said Trump raped her. And we're going to be talking later on today about the E. Jean Carroll movie, which is finally coming out viewers and listeners to this podcast will at last be able to see it in about a month's time on all the usual platforms. And you just think Melania must know what he's capable of. And I think the moment where he was attacking Rachel Scott this week

and his face came forward and the sheer aggression, which normally he keeps somewhat repressed, was out in full. And you just think, God, he's a really scary guy. Not too repressed. No, not too repressed. But there was a sort of, I think his approach to Rachel Scott, the ABC reporter this week, who asked him about the $5,000, he was like, no, no, not you, not you. And his whole face kind of lunged forward at her.

And you just thought, if you're Melania, what a nightmare to have to deal with this. Yeah, well, it is. I think markedly the new mannish Melania. The new mannish Melania. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display

and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision, to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Catalac. Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility, Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. So he didn't look well. He looked

markedly better, of course, when he was center of attention for two days in Dallas at his mini RNC. What were your takeaways from it? Well, the first takeaway is that this is, I mean, this was politically the most counterproductive thing that he could possibly do. Let's let's, in the middle of a midterm in which, in which his lack of popularity is the key issue, let's stage an event that reminds people, not only of him, but have how unpopular he is. And it was kind of extraordinary in innumerable ways, not least of all, the denial, all of these problems of which every Republican who is running for office this year has to deal with, the war, affordability, foremost among them, he is denying those are not problems. As a matter of fact,

those are benefits. We should be running on those things. So what the Republican Party got out of this, the Republican Party got nothing out of this. Donald Trump, on the other hand, I think he got what he always wants out of this. I am the center of attention. There is no Republican Party without me. I am the person who channels the hopes and dreams and passions of this central core of the Republican Party. A minority yet, a minority that's not going to get anyone necessarily elected, certainly not the next president, but nevertheless that has a lock on the Republican Party, this Maga Corps. I am their person. I am their president. So I think he accomplished all of that. What that, as I say, what that gets, the Republican Party, I don't know. But in addition to that, it suddenly gave a, a platform to the people who are going to be running to replace him.

And I wonder if actually he realized that. Because the one thing that is going to, as we go past the midterms into the final two years of this presidency, the one thing that is going to most bedevil him is the idea that someone in his party would actually want. to and believe they can replace him. So I don't, I mean, I'm, I'm wondering what's in his head as he started to see this. And foremost among, among the people trying to replace him is his vice president, which is, and I thought there were several curious moves on J.D.'s part this week, a kind of, a kind of, a kind of J.D. Jiu-Jitsu, if you will. J-D. J-D. J-D. J-Z.

Yes, in which he was both embracing the president and gaining distance from him, if not scorning him. Okay, so say more about that. Well, I think, I mean, this is J.D., understanding from J.D.'s point of view, J.D. Vance, desperately, desperately. I don't think we can, in human terms, begin to understand the level of desperation and desire in need here on the part of JD, the most cravenly, pathologically ambitious person in America. So he wants to be, so getting to be the president of the United States for JD, he has gotten, you know, and he is, he has reached that point, the close.

point you can get to being the president of the United States. But now he has to seal the deal. And he has to seal the deal by getting first getting the nomination of his party. And the nomination of his party is going to be primarily, well, I was going to say it was primarily based on his allegiance to Donald Trump. But I'm not even sure of it, if that's, you know, true. I think there's going to be a lot of currents. But among the things is there is, he is going to need to project that allegiance to Donald Trump. At the same time, he has got to get, gain distance from Donald Trump. Donald Trump, again, the least popular president in modern times. And that popularity, I think we can wager, is going to go down from here on in and not up. So there was an

example of this. So there was a long piece in the New York Times this week in which in which the premise of this of this piece is that J.D. Vance was the one person in the White House, certainly not Donald Trump, who was reaching out to the generals of the people essentially on the front line of this war in Iran to find out what was going on. So implicitly here you had said, the White House does not know what's going on in the war in Iran. So I, J.D. Vance, are going to take it on myself, upon myself, to try to figure it out. And I am going to contact the people who probably have the most information about this war. So I'm a totally, so that he's positioning himself, I'm the opposite of Donald Trump, Mr. attention deficit, Mr. Light on Details, Mr. You Can't Tell Me Anything. Instead, I, J.D. Vance, am going to be the person who is going to listen, seek out information, find the details, learn about what's really going on. Now, does Donald Trump appreciate the level of this dis?

Not necessarily. Because at the same. same time, J.D. Vance is at the mini Republican convention, the minicon, and saying Donald Trump is the greatest person in the history of not just the presidency, but of the entire history, it seemed. Right. And when he walked off the stage, he was getting chance of 48, 48, i.e., he's going to be the 48th president. I I wanted to read a paragraph from the New York Times piece because you can feel the J.D. Vance machinery going on behind the scenes here. So he says, Mr. Vance, so this is a piece by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman. Mr. Vance has developed a reputation inside the Trump administration for steeping himself in operational detail. So to your point, something we know Trump has zero interest.

Also, I just want to just a slight parentheses here, point that Haberman Swan are the authors of the New York Times book about the second Trump presidency regime change. And what you can read there is in this article would say that one of the sources on regime change is J.D. Vance. So this is repayment. Okay. All right. So Mr. Vance has developed a reputation inside the Trump administration for steeping himself in operational detail, a habit that some officials admire and others regard as too much in the weeds. Where Mr. Trump works in a way that leaves even his aides guessing how he arrives at decisions, Mr. Vance obsessively tracks the daily minutiae, including military operations, the internal dynamics of the Iranian political system. and the sourcing of intelligence assessments. John Rackcliffe, the CIA director, who we've talked about before, who went to Russia recently, has given him direct access to agency analyst. Mr. Vance knows some of them by first name and calls their desks to ask about raw intelligence or items in his morning briefing, intelligence officials said.

Now, we know that Donald Trump, the last thing he wants is his morning briefing. He knows everything. He doesn't need a briefing. He's smarter than the briefers. but that felt very clearly team Vance at work. Oh, yeah, and let me just interrupt just that interesting note that people around him don't know how Trump comes to a decision. Okay, that's not true, and both Haberman and Swan know that that's not true. People absolutely know how he comes to a decision. He just, he comes to it spontaneously. He just makes a decision.

It is based on scant information. I mean, I don't know even that suggestion that there must be a way, that there must be some logic behind these decisions, some method is not true. And they know it's true. And they know it's not true. And everyone around Trump knows it's not true. Everybody knows he just, he just decides. He just, you know, it is all got a gut call on Trump's part. Well, and actually in another piece, what was fascinating was today a callout, and I guess we've always known this, but how astonished Trump has been by the resilience of the Iranians.

He assumed that they would, within a few days of the initial bombing, give up, people would rise up from the street. And he can't believe that they haven't done it. And he can't believe that we've run out of munitions. But there was another person, I think, who's irritated. I thought there was another line in that paragraph I just read about some people think J.D. Vance is two in the weeds. I bet one of those people is Hegseth. And Hegseth is now having to get the Office of Naval Intelligence to write Vance daily reports. I don't think so. Okay. I think I think that's a, that's one of those, those, we're protecting our flank. We now have to say something, something the contrary position to how virtuous JD is. So we're going to say that in a way which actually confirms his virtue.

So we're going to say some people think he's too in the weeds. Well, in this White House, for anyone to be in the weeds, that's like, oh, my God, finally somebody, you know, in the weeds. You mean he's detail-oriented? That's what you're saying here. So that's a compliment. So that they gave the main compliment and then they took and then they recast the hedge as also a compliment. Well, it struck me as a bit like that question when you go for a job interview and they say and tell me about your faults and people say, I'm a perfectionist. I work too hard.

Exactly. Exactly. So and this is a thing and this isn't. So Swan and Haberman who are setting need to say. set themselves up to cover J.D. Vance in his campaign. So they are now currying favor for the future, for their and for their career futures. But what I also thought it read was that J.D. Vance had come in over the top of Pete Higgsath because we know that Pete Higgsath isn't doing a good job here. And as privately said, he thinks the war is going to continue. And he must be irritated

that General Kane is sending Vance previews of U.S. strikes and essentially coming in over the top of the Secretary of Forever Wars. No, I think. And the other thing that Vance is saying is, I'm opposed to this war. I was opposed to this war in the beginning, which that article says, repeats constantly. Well, and the book says regime change has, it makes it very clear J.D. Vance was the one who didn't want the wall. Exactly. And so this is reconfirming.

Okay, I didn't want the war, but now I'm taking responsibility and I am finding out what's going on. And clearly, I am finding out what's going on about the war and I am finding out that it's going terribly, which confirms my original opinion. So anyway, this is, this is the, the JD machine is now gearing up and we're going to see this. This is, this is, you know, it will, it formally, it's, it's, it's plan formally will launch on the day after the midterms, but clearly it's, it's getting into position now. Yeah, no, no, it's clearly cranking now. And then the question is, how, how does Trump undermine it? Because as you say, what's going to be going on inside Trump's head, the idea of a successor emerging to him? Because that's not what he wants to all.

Right. And I'll just let me repeat my position because I really think it's the context in which, in which to, the only context in which that you can see this, the idea that someone might fill the president, a Republican might, might become president and overshadow Donald Trump would be the tragedy of his life. Therefore, it's not going to happen. Do you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know, the same way you can skip an ad? I get it.

I'm Siaiaa and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. Oh, that's such a good line that would be the tragedy of his life.

In a way that actually for Rupert Murdoch, who always wanted to make an American president, he did make an American president. The tragedy is, it was Donald Trump. Yes. But Donald Trump is going to, the Donald Trump presidency is going to continue, if not in the White House, because I don't think he's figured out how to pull that one off, but therefore it will continue in Mar-a-Lago. He will be the president in exile with billions of dollars at his disposal to finance this administration in exile.

And of course, Gryft Force One, the Katari airplane, which we forgot to mention that hilarious moment. And what a metaphor. You immediately texted it to me when it happened. The emergency shoot suddenly going off. I mean, could you have a better metaphor than Gryft Force One is delayed taking Donald Trump to Dallas for his mini RNCCon? Because the emergency shoot goes off and you think down the emergency shoot is coming all these Republican politicians who don't want to be anywhere near. the RNC. During the campaign, the emergency shoot went off, and this was some, some, you know, poor engineer or technician did something wrong. The shoot went off and that person was immediately

fired on the spot. And again, it is the grand tragedy of his life would be if he was replaced by another Republican. But the small tragedy. All have to do with the airplane. Nothing makes him crazier than when things go wrong with his airplane. Well, I can understand that. Having spent the day on the tarmac at Heathrow on Tuesday, I can understand the frustration with transport when planes don't work. It's really annoying.

With private transport. Well, sadly not. I was at Heathrow flying back Virgin. And the entire of Heathrow was closed, actually. it was really problematic. Anyway, I got back on Wednesday. But let's also talk then, as you say, if the RNC or if Trump unwittingly gave his successors a platform to display their wares for 2028, RFK Jr., I mean, you've always

maintained he was going to run. And I've always thought partly his voice, his voice is just so unfortunate to listen to. And I know you say it's a crack power in my mind. voice. Other people say that he's got something wrong with his throat. I thought that was disqualifying. But in fact, I thought he gave a very compelling speech and he invoked his father. He invoked his uncle, obviously JFK. And he said, you know, I attended my first DNC when I was when I was six years old. No, and I've said, I mean, he is, RFCA has a, of, has a, of, a, of, is in person can be very powerful.

He's very articulate. He speaks incredibly well. He's smart. RFK is smart. The problem with RFK is that he is a liar and a fantasist and a propagandist. And it is all, he would do. anything. He would literally do anything to do. So, so J.D. Vance may be the most ambitious, cravenly ambitious person in America. But RFK, it's a different kind of, kind of ambition.

I mean, first thing, it was so quiescent for so long because he was out of it. He was a, he was a drug addict, and he was so many things disqualified him from ever hoping to be what he is, what he believes he is destined to be. So it's a different kind of he really believes that there is this destiny which he has to reclaim and to do anything to reclaim it. And he rediscovered this. I mean, he, he, this was, this was discovered really in, in, you know, 2020, when did he start to run 2022?

And, and, you know, the background of this is, is interesting because so RFK as a political creature, a national political creature, exists because of Steve Bannon and Roger Stone. So they went to him and said, you should, you should run your, for all kinds of reasons. but their real their real agenda here was to get him to run as a Democrat and to shame Joe Biden. So to weaken Joe Biden. And then RFK finding out that he could do this and clearly relishing it. And his numbers were very good on the running as a Democrat, you know, approaching, you know, 15% coming on 20%.

Those are big numbers for an insurgent candidate. And so having a taste of that, but then understanding that he was not going to be able to run past the primaries and the convention, then he decided, no, I'm going to run as an independent, as a third-party candidate. And suddenly that gave him all kinds of. kinds of power because he was taking votes from the Republicans as well as the Democrats. Okay, so we have a clip, and I like to say we watched the RNC so people didn't have to. Let's play a particular clip of RFK talking to the crowd.

The day that President Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, within three hours of his shooting, he called me and asked me for a meeting. and during the series of talks that followed, I realized that everything that I heard about President Trump and everything I believed about him from the mainstream media was a lie. Everything. Wow. President Trump called him within three hours of being shot at Butler, Pennsylvania.

Okay, that's interesting because that means that if that is true and nothing that RFK says is necessarily true. That means that Trump was not hurt. Trump was not wounded. I mean, just let's use our, we can all use our human experience. If you've just been shot, if someone has just tried to murder you,

you are not on the phone three hours later having a significant, in fact, a pivotal political conversation. You're not talking to anybody. And in fact, let me go over. I know something about the timeline here. He gets shot. He is taken to the hospital. They want to run.

variety of tests, you know, do a cat scan, do a brain scan. He doesn't want that. So I don't exactly know how long that lasts, but let's assume that's not trivial. Then he has to get to somewhere else he's going back to... Is he going back to Bedminster? Yes, he's going back to Bedminster. So I don't know where this conversation even could happen in that three-hour time period. But clearly, if it did happen, it means that Trump is okay. I mean, as Trump is that, I mean, and many people have said that this, that his wound was a, you know, I mean, essentially he got, he got.

he got, you know, some, some fragment of something hit his ear and it was a minor at best. So I don't know what's confirmed here, but clearly what is being said here calls into question lots of things. RFK's truthfulness, the president's wound after the assassination, the, and the, And then in general, what RFK goes on to say that Donald Trump is the, you know, everything that he, what does he say? Everything he's heard about Donald Trump is. Is a lie from the mainstream media. So let's go on and hear a little further clip about what he says about Donald Trump. I discovered a self-effacing man of superior intelligence, of.

empathy and compassion with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues and in molecular detail, and most of all, a near reckless courage that challenged vested interests and official orthodoxies. I found a man who cared deeply about transparency in government, who believed in protecting free speech more than anything and the entire United States Constitution. I mean, a couple of things. Just the, just the background here on RFK. RFK is not only a person who has, who has assiduously told the American people that vaccines that we know are effective are not only not effective but dangerous. So he is a person quite capable of absolutely either inventing his own reality or challenging reality in a way that is opportunistic for him.

And let's just remind people that measles has made a resurgence in the two years that he's been health and human services secretary. We've had more cases of measles this year than we had in the first 24 years of this century. Number two, he's capable of writing an entire book, which he has, defending his cousin, his Skakel cousin, who has been accused of and convicted of murdering his neighbor. As close as you can get to an open and shut case, nevertheless, RFKK can write

this book exonerating his cousin. And let me say that he does it very well. I read this book. I thought, oh my God, Michael Skakel might be innocent, which is not possible. This is the death of Martha Moxley, who was hit over their head in a terrible, terrible, frenzied attack with the golf club. Yes. So let's go back to Donald Trump is a man of great humility and

And self-effacing, managula. Self-effacing. Now, there is, there, there was, there was during the campaign a leak of a recorded conversation. The Trump people were really, really pissed off about this, a recorded conversation between, between RFK Jr., still junior at 72, coming on 73, and Donald Trump. in which I could do the conversation. It's Trump motor-mouthing, blah, blah, blah, blah. And RFK, the self-effacing Donald Trump motor-mouthing and RFK going. This is RFK lines where you go, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Now, the further background to this is that, so RFK is running as an independent. He is taking votes pretty much an equal number of votes, both from the Democrats and the Republicans. He goes to first to the Democrats and offers himself. I will drop out if you will give me a high position, you know, the, I mean, likely the same position he got from the Trump, the HHS. secretary position. The Democrats say, no way are we doing that. Subsequently to that, Joe Biden drops out. Kamala Harris becomes the candidate. And that group of Democrats who indicated that they would, that they didn't like anti-Biden Democrats who would vote for Kennedy. left, they all go back to Kamala Harris.

So suddenly he's only taking votes from the Republicans, which means that the Republicans have to do a deal. They're panicked about this. And that's his point of leverage. So the point of leverage in which he suddenly realizes, so this point in which he suddenly realizes that Donald Trump, everything the media has said about Donald Trump, is converges with the moment in which Donald Trump actually offers him the job of HHS secretary. And I will say that everybody within the Trump circle thought, you know, because Trump is always offering people, people jobs, that this was just one of those things and that the job would be. And that they were all appalled when, in fact, RFK Jr. actually got the job.

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The other thing I find particularly interesting about him, which I think is less known, is that he was actually financed by an ex-wife of Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google. Now, Nicole Shanahan is, you know, she claims she's an. AI expert. She studied at law school. She's a very interesting character. She marries Sergey Brin after meeting him at her, I think, at her bachelorette weekend party.

She goes for a sort of spa weekend with girls. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google or alphabet, is at the same yoga retreat. They connect. she then gets married, 27 days into her marriage. Her husband discovers that she's been having some sort of relationship with Sergey Brin. She gets divorced and she takes the Toyota Prius. She gets the Toyota Prius in the divorce and that's kind of it. Then marries Sergey Brin and then incredibly has a relationship with Elon Musk,

which then tears the two men apart their friends. And she makes off, because Sergei Bryn's like, okay, we're done here. She makes off with a billion dollars in Google stock, which has only continued to go up. So RFK Jr. chooses her to be his VP candidate, and she finances him. And so he's financed with her divorce settlement. I mean, it's a remarkable turn of events. Of course, he's married to Cheryl Hines, who I'm sure can totally envisage herself as First Lady, because she essentially played First Lady to Larry David on curb your enthusiasm.

No. So this is, you just have to see this all in the course of this very abbreviated political career. So this all happens to RFK Jr. post-2020. We're only in 2026. So this is a four-year political career preceded by just years in years in years of him doing pretty much not very much. And being high for a good period of this time. So, yeah, so he is now, I mean, if he pulls this off, yeah, you know, we're in no way in hell territory, which means. You know, yeah, this is a real possibility.

I've never thought of him as a serious contender until I watched his speech. And I was like, oh, wow, he really is charismatic. This is a well-written speech. Well, let's look at this. To be named Kennedy, a Kennedy heir, and to be willing to do anything. I mean, I mean, anything. There is nothing. Stop at nothing to do to get what he wants. The most amoral president who are the most amoral human being next to only Donald Trump. I mean, J.D. Vance at maybe as

ambitious, more ambitious, as I say, the most ambitious. But still, I think you could say, you could say, you can somehow see some morality or grasping for morality. I mean, he wrote a whole book about this, which is not, you know, is, I mean, which there is a genuine element to J.D. Vance is trying to at least justify a kind of morality. That doesn't exist for Bobby Kennedy, Jr. Well, and also he's just such a character in the way that Trump is a character with a remarkable past and three wives. RFK, you know, has a wife who died by suicide, claims that his brain was attacked by a brain worm, actually by a worm, had a strange digital relationship with a journalist Olivia Nutsi who'd been profiling him. And numerous other journalists, numerous other relationships which he has himself enumerated. Right. Well, his sex diary that has been written about ad nauseum, he's wrestling with Catholicism.

So he has that in common with J.D. Vance. But just it's remarkable. But I suddenly understood what you were talking about. he commanded the stage in a really compelling way. I mean, J.D. Vance is going to have to really think about how he knocks him out, I think. And the beginning of the speech was all about his uncle, JFK, it was all about his father and how they would never recognize the contemporary Democratic Party, which polices, you know, how people talk. He was very compelling the way he laid out his arguments. Right. And just to be, he is one member of a rather vast family who would take that position about their forebearers.

And the rest of his family has tried to make it as clear as possible that he has been thrown out of the Kennedy family and legacy. Right. So the other person that spoke that also has presidential ambitions and is clearly also possibly a match in terms of ambition for J.D. Vance is Ted Cruz, who will not give up his desire to run for president. He got completely elbowed out by Donald Trump in 2016, but he's back. He will always be back. And he will never be president. Why won't he be president? Not least of all, because he is, I mean, J.D. Vance may be the most ambitious man, but Ted Cruz is the most disliked man.

There is nobody, nobody who likes Ted Cruz. Nobody who likes Ted Cruz. Well, Mrs. Cruz probably likes Ted Cruz, right? Heidi, who was so meanly dismissed by. Well, actually, fair point. Yes. Fair point. Especially after Donald Trump disdain was so mean about her appearance. And then Ted Cruz came crawling back to Donald Trump. Exactly. But can we, I want to talk about this because it's on my mind because I just saw it.

This E. Jean Carroll documentary. Yes. Let's talk about it. Which I thought was fantastic. I mean, really, first thing, it was. It was enormously entertaining to see. It's a great story. E. Jean Carroll is a great story, which you forget. She's been reduced just to this, to this person who had a sad and unfortunate interaction with Donald Trump. But she's a great character prior to that and then on the other side of that. And I this, when, what are the details?

Let me just set it up because we've talked about the documentary a little bit before because I saw it probably a few months ago. It premiered at Telluride. It got very limited theatrical release because I think distributors were anxious politically about it. And it's incredibly compelling as a documentary. And in a month's time, it's due out to be rented for rental on all the regular platforms. so Amazon, Apple, etc. You can still rent it ahead of that if you want to do joint, you know, if you want to do a screening at home or have someone,

it's on something called kinema.com, K-I-N-E-M-A dot com. But she is so compelling as a character. I mean, she's fascinating to watch. She's wonderful on camera. She's funny. She's self-deprecating. She's super smart. And, of course, she had no idea.

idea what she was getting into when in 2019 she decided to out herself as having been abused by Donald Trump in a changing room in Bergdorf Goodman. So there are three really interesting things about this. The fact that this actually happened to her and then she came forward. The fact that this was so different. I mean, this was difficult for her and she became a kind of anathema, lost her job, your former employer, the Hearst Corporation, what could possibly have been going through their heads, except those are incredibly stupid people over there. They fired her after she made this accusation against Donald Trump. And then she persevered. And then she persevered. So the perseverance is the Trump, Mary. And then the winning, yes. Okay, I just want to highlight the firing because she'd been writing a column for 25 years for Elle magazine. It was called Ask E. Gene. She had a television series that was based on it to Ask E. Jean. And it was a remarkable decision for a magazine that has built itself as an empowerment, a female empowerment magazine.

Yeah, Elle magazine, sorry. And then they fired her. So they fired her. So she makes this, she writes, she comes forward, describes what happened to her with Trump. And at that point, Elle magazine and the Hearst Corporation fire her. And then they say that the firing has nothing to do with the fact, these accusations that she made. What goes through people's heads? Are these, I mean, I know the people at the, I know everybody at the,

at the upper level of the Hearst Corporation, you yourself were there, and you had left several years before this. And, you know, these are, you know, all people I know quite well, and I am, and I socialize with them, and I guess it's never been a question to me, and I've always assumed that they were in fact as gutless and as, um, um, and like it's just, just, I think, I think they made what they thought at the time, though I think it was a miscalculation, a business decision that they didn't want to ruffle anybody's feathers, the president. Yeah, well, that's called that's called gutless.

Yeah, I understand. That's not called the business decision. That's called the gutless decision. Actually, the business decision would have been to support her. And I think that would have been probably a very, well, given who their audience is. Very profitable business decision. So this is just gutless.

Yeah, I would have doubled her pages. Yes. He would have doubled her pages driven into the audience, which is young women who are largely Democrat, who really didn't like Trump and was sick of men praying on them. And the other fascinating thing, and Nelskevall pointed this out, was that she had written a piece for spy magazine, Graydon Carter and Kurt Anderson's magazine that started, I guess 40 years ago,

because they're about to have their 40th anniversary, but she had written a piece in the spy about places to have a quickie in New York. And one of the places she had suggested was the changing rooms at Bergdorf-Gubman, because they had doors you could lock, they had plush carpets, and, you know, it was a central location.

And of course, at the time, Trump owned the Plaza Hotel, which is next door to Bergdorf-Germann. And what I found most compelling about the documentary is how Eugen explains how the assault took place. She runs into Trump. She's coming out. He's going into Bergdorf-Germann. He goes, oh, you're the advice lady because he recognizes her from television. They have a conversation. It's kind of flirtatious.

He says I'm looking for a gift, takes her up to the lingerie floor. And then the next thing you know, they're in a changing room and she's like, what's happening. And then it's all over and she manages to kick him off and get him out and off of her. But once you hear how it happened or how she says it happens because he still denies any of this, you understand it in a way that I don't think you do. do before you hear her say it. Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't. And I've always been, you know, and Trump has gone around saying, A, she's not my type, which is then disputed in the course of the trial because he

misidentifies her, a picture of Eugen as Marla Maples, his former wife. Incredible, right? One would assume is his type. But and then there's a lot of, a lot of, um, has always been a lot of discussion. The people around Trump will confirm this that she was at this point 50, you know, 50 years old or something like that. So, and Trump is only interested in young women. So, and, and, you know, people say these things and then you start to think, well, yeah, that probably is kind of true. But then she explains this and then you hear it and you thought, yes, that's, of course it could happen.

exactly like that. Yes, he may be interested in young women and models, but he's interested in every opportunity. Here was an opportunity that presented itself. And then even on her part, you can see, she's thinking, thinking, I mean, she's a journalist. She's thinking this is going to be a good story. And I meet Donald Trump in Bergdorf. And even up into that point, where he's got her in the dressing room and it seems like, and you can see the, you know, and I especially can, that sense of, okay, I can write this. And then it goes all haywire.

Well, I think the moment you've just described where he misidentifies her as Marla Maples is fascinating because you can see the lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, barely able to believe he's just done that because in misidentifying her, he undermines his entire case, that she wasn't his type. And the photo is really very clear. She looks identical to Marla Mayfels.

And then when he's confronted with his mistake, he goes, oh, well, the photo is kind of blurry. It's blurry. You can see the photo. The photo is incredibly clear. And he identifies everybody else in the photo correctly. Anyway, it's a remarkable documentary. She's a fascinating character. And she's also, I think, she seems to be incredibly honest about the toll it's taken on her.

I mean, she talks about how her face changes over, you know, just ages with the pressure of it, the incredible hostility she gets online, the threats that she gets, the fact she has to get security. And just the toll the whole thing has taken. And when Robbie Kaplan, her lawyer reminds her that she's going to face Trump in the courtroom. She says she has almost a complete breakdown. She can't speak. You know, it takes her several hours to process the fact that she's going to face him. And it's a completely fascinating document.

And then there's just this other part of this, which this is another clear representation of how much. how how Trump has intimidated the media at so many levels. So they couldn't get this documentary distributed. They made this documentary. They financed this document. This is an independently financed documentary, a group called Impact Partners, which does a lot of documentaries, but independently finances them. And then, you know, traditionally you go to film festivals and,

And then distributors, you make a deal with distributors. And hopefully you get a bidding war going. And this was one of the premier films at Telluride two years ago, I believe. And they got nothing. Nobody wanted to touch this. And this has been true about every another film, The Apprentice, had a similar experience. You couldn't get, people are just saying, no, you know, this is. Well, you know, we're, you know, big companies.

Why would we want to antagonize the Trump administration like that? And this is finally, I mean, they've gone in a, you know, a really circuitous workaround of getting this distributed outside shown in theaters. And then, and then it's gone to video on demand. So, you know, and I mean, people are saying, well, it's, it's, you know, they're not afraid. They're showing this, this, they're now showing this film. But it actually is a clear divide between distributors picking up a film, financing, financing a film, making a financial commitment to the film, making a promotional and putting their imprimatur on it. In other words, they are sort of like the publisher at that point. But VOD means that they're kind of just like the newsstand.

You know, they'll put anything. I mean, you pay a fee for it and they collect their little fee. But they have no real direct involvement with the product itself. Well, it will be available on Apple. It will be available on Amazon where I guess it will sit alongside the Melania documentary. And I guess they're going to market it along the lines, market it along the lines of, you know, the documentary Donald Trump doesn't want you to see. Yeah, but they won't be. There'll be very little marketing money for it. So watch it.

Yeah, so watch it. All right, Michael, we'll be back on Tuesday, back inside Trump's head, and have a wonderful rest of your weekend. And don't forget, book your tickets to come and see us live in L.A. room and it's beast. pub forward slash ITH live. October 20th. October 20th, where Michael will be unfiltered. Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Pissarro and Neil Rosenhouse. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.