The Daily Beast Podcast - This Is Why Trump Lost It After Kirk Murder: Wolff

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

Trump chronicler Michael Wolff joins the Beast’s Joanna Coles to unravel Donald Trump’s response to Charlie Kirk’s killing. They examine how Trump rushed to blame the left before facts were known, appears to have dodged any real grief, and may still be haunted by his own brush with assassination. From a Trump’s droopy face appearing at this week’s 9/11 memorial, to cracks with RFK Jr., a cabinet unease over inflation, and Epstein’s “birthday book” resurfacing, it’s been another chaotic week for the president. They also discuss the FBI’s fumbling search for Kirk’s killer and how its apparent incompetence has fueled conspiracy theories and social media attacks across the political divide. They explore how these events reveal a leader trapped by ghosts of the past. And they ask whether Trump is running from Kirk’s death or from himself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michael, what do you think about how Donald Trump has responded to the death of Charlie Kirk? I think it's pernicious the way he's responded to it. I think he's put Charlie Kirk's death to political use. And I think he's put it to dangerous political use. I mean, without knowing the facts, this is before we had a suspect in the killing of Charlie Kirk. Donald Trump was out essentially. saying that the left, the liberals, the Democrats, and anyone who might oppose him was complicit in the killing of Charlie Kurt. This is both not only just specious, wrong, but it's obviously irresponsible. And I can't help feeling that perhaps part of the issue is that he can't talk about. He can't come to grips with this. That maybe, maybe in his mind inside Trump's head, it's too associated and how could it not be with his own assassination attempt? So I think in some way he is running from this death instead of trying to do what

a leader ought to be doing at this point and expressing grief and empathy here. So Michael Wolf, what a terrible week for us not to both be in New York together. But first of all, where the hell are you? Well, I am in, I am not in Scotland, but I am very near Scotland. What does that mean? You mean you're in, you know, I'm in. You don't know what you are. I'm actually, no, I don't exactly know.

I am, I was in London. I am in London for the next week. and we've taken a weekend excursion to a friend's house, not in Scotland, but close to Scotland. I would like. I would like. In County Durham. In County Durham, whilst I did it, there was a very funny moment in my day yesterday when you called me and there was a lot of background noise and you were like, I'm at Kings Cross Station, as if it was some sort of otherworldly place when in fact it's actually. rather a fabulous station, which I know well because I often take the train from London to

up to the north of England, where you are now. You would, and where you are from. Where I am from. So I am where you were once were. Almost. Almost. I was a little further down from County Durham and Yorkshire. But anyway, I'm sorry that we're not together in the studio, but I'm relieved to talk to you.

And I'm very curious to get your take on what has really been a remarkable week in America? No, well, it is. And this is a major event, you know, a terrible event occurred. And now we're dealing with the aftermath of this. And, you know, the thing about political, a killing of a major political figure or an emerging major political figure is that it does become a political event. Now, curiously, and it's somewhat hard to understand, one of the things that's coming out of the White House and out of the MAGA people is a determination not to let anyone talk about this as a political event. And I'm still not sure what exactly what the meaning of that is. So the response is you have to express in enormous solidarity with the family, grief, which everyone is basically doing. There's not anyone who is saying, saying obviously, that this is a good thing that happened.

This is a bad thing that happened. But it is also a thing that has now, it is now central in this moment of. of political time. And I think to try to understand what that means is a important in B, going to take some do it. And of course, Charlie Kirk was a political figure, but it doesn't seem like this was a wildly political act. It seems like an act of a young, disconnected young man. I mean, there are many parallels between his husband, Matthew Crooks. No, and yes, into school shooters everywhere. Again and again and again and again, we have seen this, the confluence of whatever deep emotional issues have gone wrong for someone and access to firearms.

Right, access to powerful firearms. So what are you actually hearing from people within the White House about how they deal with this going forward? I think they don't know and they are now responding to this thing. And I think that they're, you know, I was picking up in the conversations. I had some reluctance from people around the president. But now as he has embraced this, that that, that, it becomes the thing that they too have to embrace, which is that Charlie Kirk and the death of Charlie Kirk is now the weapon to be used against enemies, all perceived political enemies.

And obviously that's incredibly scary, incredibly frightening, and incredibly wrong. There was a strange moment yesterday, which you may have missed just because of time difference and things where Donald Trump is asked by a reporter how he's doing, because really this has obviously been a terrible week for him for all sorts of other reasons which will come to in a moment. But he says, how are you doing with the death of Charlie Kirk? And Trump says, well, I'm actually doing fine. Over there, there are the trucks they've pulled up. They're here to do the ballroom, the ballroom. I'm very excited about the ballroom. There hasn't been a ballroom in the White House, you know, and we're now building one, as if he'd already

moved on. And he was spotted at the Yankees game. Well, he was spotted. He made a big thing of being at the Yankees game, where he was sort of dancing away. And it just felt like he'd immediately moved on. It was very strange behavior. Well, I think it's also very hard for Trump. And as a matter of fact, I can't think of an instance, possibly briefly after his own assassinated, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I think about personal feelings. He never talks about personal feelings. Everything is exterior for Donald Trump. And so, and so, and that's, I think, part of what's, what's happened here is, you know, Charlie Kirk and a lot of, of the people in the White House knew Charlie Kirk. A lot of people in the MAGA thing, I've met Charlie Kirk a couple of times, seemed like actually a very personable guy. And I think they knew him. They had, they had strong personal feelings about him. And I think that's very hard to process

and what it has now come for for Trump. And I think Trump also knew him, liked him, felt a rapport for him in that this is now, but because Trump can't express this, this has become this other thing, it's vengeance for Charlie Kirk. You know, it's the, it's the left or the liberals who killed Charlie Kirk. And our commitment now is to going after them. So, you know, once more, it's this weird moment in which everybody's, seems to be having a great deal of trouble processing this on a normal human level. This is a terrible thing that has happened.

It happened because of a disturbed kid with a firearm. And it really has, I think we can argue, very little meaning beyond that. And it is only now with this reaction and the MAGA reaction, the White House's reaction and Trump's reaction. turning into something else. Well, and the reaction obviously has been, there was clearly a rush to judgment, the assumption that this was done by someone on the left,

the grandmother of the boy who is the alleged killer, came out and said they didn't even know any Democrats. This was a meg of family. They were all supportive of Donald Trump, which also adds to their confusion, I'm sure, and to how to respond to it. A total, well, I mean, the response began, before we even knew. And that's another issue here of that inability to wait to see what happened

here, what are the facts here, then complicated by the whole FBI's response in this, in which they became a laughing stock. I mean, so we, it's, it's no surprise that Cash Patel and, um, and what's his name? Dan Bonjino, his number two. Yes, I mean, these two guys who have no business being anywhere near a leadership role in the FBI, screwed the whole thing up, a cock-up of enormous proportions. So it becomes necessary somehow to cover that up or at least somehow distract from the fact that once again the Trump administration is beset by incompetence. Well, let me just ask you something, though, because they did get the guy. Was it a cock up of enormous proportions? I mean, 30 hours later after the assassination, the guy is in custody. Well, because his family called up and said, you better come and get this guy. So that turns out to have almost nothing to do with the FBI. And what the FBI did was muddle the whole thing. set up a situation which immediately fed all kinds of conspiracy theories, violated all

protocols in terms of when this was announced, making announcements, everybody rushing onto social media for their own personal purposes instead of following procedures. And this includes not only Cash Patel, but also Donald Trump. And, and, and, And again, it's cannot, can't, you have to ask the question, or you have to come to the conclusion that this administration is the thing that most characterizes it, is that they hired all kinds of people who shouldn't have been hired to do jobs, that they have no experience which would let them do the jobs in any kind of professional way. Well, you're certainly right that people ran to social media. I mean, it really is government by social media now, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's, yeah, and I think much of the response here, the response to Charlie Kirk's death is a social media-led response. And then much of the now, current reaction today is a reaction to other people's social media. So, you know, I mean, I mean, Tucker Carlson did a thing, which I saw incredibly fatuous, in which he went down the Twitter or the ex accounts of various unnamed people of no consequence whatsoever, who were saying things that he felt were inappropriate about Charlie Curtis. death. And the point of this is people say inappropriate things all the time. So in the point here, this is a larger social movement according to Tucker Carlson. And this is all to demonize now the left. I give up. I mean, nothing makes sense here. Well, it's also very difficult to understand why they want to live in this world with heightened fear, heightened violence. This just seems a very scary place for America to be going. Well, I mean, let's, let's, I mean, I think that there is a

conclusion that we can, we can jump to is that they, is that they see value for themselves and living in this world. They see value in us against them. They see value in us against them. They see value in declaring their own righteousness and the in the absolute opposite for the left or the liberals or the Democrats, whoever they, whoever the people who are opposed them, oppose them not for legitimate reasons,

but for illegitimate reasons. To what extent do you think that Charlie, Kirk's death and the manner in which it happened at a rally shot at from 200 yards away or 200 feet away brought back Trump's own experience at Butler, Pennsylvania. I mean, it seems something that everybody's gated over. I mean, it certainly should have. I mean, or you could say, how could it not? How could Trump not see this?

but he doesn't seem to be relating relating to it in that way. I mean, I haven't heard heard a word of a word out of Trump's mouth, which suggests that there is a personal, a personal connection to a horrifying event here. And, you know, I mean, again, I think. think this is about he doesn't respond, is incapable of responding personally. I think we need to take a break, Joanna, for some ads. And we're back talking about what else, but Donald Trump and the response to the death of Charlie Kirk this week. It's been a terrible week for him, too. I mean, physically, the week looks like it's taken its toll. He was on the breakfast sofa on Fox News on Friday.

And he just looked tiny compared to the three people. He looked like physically your description, or Steve Bannon's description of him as a giant shrimp. The shrimp is curling in on itself. He was physically smaller than the three people sitting around him. And you just felt this is very unprecedented to be sitting on the Fox News sofa. And there were all sorts of reports that they'd actually delayed the news of the capture of Tyler Robinson so that he could announce it on the Fox News sofa. Well, I'm sure that that is true.

You know, again, another strange aspect of this, that they wanted to own this. They want to own Charlie Kirk. They want to own this terrible event. And they want to put it to use. So, I mean, it's horrifying, and I hope actually it passes that having this, having caught this young guy, everybody realizes this is vastly more complicated. This is not in the end a political act. But then having said that, the other thing is that Trump comes to that couch and Trump comes to suddenly. wanting to make this this, this announcement in being the hero of this event because things

have been, been going so poorly for him. I mean, we have, we have the Russians, the, the Russians, the intensity of the Russian attack on Ukraine has actually become significantly greater than before Trump got involved and basically said he was going to. going to solve the problem. I'm going to Alaska. I'm going to, I'm going to take care of this. Well, clearly, he's not only taking care of, not taking care of it, but probably made it significantly worse. Then we have the Russians, the Russian incursion into Poland. I mean, this is a, this is a serious thing. I mean, and it's a serious test of NATO, which Trump has, you know, pretty systematically tried to undermine. plus we have inflation numbers that are that are more than worrisome and which match what virtually everyone said would be the effect of the Trump tariffs.

So again, and this is all a level of incompetence, they can't do anything right. And let's let's not forget RFK Jr. in the middle of this appearing before Congress. and with almost everybody, everybody except the most extreme mega faction lined up to say, hey, wait a minute, could this really be? Are we really doing this to the American health care system? You know, and I got a feeling that Trump himself, and this is what I understand, is pretty squeamish about.

this. He keeps asking people about RFK Jr. And, you know, he asks him, well, how do you think he's doing? And then he says, you know, but he's a Kennedy. So, so. That's interesting. So you sense that there could be a bit of division between the two of them. He's hiring from people. I do. I mean, I think there is a division between RFK Jr. in almost everybody. And even Trump. I mean, you know, Trump is a is a kind of a, on many levels, Trump is actually a normal person. I mean, he goes, he goes to the doctor. He's, he's concerned about these things. He's concerned about his own health. He's concerned about his family's health. And what is, and he is as well as everyone else asking the question, what is, what is all?

RFK doing? Does he know what he's doing? Now, for Trump, it's like, well, he's a Kennedy. So, so he can't be all bad. Again and again, we see these things. He's chosen these people. He's put these people in place who should not be there. And now, you know, chickens come home to roost. So do you think there is anyone around him holding holding the line for America's science community and healthcare? I mean, who would be whispering in his ear about RFK? You know, I think what will happen in this situation is that people will not say anything. No one is going to say, no one is going to be put themselves in the position of contradicting Trump

until he wants to be contradicted, until he wants someone to say, I think RFK is a catastrophe, let's fire him. That's not going to come from anybody else but from Trump. But what will happen is people will say nothing. And so I think that's what's going on in the White House. Nobody is saying that RFK is a genius. No way saying that. And that silence, does he hear that silence? No, not necessarily until he wants to hear it. Until he wants to hear it. Right. And what are the sort of saner people, if one can put it like that, in the cabinet?

How are they feeling about things at the moment? Because if you're Scott Besant, you're seeing that the economy isn't where they promised it would be. You know, Marco Rubio must be looking at what's going on with Russia and thinking, well, this isn't what I expected as. Secretary of State? Or do you think they've just completely rolled over? Well, they have two lives, parallel lives. There's the life of what they really think, and there's the life in which they interact with Donald Trump. And in many instances, there's no crossover there. I mean, you know, in order to survive in this job as working for Donald Trump, then you have to say what Donald Trump wants you to say.

There's no other alternative. That's it. Meanwhile, you know, you're not, none of these people are necessarily stupid. Some of them are stupid. But Scott Besson isn't stupid. I wouldn't put him necessarily at the top of the class. But he's not stupid and knows that at some point

this is the, the economy is going to be, he's going to have to own that. So that's going to be scary for him. Marco Rubio, likewise. I mean, Marco Rubio actually is not stupid and has had a long experience and long involvement in international matters, has had a well-documented point of view, which he is now contradicting in almost every aspect. And he knows that he is going to, he is going to be.

ultimately somebody, if not Donald Trump, then history is going to hold him to account here. So, you know, I think in every instance, they just wait and hope that circumstances will break in a way that Trump will be open to a different approach. But circumstances may not break, and it may well be too late. You're in England at the moment, and the British ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, has just been forced to resign over his letter in the birthday book to Jeffrey Epstein. Can you tell us the reaction going on there? This is a sort of probably to Americans a minor diplomatic incident of not much import. Yet it's another scalp that's fallen to the Jeffrey Epstein files. Yeah, well, I think that there are two things, things certainly for us to consider, the birthday book and how that is overshadowing Trump's week and how Epstein himself continues to overshadow everything that happens with Donald Trump. As for Peterman, you know, as for the British ambassador to the U.S., you know, this is a, you know, this is a, you know, this is. this is essentially the third time he's been caught up in a scandal and been fired. He has actually seems to have an extraordinary number of lives here. Well, he was a huge enabler of the

Labor Party getting elected, which is why he's been able to survive perhaps better than other politicians. But for those not following this story, perhaps as closely as some of us were, there was a rather remarkable moment where he apologised for his friendship with Geoffrey Epstein on the BBC, on the morning radio show, which is sort of the equivalent to Good Morning America, I suppose, in Britain. And he said, and there are more embarrassing revelations to come and then didn't go into it. And everybody was left saying what, and I must have got a handful of texts from people saying, do you know what the embarrassing revelations are. And it turned out to be an article that was coming out in Bloomberg that detailed more of his reliance on Jeffrey Epstein. It was very strange. And that's true. And Epstein spoke to me about Mandelson, who he liked very much, and they had a very close

relationship. I mean, I think that this is, you know, whatever. I think the thing to process, And this is also true for Donald Trump, and I think for other people close to Donald Trump, is that these were very close friendships these people had with Jeffrey Epstein. That was part of Jeffrey Epstein's talent. He made friends with many people, and he was a good friend to them, supporting them in all kinds of ways. in the ways of a friend, of being available, of being on the phone, of telling them what doctors to go to, of helping to get their children into school, of just being available.

Well, it's not, that makes it sound like he was a manipulator, which I'm sure he also was, but he was also a genuine friend. He was there. He would talk to you, when you wanted to talk. He would, you know, he is someone that many people came to trust. And I think that was true about Donald Trump and it was true about Peter Mandelson. Very much true. And also Jeffrey Epstein helped Peter Mandelson over some difficult personal situations that he had. And so all of these guys now are, you know, the affect is that they barely knew him or they wish they didn't know.

They wish they hadn't known him or they barely knew him. And I'm sure in hindsight they did wish they didn't know him, but they did know him and did know him very well, including, and this is, you know, always. Always, right. The central headline is that one of the people who knew him best and one of the people Epstein knew best was Donald Trump. And, you know, we went into this week with this birthday book and a strangled effort on the part of the White House. I mean, I still don't know where they hope they were going with this or where it will end up that this. that this birthday letter from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein on the occasion of Epstein's 50th birthday was not written by Donald Trump when patently, obviously, indubidably, it was written by Donald Trump.

And they have called it a hoax, but then when they've been confronted, okay, so you mean these documents are a hoax? It's like, no, we didn't say the documents are a hoax. We said the Democrats are perpetuating a hoax by somehow associating Trump with Epstein. The dialectic here is so strangled that I can't help but think that we're going to get the truth. Well, it's also so, I mean, the choice of words in the birthday letter are wonderful secret. I mean, it not only feeds into everything we now know about Epstein, but it makes Donald Trump look complicit. Let's take another break, Joanna. And Michael Wolf and I are back inside Trump's head.

They were closely involved in each other's lives at a. very, you know, pick the words, intimate level. And that's what Donald Trump is running from, running and running and running. To the extent that almost everything that he does certainly can be read as an effort to distract from this. Well, certainly the spotlight has moved off the birthday letters this week, but I think that we should dip into the birthday letters again next week. And some of them were very perfunctory and they were like, hey, Jeffrey, have a great birthday.

But some of them went into really extraordinary detail about what a good friend he was, the sinister pictures of Jeffrey handing balloons to children in childlike drawings. It's a very... It's a disturbing book and it's a creepy. Well, it, yes, but it is also a telling book. And the tell is about Jeffrey Epstein lived a sex life, a Sybarite's life, a life with, a life with, as far from, as far from, as standard middle class values as you can possibly. possibly get. And again, the headline is that Donald Trump participated in that life. Donald Trump was very much involved in in the lifestyle, which we now associate with Jeffrey

Epstein, of pursuing women, that that is, that, that is a central, a central quest in a central factor of their lives, of both of their lives. And also I'm very mindful of Jeffrey Epstein helping finance Jean-Luc Brunel, who was a French model owner who got accused in France of rape, the rape of underage girls, that Jeffrey Epstein financed MC2, a modeling company in the US with the hope of rehabilitating Brunel, who in fact got re-earned. accused and died of suicide, in theory, like Epstein, in a French jail. So we'll re- I mean, I mean, so we know, you know, the model culture is a bad culture.

It thrives for a period and then people understood, hey, this is bad. This is really, this is out of control. and it has largely been, well, to a greater or lesser extent, been corrected and restrained since then. But during that period in which it thrived in a truly unregulated sense, Donald, Jeffrey Epstein was very much a part of it, and so was Donald Trump. Yeah, I remember when Diane von Furstenberg became the head of the CFT, DA, the Council for Fashion Design in America, she insisted that models walking the runway had to be 16 years old. And even 16 years old, 16. You know. Well, I'm now wondering if it was 18, but she put an age restriction on it, which was the first time anybody done it. And the

truth is that the modeling agencies really became disrupted by social media and by influencers who took matters into their own hand and started modeling. And you got the, you know, you've got the advent of street fashion. I mean, it was an economic disruption as much as it was people saying this world isn't working. No, of course. But that era passed or has changed in significant ways. But the era in which Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were involved in it was the era in which bad stuff happened. Bad stuff happened. Michael, it's a sober note this week, a sober note, last week you said you were concerned for America and it's hard not to think that that concern has passed. It's a very strange week. Well,

you know, I mean, I mean that concern has come to pass, I think you mean, because the concern has not certainly not not passed. And I would go back to the thing that I am certainly most worried about this week is the response from the White House about, um, about Charlie Kirk and making this a... Well, they've weaponized his death, right? A campaign against people who disagree with the White House. Michael, let's get into Epstein again next week. Enjoy your time in Northern England.

I know it well. It's God's own country. And yeah, keep your ear to the ground and come back and tell you. us what's going on. We'll be back on YouTube next Tuesday evening. And I will see you from London on next week and then and then we will be back together in New York. Good. I will look forward to seeing you. Michael Wolfe. Thank you very much. So if you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget you can subscribe to the Daily Beast for up to the minute news on what's going on and goodness knows a lot's going on right now. And don't forget to join the Daily Beast

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