The Daily Beast Podcast - This Is Why Trump's Aides Endure his Endless Rage

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles take a revealing look inside Donald Trump’s world of flunkies, fear and humiliation, where cabinet officials, billionaires and tech titans learn how far they have to bend to stay in his good graces. They examine why figures like Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth have accepted radically different versions of the same bargain, and how Trump’s unpredictable mix of praise and fury keeps those around him off balance. They also explore his treatment of women, including the leaked images of Trump berating Natalie Harp, before Wolff explains why, in Trump’s second term, almost nobody around him can afford to believe they are his equal. #ad For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life, when you head to https://Smalls.com/HEAD. #ad Download SAILY's app and use code beast at checkout to get an exclusive 15% off your first purchase! For further details go to https://saily.com/beast   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

U.S. voters abroad, have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabroad.org and click request my ballot. Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote fromabroad.org. We saw photos that had been leaked of Trump yelling at Natalie Haark. She was frankly taking abuse. Speaking of flunkies, everybody takes abuse. People around Trump would say, how's the weather?

How's the weather? What's his move? There are no restraints here. This is, if he feels it, if he thinks it, he expresses it. His powers of expression are blunt force. There's no pretense that they are there for any of any other reason but the succor of Donald Trump. They are there to be his comfort blanket. Michael.

Joanna. How nice to see you. We are going to be live in L.A. at the TerraGram Ballroom on October the 20th. Tickets are on sale now. You can just go to beast.pub slash ITH live. That's beast.combe I-T-H. That's for Inside Trump's Head, live. Go to Ticketmasters and search on Inside Trump's Head. You just search on Inside Trump's Head. Come and see us. You can meet and greet us. We're looking forward to it.

And as Michael is always saying, he's very good live. You won't believe it. We have a sort of special episode today. Every now and then, we want to focus on one or two themes about Trump. And today's theme is really about, well, Michael, you describe it, his flunkies, right? All the king's flunkies. All the king's flunkies. I mean, this is really one of among the many totally anomalous things about this administration,

is that it is staffed with a whole set of not only unqualified people, but people who's chief qualification for the job is that they are willing to suck up to the boss in a way that broke no real conversation, no real relationship, no real input of expertise, which most of them don't have anyway. But even if they had it, they would not be able to offer it because that's not what Donald Trump wants. He just wants flunkies, people who to stand there and take orders and abuse and do what he wants. Conce.

I mean, without any, without reservation, without question. I mean, this is, this is, I can't any, any, I can't imagine any chief executive of a major company who would get away with this kind of thing. I mean, these are people who are, again, not just unqualified, but people willing to be sycophants at an astounding level. And I'm dying to sort of know as well the level, the level they go in, the level of sycophancy they have going in, and does he bully them into changing? Do they sublimate themselves further? We're going to get into all of it.

But before we do, I just a reminder to please subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, be it Apple, be it Spotify, be it YouTube. Please subscribe. The reason we can have these independent conversations is because of your support. There are various tiers of membership and you get extra exclusive content, add free content if you join. So Michael, a question, do people know how bad it's going to be working? for Donald Trump before they go in there? Can they do, is it possible to prepare yourself for the crazy of working for him, do you think?

No, I don't think it is because I think the relationship you have with Donald Trump is unlike the relationship you've ever had with anyone else. Now, by this point, people ought to be, there ought to be an expectation that this is going to be. be an experience unlike any you've ever had, certainly a working experience. That was not the case in the first administration. In the first administration, it was really bewildering to people. I mean, there's a whole set of people in the first administration who profoundly misunderstood their function. But at this point, and I mean, and as we point out.

we are more than 10 years into this. Everybody knows who this guy is. Yeah, I mean, I think now you would go into it and say, okay, I know what I've got to do. I mean, I have got to be an abject loyalist. And even that dignifies it. I'm going to have to be an abject suck up. So in the first administration, people joined, and we've referred to this before in the podcast. I mean, very serious people joined the administration because they thought, well, Donald Trump isn't a politician.

He doesn't know D.C. He's only been there seven times. So less than once a decade. And he's not expecting to be president. The assumption is Hillary Clinton because she's of the system is going to win. She doesn't. And people sort of flock to help Donald Trump to support him. Who do you think, you know, of the people you talked to who worked with him and you don't have to give us names, but who do you think sort of came out the most broken from the first administration? Jesus, that's a good question. And that's hard because in the end almost, I mean, everybody was broken. by this. Everybody, I mean, from the, everybody's, nobody's careers really benefited. Everybody who was in the first administration came out of this, certainly feeling cheated or feeling that they were, yeah, humiliated. I mean, that was it. Every, every interaction with this man,

if you are something more than an abject suck up. And even then, and we'll get into that, he will humiliate you. And I think all of these McMasters, Gary Cohn, Mattis, Tillerson, John Kelly, all of these people came out with a, I think, a high degree of shock and bitterness. shock and bitterness, not shock and bitterness. One can't help thinking, I mean, particularly of someone like Rex Tillerson, who was the CEO of Exxon, who gave that role up to be Secretary of State, a sort of fabulous opportunity in a normal government, even if he wasn't particularly qualified for it, but a man who certainly traveled the world doing

business, a complicated business, so requires a degree of intelligence and smarts and sophistication, who very quickly was caught saying that he thought Trump was an absolute moron and was then famously fired, and obviously it was the administration that leaked the details of him being fired as he was sitting on the toilet. So again, this sense of not just the humiliation of. firing you, but then leaking the details of how you were fired. And remember, most of these people were then fired via social media. So they would discover they were being fired on social media too, right?

No, and it isn't as if he had the courtesy, you know, to call people in and say, listen, this isn't working out. I mean, there is never with Trump a feeling on his part that he has to treat someone with any level of respect and dignity and professionalism. It doesn't exist. You're just irrelevant to him. You're just a piece, a player, a, you know, a nothing. Well, you're programming, right? You're programming until you sort of fail to draw the audience still, and then you're dismissed. I mean, I remember when McMasters, when he hired McMasters, he didn't want to hire McMasters. And he hired him to run national security.

Yes, and remember, so the first director of national security. Mike Flynn. Right. turned out to have had conversations with the Russians. He hadn't bothered to tell anybody about. So Mike Flynn was the first director who lasted a matter of weeks, really. And then because he was being investigated by the FBI because he had conversations with the Russians. So he was out of there. So they had to find someone quickly. And they got McMasters, who was a, you know, who was a four-star general, I believe.

Hugely respected figure from the military. And he came in. And his first interview was he was in uniform. And Trump was like, oh, that guy looks, that guy looks good. And then the next time he was in a suit. And Trump was like, what are you wearing now? You look like, I think it was, you look like a mattress salesman. And then basically he was told, McMasters was told, you got to go.

put the uniform back on or he's not going to hire you. So why didn't Mick Masters at that point understand? And that's the interesting thing. Within minutes of talking to Trump, you understand that there is something here that is not like other situations you have ever been in. And why then would you not say, hey, I can't be with somebody like who's talking to me like this? Well, and the answer, That's a rhetorical question, and the answer is because it's the White House, because he's the president of the United States, because you actually believe that this is, that you're stepping into a moment of history instead of into a moment of absurdity. If a genie gave me three wishes, I would use all my wishes to wish for my cats. This one is Waffles to Live Forever. But since genies don't exist, I feed my cat smalls.

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obedience that people have around Donald Trump? I mean, partly it is that he's the president, partly it is, it's the White House. It's real power. And you've talked about this before and I find it really interesting and then we'll come on to our current cabinet and who is the most egregious of the suckups. But this sense of Trump using his physical power in the room. I know he's not or he's no longer six foot three. He seems to be shrinking every time we see him. But he's physically a big man. He's an intimidating man. He shouts at people, humiliates people, thinks nothing of grinding people down in front of an audience. To what extent does that impact the behavior of those around him, even those who are four-star generals? And they're

sort of anticipating him going on around or something. Well, I would say that there are two things. I mean, there is his size and his bulk. And he's, you know, he's, he's, his size and his bulk. and his, I don't know if you want to call it energy or, I don't know what it is, but there is certainly something when you are in the room with Donald Trump. And I remember this from days in New York, so prior to the presidency, that there is this physical sense of him looming. And you pull back. Instinctively, you pull back.

from the space around him. You don't want to be in this space. Is it like a sort of electromagnetic kind of force field? I don't want to over-dramatize it, but he does seem to have this physical, as you say, energy. There is just a thing. Somebody who takes up too much space. And usually people who actually even large people,

they learn how to minimize that. Because it's, because it's intimidating to other people and it's, and it interrupts your own relationships with other people. But not Donald Trump. He kind of, however, he maximizes that. And I would, I would connect that to this other element of, of being with Donald Trump. He doesn't care about you. He barely acknowledges you.

You are for him not really there. there only in a, like a piece of furniture is there and not a very interesting piece of furniture at that. You are disposable. You are, you are nobody that comes into his field of interest, field of concern, field of any kind of sense that you and he are on the same level. I mean, it's kind of extraordinary. And I think I don't know how anyone can quite feel this. I mean, anyone can quite not feel this, although it gets confusing in the moment, too, because suddenly he's heaping flattery on you like you are the greatest.

But then you, of course, realize, and that it takes a minute. And now you're doubly confused. that he's heaping this flattery on you, but then you realize it doesn't. He could, it's, it's just, you're replaceable. And he would do that with anyone. It means nothing. So that is this, this thing that goes on with, with him, this very large man. And then when you're in his presence, you feel, well, you feel, you feel small because he, he doesn't

care about you. He is really not addressing you. He is not seeing you as anyone distinct from anyone else. I think there's a psychological term for what people try to look for when they're working with someone like Donald Trump, which is, I think, called intermittent reinforcement, where because he's unpredictable and because he is, for the most part, uncaring, you don't feature on his radar. every now and then he can sprinkle a little attention towards you or praise towards you. And it has a disproportionate impact because it's such an unusual thing. And it somehow distorts how people behave with him because like dogs, they're trying to get these treats from him.

Does that sound plausible in terms of how people actually behave with him? Except then there's this other piece of jujitsu. So the first step is, I don't really care about you. But then suddenly I'm flattering you. Right. And you get confused by that. Yeah. But then the further jujitsu is that you realize that he's not really talking to you individually.

It's meaningless. So you're, you're whipsawed by this. When I went down to Mar-a-Lago and suddenly I'm in, you know, this is a, you know, we have had this had this issue when my first book came out and he tried to stop publication, then he tried to sue me. And then, but that sold a lot of copies. So then I was suddenly like, oh, you know, that guy gets ratings. And then I go down there and suddenly he's introducing me to everybody as the best writer in America. You know, Michael Wolfe, he's the best writer in America. And you're suddenly thinking, okay, yeah, I'm, yeah. But then you realize,

Wait a minute. He has never read a word that I have written. He doesn't even know what that notion is. And then so what do you do with that? I mean, is it real praise? Is it mockery? And it doesn't, it's not direct mockery, but it basically becomes a kind of mockery. I mean, this spreading flattery, this spreading meaningless flattery wherever he goes. Okay, so let's look at the people he's got around him at the moment. Who are, well, how do you think of them in terms of sort of psychological groups? And I'm assuming that almost everybody thinks they can go in there and somehow manage him. Is that fair?

Do they all think, oh, I got this guy, I see him? You know, I think that that was the case. I don't really think that's the case anymore. I mean, if you think that at this point in time, you have really gotten the wrong information. I mean, somehow that's a profound misunderstanding. And I think you have to go into this relationship, understanding that it will be painful. And you know what is required of you. And you have to be willing to do this. And that's one of the reasons I think the cast of characters is is, is so astoundingly weak that there is almost nobody here who is a, who rises to any level of, of, of the kind of professionalism you would expect even, you know,

even a, even a B-mindis professional. I mean, everybody's an F, a flunky. And, and so I think, that's what that understanding eliminates all of the people who do have any expertise, who do have any pride, who do have something meaningful to offer. So you've gotten rid of all those people because everybody understands. You can't, you can't go into this job unless you are ready to accept the kind of of humiliation that he's going to hand out, that you are really going to have almost no independent input. You will not be able to be at any level a genuine professional around Donald Trump.

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Not even someone like Marco Rubio who's constantly held out as the one kind of element of hope around the cabinet table. Yeah, I think that's true. I think Marco Rubio made the, made the career decision. If I am, you know, I'm stuck in the Senate here. I am stuck in the Senate. I have nowhere to go. The only move I have is to accept this job. And it's not going to be pretty. And I am going to have to be all the kinds of things that my whole life has been spent trying not to be. I mean, I'm a United States senator. I've run for president. So, but here, because I'm up against it, I'm going to accept being reduced to, you know, a flunky. And we hope, Marco Rubio hopes that at the end of this, he will have found a way to go forward. Is Marco Rubio then like Lindsay Graham in this regard that, you know, at one point he was saying, you know, Donald Trump is a disgrace to the Republican Party. We need to get rid of him. He, you know, he's debated him in the primaries for the Republican leadership. He then fully succumbs. He then fully praises him. He's as abject as he can be publicly. Do you think privately Marco Rubio is doing what Lindsay Graham did? and telling everybody about the actual madness of working with Donald Trump.

Yeah, I don't, I mean, I know that Lindsay Graham did this because I spoke to him, and he told me, as he told many, many others. I think probably, I don't know if Marco Rubio is doing that. I suspect he is not. Remember, Lindsay Graham was the United States senator. So he had an amount of quite a bit of independence. I mean, he had to, he was in a transactional relationship with Donald Trump. I'm going to flatter you.

I'm going to do this. And then you're going to give me at least a little of what I want. Marco Rubio isn't in that kind of relationship. He doesn't have an independent. He doesn't have any independence. If he is, if he displeases Donald Trump in any way, he's going to feel it. And he won't necessarily be fired, although that would eventually happen. But first, he will be humiliated.

He will be excluded. He will be, his life will be made miserable. I mean, his life will, in many respects, Donald Trump has the ability to end. And it's not only your career, but I think to end your belief in yourself. Right. And so what about J.D. Vance then? Because J.D. Vance has actually managed to separate himself a little bit from Donald Trump. He appears at least on surface value to have more independence. He has clearly, he talks to the authors of regime change, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, to make it clear that he wasn't in favor of the war. He's done that elsewhere. Well, J.D. Vance has a job. J.D. Vance can't be fired. So he does have some. So he is playing this, you know, he's threading a needle here. And because he is the vice president, he, he, you know, that's, everybody, everybody understands this, this is that he can, he can gain some dis. I mean, I'm thinking. this through now because I'm like you know I'm because Donald Trump doesn't understand this the the fine distinction that we are making here and I'm not sure I mean I think that J.D. Vance has to

whatever he is doing and whoever he is talking to he is at the same time bending over as unctious as on his belly as on the floor as anyone else. And if at the same time he can do that and get away with having other conversations or suggesting that he may not be, he may be less for the war than other people in the administration, you know, again, you know, we'll see if he gets away with that. I mean, he did go from saying that Donald Trump was the new Hitler, which is his famous quote, to being his vice president, to talking. about the president in these hallowed terms. Yeah, no, there was a complete conversion here. If you now speak to J.D. Vance, and he will tell you about essentially, you know, on the road to Damascus, and he's struck down and he realizes that Donald Trump is Jesus Christ. Yeah. If you're sitting around the cabinet table and Donald Trump is sitting there and intermittently he's dozing off or

whatever. Are there sort of signals going on between the different cabinet ministers about, okay, we know this is crazy? Is there a sort of bonding? No. I mean, everybody, everybody is very atomized in their humiliation. And remember how terrible this situation is. You're with, You're with somebody who doesn't listen to you, who doesn't have any respect for you, any concern for you. And at any moment, any moment, he will ridicule you and mock you and dismiss you. So everybody in the situation when they are with Donald Trump is in fear of their life, essentially.

I mean, they don't know what's going to happen. You're with this very, very, very. very volatile person. And if he directs it at you, if you come into that field of focus, you know, you may not recover from it. You know, I remember in the first administration, the joke about Kelly Ann Conway was that she was, she did everything possible not to be in the room. Now, of course, you know, in common White House mythology, what you're doing there to be in the room is to have power. That's what you want to be, a person in the room. With Donald Trump, I think it's really the opposite.

It's like, get, stay out of his way. So you want to stay out of the room. And do you define, I mean, I, you know, did Pam Bondi go in there? how could she have mishandled the Epstein files so badly? How could she have said, oh, I've got them all sitting on my desk, I've got the files sitting on my desk? How could she have not anticipated that Donald Trump was going to outmaneuver her and fire her? Because he knew he was in the files. She knew he was in the files.

Why didn't she just say, you know, there's nothing in the file, we're not going to release them or whatever. But the moment she said they were on her death, She was cooked. Well, yeah, possibly. But remember, I'm not sure that she knew what was in the files at that point. She was, and remember, we're just in that Trump thing. You just say, oh, yeah, the files. I got the files on my desk, very Trumpian.

And the fact, you know, and this is not just true of her, but true of many people in the Republican Party. Donald Trump had given assurances. I barely knew the guy. Actually, so the, the incredibly strange thing is that people kind of believed him. And then, of course, that turned out not to be true. And then that escalated into suddenly, you know, these files which are on my desk, I then have to produce them. So I'm not sure that that was, this was that thing. We're, we're, we're, doing, we're trying to do what Donald, what we think Donald Trump wants us to do. And then, and then that turns out, and that probably is, you know, again, a perfectly Trumpian thing. We have the files that we're going to do this and then we're going to move on to something else and it will go away. And then, but when this didn't go away, then you get blamed. I mean, Donald Trump is certainly not going to take the blame. Right. Right. As you say, he just double

down on the blame. So Pam Bondi gone. What about Christy Nome? Christy Nome seemed just a ridiculous character, you know, monumentally ill-equipped to deal with the Department of Homeland Security spent, as we've referred to, you know, quarter of a billion dollars on an ad campaign, which was really her riding around on a horse with Mount Rushmore in the background. Are those two women the first two to be fired from his cabinet? I noticed that she just filed for divorce. Oh, she did? Yes.

Well, that's never a happy day. The Pam Bondi and the Christie Dome things, so these were not only people who were in the, who understood they had to suck up to Donald Trump, but they were also kind of uniquely ill-equipped. I mean, they were the kind of, I mean, I think almost you can separate the people out from the hopeless people to the mendacious people. And, you know, I think Pam Bondi and Christyneum is like, you know, I'm going to get this job. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to try to, you know, whatever he wants will do. I'm not here to, I'm not here really to think. I'm not here really to try to, accomplish anything. I'm not even here really to advance my own career. I am just grateful that I got

this job, which I would not have otherwise gotten in any other administration. Well, they were both probably incredulous that they had a cabinet position, right? Incredulous. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, never in their wildest dreams would they have imagined that they would end up at a seat with the American president until, of course, you find out that the American president is Donald Trump. And so it's more like a reality show. But if they're the incompetent ones, and I think I would probably throw in, would we throw in the former Labor Secretary who also got fired? I mean, all the people he's fired so far, we can safely say, have been women. Yeah. And there are other, you know, kind of blitheringly incompetent people around him.

You know, Sean Duffy and, you know, Kelly Leffler, Leffler, is that how we say the name? Yeah. The small businesses secretary. Oh, my God. You know, Mark Wayne Mullen, another. Oh, my God. Mark Wayne Mullen, who of course came in to replace Christenome and then tried to sneak in his house.

head of ice, Lance Schroier, while Susie Wiles was out of town, Trump said yes, and Lance Schroier, former highway patrol man and a member of Mark Wayne Mullen's security team, put in to run ice. I mean, it's so embarrassing. It's just so embarrassing. Yeah, you know, other people, and then there's, you know, there's a whole group of people who really just try to stay out of head down as far as possible. Scott Turner, you know, he is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, you know, a total zero. A total zero. And what about Scott Besson?

Where are you on our Treasury Secretary? You know, well, I think that's an interesting thing. I mean, obviously, as somebody who's not a stupid guy, has qualifications. And so why would he have taken this job? you know, also, also, you know, openly, proudly, gay in an administration in which that is clearly a, clearly a drawback. Why? I don't know. I mean, I genuinely do not know, cannot at this point in time, fathom why someone would take this job, why they would be, think that they are somehow different enough that they, that they will emerge from this job ahead rather than behind. I don't get it.

Okay, what about Howard Lutnik? Howard Lutnik seems to be humiliated by Donald Trump. Howard Lutnik, who told people that he, as you know, lived next door to Jeffrey Epstein, went briefly to Jeffrey Epstein's house, saw a massage bed in one of the rooms and was like, I will never ever talk to this man again. And then, of course, was discovered to have taken his entire family and another family. and another family with children, I think four children among them, or possibly even eight children among them, to Jeffrey Epstein's Island for lunch.

You know, you get a, it's a sort of a different category around Donald Trump when you're a billionaire. He certainly doesn't listen to you more. He does not openly humiliate you like other people. So you can't, you're not really going to get to do a do the job you might do in that position in another administration. But you are kind of protected a bit because you're a billionaire. Because Donald Trump respects money. It respects billionaires, particularly if you have the title billionaire, then you are kind of.

of on Donald Trump's side of the line, whereas everyone else is not. Okay, so let's talk about our Secretary of War slash Defense slash Forever Wars slash Colonel Vodka, as Roger Ailes called him, as you've pointed out. Where is he on Pete Hegeseth? And he would fall clearly into the mendacious category. And so what's the, I mean, the opera, Okay, remember Pete Hegseth is the, I would say, we're in safe territory to say he's the least qualified Secretary of Defense in the history of the office. That must be true. I don't think we're overseeing. I mean, we don't have a list in pandivism of everyone who's done the job.

Remember, he was in a reserve army lieutenant. did two tours of duty in Iraq, and then became a co-host of a weekend television show. So no management experience, no administrative experience, no strategic experience, no any experience relevant to running a, one of them, certainly one of the most management intense positions on earth. I think that is probably also safe to say. Well, I think he's got reverse management experience, right? He ran two Veterans Affairs organizations and the staff of both rebelled against him. And he was taken out of both under, you know, financial and organizational shenanigans because he couldn't cope with either. He was intoxicated on the jobs. And he's also referred to within the Pentagon as no tab Pete, because he

doesn't have any tabs on his uniform. A part of his qualifications, and this was a subject of great discussion in the first administration, was that he was a demonstra, he had demonstrated his suck-up credentials to Donald Trump. And this was notable because everybody at Fox was trying to suckup to Donald Trump. And Pete Hagsith was named the leading suckup of all the suckups at Fox. He was a joke, in other words. You know, I saw someone sucking up yesterday to Trump or earlier this week. And I just thought, why are you doing this? And then you could just see the fear still in her eyes. So Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa, they're getting a new steel plant. And she was falling over herself. to praise the president and say this was only happening because of the good graces of the president.

It really was an egregious display. She's leaving the Senate. She was going to be, at one point she was holding out against Pete Hegsworth, because she's been in the military, she knows that Pete Hegseth is completely ill-equipped to do this job. She knows he would be harmful in the job. She herself talked about being attacked by, you know, having a sexual, experiencing sexual abuse in the military. She knows that this is a man who's been accused of sexual abuse. His own mother wrote him a note saying, you are an abuser of women.

She held out. They leaked details of her divorce to get her to vote in favor of Pete Higgs-Ether's Secretary of Defense. She's since decided to leave the Senate altogether. And she's standing there sucking up to the president. You think, have you got no pride left? You know, one of the curious things about Donald Trump. I mean, you know, these are people in power, people who have enormous amounts of power are often very difficult to get along with and they are very demanding.

But the thing about people in power is that they recognize other people's power. They recognize how those people might diminish their own power. It's everybody weighing the power equation. Donald Trump doesn't do that. It's kind of fascinating. Nobody else's power matters to him. In some sense, he can't quite understand anyone else. else's power or because he is so narcissistic that he dismisses the idea that anyone else could

have power. So Johnny Ernst is a United States senator. There are many actual United States senators who Trump needs. I mean, they can damage his ability to do his job. That never crosses his mind. It just is a, it's like a DNA piece that he doesn't have. Oh, this person could hurt me. Doesn't have it.

Doesn't feel it. I mean, it's one of, it's a kind of a broader sense of cause and effect, which he can't grasp. One of the things I found really fascinating is this idea of group think that you know that there are people sitting around that cabinet table who individually think Donald Trump is probably incompetent. They probably dislike him intensely if they don't hate him. They understand they might be grateful for this current elevation to cabinet minister. And yet there's a sort of group think amongst them. They lose their individuality. And it's almost like there's a sort

of pluralistic ignorance about what he's doing to people. Yeah, I think that they just understand the rules. There is no flexibility here. There is no, we're not on a, we're not on the spectrum, a long spectrum here. It's a very precise place on the spectrum. This is, this is the, this is the behavior that is required. And if you try to do anything else, first thing, he will, he will attack you. I mean, he will shoot you down. You will know it. You will know if you've stepped out a line. So each person, each in their atomized fear of humiliation, they know what they have to do, and they don't ever try to do anything else.

And is this a gradual realization? I mean, because people don't, for the most part, I don't think, wake up and think, well, I'm just going to be prepared to be humiliated. That's the cost of this. I mean, I think that you see it. The first time you go into a room with Donald Trump, and mostly you're not in the room alone. So you see how other people are reacting to him.

The whole Trump ecosystem becomes very clear. And, you know, if you know, you know enough not to try to, one up that or disrupt that, especially at this point? So we've talked about the flunkies that he's handpicked around him. So he's got control of that environment. He can fire them. What about the group of tech guys who now seem to be surrounding him? I mean, we saw after his lunch with them on Tuesday that they've provided.

provide the background for him, he leans forward and says, we're not calling it artificial intelligence anymore. We're calling it super intelligence. Mark Zuckerberg from Meta has already adopted the new terminology. I mean, how... Well, this goes just this goes to show you how powerful this is, that even these guys who are in themselves vastly powerful and vastly rich are, are playing the part that they know they have to play. Why? You know, I mean, I think, I think, I think, the why is, you know, is probably pretty basic. It's because they have, they have large corporations that can, that can materially, more than materially, you know, trillions of dollars worth of materiality, benefit from Donald Trump's favor. That right now, at this point, they're looking at

this, I'm sure, in saying, let's get what we can, whether getting is good. And all that is required here is for us to play the part. We don't have to play the part that long. I mean, we're not like Marco Rubio, who, who, who, who, who must vibrate with anxiety the whole day. We just have to go in and for a couple of hours play our part. But they all at the same time know that they that they can't go beyond that. There is no pretense on their part that they can that they can step forward, that they can change Donald Trump's mind, that they can dominate the conversation. I mean, I think Elon Musk at certain moments clearly tried to do that. And, look what happened to him. And now he's back doing, doing what he is allowed to do, what he is

supposed to do. And do you think they are also atomized in their anxiety about the president or frustration with the president or abject, you know, we'll do whatever he needs us to do right now? Or do you think they're all, you know, after Tuesday's lunch, did they all leave just sort of laughing together? Is there a camaraderie, do you think? No, I don't think so. I mean, I think that's the nature, the structural nature of these guys with their individual corporations. They are all competitors at some level. And I mean, they're like the kind of, you know, the dukes of the kingdom.

And they're going back to their fiefdoms. And they realize that at any point, you know, they may be at a. odds with, or they're trying not to be at odds with Donald Trump, and they're, they may be at odds with each other at any point. So I, I, I suspect that they're, that they each are, they keep their own counsel because, because they look forward to the possibility that Donald Trump might be their ally against one of the other, one of their other peers. Right. And presumably Donald Trump, and I think we've talked about this before, but Donald Trump likes nothing better than to divide people. So he's, as you say, he's constantly calling people,

calling people and just spreading gossip or, you say, so, you know, bad things about each other. Yes, yes, no. And that's what everybody knows. So Marco Rubio's anxiety is that he's going to hear someone will tell him that Donald Trump called somebody and said, what do you think of Little Marco? And, you know, and that is, that's not good news for anybody. Right. So always, always undermining people, constantly doing that, constantly sending messages which are all about, I am the dominant person here. And you cannot at any moment forget that.

You cannot at any moment forget the fact that I could flick you away. You mean nothing to me. So where does this leave Susie Wiles, someone who you've often said has treated her role as chief of staff very differently to those who came before her? She's already outlasted the previous chiefs of staff from the first administration. She keeps, you know, a quiet profile. She's not trying to get the camera. She's not competing for attention with him. How is she treated by him?

Yeah, that's a good, a good question. How is? Because it's different. And it's different because she has made it different. I mean, she has a role that she has fashioned into the chief administrator. I mean, she's the faceless person. She is the person who, you know, make sure she makes sure that, you know, that the chairs are set up. That's so depressing.

That's so depressing for the first female chief of staff to be organizing the chairs. Yeah. No, in the campaign, you know, she was, she had a modicum of. of independence and, there I say, even respect because she kept the books. And he was very pleased because he always feels that people are stealing from him. So he came to trust that she would have a tight rein on the money coming in and going out. And she has continued in that role. Her role is not policy, her role is not really advice.

Her role is not in any way as chiefs of staff often see it as the chief operating officer of the executive branch. She is the administrator. You know that person in any office. They become kind of necessary but faceless. Michael, on Tuesday we saw photos that had been leaked of Trump yelling at Natalie Hart. You've been writing about Natalie Hart for the last two years. What did you make of these photos? I mean, they were pretty unpleasant to look at.

He looked like he was completely downloading on her. She looked like she was conscious that there were cameras. And so she was sort of laughing and looking like she was, frankly, taking abuse. Well, everybody takes abuse. It's a kind of one of those other things. You know, you have to realize that he will focus on you at some point. People around Trump would say, how's the weather? And how's the weather is what's his mood? You know, this is a man who is wholly unfiltered. There are no restraints here. This is if he feels it, if he thinks it, he expresses it. it and his powers of expression are blunt force. That's it. You're going to get it. It's going to come at you. I mean, I have seen this. There's a scene in my last book, All or Nothing, when he takes out after one of his key aids, a guy by the name of Jason Miller. And it was, it was, horrendous. And in fact, Jason Miller did not go one of the closest people to Trump. And then he

seems not to have gone into the White House. And I wonder if that was it. If that was his breaking point. But certainly, Natalie, the wrath has come on her. And it comes on her often. This was true about Hope Hicks, Margot Martin. All of these women, around him, and let's remember these women around him, they're, speaking of flunkies, they are there in this, in the most abject capacity. It is, there's no, there's no pretense that they are there for any other reason but the succor of Donald Trump. they are there to be his comfort blanket.

Mm-hmm. This episode is brought to you by Animals. How far would you go when someone threatens everyone you love? Who can you trust? From Academy Award winner Ben Affleck. Animal stars Affleck, Carrie Washington, Jillian Anderson, and Stephen Young. When a Los Angeles mayoral candidate's son is kidnapped, he and his wife are pulled into a web of deception, forced to make choices that could tear their world apart.

Watch animals only on Netflix on October 9th, rated R. So the inevitable question then is, how does Donald Trump behave when he's with equals? Well, no way. He's the president in the United States. He's Donald Trump. There are no equals, which he profoundly, Does he not think that Xi Jinping is an equal?

No, he thinks she thinks, he thinks, I think she is Chinese. That's probably something. Right. Yeah, that's another universe. He doesn't even get that. You know, Putin, maybe he thinks that Putin is. And obviously that's a, that's an issue and a thematic issue. Why is he seen to be always bending, bending over for Vladimir Putin?

So maybe, maybe that, maybe. I can't think of anybody else, however. So Putin and she are, well, she's Chinese, so he doesn't really count. And Putin, because of the long history of the Cold War, because Russia's bailed Donald Trump out so many times, who knows why. But Vladimir Putin is really the only person that, I mean, I don't get the impression that he would. He has been with, there have been periods where he's felt he seems to feel that similarly to Rupert Murdoch. No longer because he's decided that Rupert is senile. So he's of less concerned.

But there are periods in Trump's life when Rupert Murdoch was the. I think he recognized Rupert as having a power far superior to his. Did he think he was senile when the Wall Street Journal released the birthday letters from the Jeffrey Epstein book? Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I think he does. Otherwise, they wouldn't have done it. I mean, he believes that Murdoch no longer has control over his company. And are there any other business people that you think he feels?

that about that are somehow beyond his reach? I can't. I don't think anyone, he feels that about anyone now. He's the president of the United States. He is the president of the United States twice. And I think that's part of what we're seeing and part of the nature of this second term is a level of whatever, whatever we want to call, arrogance, hubris, that he's has entered a dimension, even extreme for Donald Trump.

And the only time I've seen him being what appears to be deferential is when he's in the company of other presidents, say like Jimmy Carter's funeral. Is there any sense in which he thinks the other presidents, because they're often hanging out without him? And actually, mostly, he's not in the company of other presidents. I mean, he's either not invited or he's snubbed by other presidents. And he certainly, in general, has only contempt for them, which he expresses. George Bush, contempt, Barack Obama, contempt, Bill Clinton.

I think that there was a time in the 90s when Bill Clinton was impressed Donald Trump, but that, of course, has long since passed. And he refers to his little office of the White House where he sells all his or where he keeps all his merch, the USA hats, the Trump 2020s, as the Lewinsky closet. Probably all presidents do. Michael, it's so fascinating. It's so fascinating. What an extraordinary man he's turned out to be in all sorts of ways and not what we could ever have predicted 10 years ago. Well, thank you so much. Have a great trip to London. We will see each other again on Saturday, by which point you will be in London. I look forward to seeing whatever background you have. If you're going to the country, all of you. I beg is that you have good Wi-Fi, because you know what it's like. When I'm in the British countryside, I have terrible Wi-Fi. I've now started taking my importable satellite. We should have given it to you for your trip. I think I'm good. Famous last words about Wi-Fi, but... Good. Well, let's hope you have more modern, more modern Wi-Fi than I do when I'm in

Yorkshire. I'm confident. Good. All right. Well, I will look forward to seeing you on Saturday, and we will go once more inside Donald Trump's house. And we'll see you in L.A. We will see you in L.A. I'll see you before that. But everybody, L.A. is going to be fun. Yeah, if you need a trip. If you need a reason for a trip to L.A., come to the TerraGran Ballroom, October the 20th.

You can find tickets and ticketmaster inside Trump's head. I will thank you for listening or viewing if you have been. Don't forget subscribe to The Daily Beast. And a big thank you to our crew, John Romero, Ryan Murray, Rachel Pasa, Heather Pizarro, and Neil Rosenhaus. 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.