The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Rages About Claim He Killed Epstein: Wolff

Episode Date: August 3, 2025

Ghislaine Maxwell is moving jails, the President’s wagging the dog and Trump biographer Michael Wolff joins The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles to explain the ongoing Epstein scandal and why it matters. Also on the table, Laura Loomer’s inexplicable rise to power and her claims she’s now had 16 people fired. With a potential Maxwell pardon in play and Trump’s lawyers blurring the line between personal fixers and public officials, what’s going on inside the MAGA machine?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you have the president's attention, you're going to get column inches. I mean, because that means you have actual power. I'm Joanna Cole, Chief Content Officer of The Daily Beast. You are listening to or watching The Daily Beast podcast. Today we're talking to the Trump biographer, four biographies, no least, Michael Wolfe. And we'll obviously be talking to him about the continuing Epstein saga that will not leave the president alone. and wait till you hear what Michael's saying about what he's hearing from inside the White House about Jeffrey Epstein and how he died.

But before we do that, I want to address, oh, by the way, myopic viewers may notice there's a different backdrop. We've actually moved to a different studio to expand because we're going to be producing more podcasts for you. But I wanted to mention another character on the scene, that of Laura Luma. She's a relatively new character in the court of President Trump. And this week she claimed, she says, her 16th scalp, her modus operandi is to find people in government that she thinks are not loyal to the president. She then points this out. And the people are then vaporized in their job or some of them have chosen to resign. It's, again, a crazy development and we're going to go into it with Michael Wolfe.

So, no time to waste. admire the art in the background as we get into it. Okay, Michael, so much to discuss, not least Jeffrey Epstein and the president, but I want to come to that slightly later in the show, because first of all, I want to take several comments that people have left on our YouTube channel challenging me and saying that I interrupt you too much. And so I wanted to go straight to the horse's mouth, as it were, and ask you if you think this is true? Well, the alternative is that I would go on forever. So, and perhaps that's what

they're saying. Let him go on forever. But I would prefer the better part of valor is to, is to find a pause. And to be fair, I feel I only try and interrupt you when people who aren't following this story, the Donald Trump story, as myopically as we are, might not know who some of the characters you are referring to, although at this point, I'm sure people watching this podcast are actually pretty up to speed on it. And certainly the comments are knowledgeable and knowing, but I'm glad that you've, you've swung to my defense. Well, I think it's, maybe we should establish who's the straight man here. I think it's me. I think it's me. All right. So the first person I really want to unpack with you in this week's,

is Laura Luma. I mean, there's even a verb now to be loomered. And we've been keeping on the Daily Beast website a list of the people that she has managed, to either get fired or they've resigned. And she seems to be a character who's somehow come into the environs of the White House. She seems to have a lot of influence with the president. Yet there seems to be resistance from within the White House. Well, you know, I mean, I'm not sure we have the quite have the context here, and because these people kind of slip in and overnight they seem to become part of the fabric without a clear acknowledgement of how wacko something truly is. I mean, this is extraordinary. This person comes for there, I mean, there's no indication that this person knows anything relevant.

about anything. And yet she has managed to create a really heavy footprint inside this, this White House. And why, and who, and on what basis? And where does she, where does she come from? How has she been vetted? Does she have any kind of clearance? Who's in charge? And, and the The answer to who is in charge is that the President of the United States is in charge. In other words, she has one client, the President of the United States. Everybody else. Everybody. And this was, you know, I saw this throughout the campaign.

She's a horror show to everyone else in the Trump circle. She just is there because the president likes her. and I suppose that means he trusts her, although no one else around the president feels the same way. So it's a, I mean, let's try to try to describe this, that you have, you have a person who has, who has only managed to enter this ecosystem because of this. direct, I mean, I mean direct connection to the President of the United States. He is entertained by her. He's amused by her. He, he overrides anybody else's concern, and everybody has concern about her. I mean, she's certainly very good at getting press attention. I'm aware I may have just

interrupted you. Sorry, sorry, sorry listeners. But she's had, I mean, surprisingly for someone like her, she's had a lot of column inches, even in the New York Times. And people are saying people are terrified. Well, let me interrupt you. Which you do all the time and no one comments on. No. You know, I think you get, if you have the president's attention, you're going to get column inches. I mean, because that means you have actual power.

even if there's no reason to explain why or no traditional reason to explain why you should have power. I mean, power usually comes because you've amassed influence and power through all through various circles of government. She doesn't have any of this. All she has is the, is this connection, direct connection to Donald Trump. And you've said on previous podcasts that she's become a friend of Natalie Harp who has, who is one of the, key gatekeepers. Yes. So that's how she has been, this has happened. Everybody else has tried to keep her out. I mean, it has been, it was certainly a key challenge throughout the campaign, keep Laura Lumer out. She managed to get in because she created some kind of connection with

Natalie Harp, which many people have realized how do you get to the president. You get there through Natalie. That is probably the most direct route. And she has having done that, she then secured this connection. You know, I mean, I understand the president calls her directly. She calls the president. It's she is she is in like Flynn. Now I the, and then I have seen other people around the president how they, they, they react to her. And in actually, They are afraid of her. I mean, it's almost a physical kind of thing. I'm not going there.

Right. You know, you don't want to get, you don't want to challenge her. You don't want to get on the other side of her. Yeah, I was just looking at some of the reporting. I mean, Krista said she's the de facto personnel director at the White House. Now, we've been keeping a tracker on the Daily Beast website, which we had to update last night, because I think the total tally of scalps that she's perhaps. claiming is now 16.

Yeah, I don't know if that would be, I mean, it's something, it's something else actually, because she's not really hiring anybody. She just sort of goes through and finds reasons to object to, or reasons you might believe that such and such a person is, is less loyal than you have to be. Right. And she seems to go back through people's social media post. I mean, just reading through some of the people, the body count to date, assistant U.S. attorney Adam Schleifer, six aides on Trump's National Security Council, obviously national security adviser, Michael Waltz. That seems an inevitability after Signalgate, but also the deputy national security advisor, Alex Wong, the surgeon general nominee, Dr. Jeanette Nish. Nisha Watt, who was praising COVID vaccines, which President Trump actually with his operation

warp speed put into action. And the list goes on. And she's clearly very proud of it. And she has this loyalty test. Wait, you know, the thing, this is amusing to Trump. In other words, hiring and firing, he likes to, well, firing, he especially likes to do. And he kind of moves pieces around like, like. like on a board. Oh, you know, he does this thing. If you can see my, he flicks people,

flick them away. You know, um, well, so he says that and just that, is that one of his gestures? Yes, flick. And of course, it ties into the apprentice. And there's a, all of the very few people does Trump acknowledge or understand as, you know, um, you know, full, dimensional human beings. It, it, it, it, it, it, they're just, they're just, they just, they just, they either just represent something good or they represent something bad, and that can, that can change in a, in a blink of an eye. And, and, and they are, they are, they are components to be moved around, or components to be gotten rid of. So, so, so all this is, and, and they are exercises of power, exercises of dominance. So this is that kind of thing. And she comes to him, that person is not

loyal. Okay, get rid of them. I mean, you don't even think that true. I mean, it does sound like a medieval court where she is the court jester who then sort of at the end of her dance points at someone and then the president or the medieval king gets rid of them. I mean, it really does feel not only apprentice, but game of thrones. Yeah, but I mean, but it. But, I mean, but It is actually even less, these people have less character than they would on on game of them. They're just a name. They're just a, you know, there's no, there's no reliant, you know, this is a big government, remember. These are most of the people that Trump, Trump doesn't know, which is another reason to fire them because I don't, Trump does not know them.

So therefore, fire them. But, but I, you know, I can't emphasize enough the amusement fact. the sense of cruelty partly, which I think that he actively cultivates because the advantage of it is that more people will be afraid of him. And the more you are afraid of him, the more you will show your loyalty to him. I mean, I think it's been interesting the last couple of days with the emphasis on, you know, lawyers of Todd Blanche going down to. to do the Glenn interview. Alina Haba

in New Jersey has been rejected by everyone and then imposed whether legally or not by the White House. You've got Emil Bouvet? Yes, and I have a funny detail about that that Trump has always

called him email. As a joke or because he can't pronounce Emil? As a joke, it's just a more form of contempt. I mean, this is, what separates Trump from everyone else is a sense of, well, he is separated and it's superiority, contempt, you're, I'm big, you're little. So how does he express that?

And he expresses that in myriad ways, including these contemptuous nicknames, and then including flicking you away. I mean, this is a kind of a very central, central to his management method. Well, and you feel inevitably for Laura Luma that she will also be flicked away at some point. Exactly. I mean, a very good point. And I can guarantee right now people are plotting to do that. And when that comes, Trump will do it without a sentimental moment. Michael, hold on. We're just going to take a break. And we're back with Michael. Wolf talking about Jeffrey Epstein and Laura Luma. The thing I found intriguing about her was that she was talking about her personal life

in an interview she did with the New York Times, which appeared earlier in July. And she said she told her boyfriend that the president would always come first in her life, that she then told the reporter she'd been an overweight teenager. So now she cannot get fat. She must stay thin. And that whenever she meets the president, she must wear a new outfit. because she has to feel her best, she has to feel at her most confident, and that she's going to fake it until she makes it. So even though we know that she's been stopped from working at the White House, I think twice now, she seems very determined.

And I think there was an incident where she was trying to get through the security cordon to get to President Trump at the Lincoln Center recently. But security and then White House aides kept her away. Yeah, no. And throughout the campaign, there were instances. like this of trying to get on the plane and having people in the Trump circle force her off the plane and then going directly to Trump to get back on the plane. And she's currently in a lawsuit with Bill Maher who she's suing because Bill Maher suggested that she was actually having a relationship with the president. Right. And there was a moment of Frizan within the, the Trump circle over this, although everyone else has within the Trump circle has concluded that Trump

no longer has such relationships. But he does, you know, it is very important to him to be surrounded by women and women who look a certain way. No, she's got very much a mac, a woman look. Yeah. And that, that is satisfying to Trump. I mean, and amusing and makes him feel like, I suppose, like he wants to feel. I mean, it is, and we've talked about this before, the kind of replacement for a past life. So talking about young women, Jeffrey Epstein, still has a stranglehold at feels on Donald Trump.

This week he seems particularly irascible, shouted at Caitlin Collins, the CNN anchor and White House correspondent when she asked him three times about Jeffrey Epstein. We saw him try to. to take on Jay Powell at the end of last week, and we're recording this on a Friday morning, and today's truth social was full of animus towards Jay Powell. What are you hearing from inside the White House about how this is still going on? You know, I mean, it's a very, from inside the White House, this is a difficult topic. I mean, it is the topic that they do not know how to

handle. Their response is only to attack. If you connect the president, to Jeffrey Epstein, then you were going to be subject to attack. There's no, you know, the, there's no real, I mean, they are not going to release, release, release, release documents, and they are not going to explain why they are not going to release documents. They are simply going to attack, um, and attack in the ways that they attack, which are, which are, you know, there's, that's what, that's what Trump's, the, the, the justice, lawyers who have been his personal lawyers, that's what they're there, that's what they're there to do at this, this point. I mean, I had a conversation with, yesterday, I had a conversation with someone who talks to Trump frequently, and, and this person had a conversation with Trump in the last 48, slightly, possibly more hours. And, I mean, it kind of gave me a chill. I mean, so

Trump called up this person and said, they say I killed Epstein. I didn't have Epstein killed. And then this person said, well, do you think he was killed? And then Trump said, a lot of people wanted him dead. That other people wanted him dead certainly suggests that, that Trump understands and seems to agree that Epstein had, you know, it was a man who knew too much. Right, which is part of the MAGA-BAS conspiracy theory about Jeffrey Epstein. And also there was a video released by, I think it was CBS this week, that appears to show a shadowy

orange figure mounting some stairs, which is just caught in very blurry, supposedly, security video from the prison in which Jeffrey Epstein was being held. And we had Julie K. Brown on the show earlier this week, who's like you, not a conspiracy theorist, but saying there are so many anomalies in the prison story. The video wasn't working. The video, their release doesn't even have his cell door on it. It seems completely irrelevant. People were asleep.

Nobody was checking on him. He didn't have a cell mate. The more you look into it, the more questions you come away with. Well, I think most of the, in the Epstein story, in some sense, works backwards. Why are we dwelling on this to such an extent? Why is this? Why won't it go away? Because there's, you know, at the end of the story, there is this, there is this,

mystery. You know, I mean, I don't, I have no idea what happened, but I do know that the, that the description of how he killed himself seems utterly implausible to me and to, and to many people. At the same time, the idea that he would be, have been murdered, killed, I mean, to me, seems to require the silence of probably half a dozen or more assistant U.S. attorneys and an equal number of FBI agents. And I find that implausible. And as he was just killed by someone randomly in jail because he was there for, you know, sex crimes with underage girls. Yeah, but we would know that then. They would be able to, that would be, that would not be something.

that would be easy to deal with. People in jail are killed all of the time. And that would be, you would be, you would certainly be able to document that. Well, the mystery continues. As we've spoken about many, many times on this podcast, Donald Trump is the master of moving the narrative along. This time the narrative, the Epstein narrative, seems to be stuck. Do you feel the air is going out of this crisis for him? Or do you think it's going to stay at this level? I mean, certainly the MAGA base doesn't seem to be letting it go. Even Joe Rogan is talking about it and not in great terms for the president. I mean, I think one of the things about the Epstein story, it has always returned. It keeps coming back. It will, yeah, I'm sure it will go, it will go quieter.

But, you know, the fact of the story is that there are, questions which demand answers and they aren't given. So, and you can, you can put them out of your mind for, for, for this period, but they never entirely go out of your mind. You know, and I think, I think, of course, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the house flips, you know, in which is another conversation, we should. certainly begin to have because this is now that race is starting in earnest, especially with this effort to, to, to, to gerrymander, Texas. But if it does flip, well, then this is going to be,

you know, then certainly two years of investigations, including, including about Epstein, which, which Trump is, is rightly terrified. And we've got Gillen Maxwell's appeal. in theory coming before the Supreme Court in, I think, November. And the oversight committee saying that they want to subpoena her, and I think her legal team saying they're not going to do that until after the cases appeared at the Supreme Court. Does that sound right? Yeah, I think that sounds right.

I mean, I don't think she is much of a shot at this Supreme Court reversal here. Do you think she has a shot at a presidential process? pardon? Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, Todd Blanche went down to speak to Galane to find out clearly what she knew. And does she have, and I mean, I don't think you can read that as anything else but a, but the beginnings of a negotiation. And the question was, what does she have to negotiate with? And if she has, if she has something to negotiate with, if she can damage the president of the United States, well, then I think that. They'll figure out what to do with that.

And I would say, yeah, she gets pardon in what, nine months, whatever, however they, however they structure the effect of cover up. Well, and I just want to remind people, Todd Blanche, the former personal lawyer to the president, who's now number two in the Justice Department. Again, an incredible anomaly in terms of how presidents, you know, appoint justice officials. Well, but go beyond that. They're all his former personal attorneys. You know, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, a personal attorney, Emil Beauvais, email, a personal attorney. Now on the appeals court.

Yes. Now slated to be on the appeals court with a trajectory to the Supreme Court. Alina Haba, again, a personal attorney. Boris Epstein, who is not even in, is not employed by the federal government, does not have a job in the executive branch, nevertheless overseeing much of what happens in the Justice Department, much of what happens with what Trump wants to happen in the Justice Department. Okay, so we should do a special episode, I think, in the next few weeks about Donald Trump's lawyers.

And, of course, he's had much more exposure to other. presidents than lawyers because he's had so many cases he's fought over the years. I mean, it's so unusual to have a president come into office with a quiver of personal lawyers. You think? All right, Michael, we will be watching this story with great interest. I know you're in incredible demand this weekend. You'll be doing lots more media appearances. Good luck.

And we will see you next week for more on this. extraordinary unfolding story. I look forward. Well, I'm fascinated by Laura Luma and I'm very curious to know how long she lasts in President Trump's circle of influence. And we will obviously keep you posted about her since we've been recording this podcast. Something that Julie Kay Brown, the investigative reporter from the Miami Herald that we had on the podcast on Monday predicted has indeed come to past. Gillen Maxwell in jail, sentenced you will remember for 20 years for sex trafficking, has actually been moved jails. She's moved from the federal jail in Florida to a minimum security jail in

Texas where she has a sister. And curiously, as our story says in the Daily Beast, which is just broken, she will be alongside, wait for it, wait for it, Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranus fraudster, who got sentenced to 11 years, and the former real housewives of Salt Lake City star, Jen Shah. So she will wake up to a different weekend ahead. I hope you have a good weekend. Don't forget to be Beast or indeed subscribe to the Daily Beast for moment by moment updates on modern Earth is going on

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