The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Threw Secret Situation Room Tantrum: Wolff

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles with a new window into the volatility inside the West Wing, describing what he says was a secret Situation Room tantrum by Donald Trump, a moment when military briefers could not give him the absolute guarantees he demanded, and the meeting spiraled. Wolff connects that flash of anger to the broader pattern he’s reported for years: a president who hates paper trails, avoids email, and warns aides never to “leave a record,” an instinct that now looms large as the Epstein Files fallout engulfs figures like Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson. Why, Wolff asks, do so many powerful men have receipts—while Trump seems not to? From the chaos-as-cover strategy to the Iran briefings where strength is performative, and doubt is intolerable, this is a portrait of a leader who equates uncertainty with humiliation and reacts accordingly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

General Kane, who apparently outlined that there were very problematic, tactical and strategic issues here. Now, Trump translated that into saying, basically, we can do it. Everything is going to go great. It will be a success. And then General Kane corrected him in subsequent statements. He has said, that's really not what I said. Quite the opposite. That would comport with this description of Trump in the meaning because he doesn't listen.

Joanna. How is it going? Are you completely claustrophobic at this point? I know that in your house you are just snowed in. I imagine there are drifts against the window. There are several feet of snow here, but it's beautiful. The children have their second snow day of the week. Everybody's happy.

And I can barely see you because the glare from the snow around me. is extraordinary. Well, I can see you very clearly. And we got lots of comments of how we talked over each other consistently last week. Well, it's your fault. One person said I was like a spluttering teapot.

I was so anxious to try and get any kind of expression at whatsoever. Anyway, this week we're going to try a bit harder not to speak over each other. And you are split. You splutter and I talk in this slow fashion. So, which probably makes people want to jump in and talk over me because I'm so slow. Well, I don't think it's that.

I think it's that I'm just fully excited by what we're talking about. I want to join in and show my enthusiasm. Okay, so, I mean. Actually, let me, I have some questions for you as a citizen of the United Kingdom because I don't quite understand the unraveling that seems to be going on over there, over Epstein stuff. So I want to ask some basic Brit questions. Okay, but I would like to point out, I've lived in New York for 30 years and I'm also an American citizen.

I'm very proud to be one. You know, it's a huge thing when you actually take on the nationality of another country. But are you proud to be an American? I am very proud to be an American. Okay. Well, you're the only brinked. Brit we have on this show. So you got to take that, you got to seize that role.

I'm proud to be both. I'm very happy to try and be an interlocutor. Is that the right word for what's going on right now, which is that it looks like there's actually some sort of call to justice in the UK. Okay, well, let me ask this question. So you have the former Prince Andrew who is rocking the government and rocking the palace. Now, this is a person, and correct me, if I'm wrong, who is utterly inconsequential, has no power, has no standing, has no stature, has no influence. He has been, for most of his adult life, a joke. He is as unimportant as unimportant can be. And yet he is, because of his bad behavior, suddenly threatening the most significant institutions in some of the most significant institutions in British life. Why? Well, I understand that

that might be how he appears to you, but actually, Andrew is someone, most Brits have grown up with. He was the Queen's favourite sum. Okay, but this is just to speak over you, just an issue then of sentimentality. No, it's not sentimentality. It's about things that are baked into your culture, which don't necessarily make sense. The royal family doesn't particularly make sense. He's the king's younger brother. He's still eighth in line to the throne.

And there are now moves yesterday. The Australian Prime Minister came out as part of the Commonwealth and said he would be prepared to sign up to an amendment to remove Andrew from any kind of lineage. Eighth themes pretty far. It is pretty far, but nevertheless, in British terms, these things are chronicles. I'm trying to understand British terms. Oh, my God, you're totally talking over me.

Are you doing it on purpose? Of course. Okay, all right. So let's both calm down. I'm going to stop spluttering. But, you know, half a billion people watched Andrew's wedding, which, whenever it was 25 years ago, was actually a huge, 30 years ago to Fergie was a big deal.

And remember, you know, these were the first celebrities when you're growing up in a culture. The royal family is omnipresent. And actually, I think the data shows that most people over the course of a lifetime, I think it's one in four will have actually met a member of the royal family. Now, the royal family is slimming down. but I was doing an informal audit in my head.

Almost everybody I know has met one of the royals. And, you know, that includes members of my family because they turn up and they open new senior residential care homes. I mean, it's pretty dull being a royal, actually. You end up doing a lot of that. But it's the royal family is oddly baked into British life in a way that's difficult to understand. And the good ones like Princess Anne and Princess Sophie,

Prince Edward's wife, who briefly had a, was briefly caught, I think, trying to sell access and then learned her lesson, are actually pretty good and go out and genuinely open factories and attend, you know, races and are, are thought of us working hard and for the most part better than just a regular celebrity that turns up and then gets caught in a sex scandal. And then, of course, they've brought enough sex scandals of their own to remain human and interesting. So we all watched Camilla with Charles. We watched Andrew with Fergie. We watched Fergie with her toe-sucking boyfriend. So these people's foibles are also baked into public life. You're still not answering the question. I think I am answering the question.

Why? I know you think you're answering the question. Oh, older white man patronizing younger white woman. Yeah, I'm just thinking, the younger. This is where we're... I'm definitely younger. Seems that our ages are converging. But nevertheless, so we have 10 years on you.

So we have a situation in which, again, Andrew doesn't, in terms of any kind of structural sense of power and responsibility, he doesn't, he's outside of that. So, but nevertheless, we are now talking about. Except that, except that he was given a job where he went. I am talking over you very deliberately and have purposefully interrupted you, but he was given a job organized by his father, as we said in our most recent podcast, almost as a sort of occupational therapy job for him when he came out of the Navy.

A non-job job, except that he represented Britain around the world in trade circles. Yeah, in a long time ago. See, he hasn't held that job in a long time. They got rid of him on that some time ago. Well, he then morphed into something called Pitcher Palace, where he invited people in. He's just an unsurious person, a joke. Again, I'm just trying to understand how you go from recognizing someone as a completely unsurious person, a total joke. a fool, the butt of British media for decades, and now hold him responsible for taking down,

destroying the reputation of the royal family. I mean, again, I could care less, but I just find it from the objective perspective that the Brits are going crazy about this. Yeah, but I think you're applying logic to a situation which isn't particularly Well, logic. Well, logic is good. Well, logic is good. It's often frequently the wrong lens through which to understand people because people

don't behave logically. And other people don't watch other people. Except systems, systems should behave logically. And what we're talking about here is the potential collapse or certainly the shaking of a system. But, okay, I get it. And the only thing I would say to that is that we all have friends where a lot of energy in the family goes to the people who behave least well, as opposed to the people who are highly functional and apply the systems, as it were. Yeah, I get that.

But if the assumption is that the royal house, that the palace is that the palace is, that the, that the palace is, an institution worth preserving, and maybe it's not, that it has a specific function within British society. But now you're saying, no, no, we have to question that because a remote member of the family who has no responsibility, no function, no real place except the sentimental one in this institution, behave badly, so now we should bring it down. Okay, I mean, I don't, I don't think anybody's saying we should bring the monarchy down. I think what the monarchy itself is saying is we're pushing him to the side, the law must take its course, which is what the king wrote in a very brief and fairly brief notes. I know this, but still, this is obviously all of this attention, the attention must come from this.

There must be stakes here. And the stakes are the monarchy, the future of the monarchy, the integrity of the monarchy, and ultimately its stature in British society. But I mean, we don't have to go any further. I get it. I get that what you're saying is that the Brits have a unique view of this. But from the outside view, it's like, huh? Now, but I want to go on from there.

I want to now to Peter Mandelson and ask about that because it would seem to me. Can I just throw in one thing, though, about Prince Andrew, which is really interesting, is that this is a man who's had police protection officers all his life. And according to many people has treated them very badly. Any time they try to, you know, apply security rules, he would get frustrated, he would call them out. And so there is a sense, I think, here in which the fact they arrested him on his 66th birthday, there's a sense in which they've had enough and he's being called to account. He seems like a ghastly person. I'm just saying that because he has no official role, no particular power, no nothing, he's essentially. not, you know, other than the fact that he weighs taxpayers' dollars, he's an irrelevancy.

Anyway, that's all I, I mean, it's the irrelevant nature of Prince Andrew against the enormous focus of attention that he has become in the last, in the last many weeks that I find confusing. But let me go on to Peter Mandelson, because I also have, have, I'm having, having trouble understanding that situation. It would seem to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that the labor government... I've never met someone who wanted to be less corrected than Michael Will. The labor government... The labor government came to power at a very unique moment.

The most important relationship of the United Kingdom is with the United Kingdom. with the United States. It pivots on all manner of British life. And Donald Trump was president. So a very dicey moment. As we know, Donald Trump, as the president, can pull the rug out from under you at any moment. And so they send, so they think about this.

And maybe they didn't think about this, but it would seem to me that they might well have said, how are we going to deal with this, this sleaze ball? This crazy man, this sleaze ball, who is the president of the United States. Why don't we? This would seem to be incredibly smart. Send our sleaze ball to deal with their sleaze ball. And let's remember that Mandelson seemed to be quite successful in his role as the British ambassador to the United States. And I would say successful probably because he was. He and Trump are going to be in some sympathy with each other.

Not to mention the fact that he kind of had a little leverage over Trump because he had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. I'm just throwing out this scenario here as a kind of real politic, which I think people are overlooking. Well, except that, of course, Peter Mandelson had played down his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and said it really wasn't a thing and said that he hadn't been friendly with him for a long time. And of course, the emails reveal that to be untrue. No.

Absolutely. But I'm saying this was an advantage. He would say he would be with Donald Trump and Donald Trump would know that he had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and that... And Epstein might have told him about Donald Trump. Exactly, exactly. Well, actually, that's very plausible.

I very much doubt that that was part of why they sent him. And it's unclear to me. And I don't think there's a single woman listening to this podcast or watching this podcast who would think that this would have happened to a woman, that here is a man who twice got fired from. the cabinet positions, miraculously got another third cabinet position, which it turns out from the emails, it looks like allegedly he abused by giving Jeffrey Epstein all sorts of insider information, and we can come on to that in a moment, went off to Europe and then got the best

diplomatic job that is certainly from a British perspective, mind-blown that he got this. So there are all sorts of questions which are going to emerge over the next few weeks about why did Peter Mandelson get the job? Why was Keir Stama so determined to give Peter Mandelson the job against what appears to be advice? I understand what you're proposing. I'm just going to finish my sentence here. Does Peter Mandelson have something on Keir Stama, which meant he was the only choice? They didn't have to change the ambassador, Karen Pierce, who was actually very popular. there. And in fact, Trump had dealt with Karen Pierce, liked Karen Pierce. So there was no real

reason to change the ambassador. Anness, perhaps as you suggest, the advantage Peter Mandelson brought was he was friendly with Jeffrey Epstein, but that's the very thing that has ended up bringing him down. No, but I'm also suggesting that the very nature of Peter Mandelson as a sleaze ball and has been a well-known sleaze ball for many years. And how do you deal with another sleazeball? And I'm saying this is an anomalous moment in politics and in diplomacy, because the question is, and it's a question asked by the British government and governments all over the world. How do you deal with Donald Trump? And I'm just looking at this, thinking about a kind of counter-narrative here. One answer is that you send in your. Your biggest sleazeball. Your designated sleazeball, and that would be Peter Mandelson. Well, game recognizes game, right, which is what we also said about when Donald Trump met Zoran Mamdani,

and they had that kind of love fest behind the resolute desk. That's not what I said. I said he had gone off his, he had had a senior moment there, and he forgot that Mandani was his enemy. True. I said game recognizes game and that's why they got on so well. Well, it's certainly possible and I was thinking about Susie Wiles' comment to Chris Whipple that Donald Trump has an alcoholic's personality despite the fact he doesn't drink, i.e. he's completely unpredictable. And just let me say that that is Donald Trump's characterization of Donald Trump as having, as him having an alcoholic's personality, which Susie Wiles merely repeated. And anyway.

Well, and very wise of Susie Wiles to use Donald Trump's own words to describe him, and it caused a free song because everybody thought she was being disloyal to him, but in fact she was simply reflecting the Trump back to himself. But my only point about this is having known Peter Mandelson for in excess of 30 years now, I would say he also has that unpredictability. And I have been shouted at by Peter Mandelson and I have been poked at in the chest by Peter Mandelson's. index finger and screamed at for things that I have written. And I've also been invited to parties with him. He's also come to dinner at my house and been a charming, very funny, erudite guest. And he's completely unpredictable to deal with, certainly if you're a journalist. So that might also be another reason why they would get on,

that they would recognise that in each other, although clearly he would have much less scope to be unpredictable in terms of tariffs and trade agreements and things. And I think that like Donald Trump, Peter Mandelson, who is gay and is 72, and much of that gay life was hidden, certainly in public, for his first few years, like secrets. He understands secrets. Jeffrey Epstein liked secrets. And that entire world was shrouded in secret behavior.

and you had leverage on other people. And you may well be right that they both shared a friendship with Trump in common. But I think the secrets and the acknowledging the secrets is also an important part here. I completely agree. Can I just say my last interaction with Peter Mandelson was that I was just thinking about this, was at the White House Correspondence dinner last April in Washington. And traditionally, the British embassy and the ambassador always holds a good party on the Friday. night before the White House correspondence dinner.

And it's always a very bibulous affair. And weirdly, last year, everybody at the party was walking around saying, oh, my goodness, they've really cut back on the alcohol and the snacks. It felt a much more cost-conscious event than people we used to. And we wrote a small note to that effect. and immediately the equivalent of Stephen Chung from the British embassy called me and shrieked at me for daring to write this. And that was the last correspondence I had with Mandelson before he resigned his position last October. And of course, when people said, well, why?

He said, well, there are more embarrassing emails to come and indeed they have been. But will we get an invitation to this British party at this year's White House? Yes. And interestingly, his aide, the guy that was deputized to shout at me, said you will never be invited back to the embassy again. And in fact, subsequently, I've been invited to all sports events, including football watching parties. Who was that guy? I think his name was Ed.

Ed. I think his name was Ed. In fact, I know his name was Ed, and Ed shouted at me and just said this was outrageous and it was a grotesque abuse of their hospitality. When I was merely pointing out that it used to be a steeple on the party landscape of the weekend and it had been quickly diminished. In fact, there was one terrible incident that happened at the party where Barbara Walters fell down a fairly treacherous set of stone stairs. and it was very clear that an ambulance was being called and she was not to be moved. She looked like she'd completely been knocked out cold. But it was at the time that people were leaving.

I'm assuming she was leaving to and had just fallen, tripped on the steps. And she was literally out cold. And at the time, the member of staff from the British embassy who was, who was put to sort of steer people around Barbara, just kept saying, please step over Barbara. There's nothing to see here. Just step over. Please step over.

It was just a surreal moment. The great Barbara Walters spread eagled on a stone stare at the British Embassy. Well, it is what we all have to look forward to. Yeah, absolutely. But I did want to read a couple of the emails, I think are a sort of significant, because you have made the point in your substack today that Donald Trump may yet be saved by the fact that he never put anything in writing, that even from a very early age, she was conscious of never incriminating himself in emails.

And it is extraordinary when you see what people wrote in emails to Jeffrey Epstein. And I think did none of these people have security? You know, did none of these people go on those endless courses that we all go on, which teach you to say nothing in email? I have never been in one of those courses. But let me, I think that there's a broader look at these files which we should think about, which is that I think much of what we thought would be in these files and much of the way we thought they would be organized as a, police investigation. This is the proposition. This is the testimony that we have gotten. This is the path that we see through this evidence toward these legal issues. It hasn't been there, or at least

it's so fragmented and so chaotic that we haven't found that. Instead, what everyone has focused on is the emails. And that has... And that has... been to Donald Trump's really incredible advantage because Donald Trump doesn't use email, has never used email. And he hasn't used email. In a way, using email like this suggests the kind of level of, well, of your own naivete or innocence. But in the case of Donald Trump, you know, who has been a grifter for so long.

He has long known not to put things in email, not to use email. There's a line, a Trump line, which is, goes some, let's, you know, I'm not schmuck enough to leave a record. And within the White House, he often lectures people, don't put it in email, because he has that understanding. And just in my own, in my own experience, you know, I don't speak on the telephone anymore. Who speaks on the telephone? You communicate through email or text or chat any more efficient ways, except that there are this group of people who continue to call me on the telephone.

And these are not my old relatives. These are people, business people who I deal with. And I've often wondered, why are they calling me? And then I realize, ah, they're smart. They're not. They're trying not to leave a record. And that's Donald Trump's, much of Donald Trump's life. So all of these other people are getting hung.

And they are distracting from the question of Donald Trump's position in Jeffrey Epstein's life, Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Everybody else, we're distracted. We've just spent how many minutes on Andrew and Mandelson. And we can go on the long list of people, but not Donald Trump because he doesn't use email. Well, and also it's a result, I think, is not using email of having been involved in hundreds of lawsuits where almost the first question is, do you have any emails? I mean, I can't tell you. The life of the life of a man of a perfidious man.

Right. The life of a perfidious man. Jeffrey Epstein, on the other hand, as you yourself have experienced, was a man who gave great email. Yeah, no. And you would ask why didn't Donald Trump tell Jeffrey Epstein, don't use email? Yeah. Or maybe he did and Jeffrey Epstein decided not to listen. I'm sure he conducted much of his life on the phone and off of email.

But what is shocking is just the sort of dump of email and the unguardedness with which people wrote to him. I mean, Peter Atier, who's finally been bounced as a contributor to CBS News with a sort of, you know, depressingly juvenile conversation about whether or not pussy, which now is a word that has come back into usage. And I hate to use. but whether or not it's gluten-free and whether or not it's got carbs. And it's just, it's so depressing to be witness to these conversations. But from a point of view of Andrew and Peter Mandelson, what does seem interesting is that misconduct in public life,

which is what they both appear to possibly be on the verge of being charged with, is traditionally a very difficult thing to prove. except that it appears there are lots of emails which point to them giving, and certainly Peter Mandelson, giving Jeffrey Epstein information that was, in effect, insider information, tradable information. And if you are the business minister of one country, slipping information to another, and in particular in one instance where he's advising someone at J.P. Morgan to threaten the Treasury Secretary in Britain, you know, just sort of, why is he doing that as British business minister? It's against Britain's own interests.

Now, they have not yet been. They've been arrested but not charged. They haven't been charged. How does that? Do you know how that works, this arrest? That's not exactly how we do it. Well, what they were arrested and they were taken in for questioning. And there was something to me so fascinating about.

Does that imply that imply that they will inevitably be charged? No, it doesn't imply that they will inevitably, but it's not good to have the police show up at your door with a body cam. It never is. Especially on a 66 birthday, but there was something particularly fascinating about watching Peter Mandelson, who really has been this colossus. He looks terrible for 66. Well, he's put on a lot of weight since he left the

since he left Washington. He was looking very svelte at the last party I saw him in Washington, and he's put on quite a belly. And as he said, he didn't know. No, no, 66. Andrew is 66. Mandelson is 72. Sorry, you're quite right.

Mandelson seems to me look pretty good. No, I thought. Andrew, who looks just terrible. Well, Andrew has always looked terrible. He always looks portly. But I thought Mandelson looked pretty bad, too, and he certainly looked much more svelte when I saw him last time. I thought he put on a belly.

But as he said, he didn't know anything about Geoffrey Epstein's crimes because Peter Mandelson is gay. And so we know he hasn't been eating pussy because it's calm free. We know that from Peter Ateer. So who knows what he's been doing. Perhaps he's been comfort eating since he's gone back to England. But there was something particularly interesting, I thought, about him being picked up by a male cop and two women.

They all had their body cam. on and being driven away, being sort of perp walked into the back of a Ford focus. And I would warrant this is the first time that Peter Mandelson has been in such a humble car for a long time. Normally the imagery of him is leaving his fabulous property in Regents Park and driving out with the power symbol of a range rover and being slipped in the back of a Ford focus, which is a very pretty basic car, seemed very symbolic. Handicapped for me the fate of the labor government.

And just for the American audience, Peter Mandelson is a labor politician. That is, so he is part of the current, he is part of the current ruling party. Significant member of it. Yeah, but more importantly, he's been astride.

I mean, he was the reason or one of the reasons why Tony Blair got into government, which was an astonishing ride. They won three elections in a row unheard of for Labour. And he was the man that turned the corner for Labour from being a party that supported the working class and became the party of the middle aspiring class and the media class, actually, perhaps more than anything. So what happens now to the Labour Party? So what's happened is this has split the Labor Party too.

So there's the harder left in the Labour Party who are outraged that Mandelson got the job in the first place. So they're now sort of turning on Kier Stama, who's a sort of technocratic prime minister and who people had higher hopes for than he's turned out to demonstrate. I think a lot will hang on the correspondence between various people advising Kea Stama as to why Mandelson shouldn't have the job. And two people have already lost their jobs over this. Morgan McSweeney, who was Keir Stammer's chief of staff, and Tim Allen, who is his head of press. They've both gone over this. And Morgan McSweeney used to work. work for Peter Mandelson.

It's very difficult to handicap it because we don't know what's in the emails and whether or not actually Kea Stama knew much more about Peter Mandelson's relationship with DeVry Epstein, then he's letting on. We do know what's in the emails. We just may have read them. No, no, no, no. These are emails. There's a whole back and forth set of emails to Kier Stama, some advising him not to send

Mandelson, some advising him that Mandelson was fine. His relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was in the rearview mirror. These are emails from and are where? From advisors. From advisors. Well, they're now, I mean, they're in the, I should think, number 10, Downing Street

system. And they're now being surfaced and next week the first of them will be surfaced. Now, if Mandelson gets charged, those emails may not come out because they may turn out to be evidence. But it looks like the correspondence and whether or not Kierst-Darmer decided to ignore official advisors' advice and send Mandelson anyway, I think the future of his prime minister ship will hinge on that.

Let's move to a country which is actually probably more important now to the immediate fate of the world than the UK, which is Iran. which were on the verge of doing something. We don't know. Or are we? Or are we? Well, a good question. I mean, I think Trump is in that position of truly would, his preference would be he has to do something, but he wants to do nothing.

Although, you know, I think at the State of the Union address, which is tonight, and so that will air just as we are airing. Yes, and I would advise people if you need a break from the state of the Union and you can't bear to listen to Donald Trump anymore, I feel your pain and Michael and I will pop up at 9 o'clock on YouTube. You can watch us instead. But, you know, I think if I were Donald Trump, and I've spent a lot of the last 10 years thinking if I were Donald Trump. And right now, you're inside his head. Yes. I would announce at the State of the Union that we are at that, that we were, that we are, what would be the tense, at that moment in the process of attacking Iran. That would be, that would be the Trumpian, the ultimate Trumpian move. So you would use the State of the Union address as a press conference in effect for, oh, we've gone into Iran or we're doing something in. Iran.

Yes, exactly. Now, this is good. I mean, there are many complicated factors here beginning with he doesn't want to do this, but he has gotten himself in this situation where he probably has to do this or has to do something. Now, there is, by the way, they are meeting on Thursday to have their next final, or at least next up negotiating session over with the Iranians. But in Trump fashion, I would, if I were Trump, I would attack before that. So he's thinking everybody is waiting for that.

Now he'll surprise them. Well, he's also said that he is the decider, he will make the decision. But then he's also dragged his son-in-law into it and said that Jared will be the chief advisor, Jared and Steve Wigoff, his whole dolphin party. With you, I got a little report. There was a situation room meeting the other day, and everybody gathered to assess what to do in Iran. And it's kind of interesting because they've already done, I mean, they've moved the bulk of

U.S. armaments are now in the region. So were they now to all turn around, it would be a, as. as Trump goes around saying, I can't look weak. I have to look strong. So they've got the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier there. And actually this will be, I read in the journal, I think, this will be the longest mission it's ever had. And the military staff aboard it, they've been at sea almost 11 months now, are getting antsy. They've had enough.

Some of them want to come home. But it's an interesting idea that you take on some form of military action against a country with a crew that's been at sea for 11 months and want to get home. There is, so this, a report I got from someone close, close in about this meeting in the situation room. It was described as a very typical Trump meeting. He asked for analysis and then didn't listen. He asked for solutions and then was irritated that no one could provide a clear path and then asked for demanded assurances of success and got and got mad at the generals

and the experts who flatly couldn't give him those assurances. So I... Didn't General Kane actually say this could be... This could not... Didn't General Kane actually say this may not happen? This may not be a good thing. Yeah, I mean, I mean, well, he said it was going to be complicated. I mean, he...

So General Kane, who Trump likes, because he has the nickname Raisin-Cain. And Trump constantly pronounces that Raisin-Cain says, well, Raisin-Cain apparently outlined that this was a, you know, this was a very difficult, tactical and strategic, there were very, very problematic tactical and strategic issues here. Now, Trump said, translated that into saying, basically, we can do it. Everything is going to go great. It will be a success. And then General Kane corrected him. Now, I don't know if there has been a response from Trump, but it was a pretty stark correction. And he corrected him in the room? No, I think he corrected him in subsequent statements. He has said, that's really not what I said.

I did not say this was a easy-peasy, quite the opposite. So, but that was. But that was. That would comport with this description of Trump in the meaning because he doesn't listen. The analysis outlines all of the immense difficulties there. And Trump spent a lot of time saying he wanted to do what we did in Venezuela. And everybody is like, well, you know, this situation is nothing like Venezuela. And then Trump has been going around saying to people within the, you know, within the White House, I mean, he's been kind of a kind of understanding that he's, that this is a, that this might not be easy. And he's been saying, it's been going, it's all been going so well, what's happened. And then repeating, I got to be, I have to look strong, not weak.

and then saying to people, you know, don't let them fuck me over, which is... Who's the they? You know, Trump is always, it's always problematic in these reports about Trump and pronouns. Who actually is he referring to? But I think it's the Iranians in this situation, the Mullahs, as he's always in the Mullahs. So he's been presented with lots of information, which suggests that this will. be at best a complicated maneuver. He wants a solution like Venezuela, which was an incredible military operation where they just went in, extracted the leader, brought him to America to stand

trial. It seems unfathomable they would be able to do that with the Ayatollah. Yeah, no. I mean, I don't think that's even a possibility that anybody is considering here. And Trump, rather, is considering, I mean, to read this, it's what's the least I can do to not look weak and to and to have some headlines that I did what I took forceful action. And I think my gut is that they're searching for that. And that's, that's, that is the thing that they will do, and which will mean, by the way, that we'll be back in the same position X number of months from now as we are from the last time that Trump took a particularly surgical approach to this.

Well, and I think by stressing that Jared and Steve Whitkoff are really his advisors to this, he will also have someone to blame if it all goes horribly wrong. Well, actually, that's curious because I don't think he would blame them. And that goes into this other thing. We can talk about the Cash Patel situation because this is one of the unexpected and kind of confounding aspects of this Trump administration is that no one gets blamed for anything. Well, Cash Patel quaffing beer in the locker room with the gold medal winning

American men's ice hockey team in Italy. Why is Cash Patel in Italy anyway? And of course, they issued a statement saying he was there to talk to the Italian security services. Quite why he needs to do that. I do not know.

Was one of the more remarkable things to come out over the weekend, We're now in the fourth week of Nancy Guthrie, terrible story that we've talked about before being missing. Why isn't he out there solving crimes? No, he's not. As we said on Saturday, he's busy talking to Dan Bongino, or he's busy flying a government plane to Italy where he gets to hang out in the locker room with a load of athletes when he should be solving crimes. So not only was this a bad look, it's the kind of things that government officials do and then they get called on the carpet. and then they're hidden, they're either fired or hidden someplace for a while. But from the locker room, he speaks to Trump.

Yeah. Yeah. And he speaks to them because he claims credit for getting them to come to the state of the Union, which we'll see tonight. He's like, I did it. I got them. I fucking got them. I mean, it's just.

But again, that interesting aspect of this administration, that all of these dumbass jokers, never get called on the carpet, never get blamed. But there is an interesting thing that's happening and maybe someone is getting blamed

or at least the internal numbers are so clear that they've got to do something which is RFK Jr. So they are very, very clearly pulling back on the overt anti-vax position of RFK's Health and Human Services Department. And when you say pulling back, what do you mean?

Well, they are removing people from, they are removing people at the most forefront anti-vaxxers are being removed from their positions. Oh, that's interesting. Or at least some of them are. And I understand that's now from inside the White House that they are seeing, that they are seeing internal polling on the Vax issue. That's overwhelming. It's devastating. You know, the one thing, the one thing, apparently, that most Americans have in common is that they don't want vaccinations taken away.

They don't want it more. They don't want it to be more difficult. They don't want to be in a position where they have to struggle to get vaccinated. And they also, I think, have an understanding that if some people don't get vaccinated, that imperils other people. Well, and instead, what we're getting from the Minister for Health is videos of himself peddling to nowhere on a stationary bicycle in a sauna with no shirt on. What is he doing? One cannot stress how unsurious the people are that Trump has surrounded himself with Cash Patel, coughing beer, and grabbing, again, a Trumpian move, grabbing one of the gold medals and putting it round his own neck as if he's any part of this incredible win. And it was an incredible win.

I watched the match and I loved it. And it was a fantastic extra goal. I'm only saying this because I'm pretty sure you didn't. It was an amazing, you know, it went to extra time. They got the extra goal. Nobody expected that. The Canadians have played better throughout the game. I don't even know what game we're talking about.

We're talking about the men's ice hockey match at the Olympics against the Canadians. It was an unbelievable game. And then actually Trump released, I will grudgingly admit, a very funny video of him appearing to hit in. the winning goal. Also, of course, inevitably, there's a swipe against the women's team. So Trump invites the men's team to the state of the union, which Cash Patel is taking credit for organizing. And then Trump says, well, you know I'll have to invite the women too. Well, happily, the women seized the day and issued a statement saying, much as they would love to attend the state of the union, in fact, they all had other things to do. Then listen to Donald Trump, talk for hours on end. But let's just go back to this,

to the, to RFK, HHS and the whole, the whole vaccine initiative, that is the anti-vaccine initiative, which has also confused me because, you know, I mean, Trump is of, is a, you know, is a Vax guy. He has, matter of fact, he, he deserves the credit for the, for the, for the, for the fast development of the COVID vaccine. The one achievement, Operation Warpspeed, the one achievement of his first term, which he then walked away from. So, and the issue is this other, inside Trump's head, it's that what does he think, how does he think about something, about this particular policy, it is, whatever my enemies are against I am for. And so this is not really about health care policy. This is not Trump's view of science. This is Trump's view of liberals.

What is he against here, not science? He is against liberals who are for science. So interesting. So does that mean that we may continue to have access to vaccines? That they've realized that this is. Does he understand that this is a bad policy? Like, who's making the decision here? Yeah, I'm sure.

I mean, he's saying these these, these particular numbers. I mean, these particular numbers are really devastating. At the same time, you know, there is this, this important and core group of his supporters who are devoutly, and it's almost as a religious question, anti-vax. So he can't afford to lose those, but the numbers are so overwhelming that he realizes this is going to have a big midterm impact. And this is Trump saying this or this is, I mean, what does RFK think about this? I think he's just a pawn in all of this. I think Trump likes RFK because his name is Kennedy and because he's out there.

servicing the MAGA base. But does he take him all that seriously? No. I mean, Trump doesn't take anyone all that seriously. But I think specifically RFK Jr., he doesn't. It's not a big deal. And he may also begin to think that RFK Jr. is a is a mega player. And he's not a big deal. And he may also begin to think that RFK Jr. is a is a mega player. and he doesn't really want anyone else to be a serious maga player. So he may be a maga player or he may be a liability? Well, I think those two things can be true at the same time. But if you're a maga player, does that mean that he's a potential rival to Trump? He's a potential, yes, he's a potential rival to Trump.

He's a potential rival to other maga players. I mean, Trump just wants a measure of control. I mean, so anything that Trump does, at any point, it's always part of the message is to show that he is in control. So one of the reasons none of these jokers ever gets blamed for anything is because that's a way for Trump to say, I'm in control. I'm the guy who I'm not going to blame someone because you, the media, you, the liberals, want me to blame somebody. So always, always, in everything that he does, that has to be part of the message. I am doing what I want to do. I'm not forced into doing anything.

And I will do what you least expect me to do. I mean, again, that element of surprise of being unpredictable, the alcoholic's personality, that there's no, to use your word, there's no logic here. Yes. And so let's see if that would be curious if he announced an attack on Iran tonight. Yes, it would. It would. Well, we'll be watching, of course, because we'll be talking about it on Thursday.

I can't think of anyone ever who has gotten a boost from giving the opposition response to the state of the union. Yeah, do you remember Katie Brits? I do. Her whole, yeah, her career collapsed on that. Her career collapsed. She was in her kitchen. And then Scarlett Johansson imitated her cruelly and brilliantly on Saturday Night Live. And that was basically the end of Katie Britt.

Yeah, no, she was a big. They used to talk about her as a very possible VP pick. Nope. I tell you what we haven't done, which we promised listeners and viewers that we would, which is to find out. and I will try and set the Daily Beast newsroom on this to find out how much the banners that Trump has unfurled of himself over government buildings, how much they cost. And whose idea it was, you were going to ask someone in the White House if this came from Stephen Miller if this was Trump's idea. But it will be very helpful to find out.

I haven't found the answer to that. We got lots of comments saying why aren't people out there with paintballs. I'm sure they will be. I think because you would go to jail. but more power to you. Well, we'll end up seeing if either Prince Andrew or... Don Lemon might be out there with a paintball. Don Lemon might be out there with a paintball.

Who else is going to go to jail? Scary question. So we've got some new poetry entries. Garfried, you've got some competitors. And there's a rather good one here from Tom from Melbourne. The once was a girl called Melania. For whom getting ahead was a mania. she grew up in a dump, then she married a Trump.

I wish she'd moved to Albania. I think that's very good. There's another one he did too, which is also quite fun. An orange man once had great flair for sticking his name everywhere on banners and balls, on arches and halls. But the bigger they are, well, beware. Fantastic. Thank you. All.

And we've got more questions for Melania, which I thought we would ask on Thursday. Great. Let's do it. Okay. And then I just have to remind people that like you, I am starting a substack. Easy for people to go to. You just go to beast.combe forward slash scream. And you will see a little icon of myself as the scream. And the first screams are coming. So stay tuned. Mine is called Howell and yours is called primal scream. I'm a little bit, Kencha have been a little more original?

No, I thought to myself, I find the scream and the fact that it's owned by Leon Black, or he owns one of the screams. I think there were four of them. There's such a strange justice to the fact that Leon Black, who's been, you know, whose private life has been laid bare for everybody to see comes down in the morning and despite the fact that he launched Apollo, one of the most successful private equity companies, and despite the fact he amassed,

you know, what is apparently a fantastic private art collection, he comes down and above his far place in his drawing room is the scream. That's what inspired me. Slightly oblique inspiration. Okay. And the scream, incidentally, is the only painting to have inspired not one,

but two emojis. So I was slightly inspired by the fact it's my most used emoji. You've never sent me an emoji. Is that true? Well, that's because we usually talk. I think that's because we usually talk on the phone. You say who talks on the phone, we talk on the phone. In fact, I never email you.

No, but you text me all the time. I do. I do text you. You also text me back, I would like to point out. All right. off we go, we'll be back on Thursday. I can't wait to watch the State of the Union and all the human drama with

the Supreme Court, which we talked about obsessively on Saturday. If something happens in the State of the Union, like war, maybe we should do a live one tomorrow morning. Perhaps we will. Perhaps we will. All right, Michael Wolfe.

We'll be back on Thursday. We'll be back on Thursday. And if you have been, Thank you for joining us. Don't forget to leave us a comment on YouTube. Please subscribe to the Daily Beast. You can join a Bee Beast tier membership of the Daily Beast on YouTube, if you like, which is kind of fun. You get extra content.

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