The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s Ugly Scheme to Exploit RFK Jr.: Wolff

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Joanna Coles and Michael Wolff jump in for an emergency podcast to unpack the twisted story of how Donald Trump brought Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into his administration, despite his history of drug abuse, womanizing, and a long career of anti-vaccine activism. They explore how Trump’s desperation to shore up his MAGA base on vaccines led to RFK Jr. running the nation’s public health system, with devastating consequences. From collapsing expert panels and vaccine shortages to Trump’s fleeting fantasy of a “Trump Kennedy 2024” ticket, the conversation reveals a dangerous bargain. Wolff recalls his decades of encounters with RFK Jr., from his days as a campus drug dealer to his ambitions for the presidency, painting a portrait of a broken man now wielding immense power. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So Michael, by rights, we should both be at the beach and yet... I am at the beach. Oh, you are? Well, you're at the beach, but you're in your office at the beach. I will walk out to the beach, yes. All right, you should be on the beach, is my point. But what's going on at the CDC and the dismantling of America's public health apparatus seems so urgent and so important that we decided we would do an emergency episode of inside

Trump's head to find out what's going on inside Trump's head and where he is about RFK Jr. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's just been an extraordinary 24 hours. And we are seeing this, the emergence of RFK Jr. as, you know, one of the most significant powers in the country. And one of the most dangerous powers in the country. One of the most dangerous. And also potentially one of Trump's successes. And I also see this as a kind of Trump is in a bit of a squeeze here.

So this is what's going on in Trump's mind. I do definitely see Trump as thinking, God, I'm stuck with this nut case. And I'm stuck with this nut case because, you know, the vaxers are nuts. And I got a, I'm making. my accommodation. RFK Jr. covers me with the vaxers. So Trump has had a very busy week. Inside his head, it must be very kind of frantic because he's gone from Putin to Gulen and releasing the Gellon tapes and being squeezed by the notion of giving her a pardon to now what appears to be the collapse of America's public health system. Well, that's got the kind of chaos, which actually he's

used to and I think that he likes and that he thrives on. Okay, Michael, let's do it. Let's take a journey together arm in arm inside Trump's head. Michael, I mean, America's public health apparatus appears to be on fire. The arsonist is RFK Jr. I just can't understand why Donald Trump put him a man with zero medical qualifications into this job. And he seems to be sowing his vaccine skepticism. We've got the head of the CDC leaving. We've got scientific experts, leaving, we've got expert panels collapsing. Why did Donald Trump put RFK Jr. in this job? I don't think we should express surprise that Donald Trump would put any in competent in any job. I mean, the administration is filled with them. Actually, that seems to be

a requirement. Fair, but this seems really dangerous, a really dangerous. Well, they all seem, they're all dangerous. They're all dangerous. Yeah, I mean, this seems more personally dangerous, because it really relates to the health of the people, to our own health, or the health of the people, people in our families or, I mean, it is an immediate. Well, and you've got a resurgence of measles. I mean, it's really frightening that this is all happening so quickly. I mean, we can't even begin to imagine the implications of this. And were there to be another pandemic or the beginnings of such a thing, who would be responsible?

I mean, RFK June. I mean, this is crazy. But I can say, I can outline specifically how RFK Jr. got the job. And I think this is relevant to things well, well beyond this. So you will recall, although we seem to recall nothing whatsoever of whatever has happened in the recent past. But RFK Jr. let me get. RFK Jr. after a wasteful life of drug abuse, womanizing, and domestic upheaval. And during this life, by the way, you know, he's very bitter about the fact that his bad behavior has prevented him from the power and the status he, believed he was entitled to by his family name. And it had. I mean, he was basically in exile. You know, he couldn't run for the Senate, which he contemplated at various points. He couldn't have the career he thought he was entitled to. But then Donald Trump comes along, and it turns out

that bad behavior is not at all a precondition to public office. At the age of of 70, RFK Jr. And why is he still junior is really something to ask? It's extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah.

So RFK Jr. decides he's going to run for president. And he runs in the, and by the way, he is encouraged to do this by Steve Bannon and Roger Stone because the belief it is,

he'll run for, he'll run for, in the Democratic primary, and that, and he will be, he will upset the Democrats, which he does. But then, lo and behold, he decides, when he's not going to get this, the Democratic nomination,

of course he's not, he decides he's going to run as an independent. That's a candidacy which basically draws from Democrats and Republicans equally. Partly because of the Kennedy name, partly because of the, of he's an anti-vax, partly because of because he's just not one of, he's neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump. Well, and he's the advantage of being establishment because of his name, but actually anti-establishment. All of those, yes. I mean, he's a classic figure of a marginal candidate. And he, but he's, he draws, you know, in some, in some, by some estimates in the, in the high teens. but he draws equally from Democrats as well as Republicans.

Then Kamala Harris replaces Joe Biden and the Democrats, the Kennedy Democrats, go back to the Democratic Party, leaving Kennedy with only Republicans effectively. So the Republicans have to move him out. They have to neutralize him in some way. And by the way, in the background, you have Donald Trump kind of having an orgasm about the Kennedy name. He goes around saying, how does this sound to you? Trump Kennedy, 2024. Trump Kennedy, 2024.

So was he actually thinking that RFK Jr. could be his vice president? Yes, yes. Then, in fact, at some point, RFK Jr. turns him down on this and Trump is is very disappointed but well so he actually asks RFK Jr and RFK Jr. turns

him down. Yes. So then they have to but they still have this problem the you know Republicans for Kennedy and as they move forward to the convention and in fact I am at the convention

and I run into RFK Jr you're in the hotel there. I said, well, you know, what are you doing here? You know, because it still seemed Trump and Kennedy that certainly did not seem in anybody's lexicon a reasonable combination. But as soon as I saw him, I thought, oh, okay, yeah, all right, I kind of get this now. And you've known him for a long time, haven't you? I want to come back to your story of your personal experience in a moment. So anyway, so he said, so, so they have a, they have, they have, they have a sit down and there is, and it's very clear, if you drop out, RFK Jr., if you drop out of, of the race, will make you, you know, we'll put you in charge of the, of the, you know, make you

make you the secretary in charge of, in charge of, of all public health policy. Now, even at that time, you know, they're always offering, the Trump people are always Trump, and the Trump people are always offering jobs which they don't deliver on. So it still seemed that this was ridiculous. Okay, they have to do this, but some way they'll weasel out of this. But there's this other aspect of this, which is that Trump is very exposed on the Vax issue. And the vaccine issue turns out to be one of those fundamental MAGA things. And Trump, who's a germaphobe, plus he is almost singularly responsible for the efficient creation of a COVID vaccine.

Operation Walkspeed. Yeah, that is his accomplishment. And it is not an accomplishment that is going to win him any max. He's exposed there. He is, when you get down to it, a pro-vaxxer. So, Michael, let me just understand. Where did the anti-vaxxer theme? How did it creep into MAGA? Why is it one of their central pillars? Yeah, it's almost impossible to explain because it seems to defy logic. But I think that's the, that's its appeal.

The logic is, seems to rest with the experts. You're against the experts. MAGA people are against expertise. You know, and the, this, the vaccine, the Vax thing was creeping for a long time. It's relationship to autism, by the way, it has no relationship to autism. But in the, in this new mythology, which RFK Jr. is part of. I mean, he is, I mean, he becomes a leading anti-vaxxer.

But now when I say leading, he's only, he's leading in this marginal movement. And then with COVID, it suddenly becomes a much more significant movement. And it's the perception is that the government is forcing you to. to do something. So to be anti-vax is to be anti-government and anti-establishment and anti-experties and somehow more pure than all of the other people who are corrupt. So it's a sort of partly libertarian stance, but it's also extraordinary because Americans' ability to get the vaccines out as fast as it did was literally the envy of every nation. on earth. It allowed Americans to get people back to work faster.

And it's literally, as you say, probably the one thing that people can unite on around Trump's first administration, that this was his singular achievement. Absolutely. No, and I don't really know. I mean, I think this is, this is worth much, much, much more time to try to understand how this happened, because it's beyond. At this point, reasonable comprehension. Vaccines work. They're not only well, they work. They're one of the great miracles of modern science.

They've transformed the human experience. Right. There's a reason that we live now beyond the age of 40. I mean, it's just, it beggars all belief. And RFK Jr. is central to this. The Kennedy name becomes central to the creation and building this movement. And I think we'll return to this. How did RFK Jr. get to this?

Well, the answer is that he is a nutball of the first rank. But let's come back to that. All right. So let's pick up. You run into him in the hotel at the RNC. The Republicans are offering him health and human services, because at that point they're offering all jobs to anybody. It feels expedient to do so.

Nobody is tied to it. How does he actually, given his views, clinch the deal? Well, there's a perception. There is an understanding here. And remember, we're still, we're in a phase of when Trump does not yet look inevitable, quite the opposite. Kamala at that moment in time actually begins to look more likely than not. he Trump has a problem with the base he is a skew on this issue

Vax the MAGA base is firmly absolutely unequivocally anti-vax Trump is a waffler at best and if you take a closer look he's a guy who favors he's a you know he's a um well he's a guy who has vaccines right his kids have had vaccines his grandchildren have had vaccines. That's what's so disingenuous about. Completely. And he's responsible, you know, for the, for the, for the, for the, for the, for the COVID vaccine. So, so, so he's exposed there. R.FK Jr. then becomes the becomes the, becomes his shield, his protection. So they, they've accomplished, they've accomplished, they've accomplished an enormous amount here. They've taken, RFK is no longer in a threat drawing Republican voters.

Plus, he's the guy who gives Trump. credibility on the Vax issue. So it's win-win. And they remarkably, and right up until he got the job, I thought, no, they're going to, even the Trump people are going to figure out a way around this. But he gets the job. And internally, there is a very real awareness of the weakness on this issue, the VACS issue. And then in understanding that they solve this problem by just giving RFK Jr. the health portfolio of the United States of America. Michael, hold just for a second while we take these messages.

And I'm back with Michael Wolf and we're both inside Trump's head. It's just an astonishing story and it's made even odd, not only because RFK has that very strange voice, but also he openly talked about having a brain worm. Let me stop there, because that's what they spread this idea about an illness that he might have had. It's a crack pipe voice. You know, when you smoke crack, it burns your vocal cords.

So that's why he has that voice. Yeah, I mean, RFK Jr. has a, you know, essentially behind him. him a long, long decades of addiction. All right. So Kurt Anderson talked about being at Harvard. He wrote a piece in the Atlantic in the run-up to the election saying that when he was at Harvard, he'd wanted to try cocaine. Who did he go to the local drug dealer, RFK Jr.?

Yeah, no, no. I mean, drugs are a mainstay of RFK Jr's life. He's an addict. There's no issue, issue on that. And yet one of the things he's doing is bringing in restrictions on the drug that stops people when they're having overdoses, stops them from dying. Let's go back to, I think Trump's motivations are clear. He's got a problem on that side. RFK Jr. solves the problem. Yes, the health system in the United States is at risk, but better the health system be at risk than his support on the MAGA base be at risk. But Michael, his support in the MAGA base is at risk if their children are no longer having vaccines.

Well, but that is logically true from your point of view or our point of view, but it is apparently not true from the MAGA point of view. The fact that their health might be at issue, I mean, these are people who did not take the vaccine during COVID, and many people died. That didn't seem to change anybody's mind. So I can't, I mean, who can explain that? Neither you nor I at this point, because it is so otherworldly. I mean, let's just assume this is, you know, the reason Trump has to tolerate RFK Jr.

And I think you can read between the lines here on dismissing the head of the CDC. You know, I would say Trump is showing, I mean, hasn't come. come out in direct support of RFK on this. And he's probably a little squeamish about it. But again, RFK Jr. represents that Vax position that he has to subscribe to. So we have a man who had a brainworm openly talked about having a worm eat part of his brain, running the Health and Human Services Ministry. He's pushing his anti-vax theories, which completely unfounded medically

or with no scientific proof whatsoever, onto the nation. Where does this go next? Has Trump actually got the benefit of RFK Jr at this point? Can he afford to get rid of him? I think it might be problematic to get rid of him. at this point. Certainly, I know voices inside the White House

continue to be very worried about this particular issue. And they're worried because of the health of people? No, no, no. They're worried on a political side, and they're worried not that we're getting rid of that vaccines. They're worried

that Donald Trump is weak on the anti-vax issue. So therefore, RFK Jr. is their protection against Trump's weakness on that issue. But, you know, then the other thing, and I think we should see this really very, very clearly, is RFK Jr. embittered for most of his life about being done. deprived of his rightful shot at status and power because of his name, believes that that shot has been returned to him. He is, and I certainly have no doubt in my mind, running for president in 2028. And let's realize, the more he is antagonistic to the, the health establishment, the more that solidifies his MAGA base, the more you have a solid maga base, the more credible you will be as a Republican candidate.

It all makes sense what you say. And yet, what can people sitting around Donald Trump's cabinet table be thinking when they hear him talk? These are all people whose children have been vaccinated. They think he's nuts. I mean, I'm RFK Jr. they think he's nuts. I mean, they have said to me many times, yeah, well, he's nuts. And what about, I mean, what does Susie Wiles think? I'm pretty sure Susie Wiles' is children of ex-plated. Yeah, I mean, they think he's nuts, but they think he serves this very precise political purpose. And do they think if they get rid of him that he sets up a new political base and can then take Donald Trump on? Well, I mean, I think that they probably don't go that far, but what they do, where they go is that their problem, their Vax problem is solved by not doing anything at this point.

You let RFK do his do his thing. And, you know, and then there's this Kennedy thing. Trump is very the Kennedy name, the association with Kennedy. very, you know, that is also, the Kennedy name protects RFK Jr., even though all of the Kennedys detest him. Tell us about your own experience of traveling with him when you're younger. Well, you know, I mean, I've known, I mean, RFK Jr. and I are the same age. We know and have always known many of the same people. And so at any rate, when I was a young report,

my late 20 or mid-20s covering the Teddy Kennedy's 1980 campaign, primary campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. And I did this by primarily spending a lot of time with RFK Jr. Now, RFK Jr. at that moment was running, was running the state of Alabama for for his uncle. There was a primary in Alabama. He was running it. And he had this kind of

weirdly romantic idea that he would build his own political career in the South and that he really even then was thinking about you know, a run for a

moving to Alabama, establishing himself there, seeing himself as an eventual governor of Alabama. And it was some kind of weird liberal fantasy of the New South, which he would spearhead. And this went to the mythology about his father and his father being able to speak to sort of a whole new group, of people. You know, Bobby Kennedy went to Appalachia at, at one point. I mean, this is, this is, you know, and he's already now, his father, Bobby Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy has been, has been dead at this

point for, you know, 15, 30, you know, 68, he died, but he was assassinated. 168. Yeah, so 12 years. RFK Jr., who I was with, you know, on a constant basis for the better part of a month. at this point in time. And he spends every day almost as though every waking moment reading and rereading Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s book about his father. So this is kind of weird, you know, I mean, kind of, you know, you didn't exactly know what was what was going on here, but something pretty heavy was going on. He's always got this book in his hands, except for the times, in which he disappears. Wherever you would go,

there would always be on the campaign trail some woman who he would then strike up a flirtatious conversation with and then disappear. This was like on a daily, sometimes more than daily basis. Plus then there were the drugs on a constant basis. So when you say disappeared, do you mean they were disappearing to do something together? Yes, exactly.

And that became a kind of standard thing. You would go, okay, yeah, everybody would roll their eyes. Not necessarily unusual on a political campaign trail, but he was womanizing and he was taking drugs while he was campaigning. Yeah, no, and the womanizing was random women multiple times a day. I mean, he was a Kennedy, they would be, you know, and he was, you know, and he was, you know, I'm trying, I was. going to say the word charismatic, but then trying not to use that because I think it's overused

and he was a Kennedy. So his name walked in the door before he did. He was already famous. He was tragic because his father had been assassinated. Yes, exactly. And he took effective advantage of that. And then there were the drugs constantly. He was, you know, I mean, clearly out of it, clearly then falling asleep, clearly in a nod, clearly, again, another one of those things, and everybody would just go, okay, you know, what can you do? And the nature of that kind of campaign is that you would go to a lot of, you would be put up at a lot of the homes of supporters on the campaign trail. So there were many instances in which we had to share a room, you know, sleep in the same room overnight.

And I vividly remember his nightmares. Terrified, I mean, they must be terrified to him. They were certainly terrifying to me for him to wake up yelling like this. And what was he, what was he yelling? It used to be night terrors. Yes, yeah. Just nightmares he was obviously having. And, you know, I mean, not, this is not beyond explanation.

I mean, if you, you know, this is. has been assassinated like that and your uncle's been assassinated and your next uncle is running for president and you're taking massive amounts of drugs. Exactly. Exactly. And then your life, the life of a Kennedy to have to be all of those, history imposes these expectations, which are insuperable. Plus, you have, you know, so many siblings, you know, so many siblings, not enough attention, not enough love. Oh my God, what a, what, the life that no one would want. And a life that really, I think it would be sort of difficult to survive in one piece.

And that's the point. He doesn't survive it in one piece. He is a broken guy. And, and that's, that is not the surprising thing. The surprising thing is that the broken guy has now such power and authority and meaning in contemporary America. And he's listened to. I mean, he strikes me as a man who, for his entire life, has wanted to be heard. He's wanted people to pay attention to him, to give him authority. And now suddenly he finds that, and he's got nothing of any substance to say.

Well, I don't think that that's true, Joanna. It's of keen substance. And, I mean, it's just negative substance. You know, he is doing, I mean, he is not just a leader of a bureaucracy or a cog in the bureaucracy. I mean, he is, he is destroying the bureaucracy. And that will be, that is, that will be to his. political credit. And it will be to our, to the, you know, costs the health of the country and in ways that we can't even imagine. It's hard not to think of China and Russia just rubbing

their hands at this and having some part in amplifying the anti-vax story online. This is, I mean, we're in so much uncharted territory in so many areas of, of this second Trump administration. And we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And we're back talking with Michael Wolfe and we're back inside Trump's head figuring out what on earth he thinks about RFK Jr.

Is there a tipping point here, Michael, where he becomes too much even for Donald Trump? Well, that is always the case. Everyone ultimately becomes too much for Donald. Trump. And yes, I think we can expect that will probably happen here. I think the danger is by that time, he will have become this one of the most significant MAGA personalities. And also, once you unravel something like the CDC or the vaccination advisory committee, it's very difficult to rebuild these things and give them any authority. Yeah, I mean, I think I think that no one

at this point can look ahead with any clarity on what's going to happen with the public health system in this country, which has been one of the most successful anywhere in history. Can we just have a moment, too, to reflect on the way that he was financed during his campaign, because at one point he was running out of money. He has dinner with a friend of his who has a girlfriend called Nicole Shanahan, who has been briefly married to Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google, and in the process of her divorce, picks up around $800 million worth of Google stock. And then her boyfriend suggests to RFK Jr. across the dinner table, this is when he's still running for president. You should have Nicole as your vice president. And RFK immediately offers her

the job and she comes with a loaded wallet and is able to then finance the next few months of of his campaign. And where is she now? Well, she's clearly not been rewarded by him. She's also a libertarian and is nowhere to be seen as far as we know. Briefly she was trying to do a recall against Karen Bass in California, but she seems to have disappeared at this point. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that that was obviously a rank, cynical and expedient move on RFK Jr.'s part. We ran a profile of her in The Daily Beast called Is This the Most Dangerous Woman in America because she was trying to finance him to be president. But in fact, as a member of Trump's cabinet, it's hard to think of a more dangerous man in America right now,

apart from maybe the president. Yeah, I mean, I could argue who's who among a group of incredibly dangerous people who is more dangerous, I don't know, but they're all incredibly dangerous. Maybe Pete Hexas. Maybe Pete Hexas. Maybe JD Vance. Maybe Marco Rubio. Maybe Linda McMahon. Exactly. Maybe Christine Ome. Bondi. You forget Bondi. Pam Bondi, who Trump couldn't say how pretty she was. in their cabinet meeting because his career would be over. So this is, you know, I mean, it, it, this, I can't say who is the most dangerous among these dangerous people,

but I can say that on this day, yesterday and today, clearly RFK Jr. has risen to the top of the danger thermometer. So Michael, we know what's inside Trump's head, this week. It's RFK Jr. who's elbowed Gillen Maxwell out of the way and Jeffrey Epstein is off the front pages. There you go.

Now, but I do have it in my head that Trump is, this is I have Trump's head in my head that Trump is not entirely quiet with this

whole business. And so it would be interesting to see how his next statement about RFK Jr. And I would anticipate that that would come in the next hours and the next day on truth social. So how firm is he in his support? We wait. Michael, this story has wiped Jeffrey Epstein off the front pages. did RFK Jr. know Jeffrey Epstein? Did they have a relationship?

Yeah, I think there were a couple of trips that he made. And yeah, they did know each other. And I can actually tell you Jeffrey Epstein's view of RFK Jr. And that view was, oh my God, he's nuts. and it is I mean we should there is almost everyone who interacts with RFK Jr. comes away with a similar story

I mean a story of feeling that something is egregiously wrong here off broken not not in the even in the the wide spectrum of

normal something is is profoundly amiss in this person's character and emotional framework. Well, one thinks of his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, who rarely says anything publicly, coming out with video in the run-up to the election, imploring people not to take him seriously, reminding people that when she was growing up, he had this dark presence that he used to make cocktails in a blender for his snakes by putting in live animals

and just creating smoothies for his snakes and just saying he was an altogether bad guy. I mean, it's rare to see someone's family come out so unified against someone. Yeah, well, I mean, in this instance, you know, I mean, what he has done, I mean, life has not gone the way he thought it should

for him. that again, and I'll use the word entitled, that he was, the power and the status he was entitled to, the career he was entitled to. It didn't go that way. And suddenly, he sees a window which he can walk through and he can, he might recover this at his, a kind of, a kind of late stage, late in life, last, gas for power. And the devil's bargain that he has to make here is he has to abandon any element of his family's history, tradition, beliefs, moral, code, and anything. It is just a raw, complete power grab.

I can do this. I can have what I thought I was entitled to. if I go against everything that otherwise would have created this so-called entitlement. And as they circle, as Trump's inner circle, circle Trump for running for 2028, he emerges as currently a viable candidate, which is just remarkable, absolutely remarkable, yet another Shakespearean character in the court of Donald Trump. Okay, Michael, we'll be tracking this. It's hard not to feel that America is hurtling back to medieval times when people applied leeches to men with swollen ankles.

So perhaps underneath his pants, the president has got leeches, personally applied by RFK Jr. So there you have it, RFK Jr, who Donald Trump knows is nuts, but nevertheless is in charge of one of the most important Americans. departments of government and is clearly positioning himself to run for 2028. If you have been, thank you for joining us on this holiday weekend, please share this episode with your friends, with your contacts book, with all those people you were at school and college with and started your first jobs with and have run out of things to talk to them about. Share this episode with them. Leave us a comment on YouTube and don't forget to subscribe to Inside Trump's head on Apple, Spotify,

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