The Daily Beast Podcast - What I Learned After RFK Jr. Sold Me Drugs: Author

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Kurt Andersen joins the Beast’s Joanna to unpack the surprising Jekyll and Hyde nature of Donald Trump, from his once fawning desperation to be covered warmly by Andersen to his snide takedown once Andersen was no longer useful. Drawing on insights, Andersen and Joanna Coles explore what Trump’s split personality reveals about his nature, his calculated self-presentation, and his ascent to the White House. Along the way, they tease out the contradictions between the Trump we see in public and the Trump we hear about in private. Is this the side of Trump no one really notices, or the one he wants you to notice? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, it's the one and only time in my life I ever bought cocaine. I was a boy from Nebraska. I went to Harvard. There was Bobby Kennedy, the celebrity in our class. He was early in his drug using and dealing career relatively. We got back to our dorm and I don't know, maybe we did our own lines then. And so I get a call on the phone. Of course, all my landlines at the time.

And the phone in my dorm room rang and he said, yeah, it's Bobby. Oh, hi. And I said, you took my straw, man. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And we have a wonderful conversation for you today with our guest, the writer, the humorous, the former media soothsayer, Kurt Anderson. And as Donald Trump was surfing the wave of fame that would land him astride the world stage, Kurt has been chronicling him and the fuckening of America, as he calls it, in multi-color. detail. I urge you to stay for the entirety of this conversation because we start with the very compelling scene of him purchasing cocaine from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. when they were both at Harvard

together. And I demand every detail of that transaction. We have a total recovered memory session. And that somehow feels like the perfect prologue to the America that Kurt has been writing about ever since. Now, before we get into it, just some background on Kurt, who is, of course, the co-founder editor of Spy Magazine, the brilliantly satirical magazine that first labeled Donald Trump a short-fingered Bulgarian and Kurtz the creator and the longtime host of the now defunct but brilliant show for 20 years, Studio 360. He's written bestselling novels, cultural autopsies and political takedowns, including You Can't Spell America Without Me, which is a delicious collaboration with Alec Baldwin as Trump's ghostwriter. And long before President Obama mocked Donald Trump at the White House

Correspondence dinner, Kurt had already diagnosed him as the patient zero of our national derangement. So let's get into it. I know that Donald Trump is going on a congratulatory tour of the Middle East this weekend, but I think he's going to feel a little hungover over one disappointment. And that would be not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, he didn't win it. And come on. He solved seven wars, some with countries that weren't even at war with each other. That's true.

And I only started or tried to start one or two in the United States by sending in the National Guard to various cities. Now you're being cynical, Kurt Anderson. No. No, the thing about, and as he goes through Israel, which he's already doing as people watch this, I suppose, You can bet he will be saying, you know, he will mention the Nobel Prize. I guarantee you. He will find ways without, you know, directly, explicitly dissing the heroic Maria Carina Machado in Venezuela, who has supported, who has made at least lip service support of his thanks to him

and thanks to him for putting a $50 million bounty on Maduro. How is it possible that no one's come forward with that, by the way? 50 million bounty on the head of Nicholas. Well, it's not killing him. You have to get him. You have to. We have to bring him to the state. Report it to the DEA and they have to convict him.

So not just some Joe in Rockas. Nevertheless, $50 million is quite an incentive. For just one of his minions, I guess, to snitch or something? Life-changing. It's a life-changing sum. And maybe Trump will repeat that. But anyway, he will find it difficult. And he will find it, if I'm wrong, okay, come back and tell me I'm wrong. But I bet he will more than once repeat something about the Nobel Peace Prize

and why he should win if not this time the next time. Right. And that she's a nice lady. Yes. A nice lady. But he's actually stopped seven wars. I wonder if, because Marco Rubio is. been a big fan of hers and I think wrote in support of her getting the Nobel Peace Prize, that actually he will face some backlash from Donald Trump.

Well, you wonder about Marco Rubio, who was until, you know, the day before yesterday, in terms of his foreign policy opinions, everything Trump is not, you know. I mean, he was a conventional conservative interventionist, right? So, yeah, we'll see. I mean, you know, yes, did you work to prevent me from getting it while Netanyahu is doing his best. Right. And also, of course, Netanyahu put out an AI version of an enormous Nobel Prize medal hanging around Donald Trump's neck.

No, it's amazing. It's, you know, Trump is a cartoon and people like Netanyahu know that the cartoon larger than life. What is this? Forms of flattery is what he likes. It's like when Trump himself, when that AI video came out of Gaza as a resort that Trump and Netanyahu are running. Right. He shared that.

I mean, you know, again, as I've argued and written a book about, the blurred line between fantasy and reality in fantasy land, of which Donald Trump is the Lord and Master, is harder and harder to suss out what's real and what's not. There will be people who see this Netanyahu distributed picture of Trump with the, you know, foot wide, you know, foot wide. Nobel prides hanging from his neck as real. So you mentioned that Donald Trump is a cartoon president. We have, obviously, a cartoon head of health and human services, a man that I referenced in your introduction today because you bought cocaine off him at Harvard. I want a blow-by-blow account of that transaction. Please spare no detail.

I need to understand it. It was in a dorm room. was it outside of campus? I need all of it. What was his hair like? What was your hair like? Good choice. Blow by blow.

Well, that was just... Your Joyceian natural affinities. No, well, it's the one and only time in my life I ever bought cocaine. I was a boy from Nebraska. I went to Harvard. There was Bobby Kennedy, the celebrity in our class. Was he the celebrity in your class? Of course.

And as handsome as could be. I mean, you know, I felt he made me. feel gay. I mean, he was so handsome. He was, and he was cool, and, you know, Bobby Kennedy. And, you know, the Kennedys in 1972, 73, my freshman year, were still, you know, the dynasty that they are now, whatever.

And also a tragic figure, because his father and his uncle had been killed in cold blood. Within a few, while he was, you know, not many years ago, his father four years earlier. So anyway, he was also, I said, my roommate and I said, oh, we should, track, okay. And where do you get it? And well, Bobby Kennedy was the answer. And so, and I knew. And why was he the answer? Was he a notorious drug dealer or? Whoever I asked said, yeah, go to Bobby.

Right. And, you know, and we had, I guess, a mutual friend or two already. And so the connection was when the phone call was made. And he said, yeah, come over in his laconic, preppy Bobby Kennedy way, when his voice was still not whatever, destroyed by years of cocaine use, or the illness that he says he has that has done his voice. Anyway, and my roommate and I went over there, you know, a four-minute walk from our dormitory with our $40, which was a lot of money in 1973. Right. And you went over to Bobby's room.

To Bobby Kennedy's, RFK, the Future Health and Human Services Secretary, his room in Hurlbutt, the dorm Hurlbutt, and I went in and he, I won't say welcomed this, but, you know, said come on in and offered us. His brother Joe, future congressman from Massachusetts was also in the room, so, you know, if I'd snitched, I, you know, I could have, whatever. Taking them both down. And so there they were, and we were talking, and he, as one did or as he did, anyway, offered us some weed. and showed us, opened a backgammon case, which was so perfect in this preppy Ivy League thing that people did, is play backgammon, of course, back then at least.

And it was full of... Free internet, of course. It was just full of marijuana. It was just like, I don't know, like probably a pound of marijuana in there. And I said, oh, have as much you want, I'm going to go get my stash or whatever he said. He left the room. He and Joe both left the room. So Mark, my friend and I were...

broke there and we started looking around he was gone for like five minutes and for instance we looked in his address book I didn't put this in the Atlantic magazine article I wrote about it because it was irrelevant to the serious case I was making against Bobby Kennedy last year in my piece

but in his address book oh there's Jack Romeo Kennedy Onassis there's oh look at these phone numbers and there was I swear Pope Paul the 6th it said Pope Paul the 6th and had a number in Rome. And I thought, and we wrote it down. You know, we wrote all these numbers down.

And then in the minute we had before he returned. So that was, that was a bit of color. You wanted color. You wanted blow by blow. That is a great detail. You've got the Pope's number and you got Jack Leo's number while you were there. I'm glad your early journalistic chops served you well. Well, I don't know about journalistic, just nosy little brats, but yes, indeed. Well, and how strange he would leave it out there. I've since actually seen him. his sex diary. Someone at the Daily Beast has a copy of it. Yeah, which is, so it's interesting that he leaves his things around. Yeah, well, he certainly did. Well, he's a reckless character. I mean, the other thing about him, I, I don't want to interrupt the transaction. So you're busy

scribbling down the number for the credit. We scribbled down, one of us scribbled down the numbers, and he came back and, you know, and he put out a, you know, line of coke, and we tried it with his little, he handed his little piece of, you know, one inch straw that one he'd gotten from the freshman dorm next to, or the freshman eating place next to his dorm. We did the thing, okay, what do we know? Sure. Fine. Great. We'll buy it. We did. You know, he said bye. And did he give it to you in a little packet? Did he measure it on a scale? You know, I'm an unreliable witness. I don't remember. Yes, he gave it a little packet. It might have been just a little tin foil packet rather than like a full-on drug dealer, a little tiny one-inch baggy, probably didn't exist 53 years ago.

They've professionalized since then. Yes, exactly. And he was early in his drug using and dealing career relatively. So anyway, so we took it and that was that. And we got back to our dorm and I don't know, maybe we did our own lines then. And I suddenly get a call on the phone. Of course, only landlines at the time. and the phone in my our dorm room rang, and he said, yeah, it's Bobby.

Oh, hi. And he said, you took my straw, man. I said, what? He said, you took the straw. And apparently I had pocketed and not wanting to steal Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s special cocaine straw. But it turned out it was his special cocaine straw because he believed, as he explained to me, it had crystals growing in it. It has crystals in it, man.

meaning somehow the... What, the repeated use? Repeated use of mucus and cocaine buildup made it something that was very precious to him. And therefore, now he's the head of the health system of the United States. So there you go. It's a line drawn.

So anyway, so I said, okay. He said, bring it back. I said, okay. And I did. And he took it and like, almost virtually slammed the door of his dorm room. So that was the end of my relationship my drug dealing relationship with Bobby Kennedy.

But I saw him around, and we were in concentric circles of people. Many of his friends and roommates and things were mine. And so I saw him and heard stories of him, and he was a reckless entitled guy. And they all, even though they were, you know, he had that celebrity radiance of, and, you know, there was nobody. Well, actually, Mir Buto, this son of the then dictator-president of Pakistan. And a pal of Bobby's, naturally. But anyway, he was a reckless character. And one of my friends tells me the story of driving with Bobby driving,

because he had a car, none of the rest of us did, driving through this tunnel in Cambridge, Mass, in Harvard Square, at night, turning the lights of the car off. So it was like, what are we doing? What are you doing? And it was that kind of thing. There were many stories like that of him just behaving recklessly and heedlessly. because, well, he was young, when you're young, you don't think you can die.

But, you know, this entitled, you know, rich Kennedy brat. So anyway, that's my experience of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Okay, well, we'll come back to that and why you think Trump chose him in a bit. But you've also had a ton of interaction with Donald Trump. I mean, he's been around in the media for 40 years. So have you. You're younger, but you've had a lot of interaction. And very early on when you were at Spy Magazine, you recognized that he was a character that certainly needed lampooning.

Yes, he was, yes, I am younger. I'm much younger. I'm, in fact, younger than Trump than you are than me, just for fair. Fair. Fair. Anyway, yeah, when we started spy magazine, this satirical magazine. influenced by all kinds of magazines, including Private Eye, which is... Yeah, the British magazine, which is still going.

Which is still going, and different than we were doing. We were doing more journalism and less kind of a sheer humor than Private Eye does. But anyway, so we started this thing. It was based in New York. It was about New Yorkers for its first year or two before we kind of went national. It was successful and influential, and it was the pre-Internet age, so you could actually start a magazine and be central to the conversation as you can't. Well, and as one person said, you were the zeitgeist.

When spy came along, you changed the conversation. Well, it was, we were lucky in very many ways, and I think we did what we did well. Anyway, right away, because my partner and co-founder, Graydon Carter, had done a profile of Donald Trump in GQ magazine as we were plotting and scheming and trying to start spy. And he came back to me and said, you know, he's, he's, you know, said, you know, said, I had much heard of him at that point. He was not that well-known in 1984 or five as we were... No, anyway, he said, you know, he said, bully, he's a liar. He didn't say bully at that time, but he said a liar, bragger to bridge and tunnel,

you know, want to, you know, make it in the big Manhattan world guy. And he said, and he just, you know, made fun of him, his cufflinks and things. But he said, you know, for a guy who's, I don't know, 6-1 or 2 or whatever he is, he has the smallest fingers I've ever seen. He has just weirdly small fingers. So then cut forward a couple three years and we're thinking of the epithet we would attach to him. As we did all recurring figures, whether you're Henry Kissinger, whom we called every time we mention him in the magazine, socialite war criminal Henry Kissinger. And so we came up with various, a couple of different ones for Donald Trump.

which we decided didn't stick. And then we came up with short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump. And called them that again and again and again. And people still say it today and still know it today. Marco Rubio, who stole the Nobel Prize from Donald Trump. His friend Machado. When he was running for president, and whenever that was, 2016, I guess, yes. He brought up on stage, short-fingered Bulgarian.

And as we had honestly, never done, never-intended-old-old-old her. had never thought of related to the size of his penis. Which became at the time a new low level of campaigning, right? There was so much outrage that Marco Rubio had somehow alluded to that. Well, he alluded to it. And again, I mean, I was watching on TV and thought, I mean, people talk about, oh, it's like an acid flashback. Well, yeah.

Suddenly this silly thing that we'd done, you know, 30 years earlier is like on a debate stage for the Republican presidential nomination was incredible. Of course, Donald Trump being Donald Trump went right into it and said, no, I'll tell you, in that department, meaning his manhood, and I got no problem. On the stage. So it was the cartoon had begun. Yeah, the cartoon had begun. Well, and also didn't he at one time send you a note saying how good you were?

When you left Spy Magazine and you went to Ed. it New York Magazine. Didn't he send you a note saying that you were very good? He did. Well, and he'd send, he'd send, he'd send, Graydon and me notes and letters threatening lawsuits while we were doing spy. You know, he said we were trying to extort him to get a spy carried on his short-lived, unprofitable, failed air shuttle. He had his lawyers send his letters. I've forgotten about his shuttle, the drug shuttle. The one that lasted two and a half years and lost money, one of his many unsuccessful businesses,

Well, like Trump University, Trump stakes, Trump water. Well, this actually had airplanes and it was flying. You know, it was the Eastern Air Shuttle until it became the Trump Air Shuttle. I mean, and he bankrupted it once again. But he all, and he heard, he knew that we were doing it, working on a big story, cover story, as it turned out, about his wife at the time, his first wife. And his lawyer sent us letters threatening sued over that. So, and he never sued us, of course, or not of course, of course, of course then. because, like, why he was sensible then, because why waste money on a lawsuit, you know you're going to lose, and everything.

So anyway, yes, we'd had interactions with him. And then, so I leave spy, become editor of New York Magazine shortly thereafter. And there's in a trade magazine about the media, there was a big story about me and my new editorship and here's what he's doing and blah, blah, blah. And they quoted Donald Trump at length about how. How great I was doing. How exciting I'd made the magazine and all this. And there's a big poll quote, you know, these large quotes from him about that. How exciting Kurt was.

He tears out that page of that magazine with his pre-presidential, pre-presidential famous Donald Trump Sharpie writes, circles the poll quote and says, so true about the quote of him and then signs it. About his own quote. He's unquote. And then signs it Donald Trump in that familiar, you know, EKG. Sort of pubic hair type of from their birthday letter. Yes.

And sends it to me. And I'd forgotten about it. And I found it when I was moving a couple years ago and I was happy that I about to discover it. So there it is. There was that. Then when I did a story in New York magazine where the great writer Lisa Bernbach went down to the new moral law. to spend a weekend there and just talk to him and just and wrote this piece that was hilarious and wonderful. There was almost entirely him talking verbatim.

And she did it as a, you know, weekend was at Donald's in three acts as screenplay writing, you know, dialogue. He writes me and like it's as though he wrote it. Maybe he dictated it, but it was like as if he wrote it and typed it. And it was not bullying. It was not angry because I was. in this position as editor of New York that he fear in some way or wanted my

didn't want to alienate me, right? Because he was just a real estate guy. I mean, whatever. He wasn't, he had no power. And so he wrote me in this and I say, he was just complaining. He was sorry. He was sad. It made him unhappy. It wasn't good. And I said, but, and I wrote him back and I have all this correspondence.

I wrote him back and I said, Donald, you know, it was all verbatim. She didn't really say it. It was just you and you and you know, you know, Ivana and people talking. He said, yeah, I know, but it was still so unfair. Which again, I mean, it's all these aspects of Donald Trump that we see now.

Like, no, they're just mean to me. They make me look bad, even though it's just my words. You were saying, you use my words to make me look stupid. Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so I had many, many, and then when I lost the New York Magazine, when I was fired for the New York Magazine job, he immediately went to the New York Post to say,

what a bum I'd been and how shitty I'd been as an utter and how awful. Anyway, so that's, you know, again, the Donald Trump pattern 35 years ago was clear. Kurt, hold on one second. We're just going to take some ads. And I'm back with Kurt Anderson discussing, well, just discussing the weirdness of this moment and of Donald Trump. You've written about this, and you came up with another great phrase, the fuckening of America. How did we get here? Because people knew from the beginning that he was a braggart, that he was probably showing off, that he'd lurched from, you know, he was constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

How did we get from there to here? Yeah. Well, you know, he had talked about and flirted with running for president since Spy was around. 1988, I think, was the first time. Which I think is important to say because people often situated back at the 2011 White House correspondents, but it was very clear he had bigger dreams. Well, he had bigger dreams, and they were like all of his dream, like winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, they're like preposterous at the time, right? So we actually commissioned polls to say, who wants Donald Trump to be president?

We found that 4% of Americans did, and we had made a big thing out of that. Look, you've got a 4% ground swell. But no, so he did it again and again and again, every four years he would do it because I'm Donald Trump. I'm a great businessman. Of course, as, for instance, the Trump Air Shuttle and his football and his professional football league, and all these businesses, large and small, which all fail. So he's not a good businessman. He at all.

What he was was a good guy playing a businessman on The Apprentice, which made him a bunch of money and made him famous and got him elected president. Got a market president, as I've also written over the years, because, you know, starting with John F. Kennedy and television, and certainly through Ronald Reagan, an actual movie star turned president, you know, politics, especially presidential politics, became this kind of subset of show business and performance. I mean, you know, yes, FDR was on the radio and stuff. But like with TV and all that came with Ronald Reagan through Bill Clinton being on talk shows and then Donald Trump taking it to the next level, that's partly how we got here, that celebrity and this kind of show business performance ability got us here. And in his case, as a really successful television writer friend of mine said to me in early 2016 before when he was still like really amazing. he's not going to be nominated or elected. He said, nope, he is. He's going to be nominated.

He's going to be elected because people hate politicians and he doesn't come off as a normal politician. And I have never forgotten that my friend Paul Sims said that to me because it's exactly right. So how do the Democrats sort of countermand that? Because arguably Joe Biden was almost pre-television as a candidate that took over from him. And arguably, if it hadn't been for COVID, he might not have done. But he squeezed through and he very much felt like the last of a line of politicians. How does the Democratic Party or any opposition to Donald Trump surface at this point? Yeah.

Well, I mean, Joe Biden, as I said when he was running, I mean, in 2020, I mean, you know, the pollsters often run generic Democrat, not a specific person, but a generic Democrat against an incumbent. I thought, well, Joe Biden is the embodiment of generic Democrat. of a certain age. And still won because the generic Democrat beat this freak who was president of Donald Trump the first time. So how do we do it? Well, you know, just as the media have stumbled around for a decade, like, how do we cover this guy? And still stumbling around, like, because it's hard. It's a new thing.

We are in a new period for, I won't say for better or worse, for worse and horrible, you know, in every way, including this. And, you know, at Huffington Post, I think, covered it his first campaign as, you know, we're just going to put this in the entertainment section. Ha, ha, ha. Well, no. You know, so nobody has known how to cover him. And Democrats haven't really, I mean, tried. And, you know, in the first term, behaved as just normal Democrats, as though this is a momentary blip away from. An anomaly.

And it will return to normal. We haven't entered a new era. Well, we had, and we have in so many ways. And so, I mean, you have to look at what he did and what he's done and what he does, which is to say understand a presidency in addition to, one hope, substantive legislative accomplishments and stuff, which, yes, the Biden administration had, as a show. as Zelensky did in Ukraine in a very different way. I mean, Zelensky, you know, actor, played president, became president, right?

And has been an heroic, amazing president of a country at war against a much bigger aggressor a neighbor. So Donald Trump, in his way, and he, as a young man, as a 20-year-old, said, yeah, I thought about a career in show business, but I'm going to be in real estate, but I'm going to turn it into show business. He said that. And so that's, that he does that. And, and, you know, I mean, he's, he's, he's an idiot about many things. He's stupid about many things. But his basic performative show business instincts are, are incredible. And how to keep the attention every day as much as he can.

And, again, one of the things that struck me when we were doing spy, you know, 35, 40 years ago was I'd never seen anybody. so craving, yearning for any kind of attention possible, would call up, talk to reporters on the television pretending to be his PR guy. John Barron. Very good. Yes, indeed. And just craved it.

And like, you know, the old phrase, no publicity, all publicity is good publicity. I mean, Donald Trump lived on that premise, unlike anybody I'd ever seen. Like an addict is addicted to drugs, to me, his need and desire for attention of any kind. Now, preferably, you know, the kind of attention that the New York Post gave him with the front page headline saying,

best sex I ever had, said Marla Maples about, you know. I'm sure she was surprised to read that headline when she saw it because he'd obviously just phoned it in. He literally. And that was recounted. He was telling them this. But she was somewhere in the best. back and said, Marla, that's true, isn't it? And she said, yes. Of course he did. So, but no, any, I mean,

so breaking norms and being the ultimate publicity horror of our time was his, his MO from the Good Goff. And also what I think is interesting is your analysis of him as a television star, clearly, 14 seasons of The Apprentice, and then obsessive, chronicling of who was taking over from him. Arnold Schwarzenegger did a season. Martha Stewart did a season. They both got fewer ratings than he did, and he was beside himself with B.E.

But he loved talking about how on he then social media existed, which again. Well, that's what I was going to ask you, about the segue to social media. Obviously, he's got his own now. After he was booted off Twitter, he created Truth Social. Just his sheer skill in managing to stay on top of whatever the dominant media is at the time. What is that about, what is that, as you say, addiction to attention about? Because most people would just be in the fetal position with a hundredth of the attention he gets. No, it's entirely true. Well, because, you know, we, I mean, Spy treated him

as effectively a cartoon character from the beginning, and he kind of treats himself as a cartoon character. And again, one of the great profound problems to, in my way of thinking about social media is that it, and the internet is it makes all of us treat our adversaries, the people we don't like, whatever, as not real humans. Part of that we talk about dehumanization, that's a real thing and it could lead

to violence, will lead to more violence, no doubt. But that thing of like, well, this is not a real person, that I'm saying these savage, horrible things about online, they're just somebody online. They're just like in a game or cartoon. And so the sociopathie, the psychopathy,

the psychopathy of Donald Trump, which is, you know, all about no human empathy for anybody. I mean, social media, great. I'm just, I'm just spewing my lies and fantasies and insults. And there's no accountability. It doesn't matter. They're not real people. They don't matter. So it was a natural sort of infrastructure for his pathologies, really, in a way.

Right. that's an interesting way of thinking about an infrastructure for his pathologies. And what does it, I mean, you've met and you've known over the years, lots of moderate Republicans, lots of people who are... And the child of moderate Republicans, well, I'm the title of conservative Republicans, but who would now be the worst kind of rhinos in Earth. Right. So what do you think about the people around him that initially understood he was a cartoon and thought this isn't serious and then watched their party co-opted by him? And then all his ministers around him, all his cabinet secretaries around him, fawning over him, even when they know this is nonsense. Yeah.

And, well, they didn't do that, the first term, right? The difference between the first term and the second term is so striking in so many ways. It's not just that he is now actually exercising power rather than just, you know, using his bully pulpit to failing to really do much. he surrounded himself the first term with the people you're supposed to. He considered Mitt Romney to be Secretary of State. All of them. General Millie.

All of them. We're just the kind of normal, you know. Remember Rex Tillerson, fired sadly on the toilet. And he was still playing by the rules. Sure, breaking the norms, but nothing like the truly terrifying and historic horrors that he's doing now. So he was still, you know, even though he had been elected not as a normal republic,

and he'd been elected as, well, and lied and was brilliantly a brilliant liar about like basically running as Bernie Sanders economically. I will give you better Medicare. The Wall Street is picking your pocket. They're destroying your towns. So he was truly, look at the last two-minute ad he did in his first campaign. It could be Bernie Sanders. And so, okay, this guy is different than other Republicans. You know, he's a tough Republican who hates the same people we do, you know.

Right. The swamp of Washington. He's going to drain that. And he doesn't like black people and he doesn't like immigrants and he doesn't like gay people. You know, the cultural thing that had been the, you know, the part of the Republican strategy for since Richard Nixon, really, the Southern strategy was called back when he first did it. So he had that, but he was still a, he was playing, pretending to be a different kind of Republican in that he was, he wasn't for Wall Street. He was for Social Security and for Medicare and well, you know, it was a perfect pitch to the white working class.

So that was, I mean, and Steve Bannon was around who really, you know, to my mind, had it right. If Donald Trump had governed like Steve Bannon wanted him to, he would have been reelected, no problem. Because if he had really said, I'm not a regular Republican, and I think Medicare is great, and I think we should expand it. And Bernie had a good idea. And let's have mass deportations. and let's stop DEI. Those two together, which is basically the Steve Bannon platform, would have been, would have like worked wonders.

But he didn't because of a Republican Party, except for Donald Trump, and now his, you know, various MAGA people surrounding him in Congress are still, you know, they are not a working class party economically. So that contradiction still exists. And he's given it up. He doesn't even lie about it anymore. He doesn't really even pretend that he's, you know, against Wall Street or against big business. So, you know, and that's how we got here.

And the ability to, because it's now all about paying attention to me, I'm a man of action. I'm a president of action. And he is in a certain way, right? I mean, whether it's, you know, I'm having this summit with Putin and Alaska. that does nothing. I'm going to Israel because of peace. Well, it's not peace. It's a seat's fire and good, but like, we'll see. I'm calling all the generals

together with my head of the war department. You're not to tell them they shouldn't be fat. And now I'm sending in the National Guard to Portland because it's a hellhole. I mean, and again, you know, I, it's a hobby

horse of mine, but this, not just blurring a fiction reality, but like, but we have a media fear that allows false him to, if people don't look beyond him or beyond Fox News, to think, well, I guess Portland is burning. I guess we should send the National Guard there. Just this, this basic falsehood, fabrication that is the basis of this probably unconstitutional deployment of military forces. Kurt, we're taking a quick break for some messages.

And I'm back with Kurt Ansela. and discussing the madness of America. And now we've got your old college buddy, RFK Jr., Health and Human Services. Just my dealer. Not my buddy. Well, you're just your dealer. I love that. Just your dealer.

Now telling people that not only does Tylenol in pregnancy cause autism, but our circumcision causes autism. He also appears to be an addict for attention. He was certainly a drug addict for a long time. Why do you think that Donald Trump found him so compelling? Well, compelling point A, he's a Kennedy. Donald Trump born in 1946, 14 years old when Jack Kennedy is elected president. I mean, he is in that first boomer year. And the boomers are the people, you know, who were young people.

during the Kennedy Camelot magic. I mean, and actually the older generation as well. But that's why, because he's a Kennedy. And a good looking one. They're not all good looking. He's pretty good looking. Married to an actress, married to a Hollywood actress. Yeah, married to a Hollywood actress.

And, you know, and buff and built and looks great for 71. You know, so that's why. And I don't know how crude clever he was about this kind of California new agey, now called Maha part of the coalition of people who don't want vaccines and think, you know, additives of food are bad and all the things which many of us could agree with. And that people are too obese and out of control and America's sort of food industrial complex. You know, 20% of Bobby Kennedy's prescriptions for the health system, Good, sure.

But it was the celebrity. He's a big, handsome guy who's already famous. Good. You know, central casting. I mean, Pete Hegseth or Christy Knoem, or, you know, they are like people in some third-ranked television show, but they're pretty in their ways. They're good-looking. They're, you know, like characters in a video game or something. but Bobby Kennedy, I mean, it is Bobby Kennedy.

And he has his own, you know, comes in pre-marketed with fame and had been, I say, because I once ran a very adoring cover story on him in New York Magazine. You know, he was doing good work as a lawyer as an environmental lawyer, basically. Right, cleaning up the rivers and things. Yes. You know, but in then, you know, at the turn of the century, as the Internet came and, you know, you could, you know, you could. have all kinds of falsehoods and conspiracy theories like vaccines cause autism. And he took advantage of that and became the poster boy for that, as I wrote about in my book, Fantasyland. Anyway, so he was a Kennedy, and he obviously had a flexible view of, you know, of empirical reality, you know, which, you know, the whole MAGA thing is this, like, you know, island of

broken toys of all kinds of different conspiracy theories that come together, you know, whether it's Jeffrey Epstein, plausible conspiracy theories about his pedophilia or Bobby Kennedy and about, you know, the vaccine industry working with Fauci and the pharmaceutical industry to cause the pandemic. All, all that stuff. So, I mean, believe what you want, you know. It's your, plot your own adventure. So when Donald Trump gets up there and does his Tylenol spiel, which has no science behind it whatsoever. And because this is I'm just simply saying it's bad. It's bad. Don't take it over and over again. I longed to ask Melania, did she tough it out when she was pregnant with Barron?

Yeah, I don't know. You should ask her. Well, what do you think he's thinking in that moment? Is he thinking anything? Why is he doing that? just the attention drug? I believe. I believe it's just the attention. And, you know, Bobby, Bobby says this. So I don't know anything. So I'll just, I'll just repeat it. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, you know, and you know he's taken it and all of his children have taken it. And his wife, wives have no doubt all taken it. And, uh, well, and also the weird thing is that the one thing that worked from his first administration was Operation Warp Speed, which suddenly in the moment now he's hanging out with Bobby Kennedy doesn't work so well. So he immediately walks back from it,

which also seems crazy. Well, it is crazy. No, it is. I mean, you know, he had a couple of things that he could take credit for. That being the biggest one, being not getting the way and letting the government properly fund this incredible new technology that got us a incredibly effective vaccine in a matter of months, in a year. Right. And was the envy of the world? Correct. And so, but, uh-oh, these these anti-vax nuts that are part of my coalition don't like that. Okay, I got to, you know, play both sides to that, as he does on so many things, right? I mean, he's, because he's Donald Trump, who's, one of whose political superpowers is, you know, contradicting himself within 24 hours or within an hour, within five minutes. And like, ah, it doesn't matter. And in a certain way, Because, and in this, one of its overwhelming, successful things in this administration is doing so many different things every day, a new thing, a new thing, some new, atrocious, horrific violation of the Constitution or norms or whatever. So there's just too much. It's what Steve Bannon said years ago that we're going to, you know, the whole strategy is to flood the zone with shit, you know.

And my God, he's done that. And so the media, the news media and Democrats like, how do we focus? What do we focus on? So the one thing that does seem to stick to him and unnerves him and unnerves the people around him is Jeffrey Epstein and the story of Jeffrey Epstein and their friendship for 15 years. Did you ever come across Jeffrey Epstein? I didn't have that privilege of coming across Jeffrey Epstein. Although, you know, people I knew did. and you're a contributor Michael Wolf and my friend at the time, and still, certainly did.

And people were aware of him as this interesting, highly interesting, unusual, rich guy character. But no, I never did. But they obviously were, you know, they had much in common as Bridgeton Tunnel boys who made money in their variously shady, sketchy ways. and came from Brooklyn and Queens and moved to Manhattan. And, you know, as Donald Trump said, of Jeffrey Epstein, likes the girls really young. So, no, but I never. I'm laughing at that.

I don't know why I'm laughing at that. And every time I do people write in and say, this is about young girls, don't make it funny. But it's hard not to because it's such a peculiar situation. Final question then. Do you think that Jeffrey, Epstein. Well, how do you think Jeffrey Epstein died? Well, if I had to bet money, and again, I haven't. Mem coins or? Or no actual cash? I haven't studied it carefully, but I've read fairly carefully about the

circumstances. And I, I disbelieve extraordinary conspiracy theories until I can be persuaded that they're real. And this one seems a plausible conspiracy theory that somehow, just as, you know, the Speaker of the House is now keeping Congress the House out of session in order to prevent Epstein's, the Epstein files from being released, that somebody thought like, Epstein better die or you're in trouble, Mr. President. You know, I don't know. I don't know that that's true. But as allegations or suspicions go, along with so much of the unusual connections and coincidences around Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes go, it's plausible. But if I had to bet $10,000, I'd bet, yeah, he killed himself. Kurt Anderson, such a treat to talk to you. I love hearing your sort of vision of the world and your observations and also your strange interactions along the way with,

The people who, I mean, Donald Trump really stands astride the world, Nobel Peace Prize or not. He's the most talked about man in the world, which is all he ever wanted. It is exactly right. And yet, yet, I think the whole in his soul and his inability to be satisfied or happy or content with life, to me, is still manifest and apparent. So, I mean, that's, at least I take some consolation in that belief. Will you come back and talk to us again? Sure. Happy to. I found that a wonderfully stimulating conversation with Kurt, and I really want him to come back

because it's so helpful to think about the rise of Donald Trump on the world stage as not just politics as normal, but as a cultural phenomenon that we have all been privy to. And of course, we've watched it happen through television, through social media. and it's just, it sort of says so much about all of us. Anyway, if you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to join the Daily Beast community. And please subscribe to this podcast, wherever you get your podcast. If you're on YouTube, you can press the button to join the community below.

Don't forget to be Beast, as our first lady would have us say. I want to thank our special Be Beast membership tier, Karen White, Heidi Riley, Connie Rutherford, Sharon Shipley, Andrea Hodel and Free D.C., whoever Free D.C. is, it's a great nom de plume. And just to remind you, we'll be back on Monday with David Rothkopf, and Tuesday we'll be going back inside Trump's head with Trump Chronicle, Michael Wolfe. Thank you to our production team, Devin Roderino, Anna von Erson, and our editor, Jesse Millwood. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-star the Daily Beast podcast at the DailyBeest.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber.

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