The Daily Beast Podcast - What Trump Aides Whisper About Crazed Racist Post

Episode Date: February 8, 2026

Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles unravel a week in Trumpworld that veers from grotesque to outright dangerous, starting with Donald Trump’s late-night Truth Social spiral and the racist meme depicting the Obamas that even members of his own party scrambled to disown. They dig into what aides privately describe as Trump “going over the edge,” why the media still struggles to describe these moments honestly, and how this behavior is no longer an exception but the operating system. From there, the conversation turns to Trump’s jaw-dropping demand to rename Penn Station after himself—holding billions in federal infrastructure funding hostage in exchange for another monument to his name—and what that reveals about power, domination, and his obsession with owning physical and psychological space. The episode also explores the next weaponized phase of the Epstein files, Ghislaine Maxwell’s looming testimony, and how conspiracy, grievance, and raw racism are colliding at the center of Trump’s presidency—so is this just another scandal to scroll past, or a warning sign of something far more unstable still to come? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is part of the problem. You can't produce a headline that says the President of the United States went back shit nuts last night. Well, you'd be writing that every day. You'd be writing that every day. But in the, you know, and in the official outlets, the New York Times doesn't have the language to say the president had a breakdown last night. When he clearly has had, clearly something has gone on, something that, and he has reacted in a way. way that is beyond reason, which seems to define a breakdown. In an individual sport, what an honor for her.

There is the vice president, J.D. Vance, and his wife Ushah, whoop. Those are not. Those are a lot of booze for him. Whistling, jeering. Boo! Even though the Olympic Committee told people in the crowd not to boo J.D. Vance, people still booed him and his wife Usha as they stood waving their little flags. I think J.D. could become, maybe is one of the most unpopular people of our time.

Interesting. There's just something skin crawling about him. Well, he just did. I guess his apparent and obvious and profound insincerity. Yeah. I mean, the 180-degree swivel from Trump is the new Hitler to Trump is my lord and master, and I will defend him at all costs. Yeah, no, I don't think you can recover from that.

I think, well, he recovered to be vice president. Yeah, but I think. Remember, the point is never to be just the vice president. That's a dismal fate in life. Right. As Gore-Vidal would say, always a vice president. never the president. Which is not true.

You have a fairly good chance. That's the point. But if you don't become the president, then you become nothing. Yeah, you vanish, you whisper, you float off into the air. Well, he must be feeling under pressure because he did a very long interview with Megan Kelly, who says that she's going to get to some substantial questions. and I haven't reached the point where she's done that yet. I'm watching it in installments because it's so long.

And she's just smiling at him the whole time. I think she's taken her cue from Caitlin Collins, who always looks severe because she's dealing with severe issues. And as we know, as we discussed on Tuesday, was it Thursday? Who knows? The weak whistles passed. But we discussed that Donald Trump attacked Caitlin Collins for not

smiling when she was asking him about the victims of the Epstein files. Anyway, Megan was smiling fulsomely at J.D. Vance, who I'm sure knows he's not very popularly, which is why he was doing the interview. You know, I mean, the Megan Kelly thing is to smile and then bite you. Well, she didn't, she didn't. I mean, she smiled. You know, it's, you can't tell. But I, you know, I've seen, I mean, I remember there was there was one moment on the campaign trail where she gave, Trump gave her an interview, which was interesting because they had been at odds, but then she had systematically sucked up to him and then he had become convinced that she was on his side. And then they got into the interview room with her and she chewed him to pieces.

It was really kind of spectacular and resulted in a fight of Trump's people and her people at the end, lots of threats. It was an impressive moment. More impressive than when she wore spaghetti straps to interview Putin. I don't, I miss that. OK, well, let's move swiftly on. J.D. Vance is, I'm sure, pretending that he wasn't booed at the Winter Olympics, which I have to say I haven't started watching yet

because there's no time to watch the Winter Olympics, because there's too much going on here in terms of political sporting events. Too many podcasts. Too many podcasts. So, of course, where do we begin? Should we begin with the insane meme, the truth social frenzy that was going on on Thursday night? You know, a breakdown, and I spoke to people in the White House about this, and their view was, whoa, you know, actually.

let me quote, off his meds. So, which is an interesting thing, that they can acknowledge when Trump is too Trumpy, when he has gone further than they would have expected, and at which point they acknowledge that there is something that has probably happened, that something pushed him over the edge, which is another term they use. He went over the edge last night. So we're talking, of course, about the racist meme of the Obama's presented as apes, which... What that was in the context of like 60 or 70 Trump Truth Post that night, sitting up all night to just, you know, just reflexively, just a kind of brain dump of vile.

I think I was in it. I think I got, I think that was the night that I got a, at least, at least one biolrific call out. Biolrific call out. Well, if only he listened to his own health and human services secretary, RFK Jr, he would know that if he just ate a lot of steak, none of this would happen. We can come on to RFK Jr's cure for schizophrenia in a moment. But so even within the. the White House where they see presumably everything, they are, I mean, do they see this as a different stage of Trump's manic behavior? Well, I don't know. And remember, and a lot of people respond to this now, these truth socials, 66 in a, in a, night or whatever, whatever it was, whoa, you know, many commentators are on this. But he has often done this throughout the case.

campaign. One of the themes of the campaign among the Trump staffers was, thank God, he's doing this on Trump social rather than Twitter, because on Trump social, because he's the only one on Trump social, nobody sees it. But clearly, and this was an explicit point, that if anyone did see it, they would understand that there is something truly profoundly peculiar here. But the media cover truth social, obviously, because that's how Trump is communicating. He used to communicate through Fox News and now he does it on. Well, they cover it now, but that's also recent. You know, in that whole presidential in the campaign, they did not cover it.

I mean, the media doesn't really cover truth social. He continues to get a break on this. Yes, some, you know, the, the Obama meme, that kind of thing. But not the daily or certainly weekly breakdowns. Well, I can assure you at the Daily Beast, we monitor his truth socials because we're using it as a sort of, it's almost like a different kind of blood pressure monitor. You have what he physically looks like and then what we think is. mentally going on on truth social. Because you're a news organization, you can only deal with so many things.

You know, you have to pick from the most incendiary. But below the most incendiary, there is then a declining order of other craziness. So, and you can't produce a headline. This is part of the problem. You can't produce a headline that says, the President of the United States went back shit nuts last night. I mean, that would be writing that every day. You'd be writing that every day.

Well, you would be writing that every day. But in the, you know, and in the official outlets, the New York Times doesn't have the language to say the president had a breakdown last night. Right. When he clearly has had, clearly something has gone on, something that, and he has reacted in a way that is beyond reason. which seems to define a breakdown. Well, I think we know what's gotten under his skin besides you,

which is Jeffrey Epstein, the release of the Epstein files, which are just coming up with news stories every day, three million of them, light looking for a needle in a haystack, as we know. On Monday, Congress is going to be able to look at them unredacted. I don't even physically know how that's possible. You've got 450 Congress people. How on earth are they going to even begin to say what they want to look at?

And a lot of this will have to be performative. They'll have to go up to the hill. They're not allowed to take anything away. They have to look at it on DOJ computers. So that's confusing. And then, of course, Gillen Maxwell is going to be giving evidence from her prison camp in Texas. where she was moved after her two-day interview with Judge Lodge. She's not coming to Washington, which I believe that we said the other day.

So she's doing this remotely. She's doing this from the prison camp. Probably with her puppy. You know, her puppy will be jumping around at her feet. No. And, you know, I mean, I think we're coming into a new phase of the Epstein files, which is the weaponization phase. So who can claim this?

There is so much material. It is and so much you can make anything out of all of this, all of this information. So it's the question of who can claim it. I mean, it's a hall of mirrors. Reality is endlessly distorted. And the loudest, weirdest, most insistent voice gets to claim the narrative, which everybody is trying to do right now. the Republicans are clearly setting up. The Clintons to be the face of this. The Galane interview, I would expect is going to work for the Republicans because she's made whatever deal or is,

I mean, she has only one recourse in life, and that is to carry favor with Donald Trump. Well, she's desperate for a pardon. So, yes. So she will be, she will be good for the Republicans in that. And now Trump obviously has dived into this looking for a way to position himself favorably, which is at my expense, expense, not no expense, but making, suggesting that I was in a conspiracy to, with Jeffrey Epstein to damage Donald Trump. So I think we're in this moment. who is going to claim the Epstein conspiracy for himself? And then, of course, we've got all the women, many of whom's names haven't been redacted,

many of whom have turned up in photos, and who are looking for some sort of reckoning or looking for some sort of conclusion to this. And in fact, I think it's only deepened a lot of their anxiety about their own. Yeah, yeah, no. I think... About their association with Epstein. Well, and also because nothing has been, has come particularly clear about this. I mean, all of this information and what do we know?

Are we more informed now than we were? We've added a new sort of new characters to the drama. But what has, has that gotten us any further understanding of what? of what went on and the meaning of all this. To me, no. And I think it's going to take, you know, it may well take years for the Epstein files to be truly picked apart and for whatever conspiracies are in there to explain, not least, how he made his money, how he made his money, which still remains a mystery at the center of it. of all this. This is a man that died with $600 million. He lived a lifestyle that cost between, well, probably up to $100 million. And no one understands. You remember having this conversation

with Leon Black, the co-founder of the private equity group, where he said, how did Jeffrey make his money? You know, absolutely true. But just let me add a little context to this, which is I've been in New York a long time and around not just Epstein, but a lot of people, Like Epstein, a lot of people who are very wealthy, and I'm always saying, how do they make their money? I mean, it always seems. I think all of them were like Epstein. They didn't have an industrial-sized, vertically integrated. Well, they didn't, but there is, you know, I mean, enormous numbers of people.

Where does the money come from in this time? And this goes to the whole nature of this story and why it is intrinsically fascinating. to so many people. Where does the money come for so many people who have so much money? There is, I mean, the logic of this, I mean, it seems to me that everybody should give out a little, you know, a little one-pager. This is why I have more money than anyone has ever imagined happening. Well, and the other thing I find interesting about it is, you know, there are things like Jeffrey Epstein introduced Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, to J.P. Morgan. In 2012, I think, why an earth couldn't J.P. Morgan have approached Sergey Brin separately?

Why didn't Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, immensely wealthy? I think at the time, probably the third richest man in the world. Why would he need Jeffrey Epstein to create, that introduction for him, that makes zero sense. Zero sense. Well, everybody, if you plumb the depths of every middleman in New York, and most men seem to be middlemen in New York, you think, why is it that they do what they do? Why wouldn't it be more efficient to eliminate the middleman? But nevertheless, it turns out that the middlemen make everything happen.

It's just so strange to me. So strange that Sergey Brin would think he would need Jeffrey Epstein to introduce him to America's biggest bank. I mean, what on earth was his financial advisor doing? Must have just been collecting commission, I suppose. Why on earth wasn't he doing something? I don't know, but let's assume that there is that this happens for a reason. This doesn't happen randomly.

I mean, the people at J.P. Morgan are probably slugs, and they probably sit there and do nothing until the middlemen, the guys who are really actively out there trying to make money, which is what a middleman does, calls them up and say, hey, you know, I got a, I've got $20 or $30 or $40 billion for you. Yeah. And then, of course, Jeffrey Epstein made money from the introduction, which we saw from earlier papers released to do with the Epstein files. That's what floats the middleman. Okay. So we have to stay. The Vig. That's called the Vig. It's called the Vig. Okay. Well, the thing that we, so Trump has, I mean, actually there was a relatively bipartisan approach to the racist meme. Trump eventually took it down, saying that, oh, it was a member of his team, he didn't know about it. Yes, he understood it was racist. He was taking it down.

I mean, pathetic, pathetic, obfuscating and blaming, blaming of other people, which is obviously what he always does. Thoughts. Thoughts. Yeah, well, I know the operation. You know, this stuff comes, they send him. Natalie Harp is at the head of the list here. They send him stuff. anything that they think confirms his point of view about anything and makes him look good and

someone else look bad. It just is a funnel of stuff that comes to him. So could he have inadvertently snap that up? Well, it's, it's everything is is at to some degree inadvertent. There is no thought here. So to actually, to impose thought on this, I didn't think this. I didn't think about this. I didn't focus on this. He doesn't think about everything. He doesn't focus on anything. So his posting of that is no different than all of the other, the other 60 or 70 posts

from that night or the nights before. This just happens to be a something that the media could focus on, therefore, create that moment of, oh, my God. And perhaps Trump's reaction was, I should have thought of this. And then he'll yell at Natalie for sending this to him. But it is no different. There is no exception to what happened here. Right.

Well, it took our eye off the ball on what's happening with the Iran conversations, your friend Steve Wittkoff, back in there with Jared Kushner. And they didn't make any remarks to the press after they left the conversations. They did not seem to make any progress. Well, we don't know if they made any progress. Who knows? Maybe there'll be another big peace announcement. But he's also closer to home trying to name Penn Station after himself.

You know, on the heels of the Kennedy Center, and, you know, we discussed this the other day of the political, of how preposterous that was in. any political sense. I mean, he gets nothing from that. This move to put his name on, apparently anything he can put his name on, is to no political advantage, quite the opposite. I mean, the rebranding the Kennedy Center has got to be one of the most dumbass political moves of a long time. I mean, the Kennedy. Center is an accepted, even beloved institution, John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular figures of modern history. And let's take that on. Obviously, it was a catastrophe. The performers bowing out, audiences. The real Kennedy family coming up and saying, this is terrible. The minute you're

out of office, we're going to reclaim it. But in addition, the Kennedy Center couldn't operate. So now he has to close this down. Well, I hope that doesn't happen to Penn Station. There are 800,000 people a day who use Penn Station. Well, so the thing is, and then why would he do that? So, I mean, let's be clear. He is now holding a Penn Station hostage.

It needs the release of federal money. in order to continue building a tunnel which everybody thinks is necessary. Without that, there is the, there is enormous amount of economic at issues that become at risk because it's such a focal point and funnel of so much activity. No, this is actually catastrophic for New Jersey and New York. We badly need a tunnel connecting the two places. Well, it's not just the local issue. It's a national issue because so much flows through this, so much necessary economic activity. But, okay, so put that aside. So he's, anyway, that's the setup. He's doing that. He's holding that, those money's hostage in return for putting his name on Penn Station, Trump Station. So why would he do this? What is the possible political? gain here. Now, this is the same question I asked of people I know in the White House. What is

going on? What does he think he's going to accomplish? And they were quite methodical in interpreting Trump that this has been, and reminding me that this has been the fulcrum of Trump's career? What has he done? What did he do different from other people? What is he? What was really the thing that propelled him? And it was putting his name on buildings. And it's interesting because when he started to do this, this was not something done in the real estate business. Developers did not put their names on buildings. Developers were not stars. Developers were developers. They were guys who were there to make money and the other frippories, fame, celebrity, et cetera, uninteresting to them. Trump comes along, puts his name on every building.

He puts his name as big as it can be. And that, we should remind ourselves, becomes the way he comes to in enormous attention and prominence. So in his mind, this is what people in the White House are, you know, understand. And we're reminding me of it is central to the attention he has gotten, which is central to his political success. And let's do a commercial break. And Michael and I are back inside Trump's head. What's so interesting is he's put his name on all his businesses, right?

So the Trump model, Trump waters, Trump water, Trump University, Trump state, Trump champagne. And all these things have vanished. I mean, they've been pursued by lawsuits. Well, yeah, but he's the president of the United States for the second time. I mean, something has profoundly worked. Something has profoundly worked. In the dot-com age, I have. a business which raised quite a bit of money and I put my name on it for the express purpose

that I thought it would make it much harder for them to fire me. Well, maybe that's what he was doing. They fired me anyway. What was it called? Michael Wolf Enterprises or the Wolf's at the door. What was it called? was called Wolf New Media. Wolf New Media. Okay. Well, you're not president of the United States. Maybe you just didn't

do it big enough. You weren't bigly enough. Anyway, I really hope if he does end up doing that, and that becomes the quid pro quo, they release the funds, which have already been appropriated. You know, I'm sure it would. I mean, that's the, I mean, that's the, that's the bargain. They're saying, this is easy. We'll give you the money. It's right there. All you have to do is agree to this one little thing. Just, just, and they go, just call it Trump station. What the hell? What's the difference? Right. Just give in. He's just, he's just demanding. It's like a child. Give in to him. Yeah, it doesn't, they will say it doesn't cost you anything. Actually, it gets you an enormous amount of money. Why not do it? Why not? Now, you know, I mean, the, and the reasons actually

not to do it, then become more complicated to explain because he's insisting, because this is all about domination, because this is all about making himself a fait accompli, because this is all about Donald Trump being omnipresent in our heads. So, but that against your, the release of your whatever it is, 46 billion or I don't know. I think it's. It's a $17 billion project, and the minute they stop working, which is what they're doing at the moment, it's costing between, I think, 30 and 40 million a month just to store the machinery, close the five different sites down. I mean, and this is taxpayers' money.

This is infuriating to me that this is a waste of our money. Yes, so we will say. So in order not to waste the money, the principle will give way to the money. will give way to the money, which he is counting on. Well, Chuck Schumer, who he was trying to get to agree to this, has demurred and pushed it off. But it will be interesting. And you're right, you know, if that's what it takes to get it done,

maybe that's the price that's worth paying. And then the minute he's out of office, it can be renamed Penn Station again. You know, it's not so easy to rename these things. They become reality, which is what he is counting on. Well, I think your point about him wanting to be in everybody's head and owning another huge piece of real estate in New York is a good one. And the new Penn Station is fantastic. I mean, it's an absolutely incredible station, a world-class station, which used to be horrible.

No, it doesn't, but that's not true. Penn Station is still one of the world's great shitholes. They've just created an annex. Yes, but the moynihan part. Just the small annex across the street. Penn Station is still the overwhelming amount of traffic. Doesn't he want the Moynihan station, which is part of it? No, I think he wants.

Well, why would he want the old horrid bit of it, which is under MSG? Because I think that's coming under the plan is to. is to remake that, I think. No, no, you're right. This is what they've hired Andy Bifer to do. Andy Bifert, who used to run the MTA, the subways, came from London. He's British and he's come back to oversee the remaking of Pem Station. But I assumed it was Moynihan Station.

No, he doesn't want Moynihan. Who knows that? That's just this annex. Penn Station. He wants Penn Station. He doesn't want the annex. All right. Well, the annex is fantastic.

It used to be the old post office, there's glorious building. It makes you want to take trains. It makes you want to do a full Joe Biden and just ride up and down on the accelerator. Yeah, but that is. I mean, you're on, that's the Amtrak line, which is a... Well, it goes to D.C., goes up to Boston, goes to D.C. Does the whole of the East Coast. But it's not principally the commuter line, which is where all the traffic comes.

True. Okay. All right. Well, I've never, I've never been. a commuter in terms of from New Jersey to New York. So that's why I got a bit confused. But I do use Moyni and the Annex, as you call it, which I think is glorious. I grew up in New Jersey. Yeah, of course you did.

I'd forgotten that. You and William Carlos Williams. And who is the other one? Alan Ginsberg. Alan Ginsberg. Okay, so what about... In Hurricane Carter, if you're just... Hurricane Carter.

You don't even know who Hurricane Carter is. I think he's a boxer. He's a boxer, isn't he? He's a boxer, I do know. A Bob Dylan song. But I do think this, you know, this, you know, putting your name on the building and this, I mean, I think the Kennedy Center thing is, is instructive and destructive. I mean, what he is doing, I mean, look at this in the course of just a couple of months. He's, the Kennedy Center has ceased to operate, cease to be able to operate.

It is now being closed down. He is going to, he is going to. he is going to rip it apart, rip it down to its steel, and then create something else. So we will go from this iconic Edward Durel Stone modernist building to a imperial neoclassical style and which this will reopen sometime in the future as a building not for the performing arts but for some arena-like spectacles. and it will be called the Trump Center. And turning point USA will turn up and do their rallies.

Exactly. But the important thing is it will be called the Trump Center and we will not remember what was there before. That's the plan. That's what he counts on. That truly is an autocratic move. And of course the irony is that RFK Jr. is right there alongside him in his cabinet meetings

and telling everybody that actually if you've got schizophrenia, if you eat a couple of states, you'll be fine. He's come out now saying that the keto diet is the cure to schizophrenia. Yeah, well, the RFK thing, but I would say before we segue into RFK thing, are you just throwing it away as the RFK Jr thing? Because this is a major, this is the American health minister saying this. I just want to flag the president's diet, which is a steak diet and all steak all the time diet. I thought he had chick filet as well.

Doesn't he have chick filet and fish a filet, whatever those, a fish fillet sandwich from McDonald's? No, from McDonald's, he likes a, you know, he likes a Big Mac. It's always a hamburger from whatever, whatever sometimes pizza. But otherwise, from every other fast food joint, he gets the hamburger. Well, anyway, RFK Jr. I'm not a chicken man. You think I'm a chicken man? So RFK Jr. has put out another movie's Madcap considerations, which is if you go on the

keto diet and you have schizophrenia, you may get cured. According to some kind of a study that he read two days ago. Yes, the author of the study has already come out and say, no, that's a misreading of it. Of course he has. But let's just, it's just thinking through this, what is RFK Jr's game here? By the way, the COVID vaccines, which is the whole point of this, is now under review. And we will, we will, we have lost and we will loss more of our ability to easily obtain a COVID shot. So this is, so what is, what is.

What does RFK want here? Okay, well, before you go into that, I've actually got the list of vaccines here that he's saying are no longer recommended for children. COVID-19, hepatitis B, rotavirus, influenza, hepatitis A, and meningococcal ACWY. And the recommended number of HPV doses has been cut from two or three,

depending on the age to one. I would have thought the HPV virus would be something that Kennedy himself would be quite keen to clear up. Given his own muddings, as he called them, his... I hope you're going to define muddings. Well, muddings are his sexual activity. I've seen a copy of his diary, which someone in our office has a photocopy of actually,

and it's really disturbing. It's just a list of women's names and then numbers by them as to what stage he got to. And he calls it his demons that he was haunted by his demons. He's a really, really peculiar man and particularly peculiar to have as Health and Human Services Secretary. There are two, I mean, there's only two reasons that he would be pursuing this, this, these policies. One is that he is flatly out of his mind. I mean that he exists in some other reality, that he has become possessed by the righteousness of his vision of health

disregarding any scientific basis for that, which seems like actually quite a reasonable explanation for where he has gotten to on this. And certainly what's his family say about him? Yeah. But the other explanation is an understanding or a perception on his part that this is really central to the MAGA people. That they are, that for a whole set of reasons, in certainly involving COVID, the health guidelines and instructions and assumptions of the health guidelines and instructions of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, past number of generations have all become deeply suspect. And they are in opposition to this

view. And so Kennedy's catering to that is the platform with which he hopes to become the president of the United States. Once more, gratefully, a word from our sponsors. And with a big thank you to our sponsors, Michael and I are back inside Trump's head. People are always saying the thing about Donald Trump is there's often a kernel of truth at the center of some of his crazier ideas is there are issues with American health. People are obese. 64% of the population are overweight. 43% I think are obese. And so and the solution. But I would hesitate there. Yes, yes, there. But the real thing and the real emotional nexus of this issue is vaccines.

And vaccines have been a, there is no, none, no evidence at all that they are what RFK and company claims they are. and no evidence at all that the American public as a whole has become suspicious of them. It is just a very defined mega minority who has made elevated this into a central issue and a central part of their political identity. Well, and as you say, he was actually interested in the environment until he stumbled on very, vaccines as something which gave himself something of a base. Now, it is quite possible also, of course. I mean, I set these two things. He's crazy or he's a political opportunist.

But it is highly possible that these two things are true at the same time. Yeah. No, they're not mutually exclusive. And we know that he's said that his brain got chewed up by a brain worm. But which is even more. threatening that the crazy man's crazy beliefs are convergent with a politically powerful movement. And, you know, it's funny, you go on holiday and you visit ruins of civilizations and you think, well, this does seem like it was a very plausible civilization.

How is it possible that it went out of being? You know, you look at these ruins from a thousand years ago and you think, oh, goodness, that is strange that they just stopped. They just stopped. And yet you think, oh, the reintroduction of diseases because we had vaccines that stopped polio, that stopped measles, that stopped all these diseases that killed children and killed adults, oh, this is how it could happen. That America becomes disease ridden. and that eventually the country just sort of falters. Well, I mean, since we've had these diseases before and we recovered from them and grew, I'm not exactly seeing that as a logical, logical, logical trajectory of history.

But it is certainly, I mean, people are going to get sick, people are going to die. People are already getting sick. There are already pockets of children getting measles. People are and the certain you are undermining a, you are undermining intellectual progress, essentially. And intellectual progress is hello progress. The number of scientists who've had the grants to their work just cut. The number of scientists who've left America, it's such a brain drain. and it's really difficult to build back.

But again, and I keep coming back to this question, both in terms of Donald Trump and in terms of these other people in the administration, I think it's very, you know, a critical question when it comes to Bobby Kennedy Jr. is that none of this appears to be politically intuitive or smart, to say the least. So there is all this kind of, I mean, heading in what I think is very plausibly into a kind of politically self-destructive whole, that this is all going to come, that this is not popular, that they are going to pay for this and pay grievously for taking away things.

that the American people have intertwined into every aspect of their lives. These are expectations and expectations not met are the worst thing that you can do in politics. So, you know, you end up thinking, what the devil here? And then I come back to the fact that they are all fucking crazy. They are all crazy, but we put them there as a country. That's the harder thing to reconcile. Anyway, Michael, that's quite a lot to chew on this morning. The Clintons will be appearing, and they're asking to have their appearance at the Oversight Committee on the Epstein files on camera.

They're saying, bring it, let's just do this, which also doesn't seem like a very good political move. You know, I don't know. I think it's a risky move, but it could be, well, be a political move. I mean, first thing, the Clintons are pretty good at this. Well, that's what I mean. It's not a good political move for the Oversight Committee currently in the hands of the Republicans, James Coma. They may deny this. I mean, they don't have, they are under no obligation.

I mean, it looks fishy, of course, if they do this, but these guys don't care about what looks fishy. and I think that they would be, you know, I don't know, it would be, it will be a risk for both sides, but interesting to see. We'll all be tuned in. We will all be tuned in. And I will be tuned in to hear whatever Gillen Maxwell says. I'll be looking forward to reading the transcript for our viewers and our listeners next week. It's an easy reading. She's got an English accent.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. how she's going to do this because now she's rather, she's on record and under oath in a rather detailed way. I mean, Todd Blanche, the number two in the Justice Department, Trump's former lawyer, went down. When was that now? July. Was it July? Anyway, within the recent past that we can no longer remember to interview Galane Maxwell, and got her on the record two days of depositions. So she's in a very dicey perjury trap.

Well, I'm sure she's spending all weekend trying to memorize what she said to Todd Blanche whenever they had their conversation in the Talley Hassee court, because, as you say, she doesn't want to contradict herself. But we know that she said the president was a marvelous man and that she would like to extend her congratulations to him being elected again. And again, we do hope that the,

whoever is questioning her will ask about Melania's letter to note to her and her note back to Melania. And it would be, I will say, helpful to me and my in my lawsuit against the first lady. Any news on what's happening? For any details on their relationship. Any news on where you are with your case? How are you getting on trying to serve the first lady?

We're still in the same. We go into, we answer their motion to dismiss the case in federal court. We answer it this week, I believe, on Monday. Well, good luck with that. Michael, I think it's time for a limerick to read us out. Interestingly, we've had a lot of limericks this week, and they've all started with the same line, or almost the same line, which is the once was a centre called Kennedy. And Kennedy, it turns out, it's quite hard to find a rhyme to go with it. But I applaud.

I've got three in a row here that all begin with that, all from different people, I think. This is from Rina Helms. The once was a centre called Kennedy, which featured the cream. of humanity. But a gent with some gore smacked his name on the wall, which made for hideous calamity. I thought that was pretty good. Good job. Okay, we've got one here from Sunray 1938. The once was a centre called Kennedy, whose existence served the slain's memory. Good one. The audience declined and the artists resigned and refused to be stained with complicity. Also good. Also good. That's from Sunray.

You know, I don't write limericks, but perhaps I could, but I have written a column, a substact column about this, which I recommend to you because it's super depressing. It's super depressing. Well, I'm not sure I want to read it now. Well, it's, you know, I think you should. I think everybody should think everybody should think about how depressing this is. No, and it's also one of the things that autocrats do, right? They come in and they try and own the culture. And if they can't, it close. it down. I mean, there is something very significant about what's going on with the Kennedy Center here that perhaps hasn't got its due attention because of everything else going on. You know, and it's, yeah, and, you know, and what people, what people, people think is that this is a dumb-ass thing, you know, that he'll get hoisted on this, that the opposition is raising its

voice. But the real truth is that it goes along, it's, it's just obliterated. No one will remember the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Thank you for joining us. We're leaving you on a rather somber note. But there are lots of things you can do. Get involved in your local community and take a stand. And join the Daily Beast community where you will find like-minded people howling into the darkness like Michael and me. Anyway, please subscribe to the Daily Beast. We're independent media. We love your support. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out.

And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team, Devin Rodgerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passe, Heather Pissaro, Neil Rosenhouse. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at thedailybeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline head to the dailybeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.