The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Cornered Trump Is Turning On His Own Justices

Episode Date: February 22, 2026

Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles climb back inside Donald Trump’s mind at the very moment the Supreme Court humiliates him on tariffs—and he responds not with retreat, but with theatrical fury. From calling his own justices “fools” to turning a legal defeat into prime-time spectacle, they unpack how Trump transforms setbacks into legend, why the State of the Union could become a live-wire showdown with Chief Justice John Roberts, and what those colossal presidential banners draped across Washington really signal about dominance and power. Along the way, they dive into the bro-coded videos of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth, the strange silence from Kash Patel on Epstein, and the unsettling mystery of a disappearance gripping the country—asking whether Trump governs as a president, a performer, or something closer to a monarch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It will no longer be about the Supreme Court basically humiliating him. It will then be about his theatrics in responding to this. When you see this guy, it is he wears it all on his sleeve. I mean, he has done that for. It was like watching a child yesterday. For years now. Absolutely. No, and it was like, well, I'm going to do tariffs anyway, 10% on all of them.

I mean, it absolutely is the mad queen. Off with their heads. Off with their head. reduce the political world to boring, can't stop watching. What does that get you? Well, gets you Donald Trump. Michael. Joanna.

Where are we going? It's Saturday morning. Where are we going, Michael? You know, we're going inside Trump's head. And can we remind people? Do we feel like being inside Trump's head on this sunny day? in the Hamptons. I don't know. Well, we're expecting, I think, somewhere between 10 and 12 inches of snow this afternoon,

which fills me with a little trepidation because I'm supposed to be going on a jaunt upstate, but I don't feel 100% steady as yet. So I'm just debating what to do. You're going on a jaunt with your new hip? I'm going on a jaunt with my new hip, except I don't think my new hip wants to fight through 10 inches of snow. So we're going to take it under advisement, as they say. But for new people who haven't joined us on this podcast before, do you want to give them a suggestion of what they are in for?

No, I do because it's important and I think continue to believe we do something that is unique. People cover the Trump administration from outside. They cover the Trump administration, frankly, as though, despite all the evidence, it is a normal political situation. And it isn't. And it isn't because it actually doesn't work from the outside. In order to understand what is going on at this moment in political time, you have to understand what goes on in Donald Trump's head. Because nothing else matters. I mean, it doesn't matter.

The policy goals don't matter. Political reality doesn't matter. the only thing that matters is what he gets up in the morning, thinking, wanting, or having seen on television in the last number of minutes. So it is, again, as we have said often, a government of one. He doesn't listen to anyone. He doesn't really have advisors. He doesn't take advice. What he does, it is all reflexive.

who he hates, who he wants revenge on, and most of all, how he wants to project his own dominance. And I think I would say that what I find so intriguing and fascinating and unlookable away from is just the way that he says things that other politicians have never said. And we were talking earlier before we hopped on to record today. and we were talking about the opacity of most politicians and how you don't actually know what they think because they're saying what they think people want to hear. And of course Donald Trump doesn't do that. And I find myself now and we'll go into the scotus of it all

and the decision yesterday to not allow him to impose his tariffs and we'll go into his reaction. But I now find myself on the edge of my seat for the State of the Union address on Tuesday, not words that would ever have come out of my mouth. You know, I mean, we had an exchange, an off-camera exchange, or for those on audio, off, what would it be? Off-audio.

Well, we were just talking. We were talking as friends. Just talking. And your response, which was a perfectly understandable one, is, again, that, you know, he's such an embarrassment. He's a moron when he talks, which is certainly absolutely astoundingly true, except for the fact that it's incredibly effective. You cannot take your eyes off him. And his response after when he came out yesterday to deride the Supreme Court in all manner of, with all manner of insults,

Again, he was absolutely moronic, but absolutely riveting. Well, and as you make the point, it's as much about who he hates and who he wants retribution on that makes his policy. And I mean, yesterday he came out and he called the justices who ruled against him. So the three Democratic justices, the women who are appointed by Biden and Obama, but also Neil Gorsuch and Amy Comey Barrett, who he appointed. He's one who votes against him. Yeah, okay, but he specifically called, and this is New Territory, the justices, unpatriotic fools and lap dogs. And I think actually, in an effort to be even more effective, we've got the clip here.

They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. It's my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think. I can't stop laughing. We could just do the gestures on this because it's so rudimentary that you could just, but again, who would say such things? And you don't know the next thing he's going to say. So you're kind of glued to it.

But the other, in the broader context, handed a defeat that galvanizes him. You know, his magic is to turn that defeat into victory. So, I mean, let's remember the 2024 campaign, he's indicted four times. These are criminal indictments. This is his life is at stake. His freedom is at stake. And does he bow to that at all? No, it's all confrontation.

It does throughout the campaign. There were really no campaign issues except, except, to him, the prosecutors, the judges, and anyone, anyone who would try to, anyone who would oppose him in court. This became the entire narrative of the campaign. This will now, in this election year, this tariff things, the court will become the enemy. He will rise to this occasion. and this will ultimately redound to the legend of Donald Trump rather than to a policy defeat. Well, can you imagine being Chief Justice John Roberts yesterday morning waking up and saying to Mrs. Roberts,

well, today is the day. And, you know, this is a man who oversaw giving the president immunity and allowing Donald Trump to think that he was literally, above the law and finally Scotus has pushed back. John Roberts, the Chief Justice, wrote the opinion. I cannot imagine a worst day for the poor man. And then of course, the reason I'm on the edge of my

seat about State of the Union is, which is on Tuesday, is that at last year's State of the Union, Donald Trump caused much sturmund rang when he walked past Roberts. He shook his hand. He said, thank you. He sort of murmured into his ear. And everybody was like, oh my goodness. Oh, my goodness.

You know, the two of them working together. There was so much online drama about it. And now, of course, he's got a new enemy in John Roberts. And I'm sure during his speech, he'll go after them, right? He'll come up with nicknames for Amy Cemy Barrett. He'll come up with nicknames for Neil Gorsuch, the first justice that he appointed. The important point is that it will not be, it will not, it will no longer be about, it will no longer be about, about the Supreme Court, basically, humiliate. It will then be about about his theatrics in responding to this and his emotion and his, and it's incredibly effective. When you see this guy, it is he wears it all on his sleeve.

I mean, he has done that for, it was like watching a child yesterday. For years now. Absolutely. No, and it was like, well, I'm going to do tariffs anyway, 10% on all of them. I mean, it absolutely is the mad queen from Alice in London. Off with their heads. Off with their head. I mean, it's extraordinary how it's playing out. And nobody knows.

And if you're a business, it's incredibly difficult to know how to play. There's very difficult to organise anything in advance. It's incredibly difficult. If you're a Democrat, how do you counter this? I mean, and all of these Democrats, Democrats have spent their whole life in politics, know that caution is there, the chief virtue of, of a political life and a political career that you want, that every word you say you want to,

you want to hone craft. And here is a man who doesn't hone anything. He doesn't craft anything. I want to go on to the board of peace a bit later in the show. And also we want to talk about the homo erotic videos that are now spinning out of the cabinet with alarming frequency. But just let's make the distinction between boring and can't stop watching. So take that out of the realm of policy.

Forget that, which is the Democrats always say, no, no, no, you can't forget that. It's policy, policy. But really, put that aside and just think of those two things. Reduce the political world to boring, can't stop watching. What does that get you? Well, gets you Donald Trump. It gets you Donald Trump. It gets all of us Donald Trump. It gets the world Donald Trump. We're all saddled with this man. But the fools and lap dogs description of the of the justices is a new, well, it's just new territory. And to set them up like this really politicizes them in a way. We haven't seen for a long time. I'm trying to think if that is true, and it's not exactly true because the court during the, you know, during the 1960s, the Warren court, it was the, I mean, the court was highly politicized under nearly constant attacks, constant calls for impeachment and resignation. So, I mean, this is a little different, actually, it's a lot different because this is, this is,

his court theoretically. I mean, this is a court which has... Yeah, it's got six conservative judges. Yeah, I mean, this is one of his chief accomplishments theoretically to have stack the court in the way he has. But that doesn't matter. This is a typical Trump thing. He first has no loyalty to anyone.

And anybody who crosses him, dises him, there is no compromise. There is no, Donald Trump is not saying. Yeah, okay, I got a, you know, these are guys have been pretty good to me, and I'm in a pretty good place on this. And they've basically said, I can do anything I want whenever I want, and nobody can do anything to me. But, and so maybe I should swallow this. No, he swallows nothing. I'm sure that John Roberts, as a child, borrowed his mother's cape and swished around the living room, going, I'm going to be Chief Justice one day.

Be careful what you wish for. He had no idea when W appointed him that one day he would be doing battle with Donald Trump. And in the court of television and entertainment, Donald Trump would win. Anyway, I can't wait for the state of the union. Is he going to walk past them? I mean, he actually said,

I don't care if they're invited or not. I could care less if they come. Again, you know, of course they're space be there sitting there on the row. We famously watched Ruth Bader Ginsburg falling asleep at the State of the Union. And why wouldn't she? Because they're frequently boring. But this is going to be electrifying, I think, on Tuesday. Anyway, that's my prediction. But what are we- And a reasonable prediction is that nobody falls asleep during Donald Trump's state of the unions. And they go on for a longer, they break precedent almost in every occasion. But you

don't know what he will say. Well, he doesn't know what he's going to say. He doesn't know. Exactly. Exactly. So this is, but again, it's so interesting to me that the Democrats are helpless in the face of this and cannot come to terms with what this is and how to meet this head on. And I'm not, I can't help them because I don't know what you would do.

I think on this one, you sit it out, because there will be many more things before the run-ups to the election. Well, it's not just this. It's the entire, it's his entire political frame of operation, which the Democrats don't know how to, how to, how to counter. I mean, Newsom now has, you know, what he's, he's trying to create social media means, et cetera, et cetera. But it's still, it's weak. So is there a democratic politician? And I'm just trying to think through the cast of characters who could possibly be as performative as Donald Trump.

Well, and that may not be what people want. People may not want someone as performative. You know, they may just want a return to something that feels a little bit. No, no, people just say they want that. Well, they return to Biden after, they returned to Biden after Trump won. Yeah, well, that lasted, what, 10 minutes before he was, he was, he was, he was completely in the doghouse. Yes, we want him back because that guy, we don't even notice that guy.

He's just white noise. So, so if you think of, you know, and this is a problem with the Democrats, of course, They continue to think of voters as voters instead of voters as an audience. What does Trump understand? Voters are an audience. And they respond to the same things that an audience responds to, which is not policy and it's not a legislative agenda. What it is is they respond to the guy on the stage.

Well, and the thing that we know that Donald Trump also responds to is he doesn't like being backed into a corner, which he has been with. the tariffs, although he's now said that he's going to impose 10% tariffs on absolutely everybody. But meanwhile, we have a buildup of troops in the Middle East. The biggest buildup since 2003 in the invasion of Iraq, is he going to divert from what was a loss for him with the tariffs and bomb Iran? Is he going to keep threatening Iran? Is he going to try and do an in and out, as he did in Venezuela or as he did in the summer?

what do you think it's likely to happen here? I assume these are rhetorical questions because we have no idea. Well, he has no idea. He has no idea. He has no idea. Exactly. I mean, where we are. Okay, the status-wise of where we are is now he is talking about a limited incursion

or a limited action of some sorts. In other words, and as we talked about this the other day, you know, he's in a pickle. You know, if he doesn't do something, he looks weak. Also, we have all that. We have the entire United States military amassed to do something. So he looks weak, but he also understands and people keep telling him about how complicated it is to, in fact, do something. And A, he doesn't want to listen to the details of why it's complicated.

and B, he certainly doesn't want to deal with a sudden complicated situation which would take over everybody's mind share instead of him being everybody's mind share. And the whole idea actually and virtually no one in the world can make the prediction of what happens if they, in fact, get rid of this regime. Right. Which may well be the result. Right. And we should remind people, he encouraged people to keep protesting in the streets last month that help was on its way. And his goal is to stop Iran becoming a serious nuclear power. Well, he doesn't really know what his goal is. The goal was first, you know, to protect the protesters. Okay, well, that goal fell by the wayside and they, you know, and 7,000 or 8,000 or 10,000 or nobody knows how many thousands were. were shot in the streets. So that goal went away. Now the goal is about their nuclear capacity.

And, you know, I mean, so it is interesting, but it does would seem that right now he is on the verge of doing some face-saving thing that will not advance the ball in either direction. Well, and if he's doing a face-saving thing over the tariffs, whether or not he ever extends a decision in Iran? No, I think the face-saving thing is over Iran. Well, there are two face-saving things, I think. There's the tariffs because that was humiliating and he's gone after SCOTUS. Well, the tariffs he's already launched a face-saving campaign. They're the enemy. They're wrong.

I'm going to put tariffs on anyway. I mean, he's in his element here, which is, I don't need you. I don't listen to you. You're not the boss of me. You are not the boss of me. That's the exact energy that he was giving, that he was giving yesterday when he responded. In that strangely lit white house press room too,

which was odd with poor Howard Lutnik standing there, solemn and silent throughout, never once called upon as Commerce Secretary, never once called upon. Anyway, we have no idea if he's going to go into Iran. He doesn't know if he's going to go into Iran. The Epstein Secretary. Yeah, that's a good description.

And obviously, we'll get into the Epstein of it all. Do we want to discuss the homo erotic videos coming out of the cabinet? I think we might do because you're talking about how is, how are the Democrats going to face 2028? You have always maintained that RFK Jr. is going to run as president in 2028. obviously for the Republicans. And he released a video with Kid Rock this week in the sauna not to be outdone the next day. Pete Hegeseth released a video

talking about how it was very important to keep your butt down when you were trying to bench press. I think that's the term bench press, £350. And the thing that was so bizarre to me, and perhaps you can explain this. $3.15.

Okay, 315. Sounds like 350, if you say it quickly. which I think he did. You've got to keep your butt down. No, and it's this other thing, the other signal that they're very clearly sending, that's a bro message. It's protein powders, right, and creatine and all that stuff that they take, even though RFK Jr. says just eat real food and smother yourself in beef tallow.

Anyway, we saw him smothered in beef tallow cycling mysteriously on a stationary bike, cycling to nowhere in the sauna. Why does he work? out in tight blue jeans. Because he thinks it's attractive and women will like him even more and the blue goes with his eyes. Have you ever seen anyone work out in tight blue jeans? No, but I have a friend who lives in Bedford slash Mount Kisco who says that when

RFK lived up there. Isn't one or the other Bedford or Mount Kisco? They're sort of next to each other. And the point of the story is that there were gyms. Oh my God. I cannot get a word in edgeways. Kisko, but wants you to think that he lives in Bedford. No, I actually think it's the other way around.

But the point of the story is there are gyms in both Bedford and Mount Kisco, where I am told RFK Jr. was parading around the gym, to your point, in jeans with no shirt on. And I don't think it was a shirtless environment, as you can imagine, up there in those slightly prissy, those prissy upstate towns. Anyway, you've had so much coffee this morning. I'm struggling to get a word in edgeways. But I was curious about Peter Hegeseth. He's lying there. He's bench pressing £315.

And the person who's spotting him is his 15-year-old son, Gummer, who looks to be a young 15. And he's sort of desperately looking like, you know, I mean, first of all, who would trust their teenage son in a moment like this where you might end up dropping £350 on your own body? Who would trust a teenager to spot you? You know they're not thinking about you. They're thinking about anything else but what's going on in front of you. Poor Gunner. And then at one point, Gunner reaches out because it looks like his father is going to be unable to lift the full thing. And Pete Higgs just shouts at him.

He just reams him out. He's like, get off, get off. Like this. And you're like, you're humiliating your teenage son. And then you're distributing this on video. It was absurd. So what's the goal here? Is the message that masculinity is back?

I mean, the other thing I keep hearing from my senior female friends in big companies is that nobody cares about DEI anymore. We saw that Goldman Sachs put out a statement saying they were jettisoning DEI. And I have a friend who was actually called by her boss, a very significant figure in the finance world, who said she has been working on another project and he said, I need you to come and talk to the men, the men are out of control. And there is this sense in which I think the whole DEI. The men are out of control in their browness or in their browness in the way they're talking again, that all the things that men thought they couldn't say about women or couldn't say

about anything, they can now say what they like. So the HR department no longer matters. The Jeffrey Epstein emails have become inspiring rather than whatever the opposite is. Yeah, which is odd because for many people, they've become fireable offences. And we can talk about Casey Wasserman and what's going on in Hollywood there. And obviously Casey Wasserman started the Wasserman agency. He's the grandson of Lou Wasserman, Hollywood legend. And perhaps more importantly, he's actually chair of the 2028 LA Olympics and is now under enormous pressure to resign that role because he was

friendly with Epstein and had a series of racy emails with Gillen Maxwell, in which one of which he imagined her in tight leather outfit. Just note these emails were from almost 25 years ago. Yeah, I am noting that before people understood the scale of what Epstein was up to. And it's not illegal to send an email to someone saying that you'd like to imagine them in black leather. But what I am hearing from my senior females out in the workforce is that DEI is out of the window.

Nobody really cares what women think anymore. And it's, to your point about why are people putting out these videos, it seems to be a celebration of a very classic masculinity, possibly the toxic masculinity that we wanted to move on from. But I think it's an interesting moment that that occurs exactly simultaneously with the Jeffrey Epstein moment. Because, I mean, the Jeffrey Epstein of it all is, you know, I mean, essentially a true. to have created a incredibly toxic environment in which women are of, not only of little consequence, but you can do with what you want with them. And there will be no consequences. Exactly.

And this is what? I mean, people are losing their jobs all over the place. Not Peter Atier, the longevity expert. So side by side, these two contradictory forces are on the loose. Interesting. Yeah, it is interesting. And it's the Trump government who, or it's the Trump administration that is really pushing this sort of masculinity.

I happened to drop by Dan Bongino's podcast yesterday. You remember that Dan Bonchino was the... I thought you were just going to say you happened to drop by his office. I thought, well... No, no. I mean, I just dropped by it. I dropped by him on Rumble or wherever, whatever distribution platform he's on. And he had an interview with Cash Patel on.

So I thought, oh, this will be interesting. I'm curious to know what the two of them are going to talk about, because obviously the two of them before they entered the administration, as the number one and the number two of the FBI, were demanding the release of the Epstein files and kept going on about the conspiracy of the Epstein files. And you will be surprised or perhaps not surprised to know that in the 20-minute interview that they did, they didn't mention Epstein once. And actually I was encouraged by the fact that all the comments were like, guys, guys, why aren't you talking about Epstein? Instead, they talked about Antifa and no mention of Nancy Guthrie, no mention whatsoever.

So Cash Patel has time to give to his old friend doing a pointless suck-upy podcast with Dan Bongino where he talks about the brilliance of Donald Trump, the brilliance of Donald Trump. But him allowing us to work, especially after early on the successes of Viper, Operation Viper, the Violent Crime Operation in Tennessee, he saw the results and said, Guys, we got to expand this nationwide. There's no reason we can't replicate this in cities across the country. I think you just hit upon the brilliance of true leadership in what President Trump said to you and I. He said, go reduce violent crime. Go defend the homeland. Stop children from overdosing.

And let's protect our children online. Doesn't mention Nancy Guthrie once, who has been missing now for three weeks, for three weeks. an 80-year-old woman has disappeared and the FBI can't find her. Meanwhile, Kash Patel has time to give to Dan Bongino as Dan Bonjino promotes his coffee powders and whatever else he's promoting. It was a shocking display. Well, I'm shocked that you're shocked. I guess I shouldn't have been shocked. I mean, I mean, look, we know who these two guys are.

Again, what you're trying to do is normalize them. trying to normalize them and I shouldn't be doing that. You're quite right. It's to give them some credit as professionals in their job or people who ought to be professionals in their job. When they are not professionals, by every evidence, don't have the capacity to be professionals, probably not the interest to be professionals either, and are doing, who knows what they're doing there?

They're just there to not. create any friction between themselves and Donald Trump's. Well, I was, I was, I was wondering if perhaps Donald Trump had been back channeling to Cash Battile, you've got to sort out this Nancy Guthrie story because it's just a remarkable story. And as you know, it's completely gripped the nation. And for those, and we have a lot of listeners abroad in Europe and in Australia, for those who haven't been following it, this is a disappearance.

Actually, and this is something I don't know, has Trump been asked directly about this. Yes, and he said that they are going to bring in the death penalty for whoever did this. The death penalty. Yeah, he's been, you know, super supportive of them trying to find Nancy Guthrie. And we should just say for people abroad who haven't been following the story, this is a story that swallowed America for the last couple of weeks. It's the disappearance of the mother of Savanna Guthrie, who's a much beloved presenter of morning television anyway, her mother who lives in Arizona. has disappeared. There doesn't appear to have been a ransom note or there have been several, but it's unclear if any of them were real. Anyway, it's a strange story. Other than a ring video, there appears to be no evidence. Yes, and why don't you describe the ring video? Because it's really haunting. Yeah, I mean, it's just somebody in a mask of some sort. I mean,

you don't see very much. It doesn't offer very much. Just it would be haunting if someone approached your ring video in a mask. Well, and a mask and gloves clearly doing something untoward. It looks utterly premeditated. The whole thing is like a scene from a horror movie. It is, but the interesting thing about this is that it doesn't go beyond that. I mean, we know nothing more. This story has not advanced beyond that.

So it's just, it just becomes literally a black hole mystery and not a mystery clearly that's being solved. Well, and certainly not being solved by the head of the FBI, Kashpetal who has been doing... Well, it appears to be being solved by nobody or certainly, I mean, maybe somebody knows things that we don't know and they're performing in a very professional manner, but it certainly does not seem that way. Well, it just seemed a mystery to me that Kashpetal would have time to appear on Dan Bongino's video when there are other more urgent things for him to do. Yeah, so three weeks is a... This is, I mean, this is obviously a tragedy of great proportions and the, you know, the likelihood is that this is not going to end well. No, it really doesn't look as if it is going to end well, although we have, frankly, we have no idea.

But it's a terrible, terrible story. But I've watched the Dan Bonjino podcast, so nobody listening or watching this podcast needs to. including you, Michael. But you wouldn't even know where to find rumble. No, well, you sent me a little clip, I thought, and it confirmed. I mean, the fact that these people are so stupid. I mean, I mean, you just hit your head again and again. My God.

Well, and the idea that the two of them are running the FBI is really shocking. Anyway, what do we think about the banners, the very sort of 1930s Germany banners, that Trump is erecting of himself all over DC. Everywhere. Every government building is going to be required to have a Trump banner. And these are, I mean, if you haven't seen these banners, these are huge banners. They are huge enough to dwarf huge buildings.

Yeah. The one outside the Justice Department is perhaps the most egregious, the sort of signaling, this is Trump's Justice Department. Let's speculate on where these come from. Does Donald Trump say, hey, I went by that building this morning and we could put a really big picture of me on the building. Probably. Does that, is that how the message gets sent? Or are the people at the Justice Department in every other building so much the toadies that they figure, hey, hey, this is

a good idea. Well, we should actually... Forget Nancy Guthrie. This is a good idea. Let's put up a building-sized banner of the president. In fact, the only person I know who's had a banner or an image as big as that is you, when you were projected on the side of Windsor Castle with that video of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. So maybe that's where he got the video.

Maybe that's where he got the idea from. That was so fleeting video. It just, you know, it's... I wonder if the idea somehow, the kernel of the idea came from that, because he liked the idea of himself on the side of Windsor Castle. And then he thought, or maybe he's just been looking at imagery of Nazi Germany and thought, hey, those banners are a good idea. I would like one of those banners.

I don't know. I mean, let's think, does it come from him? Does it come from Susie Wilde? Well,'s thinking, oh, God, you know, he's in a bad mood. This is, this will make them, you know, we'll get a couple of hours respite if we put up some, some ban. Well, can't you ask your person in the White House next week and we get some sort of, we should investigate this because it's super interesting. And there was that moment during one of the cabinet meetings where he briefly stayed a week, awake. And we haven't actually discussed the possibility of whether or not he could fall asleep in his own state of the union.

But let's go. There's another question which is, we're making fun of these banners, but is there a political point with these banners? Does he get something from these banners? This imposition, we're talking about Nazi Germany dismissively, but that was, you know, for a while. Well, I didn't mean it dismissively. I mentioned just symbolically. So does this have, does putting up your face anywhere you can put it up and putting your name, anywhere you can put on any building you can put it on. What does this accomplish? Certainly for a good part of the country, it just contributes to turning everybody off to Donald Trump, more than everybody turning people off. The revulsion is clear. But to the other part of the country, do they look at this, Donald Trump's immense face on these buildings?

and not particularly by the way, an attractive face and think, you know, what do they think? I'm, is there an outpouring of pride and affection? Well, maybe to him it's the logical conclusion, as we've said many times. Here's a man who's built his brand by slapping his last name on buildings. He was the first developer really to do it. And this is the natural extension of that. And so he feels that that has consistently worked for him. And I guess in some way, although it is hard to believe, it has.

Well, and it's taking ownership of government departments and perhaps reminding people if you walk into those departments every day that this is your boss. So it's about dominance again, dominance, dominance, dominance. It's always about dominance. And then it's about a cult of personality, and then it's about speaking to the fan base. Speaking to the fan base. So if you see his not as a political base, but as a fan base, then what matters is the face, is the person, is the merchandising. Yes.

And I think it can't be lost on those who walk into those government. buildings every day that he's the boss. For now. Yeah, you know, and just a minute, you know, always traditionally there has been you walk into a government building and there's a frame portrait of whoever the president is. But it's a frame portrait. It's just, it exists in a, in a boring capacity. So back to what we talked about before, which is politics is boring.

Donald Trump is electric, is crazy, is really. ridiculous, but he is not boring. And suddenly you've taken those old boring stayed portraits in which the people look dead into this now, this flowing, gigantic portrait, which looks like, you know, looks like the monster has come to Earth. Yeah, the sort of political Godzilla. And also, he must have been used to having portraits of himself when he was doing The Apprentice, those absolutely enormous posters on Sunset Boulevard that go up to announce the new season of a show. So he probably just thought, why don't politicians have those?

And I could bring them in and it could be a new thing. Well, our job now is to find out whose idea was this? Yeah. Yeah. I'm on the job. It's a great question. It's a great question. And, you know, I did think he was pretty, it felt so amateur the way he did all the

introductions to the Board of Peace, which was this week on Thursday morning. It felt like he hadn't bothered to read the notes. He described everybody in the same way. Greek guy, tough guy, strong guy. He always does this. He really likes this moment in any room when he can single out the people that he knows. So he's tumbler-like in that way, Vegas, you know. Well, it's struck me almost as a cat skills comedian.

No, I've seen him do this many times, many times. And he starts to go on. And often if he actually knows the people, then he'll say something kind of off-color or personally embarrassing. You know, he had a beautiful wife, beautiful wife. But, you know, time passed. Now he is another. Look at her.

Look at that. Isn't that great? Well, a bit like he said about the poor man who was sitting around, Was it Harold Hamm, the oil executive, who was at the meeting post the Venezuela Maduro takeout? And he goes, Harold Hamm, Harold Hamm, or he's got some problems going on. And he was like, oh, my goodness, what are the problems? Because again, it's unexpected. But I think we have a clip of him here as he's doing his round of introductions

to the 20 countries that turned up for the Board of Peace meeting. President Pena of Paraguay is here, president. President, thank you very much, young handsome guy. It's always nice to be young and handsome. Doesn't mean we have to like you. I don't like young, handsome men. Women, it's like. Men, I don't have any interest.

Such a sort of, can you imagine any other American president? Can you imagine President Obama doing that? No, no. George W. wouldn't do that. I mean, it's such a bizarre. Your word tumbler is the right word. Tumblr. Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, okay.

T-U-M-M-L-E-R. No, it's like at the Friars Club. Right. Or like a Vordville, you know, comedian who's a little. That's with the Friars Club. Okay. They're a little down on their luck. They're throwing out their last material.

They're seeing if they can keep the audience. I mean, such a strange moment, as was the moment where he's talking yesterday and he's referring to having gone to a factory and someone at the factory said, Mr. President, I would like to hug and kiss you. And he's like, please don't. Please don't. No, no, no.

Let's be specific. He said someone at the factory said this. Now, it is very likely that no one at the factory said this. That it just comes into his head. It just is a kind of way. I mean, it's actually pretty an effective speech. speech-making way. It's an anecdote. You quote somebody. The fact that these people don't exist is immaterial to him. Matter of fact, there was a period in the first administration where he gave

a speech about a friend of mine, a friend of mine went to Paris once. And then evermore, when he would come up in a speech with one of these anecdotes about an unidentified person, people in the White House would say, well, the Paris friend is back. Meaning there's no such person. No such person. Never is such a person. I'll guarantee nobody wanted to kiss Donald Trump.

Well, let's have a look. We've got the clip here, actually. I just want to play the clip because it was so delightful. A lot of the press right here, we're in Georgia. And I said to the owner, I made a speech at a factory. They made steel products. And I said, how are you? Nice to meet you. How's business?

President, I'd love to kiss you. This is a very powerful man. I don't want to be kissed by that man. But a very powerful, strong man. He's been in the steel business for many years. His father started it. And he said, sir, I want to kiss you. He said, why?

He said, because we were down to work in one hour a week, and then you came in and imposed tariffs. And all of that foreign junk that they were dropping into our country stopped. And we're now going to double shifts, seven days a week, and we may be very soon going to 24 hours around the clock, almost seven days a week. He said, sir, I want to kiss you so badly.

And I said, no, thank you. Now, the interesting thing is I'll bet nothing in that statement was true. Not the kisses, not the 24 hours, not the double shifts, not none of it. Well, we know who doesn't want to kiss him, and that is Melania. Melania does not want to kiss him, and she wants us to know she doesn't want to kiss him, because that's why she's done her documentary is the one thing you take away, that this is not in any romantic sense, a couple.

Or in any geographic sense, which is quite relevant to me. So you had an interesting column yesterday on Substack about Epstein and Friendship. And I've been thinking a lot about the nature of friendship recently, just because I've had a lot of friends come around post-surgery. I've had people come and stay. My younger son came. I thought you were going to say you had a lot of friends who went to jail. No, I have no friends who went to jail. I've done my friend infantry. I was trying to think about who's gone to jail. But, you know, I have friends who really turn up when I need people. As a British person, I find it very difficult to admit that I need help. But certainly when you're recovering from hip surgery, you need help. My best friend came from London for several. days, which was fantastic, and she was in the middle of a book deadline. So, you know, I was particularly grateful that she came. But if I were to go to jail, which I'm not planning to do,

hopefully it's not on the guards, but would I expect my friends to stand by me? And of course, you have Prince Andrew, or formerly known as Prince, recently arrested and now I think awaiting charges, saying that the reason he didn't drop Jeffrey Epstein was because he was too loyal a friend and he wanted to stay loyal to him because just because he'd been in jail for soliciting prostitution from a minor, he was still a friend of Andrews. Now, we know that Andrew wanted lots from him and it was a transactional friendship. But, you know, I mean, all friendships on some level are transactional. Just to say that doesn't dismiss the friendship.

But the, I mean, I think the interesting point here, I mean, virtually everybody who was friends with Jeffrey Epstein has now said, you know, I wish I had never been. I don't know what, you know, I didn't know. Certainly, certainly I didn't want to be friends, knowing now I wouldn't want to be friends, et cetera, et cetera, cast off. Instead of saying, and when the answer, the question is always, How could you have been, spent time with Jeffrey Epstein? How could you? And the answer, the true answer, among an enormous number of people, a broad section of of interest, disciplines, I mean, kind of extraordinary is they spent time with Jeffrey Epstein because he was their friend. They were his friend. They, all of the attributes of friendship were in place.

And that is, so to your point about not abandoning him or you can see it even in a different way, when you are friends with someone, you go out of your way to overlook what their, whatever is negative about them. I mean, you might get to the point where you no longer overlook that, but that's what we do as friends. And that's what all of these people who were friends with Jeffrey Epstein were doing. They were genuine friends. And I always thought it was interesting because functionally, Jeffrey Epstein is a middleman. And New York is kind of a city of middlemen. But the thing about most middlemen in which you can almost instantly tell is their insincerity. And the thing about Jeffrey Epstein, in which I was often a witness to this, is that he really was interested in the people he was in the middle of.

Did he like people? I mean, he seems so sociopathic. It's hard to imagine that he had any relationships. No, I think that's completely, I mean, I think on the one hand, he lacked all intimate relationships. You know, he had a problem, classic problem with intimacy. But he replaced that with a strong connection to people who did interesting things, who had interesting jobs, who were successful and accomplished in the following ways. And he was genuinely interested in those people and genuinely had forged a bond with those people.

There was a good piece in New York Magazine this week, which illustrated the point I was trying to make on our last podcast where you said that Jeffrey didn't shake hands because he was a germaphobe. And I always think that germaphobes, like Donald Trump, it's such a tell. People are like, oh, I'm a germaphobe, I'm a germapope. How could this man be a germaphobe when he was having sex with three different women every single day? What kind of a germaphobe is that? And the piece in New York Magazine is about the circle of doctors that he kept close. And there's a description of him having gone a rear at some point and reaching out to the doctors and then saying, well, these girls will need the shots. And that whole sense of him and his friends trying to manage all this.

And then you think about the anecdote of Bill Gates, who was supposed to have caught some kind of STI from a Russian woman. who, and then he was trying to smuggle antibiotics to his wife. I mean, this is, how on, the germaphobe, it's such a tell. Yeah, no, I always had thought, I mean, you know, I mean, I sat through Trump's Stormy Daniels trial. And frankly, it was one of the things that constantly came into my head. He's a germapode, there's Stormy Daniels. How does this match up? So I don't know the answer to this.

I mean, there's a solution to all of this. Just use a condom. Yeah, well, I'm not going to go there on this. Okay, well, I'm not expecting you to go there. I mean, it's just, I don't understand any of this. I don't understand how you would, anyway, let's not go there. I don't want to go there. One of the things I'm finding very complicated about understanding the Epstein files is, one, there's so many of them.

two, they are all over social media and social media is also full of AI slop. So there are some very good fake emails that look as if they could be real. And there are enormous numbers of emails that are purported to be from Gillen Maxwell. No, no. It's just, it is extraordinary. I, you know, I watch, I mean, I happen to know the truth about some of this stuff at any rate. And you tune in social media and there is somebody you can say, everything that I have just heard, 100% is completely wrong. And people say it with enormous certainty and earnestness and alarm. I wish that Gillen Maxwell would give evidence because I've read at least three correspondences

which appear that she was, well, at least having intimate emails with Thomas Pritzker, Casey Wasserman and Bill Clinton, all I think concurrently. So she's an under-explored person in this whole thing, partly because she's gone to jail, she's out of sight. And I think I remember saying to you on a couple of podcasts ago, I had a friend who was at Oxford with her. He was gay. She would constantly come up and put her hand down his pants.

I mean, I've never heard of a woman doing that. Why on earth would you do that to a gay man, except that she was very sexualized and very sexually aggressive in a peculiar fashion. No, I think she was a classic seductress in the dramatic version of that, which is part insidious and part accomplished and in part a serious disruptor because of this, this willingness and ability to seduce. And I think she did this on a rather chronic basis. I mean, I know somebody who, you know, a young woman who she just, she approached randomly

in a restaurant in New York, sat down with, gave her her card, that kind of, that kind of, come on. Now, this person, and I, you know, I think clearly the world cleaves here. this person said, okay, there's something wrong there, as opposed to the women who said, oh, this is an opportunity. Yeah, it's a very strange. She's as yet a still untold part of this story, I think, and who knows if we'll hear more from her. But what a sort of bizarre character and how weird that the two of them would have met each other

and would have been able to. She was obviously so useful for him, not only in her ability to bring in high-profile people, but also her ability to make young women think that nothing untoward would happen because somehow she would, as a woman, protect them. Well, also she seems to have had a, well, I mean, she had such a horrible father to walk into this situation. I mean, I think Jeffrey Epstein to the people around him, to the, you know, I think he established a very hierarchical relationship.

And I think, and I think Galane was willing to fit into that. I mean, because her father obviously established those kinds of relationships with everybody. He was the boss. Everybody else was was in service to him in some. in some capacity. This is also true, by the way, about Donald Trump, obviously. Well, and the two stories that was sort of legendary on Fleet Street, where I spent some time as a young journalist, were that Robert Maxwell would pee from the top of his tower onto people walking below it, onto, you know, unsuspecting pedestrians.

Well, that's interesting because one of the scenarios for how Maxwell died is that he was peeing off the side of his boat and then fell in. Right. And then miraculously, when he fell in, well, shortly after it was discovered, he plundered the pension fund of the mirror. No, no, no, no. It was discovered actually before that. So it was pretty clear that he probably went over the side because he had no recourse. He was, they were all coming.

They were coming for him at that point. Yeah, well, I think he knew that. But maybe he was peeing. Obviously, he still had to pee, even if he was a plunderer. Well, he was definitely a plunderer. I don't think it was common knowledge that he'd done that, though. It only became apparent the extent of his plundering, which was half a billion dollars. He knew that they were all, that the police and investigators were closing in on him.

But the public didn't know. It only became clear after he'd died. quite what trouble he was in, which was that he'd stolen up to half a billion pounds from his pension funds. And he was living on hot air. These days, that seems like a small amount. Yeah, but it wasn't a small amount. And at the time, I think it was one of the biggest ever con jobs on people. But it explained why he was able to live as large as he did when to a lot of people it was unclear how he was making any money.

But anyway, one of the things he also used to do was to interview people in his car. He famously lived at Heddington Hall just outside Oxford. He worked in London. So he would say to people, will come and we'll do the interview in my car. They would drive up the M4, which is the motorway to Oxford from London. And then when the interview was over, he would have his driver pull over and drop people on the side of the freeway motorway and leave them there. And then they would have to figure out how to get back. So that was another thing that people eventually stopped wanting to have interviews with him because that might happen.

You know, I once went, I had a meeting with him. I was involved with some journalism startup project, a magazine startup. And I had a meeting with him in London at a suite in the Ritz Hotel. And I was shown in and I sat down with him. and we exchanged a few words and then he got something happy, got called away and left the room and left me waiting there. And I waited for, this is embarrassing because I waited for an hour and a half. And then finally I thought, okay, I guess.

He's not coming back. I got to go. So, and that was my, I think that was my one interaction. with Robert Maxwell. That must have gone down in Fleet Street law too. Anyway, not a father if you necessarily want to have. But anyway, the thing is to come back to in the question about Galane, and I do think that's an unexplored, her presence and her, what she did in this,

other than recruit young women for Jeffrey Epstein, but what her larger position in this whole lifestyle, in this whole weird, weird story is unexplored. Well, she was the sort of cortisand. She was keeping some of the more powerful people in his circle engaged, I think. Right. But it does then go back to the father who is such a weird, weird story. Does it go back to the father? Does it have to go back to the father?

I have so many friends. I just want to finish this point because this is a point of friction with a lot of British friends I have who knew her, who were at Oxford with her, who are still very fond of her and somehow think that she's ended up carrying the can for Epstein in a way that she shouldn't have done.

And they all say, oh, it goes back to the father. She had a terrible father. You cannot imagine how awful her father was. And I just think at some point you have to have agency over your own life. And the fact that she had a terrible father does not excuse the fact. But you don't have agency over your own life is the tragedy. And when you have a father who is that large, that awful, that in his own right,

that much of an aberration, well, you certainly then have to say, you know, probably had something to do with the father. I'm not saying it didn't have anything to do with it. I'm just saying it's not an excuse. It's not an excuse for picking up underage girls and serving them up to. We're looking for explanations. Explanation. Well, it may be some kind of an explanation, but it doesn't excuse her behavior,

picking up girls from the school yard and delivering them to. No, I think it's an important point. We're not excusing. This is about explaining how did Galane Maxwell get into the position. You know, I'm a writer. This is what you have to do. The larger the context. How did this happen?

And you certainly, if you're writing this story, can't ignore the fact the Robert Maxwell element of it all. Well, she had, I think, eight brothers and sisters and none of them procured underage women for Jeffrey Epstein. No, but nevertheless, actually, they were in themselves have had odd careers and odd lives. And I know this because I was actually in almost in business with one of them. And there's a very funny, I think, I think account of this in my book, Burn Rate, and they became internet grifters. Oh, I think I remember this when you went to see them for money. Yes. And I was almost, I was almost became part of their grift.

And that actually was a moment in which the bankers told me I was worth an enormous amount of money. But then their grift became apparent. And then I said, how much am I worth now? And it was all passed. Well, happily, you fell back on your actual ability, which is as a brilliant observer and writer. And it turns out that you've been writing about the people that have been at the center of our culture for the last few years. So we are the beneficiaries of that Michael Wolf, which is a very nice note to end on this Saturday.

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