The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Sleepy Trump, 79, Is Really Panicking Aides

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to dissect a president increasingly disengaged, dozing through televised cabinet meetings while aides scramble to manage both optics and reality. They probe the murky Hegseth video controversy, Trump’s self-awarded FIFA Peace Prize, and his meddling in Hollywood mergers, showing how delay, spectacle, and loyalty dominate decision-making. Wolff charts the frustration, chaos, and quiet panic inside Trumpworld. The two ask: What happens when no one can keep up with—or contain—Trump’s mercurial whims? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Everybody is in a low-level panic now all of the time about Trump falling asleep. Because then he gets mad. He essentially blames the people around him for the fact that he fell asleep. And you can see it, and they talk about seeing it. It starts to come on. And, you know, he kind of relaxes or the features change. He tilts. And then everybody knows the eyes are going to shut.

Michael. Joanna, he said, with slight skin. skepticism. I know, but it's me. Why are you skeptical? It's not an AI version of me. I just, it's that we've found ourselves in this position after all these years. After all these years.

It seems kind of full of wonder. Full of wonder. I wonder if most people know that I stalked you to get to know you because I was a huge fan of your New York magazine column about the media. It was so good. And I thought, who is this columnist Michael Wolfe writing every week about all the people I wanted to read about? This was 25 years ago. It was 26 years ago. I think it was 26 years ago because I was the Bureau Chief of the Guardian newspaper and I tracked you down and three times you cancelled me for lunch.

You know, but I am, and I don't know why I have a precise memory of this, you were no longer at the Guardian. and you had moved to the Times? You had moved to the Times. Yes. Okay. And we finally had lunch at Michaels, which was the media cafe at the time, still is, in Midtown, Manhattan. Still is. Same people.

They're just all 25 years older, literally the same people. They're now all out of work, however. You can look around that restaurant, and you could say no one here has a job. Well, you have a job. your job is to go inside Trump's head with me every week. But you also have the same table, table number five. I do. I do. It's been a long run.

A long run. And here we find ourselves. But the good news is we are employed and we are very concerned about what's going on inside Trump's head. I'm actually, we're not together. You're in the studio. I'm in Abu Dhabi. In my head, we're together all the time. Oh, dear.

Well, I'm here for a media conference, but I feel like I'm missing so much. I can't stand it. So I miss the president falling asleep on Monday. And then I missed the reversal on the video of the boat strike. So you need to fill me in. But you didn't miss any of these things. You know as much about this as, as certainly as I do. Okay. Well, all I know about this. We're all this is in this long running day by day. a novella, the Trump novella. We all see it. A novella would be short. This feels like war and peace. It's a thousand pages. The novella series, the Mexican television series. Oh, telenovela. Yes. Thank you. Teleno. Well, you omitting the word teller.

I was grasping. Okay, so. Yeah, this is not a short story. This is, this, this, this runs endlessly. We're in what, the 10th year? Yeah, so we're in season, it feels like we're in season 24. But it, but it is different because in all those, I never remember Trump falling asleep. You know, and it used to be, I mean, he got bored and then he would get up and walk out. I mean, all of the time. Certainly in the first White House, 90 seconds, he was bored, he was out. He was out. of the room. Everybody going, uh, now, now they're going, mm, mm, because he's asleep. He's asleep. And then what we're really waiting for, I mean, you can't wake him up also the cameras are running. I mean,

everybody is in a, is in a low level panic now all of the time about Trump falling asleep. Because then he gets mad. Is that what you're hearing? Yes. Yes. And then he gets angry. I mean, he gets angry. He essentially blames the people around him for the fact that he fell asleep. Well, that's ridiculous. I mean, poor Marco Rubio was trying to talk louder, I think, to keep him away. No, and I think that's it. But there is no, I mean, you're on camera.

So you can't jostle him. Hey. So nobody knows what to do. And you can see it. And they talk about seeing it, that it starts to, it starts to come. come on. And, you know, his, he kind of relaxes or the features change. He tilts. And then everybody knows he's, the eyes are going to shut. The eyes shut. And then he just jolts himself awake. Well, it's a bit like being on a plane when your head droops and suddenly you wake up again. And

you saw Paul Marco Rubio on Monday trying to deal with it and then Trump coming to. do you think this is a health issue or is this just a you know Trump he's 79? Well, you know, I mean, we spoke last week about about the sense among people around him that he may be losing interest. Right. And I think that is a thing. You know, and almost it feels, you know, he's had this incredible year. everything essentially has gone right for him. And I think now what we're starting to see is it's not really going right anymore.

And it may be going kind of dramatically wrong. And I think he's losing interest in that. I mean, he likes, you know, he likes success. He certainly doesn't like hard work. Okay, so things are going a little wrong. I mean, we had, well, where do we begin? Okay, let's begin with him saying, as he did with the Epstein files, that he was going to release the video of the boat in Venezuela that was struck. We thought perhaps twice, but now it sounds like it was actually struck four times when there were very clearly survivors clutching to the wreckage.

Pathetic survivors. People half dead, half alive, yes. Yeah, no, no, no. And he did this with that same kind of throwing it off basic disregard that he did with the Epstein files. I mean, you know, there was never a point in which he said, we are going to release the Epstein files. It was always somebody bringing this up and he would go, yeah, sure, sure. And the Kennedy files and this, that, any files. And then when it came to it, you know, suddenly he had these people who he had appointed to high positions, Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, people whose reputations actually were involved with releasing the Epstein files.

And they came into office and said, we're going to release the Epstein files. Remember, Pam Bondi had, you know. Yeah, she had them on a desk. As though, you know, which was always a Trump thing, you know, everybody. They get this, as I've seen this before, they get, you know, notebook thinking, looking things with blank pages. Yes, there they are. And suddenly Trump was like, what the fuck? You know, how did this happen? And then he had to, and then he closed that down. We are never, never, ever releasing these Epstein files until they force us. And we still haven't seen the files. So who knows what's going to happen. But this, the. the Hegseth video. Let's start to call it the Hegseth video. Hegst video, yep.

You know, he kind of said that was kind of like, well, will you release? If somebody asked him, will you listen? And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. And then I think in the last couple of days, people have said, hey, you know, they're going to force us. They're going to force this issue. They really want this release. Do you know what is on this?

and then he, you know, then he went, and interesting, he didn't, he didn't say, yes, we'll release it. I mean, he could have sacrificed Hexeth at that point. Yes, we're going to release them, knowing that this was going to be the, the moment of doom for poor Pete, seeing these, these, these wretched people in the water being bombed to smithereens. Instead of sacrificing Pete, because he really doesn't like to sacrifice people. I mean, it really, you know, he doesn't like anybody to force his hand. So instead, he said, no, we're not releasing this or only, we're only going to release it if Pete wants to release it. Right. I thought he shifted the responsibility onto Pete, which he did by saying, well, I wouldn't have bombed it twice. I would have just done it once. But so far he's saving.

Pete. I mean, I don't think he's going to be able to save Pete. I think Pete is, I mean, so hopeless that he is he's unsavable, unsavageable. Well, and I don't think that Trump wants to be blamed with war crimes, does he? I mean, there is something very serious behind this, that yes, there's the Hex-eth and pushing our responsibility. I mean, of course there's something. serious about it. There's people lives. There's a whole, a whole way of, you know, the whole structure of world morality is essentially at issue here. But I think, I think it's more important to him that he, that he continue to appear to be strong, continue to not to bend to what the media wants him to do, not to be told what to do. I mean, he would certainly say,

sacrifice world morality for that. But he's not going to want to end up in the Hague. I mean, what's the logical extension of this? If America gets found guilty of war crimes. No, there is nothing. Let's not even go there because that's nowhere. And remember, you know, the Supreme Court has let him off. Anything that he does in his official capacity, he has effective immunity

for. He has a free pass. But it undermines his case for the Nobel Peace Prize, even though he greedily accepted the FIFA Peace Prize this week. You know, I don't think, I mean, that's illogical to an extreme anyway. So, so I don't think that he is proceeding by logical thinking toward the Nobel Peace Prize. He's proceeding by Trump thinking. It's a fantasy. and I'm sure that he never really thought that he would be that the world would come together and say he's a great peacemaker. What he has thought is I will be able to pressure enough people and I will have created a situation in which people will want to suck up to me enough that I will get the Nobel Peace Prize, which is still not out of, it's not beyond. I mean, it seems to recede ever more every day.

But, you know, I may be wrong on that. I mean, people do suck up to this guy. Well, the Swedes and the Norwegians seem resolute not to give it to him. I mean, they were fairly severe in their comments about him. Yes, yes. Well, they, yes. Well, they, yes, well, there are Swedes and Norwegians. Oh, yes.

that we are not going to give him the peace prize. That sounds a little bit like. I mean, they're not going to give him. Let's not even debate this. He is not going to get the Nobel Peace Prize. But he got the FIFA Peace Prize, which came out of nowhere. They just invented it. And then he put his own medal round his neck.

One of the great corrupt organizations on Earth. So, yes. And this is because America's hosting the World Cup, this coming summer, so 2026, And so in some sort of strange way they came over, invented a peace prize and gave it to him. And literally he put a medal. It was like a huge cartoon medal. And he put it on his. No, no.

And he doesn't really care because people get this mixed up. As a matter of fact, my 10-year-old daughter said, said Trump got the peace prize. I'm saying, what are you talking about? It's not possible. She said, definitely, he got the peace prize. So maybe people think he's got it. Yeah, I know. I know, right.

And he will start to claim this. Remember, this is like the cover, the fake cover of Time magazine. Right. He's just, it's all merged in his head. Yes, he will award himself the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, soon he will be saying that the FIFA Peace Prize is much more important than the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, of course. It's a great prize.

It's a tremendous prize. It's the peaceiest of prizes. Does the Hegset video get released? Hmm, good question. I think it does. It sounds very disturbing. I think it does. But, you know, I mean, I think, I mean, the game Trump will play, the Trump game is just to delay this. We delay this. Other things will come up. People will be distracted. So if it isn't, if it, if it is released, yeah, I think, I think then Hegseth is going down.

And that's certainly not going to be good for Trump. You know, one of the things that I wonder about, you know, Trump goes around and saying all the time, you know, because again, he doesn't do details. He doesn't want to hear details. Don't tell him anything because he can't listen, as we've discussed before. And he can't really. And he can't really. And he can't really comprehend. So what he does, what he does is say. And I've heard him say this on many occasions and the people around him talk about this. He says, finish the job. Finish the job. So you start to say, well, and then he interrupts you. Finish the job. So I think it's very possible that he said to Hague Siff at some point, you know, these guys finish the job.

And so Hegsith is bombing, repeatedly bombing everybody on these boats until they no longer exist. and he's saying to himself, the president told me to finish the job. One thing I'm quite curious about is the Washington Post first round with the story that Hegzeth, I think Hegst said something like, kill everybody. What I'm curious about is there doesn't seem to have been much follow-up reporting to that. Yes, I don't know. And it may not have been, kill everybody.

It may have been finish the job. Right. Well, Admiral Bradley says that Pete Higgsath didn't say that. And obviously we know that Pete Higgseth has got Admiral Bradley's back. It's Pete Hegseth, you know, I mean, the moronocracy. He certainly could have said, kill everybody. And he may have jumped up and down with glee about this. but it is also possible that he did say finish the job and it's just they're they're in this kind of loop

It's the fog of war, Michael. It's the fog of war. Yeah, it's the fog of Donald Trump. I mean, you know, you don't really know what he wants. You know, I mean, Donald Trump is not sitting down and explaining to you. He's not outlining policy. He's not outlining his beliefs. He's not outlining tactics or. strategy. He's making pronouncements. Finish the job. We're the best. It's, you know, imagine. So if we can

defend Pete Hegseth for at least a few seconds, imagine working for Donald Trump. When you're Secretary of War. When you're doing anything, when any interaction you have to have with the man, you have to try, the thing is always to understand. You have to, you have to You have to infer, extrapolate, imagine actually what he's saying and what he wants. Well, maybe Pete Higgsuff will be relieved when it's all over. It must be very stressful. Yeah, I'll say. I mean, I think it is incredibly stressful for all of them.

I mean, we talked about Mike Johnson last week and he gave that interview and he basically said, I'm having a nervous breakdown. And then every Republican in Congress came out and said, oh, my God, he is having a nervous breakdown because he's a moron, along with all the other Trump morons. Well, and he also said that he didn't feel like he was really Speaker of the House. He felt like he was a mental health counselor. Yes.

So they're all having breakdowns. Everybody's having a breakdown. Right. Because, but understand this. And it's an important point because Trump is a, at the center of this because you don't know what he wants. He's mercurial. He's, he's threatening. He's, you know, you're all, it's all kind of Stockholm syndrome. And he's aging. I mean, he is aging. He's falling asleep in cabinet meetings, which are being televised. So God knows what message he thinks

that's sending. I mean, he's smart enough to understand this can't look good on television. Or maybe he thinks it's great and it's just what people are talking about. No, I mean, he clearly doesn't, and he's railing about this, and he's mad at people, but he's also in denial. I didn't fall asleep. I mean, that's what he's saying now. I didn't fall asleep. Well, your eyes were closed. And I mean, just when I was doing my Murdoch biography and I sat with Murdoch for many hours a week over the course of a year, and often I would be talking to him.

And I would lose him. I mean, you didn't know what had happened. I mean, he would just be like frozen. And on many occasions, I thought I have killed him. And then I would ask. I would kind of gingerly say to people around him. I mean, Murdoch had this guy who was always kind of, kind of, I mean, his guy.

He was a PR guy. and he just kind of navigated around Murdoch constantly and attended to him, a guy by the name of Gary. And I would say, you know, it just, he seems to have, you know, loss. I mean, I don't know what happened, Gary. And Gary would say, no, no, no, no, he's thinking deeply. He's really thinking. He concentrates very hard.

So, and I think the people around Trump have to make those kinds of excuses. because you can't say he fell asleep. And Trump is going to say never admit to falling asleep either. Well, it reminds me of that essay that Adam Gopnik wrote in the New Yorker about his shrink falling asleep and he would go to see him and he was paying for him and the shrink would just gently nod off and then Adam would sit there for half an hour wondering what to do and then wondering whether or not to raise the fact with his shrink that he was falling asleep.

This is true for, I mean, we can be generous here. It's true for everyone. I mean, I'm watching a show with my wife at night, and she's clearly asleep. And I say, are you asleep? And she says, absolutely not. Okay. So we don't know whether or not the Heggseth video gets released. Donald Trump said he was going to release it.

Now he says he's not going to release it. Or he never said that he was going to release it. Well, and I mean, this is going to be, this is going to be like the Epstein files. I mean, if Congress, this will only be released if Congress insists on it. And they may. You know, we're in this transitional moment of a Congress that has been abject in its, in its willingness not to challenge Trump at any level. And now they are obviously, that's changing. Well, they're sorting out the budget for next year's Department of War, and they're saying

that they will withhold 25% of the budget if they don't get to see the video. So there's clearly cross-party pressure on Hegset to release it. As we've discussed before, and I think we should come back to this again and again, everybody in Washington, everybody 100%, certainly all Democrats, but 100% also of Republicans think Pete Hegseth is a joke, a fool, a joke, an embarrassment to anybody who is in office at this point in time. Yeah, and I think I was telling you that I had had dinner with someone who was formerly very senior in the military who said exactly the same thing, but they think he's an absolute moron. This is not anything new. You know, when he was at Fox News. People thought he was a moron. I mean, he is the low man wherever he is. He's not smart. He's

not honest. He's not competent. And he's a drunk. So the package is really complete. Well, and the other thing that's crazy is that he's actually the second most important man in America after the president. It's not J.D. Vance because Pete Hegseth is in charge of the military. Well, it always goes whether it's the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense or, as we now say, the Secretary of War. I can't believe. I've never uttered those words. But yeah, no, I mean, it's, I mean, it's not even, forget. It's also one of the most. profound and confounding management jobs on earth to manage the Pentagon, the United States military.

This is, I mean, you're not only managing a vast, of a vast personnel base, possibly the largest personnel base in, in, in, in, in any business. There may not be any business that has more. employees than the, then the, then the, then the department of defense. Amazon, doesn't Amazon have more employees? I, I, can't possibly, no. I don't, I say that with great authority and I have no idea. But at any rate, it's a lot of people with guns. And then, and then, you know, it's, it's, it's also then a business, I mean, a technology business.

That has to be managed at the same time. Anyway. And it's also a business that doesn't have official oversight by the press because Pete Hegzeth has sent them all away. And of course, now the New York Times is suing them, suing Hegzeth and the Department of War saying that they're infringing on the First Amendment for the New York Times to actually write about what's going on there. I mean, it's not stopping people from writing about it. I mean, interestingly, since they've kept the press away, we've had. had the story come out in the Washington Post that Hegseth was behind bombing the boats as many times as they needed to. Let's make a little book on this. How long do we think Hegsith lasts?

I think he lasts till the new year. Till the new year, okay. I think they released the video and he has to go, and I think that will take some time, but I bet he doesn't go until the new year. Great. Okay. You think he goes before? No, no, no, no. I mean, the new year is, is, um, frighteningly almost upon us. So, no, and as I say, you know, the Trump thing is delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, delay. And, you know, it's a very, you know, the theory is, which people around Trump actually, I don't know if Trump has articulated this, I doubt he has, but people around him say very reasonably, you know, all kinds of things happen. The longer you push something out, the more, the greater the chance is that something will happen. to change the discussion, change everything. And, you know, it's like sometimes I'll agree to, you know, do something I don't want to do, you know, for months out thinking, you know, I could be dead by then. And I think that that's a lot of what goes on in Trump's head and in the people around Trump thinking, how are we going to ever survive this.

And let's take a commercial break. And we're back talking about Trump's takeover of Hollywood. So, Michael, Marjorie Taylor Green did an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, which was going out at the same time as Donald Trump was attending the Trump Kennedy Center honors. He then sort of went berserk at Paramount saying, you're just as bad as the last lot. You know, CBS is terrible. This is not what I expect.

kind of thing. And of course it's significant because Paramount threw in a hostile beard for Warner Brothers. Right. Well, let's unpack a few things here. But before we even go there, you know, he has this 60 minutes fixation. I mean, nobody has watched 60 minutes in years. And, but his, his fixation with 60 minutes is like his fixation like Time Magazine. Right. I mean, Time Magazine, Time Magazine wants an interview. Everything stops in the White House. Time Magazine doesn't even really exist anymore. It's just a, you know, a kind of a memory. It doesn't make any difference.

And like 60 minutes, you know, Trump is, is, and it's important constantly to remember this, that Trump is a guy lost in the past, which is a curiosity since he is so much the guy who defines the present. But that, you know, that's a weird mix up, which history is going to have. to unravel. But anyway, yes. Auntie has his own true social platform, his social media platform, where he goes berserk at two in the morning, firing off insane missives to people, the latest being to the Supreme Court. But let's come back to that, but let's first unpack the Warner Brothers, Paramount Netflix conflicting offers. Right. So out of this, this 60 Minutes thing, and then he went crazy about that, and then therefore crazy,

about the Paramount, a 60 Minutes of a show on CBS. CBS is owned by Paramount, which was recently sold in a seminal deal to a company called Skydance. Skydance. I was going to say Sky Horse, but that's another. That's another. That's the publisher. Yes.

Melania. Robert Kennedy, right, Malania book and Robert F. Kennedy's books, because no one else will publish his books. It was sold to the Ellison family. So Larry Ellison is the second richest man in the world, something like that. And the founder of Oracle computers.

Yes, 200 million, 300 million, a billion. What a million? Yeah, a billion. Yeah. And his son, this is, This is just, you just can't make this stuff up. So he gave his son an entertainment company. You need a job.

You know, why don't you buy CBS, you know, a television network? And they own a movie studio. You'll be in the movies. What kid doesn't want to be. And so that deal happened. And that deal happened partly because, because it had the favor of the Trump administration. It had the favor of the Trump administration, partly or wholly, because Larry Ellison has been a dedicated contributor to Donald Trump and a loyal

supporter. So they did that deal. And now, and then they made a overture to, buy Warner Discovery. So that's Warner Brothers, HBO, CNN. All the Discovery channels. All of the Discovery channels, although no one knows what they are. Food Network and HGTV. Thank you. And I think Own, which is Oprah's channel, right?

It may be. It's an irrelevant part. And it's an irrelevancy in this deal, however. It's a cable business, which net. Netflix doesn't want. Yeah, okay. So, at any rate, the overture from the Ellison family put Warner's into play. Then Warner said, okay, if you want to buy us, you know, somebody wants to buy us,

we're for sale at the right price for or for the highest price. So a lot of companies then were interested in this, including. Comcast, the Ellisons, Netflix. I think maybe there was another bidder. But anyway, and they went through this process, and Netflix won. They won for the simple reason that they bid more money than anybody else. But the Ellisons have been, their position has been, no, we should have won because we know Donald Trump, essentially. you're not going to be able, Netflix, you're not going to be able to get your merger approved.

But we can get our merger approved because we know Donald Trump. I did. I met with Ted. I think he's fantastic. I think he's in the history of Hollywood has really been almost, you could say nothing like what he's done. He'd go back to Louis B. Mayor, maybe, Metro Golder Mayor, MGM. He came up. He was in the Oval Office last week. I have a lot of respect for him. He's a great. He's a great person, but he's done one of the greatest jobs in the history of movies and other things. And he's got a lot of interesting things happening aside from what you're talking about. But it is a big market share. There's no question about it.

It could be a problem. Between the Ellison's and Paramount and Netflix, nobody should do this deal. I mean, that these are both preposterous combinations against the law. They are both, all of these companies are in the same industry. They are competitors. When they buy, when one buys the other, that becomes anti-competitive. That's a monopoly. That's against the law.

But I suppose pay no mind to that. That's not the issue. The issue is, well, A, who's going to pay more? and be possibly, and this would be a really a decidedly new wrinkle in the mergers and acquisitions business, who Donald Trump likes more. So at any rate, Netflix was, Warner's agreed to be sold to Netflix because they bid the highest amount of money. but the Ellison family has now made a hostile bid. They've basically said, no, no, no, no. We are, we are, they have two points.

We're, we are actually, we've raised our price and we're actually paying more money. That's unclear, but that's what they're maintaining. But more importantly, the Netflix people are never going to be able to get this deal done. and we can get it done because Donald Trump likes us. So they've gone directly to the shareholders. So the shareholders at this point, the shareholders and Warners, they just want to deal. The last thing that they want to be left with is Warners. And that happens just because in this arbitrage thing, a lot of the shareholders,

it gets to a high price and then they cash. out and then and then the people who get in are just the arbitragers basically. And so they need a deal and we'll do anything to force a deal. They don't really care. They just want the highest price, A, the highest price and the deal that can get done. And of course, one of the other people that the Ellisons have brought into this deal that they're putting together. I totally forgot about this.

This is like, right, where that's, here's the headline. Do it. That's also a wrinkle. Well, I mean, who else but affinity partners, Jared Kushner's venture capital company, and of course, lots of money from the Middle East. It's totally. So basically, I mean, not only are the Ellison taking the position that, you know, we support Donald Trump, therefore he's going to support us. But we're going to go and get in support his son-in-law. Right. And his son-in-law will bring this home. I mean, this is such an extraordinary moment in American business. I mean, I can't tell. We've talked a lot about the grift.

The grift has been written about endlessly. We know that Jared raised $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign fund for his affinity partners. This seems a level of conflict of interest above anything I can think of. Well, let's think. I mean, it seems to me there's. conflict of interest almost in anything that Donald Trump touches. But then let's segue back to this 60 Minutes wrinkle. Because the problem with dealing with Donald Trump, even in an open, straightforward grift,

we're going to support you with any kind of money that you need, and we're going to bring your son-in-law in and make him even richer than he already is, and the wealth is just going to flow to you. Even then, you can't depend on Donald Trump. Right. So. Well, and I mean, it's just crazy that Marjorie Taylor Green, or Marjorie Trater Green, as he calls her, would go on 60 minutes and trash him.

and trash him in a meaningful way, actually, saying that she's had death rates, she's had a pipe bomb threat at her home, that her children are frightened. Can you imagine having been the journalist with that booking, with that booking, and think this is going to blow everything up, Trump is going to be furious. He thinks he's got CBS tamed, his friends own it, and somehow they've sneaked in Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, it's quite a feat. I just wanted to add that what I can't imagine is having Marjorie Taylor Green as your mother. But put that aside.

Let's put that aside. It's not her children's fault. Totally. It's, you know, the whole Trump thing is, I mean, it is not just the grift. It is dominance. I must dominate. It must be you can't do, you can't cross. me in any possible way.

You know, so even if the Ellisons are going to pay him and his son-in-law and everybody else around him, the fact that 60 minutes would devote any time to one of his enemies means, you know, let's blow up the deal. You know, at least the guy with a grift, you could say, well, you know, there's a level of rationality there. You want the money. Right. You can't even say that here.

Well, also the other interesting thing is that at least my understanding of the deal is that Netflix wants to buy the studio and the streaming business, but it doesn't want the cable channels. Paramount is offering to take off, is to take the entirety of Warner Brothers. So you also then get CNN. And there's been all sorts of rumors that Trump hates CNN because they've been critical of him. So he wants CNN. to go full Maga, which will be another incentive for him to support the paramount. Yeah, no, you would think that in Trumpian terms, this is what he wants. Now, which doesn't mean because actually there are actual business issues here that he will get this.

I mean, the shareholders, in the end, you know, the shareholders of Warner Discovery are going to have to. decide and shareholders are are pretty exclusively prone to taking the highest bid and it would appear that the that the Netflix bid which may well go up is still by substantially ahead of the of the paramount bid so the paramount bid is kind of saying you know we can actually wink wink pay less because Donald Trump is our friend. But who knows? At any rate, we should also say finish this out by saying neither of these companies should get this deal, that this is going to be disastrous for, we're probably disastrous

for these companies as most media mergers are, but also just disastrous for Hollywood, the creative community, for the audiences who are just going to see. you know, when there is only one company at the center of things, you know, the product gets, you know, gets lazy, homogenous, you know, crap. And once more, a word from our sponsors. And we're back talking about Trump's takeover of Hollywood. Well, the other thing I wanted to ask you about was, where is the TikTok deal?

because Larry Ellison of Oracle is supposed to be, I mean, he and Trump have also, in theory, organized the TikTok deal between themselves. Totally. I don't know the answer to this and because it's just one of those things that we should know the answer to, but it just gets, you know, events superseded. Yeah, no, the TikTok deal is another bit of absolute incomprehensible egregiousness and, you know, fundamental violation of whatever capitalism is supposed to be. It's this other thing. State-supported capitalism, which is not capitalism. But, yeah, I mean, Trump basically took over TikTok and then has divvied it out to his friends, including Larry Ellison, including Rupert Murdoch. Right. Okay. So we should find out for our next inside Trump's head. So did you watch any of the clips of Donald Trump at the Kennedy, the Trump Kennedy Center, as he's now jokingly calling it?

Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. I mean, that's one of those. Other thing, let's take over this. So you have a cultural institution in Washington, D.C., which has a relationship to the government, but is a, you know, has a, you know, has a, own, has its own board of directors, its own governance. But nevertheless, Trump came in, took it over, threw everybody out, put his lackeys and factotums into the, populated the board with that. I think his former German ambassador, Rick Granel. Yeah, Rick Grinnell is gay,

and that's what Trump said. We need a gay guy who's running the show business. We need a gay guy. Is that what you said? Yeah, totally. So anyway, the, so he took over the Kennedy Center, which means that almost every professional involved with the Kennedy Center has run in the opposite direction. The audience has run in the opposite direction. Correct. The entire institution has been fundamentally denuded and leaving only Donald Trump on the stage, which is what has happened. Donald Trump, on the recent Kennedy's, what is that thing? Honours, the Kennedy Honors. Donald Trump was the MC, his dream job. Well, and he actually said at the end of emceeing,

and we should talk about him talking about Michael Crawford, because Michael Crawford inaugurated the role of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera, which turns out to be Donald Trump's favorite, favorite. musical and it is a very powerful musical and people have loved it for years and it ran and round and round and round in the west end and on broadway so have you ever seen it do you know the awful thing is it's just terrible it's terrible it's terrible anyway is it terrible oh of course it is it I mean it's trumpy and I actually can't remember if I've seen it or not anyway all right it's Trumpian pablum but but my point is a lot of people like it right so he gave the award to Michael

Crawford, the British guy who inaugurated the role. But just the way he was talking about Michael Crawford and his voice and his voice is fabulous and he's got this crave. It was just on and on. It was just, this is not what the Kennedy honours were supposed to be. They were supposed to be this serious moment in American cultural life. And once again, Donald Trump has sort of trashed it. And also then at the end, he said people have been saying that perhaps I should get a Kennedy honor. I think I'll nominate my self and you're like, oh my God, just for once make it not about you. No, the Kennedy Center Peace Prize, perhaps. The Kennedy Center, the Trump Kennedy Center Peace Prize.

He'll just have so many peace prizes that, of course, of course, he will be the peacemaker. He'll award himself a medal and pin it on himself. So actually, Melania accompanied Donald Trump to the Kennedy Center on us, and we've seen a bit more of her this week. And if you haven't seen it, I want to encourage everybody to watch the video of Malani reading a book about Santa to children. And the book is called How Does Santa Go down the chimney? And I literally thought I was switching on to a spoof at first because she goes, does he wear night goggles? Does he wear night vision goggles or heat vision goggles? And I was thinking, this is a spoof on Pete Hegseth, right?

But no, not at all. And it's called, How does Santa go down the chimney? I mean, it was just the most bizarre, the most bizarre reading of a Christmas book I've ever heard. Maybe you could do it. How the fuck does Santa go down the chimney? Yeah.

How the fuck does Santa go down the chimney? I can't quite get her accent today. A few people have been commenting on my accent. By the way, we got a lot of. lots of comments on your slight dismissal of the people in the boats as drug dealers. They're just drug meals. And a lot of people made the point. We have no idea who these people are.

We have no idea. In my defense, I said purported drug carriers. We don't know who they are. But that's what they are. That's what the government, our government, purports them to be. Yep. They do purport them to be that, even though they're not coming anywhere near us, and it would take them 20 oil changes to get here.

I want credit from the way I accented, purported. Okay, so Michael, it's time for me to leave. I'm going to go out on the town in Abu Dhabi. We'll be back on Thursday, where we can discuss your progress in getting our first lady under oath, because I know you have lots of questions for her. So just reminding people to send in questions for Michael's suit against the first lady. Yes, fantastic. And I appreciate them.

And I am actually told that I am getting the first draft of the list of people who will be subpoenaed today. So I hope to have to be able to report on that very soon. Well, and have you put that list together? These are people that your lawyers say you want to talk to first. Yes, we have been in, we have been all conferring with this, and with several researchers on this. But you can add anyone for in terms of asking Melania, it doesn't just have to be Melania.

You can ask anyone who, you can propose anyone you think we should subpoena and who might be able to answer. relevant questions about Malania. About Melania? And her husband. Are you allowed to subpoena other members of her family? We can subpoena, I believe, anyone who might have relevant information. It would be interesting to subpoena Marla Maples on when she understood Donald Trump and

Melania first met. Okay. Just trying that out there. Sounds like a good idea. Anyway, if you have been, thank you for joining us. don't forget to leave us a comment and subscribe. You go to bed in Abu Dhabi. And most importantly, don't forget to be Beast.

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