The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump Can't Escape Epstein Forever: Wolff

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to unpack one of the most confounding political inversions of the Trump era: the moment when lying stopped being a liability and became a source of power. Wolff argues that while past presidents were undone by exposed falsehoods, Trump’s credibility has never been weaker—and yet it has only strengthened him. Together, they examine how shamelessness, repetition, and brute insistence on an alternate reality have replaced truth as a governing tool, leaving institutions, media, and public protest strangely inert. From the collapse of shared reality to the media’s inability to name what’s happening in plain language, this episode digs into why transparent lies no longer undermine authority—and what it means when reality itself stops working as a check on power. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nothing is going on besides Venezuela at this point. This is a monster development in the Trump political life. But Epstein, it never goes away. It always comes back. I mean, I think the question to ask right now is what's the status of the, what were the remaining, the five million other documents that have not been released. Michael. Joanna Colts.

could it be? Oh, God. Should we remind people who we are? I'm very conscious that lots of new people join us every week and we never really tell them what we're doing or who we are. I'm Joanna Coles from The Daily Beast. We're two old friends who now find ourselves like perhaps all old friends as a podcasting team. Possibly. And again, this morning I woke up, having had a calmer period perhaps because of the holidays and a slight break, waking up thinking, oh God, are we slipping into an autocracy? Is this all slipping away from us? Is this the moment when we should all be in the streets? Well, no, and I, curiously, I woke up thinking exactly the same thing.

I woke up thinking, wait a minute, there is not the proper response to this. I mean, this is going off the rails. off the rails on a daily basis, even more off the rails than we thought it was going. Right. We've now invaded another country. We're talking about invading other countries. We've had this remarkable statement from Stephen Miller, arguably the second most important person in the White House, which is in any language, thinly veiled fascism.

And what are we doing besides doing a podcast? where are the people in the street? Well, and also we had the terrible ice shooting yesterday. But they're getting shot, yes. Right, right. So we had that and we want to come on and talk about that. And Christy Nome's weird obfuscation and blaming the victim as being a domestic terrorist when in fact she seemed to be a very normal, much-loved mom who,

you know, says on her social media, she loves poetry and music. But we are going, we are at that point. And this could have been this, I'm sure, has been predicted, but it certainly is predictable that this paramilitary police force flooding American cities would harm somebody, I mean physically harm somebody, shoot someone rather in cold blood, it seems. Well, and you see the pictures of it and the videos are going absolutely everywhere. could think of was, oh, China and Russia must just be sitting rocking back and forth laughing at this

because this is what they want for America, this sort of slow, well, it's not even that slow, what feels like a disintegration of American culture. And of course, it's not as bad as the 1960s. One has to remember that. But nevertheless, it does feel unstable. But I'm considering your last statement, it's not as bad as the 1960s. I mean, you might remember the 60s better than me. Whatever, what was going on actually in the 1960s was a response to a government out of control, but it was a response. I mean, a clear response, and in fact, it brought the end of that government.

Nothing like that is happening now. Where is the response? Certainly what this government is doing begins to rival what the government in the 1960s was doing. And where is everybody? Hello? And also in the 60s, the movement was towards progress. What's so scary here is this sense of a movement towards something which is much, much darker. And this may be my conspiracy theorist coming out, but I believe is driven largely by bad actors abroad in China and Russia. But, but, you know, but, you. But, you know, You've written a very good substack this morning, which I just want to alert people to.

I don't know if you've published it yet, but you sent it ahead of time to me about Stephen Miller, who, as you say, is rapidly becoming the second most important person in the White House. And there is a little bit that I wanted to read from it. Again, I'm reading your own words to you. Is there anything a writer likes more? I can't believe we're starting off the New Year with me being so toading. Maybe I'm picking. But I will clarify that. There is nothing. The only thing actually that a writer likes more is

is the writer reading his own words. Okay. Well, I'm going to read your own words here. But this is from your substack, which I think goes up later today. You can't spend five minutes with Miller, Stephen Miller, and not understand there is something wrong with him, some point on the spectrum where he dwells alone. Indeed, you can't watch. him in a television interview, he looks like no one else who is allowed before a camera without seeing the psychopathology. He's really out there and he's not with anyone else. And it's so ominous and so dark and he is so peculiar and he has this kind of featureless face. He literally looks like Voldemore from the Harry Potter movies, who again has no features when you see

his face. It's all sunken into himself. It's very, very strange. You know, And we've seen, and actually Stephen Miller kind of traces the whole Trump continuum here. He came into the Trump White House in 2017 as actually kind of Steve Bannon's joke. And Steve Bannon was, you know, and I spoke at length of Bannon during this time and even about Stephen Miller, who he treated as a joke. But it was his kind of joke on the Normies in the White House. we really are like this. He would say, although Bannon never saw himself really like this. And I remember once he took me in to see Miller and Bannon said,

and Bannon was certainly aware of everyone calling him a fascist. And then he said about Miller, now this really is a fascist. And, you know, and I spent a little time with Miller and I thought, Oh, my God. Jesus, this is one weird guy. You know, he can't meet you. Can't look you in the eyes. And then he would just recite these things. And you just wanted to get out of there.

And then I came out in Van and said, you see? And then he says, kind of, he said, gobbles. Oh, right. I mean, just very frightening. But that was at that moment when, As I say, he was a joke. Everyone kind of was aware. Even Trump called him Crazy Stephen. But then over the course of this time now, nine years, he has risen. Everybody else has fallen by the wayside. And there is Stephen Miller, the most peculiar person in the first Trump White House. Now, the central person, second most important person in the Trump White House.

there he is, this, this cuckoo bird. But a cuckoo bird who is, who is determined, cruel, obsessional and dangerous. What is his driving ideology? Why is he so angry? He grew up in a perfectly nice home in Santa Monica in California. I mean, what is his, what the hell is his problem? Well, who knows? You know, you become obsessional for all. kinds of reasons. I mean, his obsession is brown people. It's a country that he envisions in one way that has lost its way. And he demands a new purity and force and power. I mean, that the statement that he released was that yesterday or the day before about, I think this was he was referencing Greenland. So you refer to this in your substack, and I'm going to read that paragraph. Now, of course, the junior aid has become the singular survivor of Trump's rise, fall, and comeback. The fundamental architect of the second Trump administration and its clearest voice as off the beam as ever.

Now I'm quoting him, we live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. but we live in a world in the world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. Okay, so that's, you can just see that. That was the pre-World War II view and necessarily the German view of foreign policy, of international life, of the relationship of one powerful country to other weaker countries. And that was the view that since the end of the Second World War has been wholly revised by America leading the way, but obviously other European countries.

And the success, the historical success of all of these years of relative, and I emphasize relative peace, certainly the absence of world war was the central accomplishment of undoing precisely that view. Well, it's back again. Well, it's back again, and yet the countries we're taking on Greenland, Venezuela are not the other superpowers. I mean, it seems like we're aiming at very small fry here. I mean, Greenland, we already have access to Greenland. Remember, I mean, you know, I hesitate to make these parallels to direct.

But when Germany took on other countries, they too were the weaker countries. It then overstepped and took on other, you know, it screwed itself up by taking on stronger countries. But Poland, the Netherlands and one country after another were easy prey. Well, what's going on in Minneapolis is very concerning. The ICE agent who shot three times the poor woman in her minivan, who was trying to get out of what looked like a very complicated situation. Not a professional agitator. And of course, Donald Trump has issued on Truth Social his version of events, which I was going to read and get your opinion of. So this is from our president.

I've just viewed the clip of the event. There were many clips of the event because so many people were filming it, which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was obviously a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer

who seems to have shot her in self-defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. I mean, what's so fascinating is that's not what the clips shows. That's not what any of the clips show. I mean, we are at that point. It's not only about not assuming responsibility. It's not only about a question of what happened.

It's direct outright lies, which is not we've been at that point for some time, but this is now in this mortal situation. I mean, we have this, this. paramilitary internal police force, who can do no wrong. Well, and also it's that thing where the president tells you something which you can see yourself isn't true, which reminds me of when he was saying, oh, the crowds were so huge for his first inauguration, when we could see the pictures of the crowds. And they weren't huge. There were vast, vast areas where there was no one.

Well, you know, this is an interesting thing. And if we go back to the 1960s, there was something called the credibility gap in which you would, the government was undermined because it kept putting out reports on the kills in Vietnam, that we were winning the war when we were losing the war. And that undermined the government. Now, compare that to now into the Trump years when credibility, his credibility, has never been, a president's credibility has never been weaker and the lies more transparent. And yet it has not undermined him, quite the opposite, it has strengthened him by the fact that he can so shamelessly, so stubbornly, so boldly, insists that his version of reality is, is, is, true. It's confounding. Well, that leads me to an interesting picture in the New York Times today. They're

sitting down there. Political reporters sit down to interview him. And I don't know if we can show the picture. I think we can. But it's Donald Trump behind his desk. And then there are five reporters in a semicircle around him. And it reminded me of one of those pictures you see when there is a violent criminal in a courtroom. And they're being escorted by. five or six guards who look as if they, only the might of the five or six of them will be able to contain this superhuman violent criminal. I saw it as I would reach for a different metaphor there. They all look like dogs waiting for a bone.

Well, I'm, he's the master and there they sit at his feet. I found it kind of, kind of, kind of a distressing picture. I thought it was, well, first of all, I'm envious that they've got five reporters to send in, because we certainly wouldn't have five reporters to send in from The Daily Beast. I thought for him it must be almost the apex of his career that he's sitting behind the desk and who's listening to him, five reporters from the New York Times, which we know he's obsessed by Stephen Chung. And why would you need five reporters actually since someone is running a tape recorder here? Right, right. I've absolutely no idea. but it sort of looked like he must be just, you know at some point he's going to say, and they sent five reporters, five reporters, not one, five reporters to talk to me because he's so important.

And to me it looked like they had five of them because they knew they were going to be lied to. And so they wanted other people to check it with. But it was a bizarre, a bizarre picture. This is not a, anyway, it's, they have a tape recorder. Well, they have five tape recorders. I mean, the thing that then confused, well, didn't confuse me, I might have expected this, but it's another bit of this whole paradigm between Trump and the media is that, is that, so the interview, or at least the portions of the interview that they covered today were about Venezuela. and them questioning Trump about the reasons for this, for this invasion and most of all, what we are going to do with this country now that we theoretically have taken over,

but we haven't exactly taken over, but they keep announcing we have taken over. Well, he's announced he's running it, right? When someone asks who's in charge and he said, I'm in charge, I'm in charge. Right. But there's no real, real, the underpinnings of how he is going to be in charge, what he intends to accomplish being in charge. All that was missing from this. All of that he didn't know. He couldn't say he wasn't going to say yet.

He would say sometimes maybe. And this was all treated as in the course of business. This is, this was the Trump. This is what, this is the Trump position. the Trump White House position that they've taken over a country, but they're not going to tell anyone what to do about it. And the New York Times has rendered this. I mean, maybe they think that they're rendering this in some kind of deadpan language, and readers will draw their own conclusions, which they obviously, obviously they will. But it also creates that other effect, the other effect, oh, that this is normal.

we are not saying, and partly because the New York Times doesn't have the language to say, hey, this is bad shit. Well, this is absurd. It's ridiculous. It makes no sense. You made it up as you went along. You stood up there on the platform and when someone said who's in charge, you said, we're going to run it. And that was clearly the first Marco Rubio had ever heard of it. And then you have Stephen Miller, like a ghoul, standing behind Marco Rubio. How does Stephen Miller get on with Pete Hegzeth and Marco Rubio? Well, I don't think Stephen Miller gets along with anyone because he is way out on the spectrum. So the idea he can't really talk to anyone else. I mean, he's, you know, he has deep social problems. You can't sit down and have a beer with Stephen Miller. But even on the new Mar-a-Lago White House patio?

Even on. Because it's set up for that. Yeah, no, there's something wrong with him. He is a broken person. Well, he's having a fourth baby with his wife, Katie Miller, who does a podcast where she similar, I mean, you referred to him as Gerbils, or you said that Steve Bannon referred to him as Gerbils. And Katie Miller is putting out sort of state-sponsored propaganda by interviewing all the top Republicans, all Trump's henchmen. What was Gerbil's wife's name? Was it Marla Gerbils?

Magda. Magda Gerber. Which sounds a lot like. Maga. Indeed it does. So we've got our version of Magda, Katie, interviewing Hegset and his wife, Mike Johnson, and his wife, J.D. Vance. I guess we should not reference what happened to those children. No, we shouldn't reference it. But if you haven't watched the downfall, which is about the last week of Adolf Hitler and his group, you really should. It's an amazingly good movie. Did you watch the downfall? I mean, amazing. Totally.

The other film that's worth watching while we're on it is the life of others about East Germany and an East German spy. Did you ever see that? Two very good movies about what's going on right now. The Downfall is a perfect movie to watch right now. So much to discuss. What did you have for breakfast this morning, Michael? Was it Top of the Food Pyramid? Well, it used to be on the top of the food.

pyramid. You know, the food pyramid has been turned upside down now. So I guess in an in an RFK world, you wake up and have, you have steak and eggs. And then you smother yourself with beef tallow. Yes. And testosterone. I myself had oatmeal or porridge, as you say. Yeah, porridge. I don't think that's very good for you, though. Does it, does it feel you, comfortably through lunch? Yes, well, it used to be. That's what you were supposed to have. That was high fiber and fiber is what kept you full.

Well, now they're saying it's just so much. You need much more protein. So good news. We can have steak and eggs for breakfast. I once asked Murdoch what he had for breakfast. And he said that he had every morning's eye, you know, I just a bowl of breakfast. porridge. And then he said, a horse needs its chaff.

What a great line. A horse needs its chaff. Well, not according to RFK, it doesn't. So he's, you know, obfuscating the vaccine stuff or throwing the vaccine rollbacks to the Maga base and then playing to the rest of us by saying that we can smother ourselves in beef tallow. But let's move this. So we have Stephen Miller, who I, think I would certainly argue, and I think you can easily make the argument, is a crazy person. A person whose presence in public life is inexplicable. And then you have RFK Jr., equally, absolutely crazy. His presence in public life.

And he's 72 years old, and for most of his life, as a Kennedy, he was kind of precluded from public life because everybody knew RFK Jr. He's the crazy one. And here he is in a pivotal role in this government. Pivotal. And as we have said before, and I think we should keep repeating, at least someone not notice, who is running for president in 2028. Well, Stephen Miller won't be running for president, right? Because he has absolutely no popular appeal whatsoever. But RFK Jr. does have some kind of popular appeal. He's a Kennedy. He's got big blue eyes. He, I mean, he does. I mean, it's hard to figure out what the popular appeal is other than the fact that he is named Kennedy. I mean, that's exclusively. And yeah, do you, do you see any other point of appeal here?

No, but I'm struck by the fact that women find him attractive, actually. I mean, he's so peculiar. He's basis like a sort of raisin. Well, they find too attractive because he's a Kennedy. Yeah, I guess. If you put him in, you know, I mean, the old thing, you know, when, when, you know, Teddy Kennedy, remember, you know, with his, and everybody said, said, I mean, there was a famous line if his name were, his name was Edward Moore Kennedy. If it, if he was just Edward Moore, he would not have been able to, just would have been a, by the side of the road.

Well, it's super alarming. It's super alarming that we've got two crazy people in there. And of course, they're not the only crazy people. Because the president is crazy. He's absolutely nuts. No, well, I think that that's one of the things. As over the course of this Trump era, as the normies have fallen by the side because Trump is crazy.

None of these people, I mean, you know, and everybody makes this kind of negotiation with themselves when they go to work for a politician. All politicians are a little crazy, but I can help restrain this. I can, you know, at some, there's some level that we're going to reach that's, that's manageable or acceptable. Well, this never happened with Trump. And all of the normies were washed out, leaving only the strange people, the peculiar people.

the toadies, the lackeys, the bottom of the barrel. Yeah. Well, I did a very fun interview with Seth Moulton on the Daily Beast podcast this week. And he was talking about how it's essential that in the Democratic Party, the older leaders now let go of the torch of power and pass it to a new generation. And this morning came the news that's, how do we pronounce this? You will know better than me. Staney Hoyer. From Maryland, congressman who is 86 years old is stepping down. He's stepping down, voluntarily

stepping down. And a word from our sponsors. And Michael Wolf and I are back inside Trump's head. It's just unfathomable. Nowhere else would this be allowed. You don't know of any industry where someone is allowed to stay that length of time unless they run the company, unless they started the company. It's crazy. Well, Berkshire Hathaway, but... Well, yeah, as I said, founded the company. So that's slightly different. If you found the company, you can do it.

I guess people, he can argue well, people voted for me, which is, which is fair enough. But it does feel very clear. You know, on an individual basis, that seems, that seems you can explain that and that's, that's understandable. I mean, the problem with the Democrats is that became on an institutional basis. Right. So, you know, I mean, Steny, I mean, he has a long, respectable, enviable record. And he doesn't seem to be suffering from dementia like some of his colleagues. But in general, the tolerance for that, and this has to do with a lot of institutional, a lot of structural factors.

I mean, once you're a Congress, you're in Congress, and this is increasingly, increasingly true, there's no competition you are. It's a job. It's a job for life. And that's that's clearly, clearly a problem. And that's clearly because of the Democrats' long success up until the Trump years, that they've, they've, they've institutionalized their own success. and that means institutionalizing people who inevitably got older and too old. Right. And calcified. Calcified in the roles. Yeah. The interesting thing about Seth Moulton is that he's a MAGA favorite.

Bannon was always talking up Seth Moulton. So that's a, it's a. Well, I think he's prepared to. work across the parties, right, and he's a moderate. The establishment, the democratic establishment, don't like him because he won't wait in line. And he's a man on a mission, I think. I mean, yeah, he hasn't, that mission hasn't really gotten him too far yet, but, um, well, he's been in Congress since. It'd be curious to see. And he's that, he represents that other, um, that side of the Democratic party, which, which a lot of people have high hopes for,

which is former military people in the Democratic Party. And that's not necessarily an intuitive position because the Democratic Party has been for a long time. The party that has stood against the military. The military is a deeply conservative force in American life. and well and it represents the opposite of community organizers and

activists which are now you know throwing up candidates Zoram Mamdani being one and of course Barack Obama was a community organizer before he became president

you say that you say that with distaste no I'm not saying it with distaste it's completely the opposite to the military you're completely right but Seth Moulton struck me as energetic. He's taking on Ed Markey, very popular senator in Massachusetts, who nevertheless is 79. You were wowed by a politician. I was, I was excited by a politician.

This has happened to me many times, and I'll let me just say, it's always a mistake. Well, it may be a mistake, but what was nice. Politicians are very good in person. I mean, a, a, no, they're not all very good in the, They're not all very good in person. One variety of politicians. They turn, they train you, they look you in the eye, they treat you like you're the most important person. Okay, so I'm going to push back on you on that because you have frequently said to me, as you've met many politicians, and you and I've discussed both on and off the podcast, who are going to be likely candidates for the Democrats in 2028.

There is a difference between politicians who can speak normally and politicians who, unfortunately, like Hillary Clinton when she ran for president and like Kamala Harris, speak in policy paragraphs and you can't get into kind of any sense of the human being in there. But there's actually then a further distinction. There are those people, politicians who in person and you go, wow, you know, this is a really interesting person. Like Hillary Clinton. And then they get up on a stage and they go dead.

they talk cotton. And actually, Seth Moulton, in a public setting, is no, you know, he's not Mr. Carisma. Well, that may be true, but at least I would urge people to watch the podcast make their own opinion. But I thought it was exhilarating to talk to someone who was able to speak normally about what's going on. Okay, well, we'll see Seth's numbers. And you know what? We got so many comments on your. disagreeing with Mark Kelly. In fact, I would say the majority of the thousands of comments we got on our last podcast were disagreeing with you fervently about your agreeing with Pete Hegset, the Secretary of Defense. Let's go there and let me double down.

Oh, my God, you're getting all Trumpy on me. You are getting all Trumpy by double downing. First, first, I don't in any way think. that Kelly should be penalized for anything that he said here. I think he had a perfectly right, perfect right to say, to say whatever he wanted to say. And in this instance that, you know, he was making a broad state, I mean, it was a broad objection to, to Donald Trump. And I think it was right. Which I'm all for.

but on the specific point in which he is openly advocating that American military personnel disregard orders or essentially saying that they could, that it was in their purview to disregard and what they might believe is an illegal order. which is, A, is really not true. B is, is, you know, is certainly, is certainly ridiculous. And from the point of view, from someone who had a command role in the armed forces, would not be something that person, Kelly, in this case, would have believed when he was in that role. So it was just, it was just adjut prop. It didn't mean anything.

And I think it should have been treated as something and didn't mean anything and who cares. But on the merits, he is flat out wrong. Well, I can see another 2,000 comments coming in on this alone. And of course, I think what people were very mindful of was Trump's overreaction to it, because in a sense, as you say, it's adjutop and they're playing a game and it's performative.

And Trump said, well, he should be executed. This is seditious. It should be executed. And in that sense, by the way, it works for everybody. Kelly's profile is elevated. Trump has an enemy. Everybody is playing everybody else's game here. And I suppose more power to them. But less power to him if he ends up getting his pension cut and his status revoked in the military. I mean, Pete Higgs has claims he's on the case. And then he'll be restored in the next Democratic administration. We're just, this is not. None of this is. is real. None of this is substantive. None of this counts. But it's hard to think of a better public servant than Mark Kelly, who's, you know, served his country, whose wife was shot 15 years ago, actually, this week. Famously,

Gabby Gifford's an amazing Congresswoman, and the two of them have worked diligently to try and restrict access to guns so that this doesn't happen again. It seems completely, you know, someone you would want to elect. And also flexing his muscles for 2028. Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm just saying on the merits of the thing that people in the United States military should not, do not and should not each individually have the discretion to decide which order they are going to obey in which they are not.

This is pretty basic. Yes, in Nuremberg-like situations, they're going to have to make a choice. But to cast any sense that Nuremberg, like, decision-making occurs on a frequent basis is, again, ridiculous. Okay, and back to our German analogy. All right. So what else is going on? I know you were concerned about this group Club America, which is the teenage version of Turning Point.

Club America is now being rolled out in high schools, and it's an offshoot of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point America, and it's causing all sorts of drama in schools because it's encouraging, I guess, far-right values or what they would say, a constitutional... I mean, here's something that seems patently something we don't want is let's politicize high school. I mean, of all of the other problems you have in high school, now we're adding right, left, whatever. But I was thinking back to when I was at high school where I was shamelessly a member of the young conservatives because they had better parties and then briefly a member of young.

labor because they seemed to have better ideas. Were you never a member of a political party at school? High school or university? No, no, no. This was, well, it was actually when I was at high school, but it was outside of the school. So it wasn't school sponsored, but I was a member of the local ones because, A, I was interested in politics, and B, I wanted a social life beyond school. And they were sort of interesting people, and they had good parties and local politicians

would come and talk. did you not do any of that? You were probably too busy growing your hair and smoking weed. I didn't have access to drugs in the north of England when I was going up. And doing my schoolwork. And doing your schoolwork. I don't even remember doing any schoolwork. I read a few Shakespeare plays, which have stood me in good stead.

I would urge every school student to do that. But Club America seems a somewhat ominous development and is clearly causing problems for certain principles in schools where the parents are now using it as a political tug of war. Yeah, no, I would say in general, and this is also, I think, from the left as well as the right, let's get politics out of high school. Maybe they should send Erica Kirk around to do a high school tour.

And the way that Tony DeCopal from CBS is doing a tour of somewhat, it seems, random cities, Erica Kirk could start doing the high school tour. J.D. Vance could join her. Well, I mean, that's, I mean, you know, Charlie Kirk, the growth of Turning Point USA is partly because Charlie Kirk did these college tours. What else is going on? I tell you what isn't going on or what I feel isn't going on, which I'm concerned about, is really diligent, dogged research of people going through the Epstein files. I mean, I mean, we're in this thing. First thing, we're, we're, nothing is going. on besides Venezuela at this point. I mean, this is a monster development in the Trump political life. And I would say the most significant development in the second term so far. I mean, he has done what he always manages to do, which is to change the subject through a reorder, a fundamental reordering of the

the narrative, of the drama that we're living in. And we have now, we're now invading, we've invaded this country. We're set to invade other countries. It is hard to focus on anything else, although one can make the argument certainly that we should, because we're not really doing any of these things. But that's another, another, the, the Trump mirror and the Trump illusion, but which works. But Epstein, and the thing about Epstein, and we might trust this, is that it never goes away. It always comes back.

And there are, I mean, I think the question to ask right now is what's the status of the, what were the remaining, the five million other documents that have not been released? What's the status? there and I don't know the status. I mean, I read somewhere that only 1% of the files. I'm not sure anyone does because the status is in the hands of the Trump White House, which

has now distracted everyone from this job. The job of releasing the Epstein files has been preempted by the job of running Venezuela. Well, good old Thomas Massey, who is one of the Republicans that fought for the release of the Epstein files, has been saying that, has been criticising the White House and criticising Pam Bondian saying, this is ridiculous. Where are they, they're, you know, they're failing to release enough of them. And as far as I can understand, they've only released 1% of them.

And I spoke yesterday to a victim's advocate who said that the survivors are absolutely furious about this, that many of them feel they put themselves out there and they're beside themselves. And I think we can assume that this, I mean, this isn't gone away. This is coming back. But the operation here, the Trump operation, is to distract from this. How do we distract from this? Well, we invade a country. Okay, well, this is pretty much by the distraction book.

So I think in the short term, it's going to be Venezuela. And then old, reliable Epstein will be back again. What about Greenland? Do you think that we might go from Venezuela to Greenland? You know, apparently, apparently. But again, that's the thing. And we had discussed this before. There is very little, if anything, that we would get from Greenland by invading it that we do not have now or by owning it. Well, and also what would an invasion look like? There's only 30,000 people. there in rather nice brightly colored huts. I rather like the look of going to Greenland. In fact, I thought, should we go and do a podcast from Greenland? Be super fun. A cold. I think the form of

this could very well take. We own Greenland and we can do the following Trump pronouncement, but we can already do those things. We already have a defense agreement, which gives us wide latitude to almost do anything, anything defensively in the defense of Greenland and the Arctic territory that we want to do. Similarly, you know, then there's this thing about, you know, mineral rights. There's an open invitation. Greenland says, yeah, we're game. You know, bring your investment here. We'll take it. And it's also, I remember this, from a brief period I had in business, it's actually quite difficult to figure out where all those minerals are.

I mean, it's not as if people haven't been trying. They've been trying for years to find this. That is why there is this. I mean, this is all good for Greenland. So the extent that they haven't been exploited is that they're difficult to exploit and costly and the return is less than people are probably looking for. But now Trump is in a position to say, we own, he's very capable of doing this. We own Greenland.

He's going to make an announcement. We own Greenland. And we're going to go in there and we're going to put the U.S. military there and defend the Arctic territories. And we're going to exploit. And we now have the right to exploit all of their mineral capacity. which he already has. We don't have to own it to do that, but he'll just add that flourish.

Right. And American companies have already been trying to find out where these minerals are. But if there's anybody from Greenland watching or listening, please let us know how we can come and do a podcast from Greenland. I really want to do it from one of those lovely painted huts. They're all different colors, bright colors, very cheery in a land where there isn't much sun in the winter.

Tooley Greenland. I actually had a brother who once spent a summer job working on the United States military base in Tully Greenland. I think you invent your brother. I don't think he exists. I've met your sister, but I feel like you invoke your brother when you want to come up with some obscure wolfian family law, which isn't necessarily true. Didn't you have a brother who trekked across America at some point? No, I only have one brother who lives in. Maui. Many years ago, he left civilization for paradise. Right, right. Well, you're both living in

seaside resorts. I might say he left his family for paradise. Okay. Well, you're both living in seaside resorts, so you have that in common. The Hamptons, Maui, rich seaside resorts, as I'm sure commentators will point out. Are there poor seaside resorts? Yeah, of course there are. A lot in the UK. I've been to some in the UK. I was going to say that the UK. Very depressing. Super depressing.

Or now we're going to get angry UK people writing in. But there was actually a book written recently about how essentially the sad, the sad, its thesis was because air fares become so cheap people in the UK now flee the UK for their two weeks vacation. And so the UK coastal map is just full of these sad towns that have fallen apart and there are sort of aging roller coasters and old ice cream stands slowly rotting. I once accompanied Boris Johnson to speak before some conservative ladies in a seaside town. Was it Blackpool? Was it Blackpool? Brighton? It comes to mind that it was a town called Yarmouth.

Oh, yeah, Yarmouth, Great Yarmouth in Suffolk. Yeah. And Blackpool, where they often have party conferences, and I once got very ill from eating oysters there. I would recommend anybody avoid the oysters in Blackpool. I suspect the ones in Amagansett are slightly fresher. Anyway, I did notice your friend, Lindsay Halligan, popping up because when she was in the White House before she got sent off to Virginia,

where she spectacularly flamed out trying to indict James Comey and Tish James. And a word from our sponsors. And Michael Wolf and I are back inside Trump's head. She was told to go and tell the Smithsonian to get its act together. And if they wanted to continue with federal funding, they had to jump through a lot of hoops, not least, how they were describing American history to American visitors. and J.D. Vance now looks like he's going to take a seat on the Smithsonian board.

There are several more seats coming up for grabs this year. And it looks like the Smithsonian might go the way of the Kennedy Center. Do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, the Trump Smithsonian. The Trump Smithsonian. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's, I think everything goes this way.

Yes, there's no. Why stop with one institution when they can all be Trump's such and such institutions? And Trump's view of America and the history of America. I mean, yeah, why not stop and take these world-class institutions, the envy of other countries and just Trumpify them? That's what he does, slaps his name on things. Yeah, again, we're, and I do. don't know what is the moment in which in which um too much is too much what is the moment in which in which there is some response to this i i mean this sounds um weak i think from my point of

you like well congress has been moed over it's been moed over but i am really i am really i think it's almost in the story of the Trump administration of what is going on, an equal story, a parallel story, might be, ought to be, why is there no response to this? Well, and people would say there is a response and it's online, which isn't as effective. So, Michael, on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is it for America if 10 is very bad? 10. I mean, bad is not bad and very bad are not without, are not limited. So it can be 10 and get worse. It's like the top of the bestseller list, which is the top of the bestseller list not only means you sell more than every other book, but, but the, The sky's the limit. Your,

every other book sells, sells this, this many thousands of copies and you at the bestseller list sell millions upon millions of copies. Ah, the writer's dream. It's the writer in you coming out. That's the analogy.

Yes. Well, I was once in that position and it was quite a sweet one. You'll be back there again. Michael Wolf, you will be back there again. I will say that our podcast is going up the charts. The YouTube chart. Our podcast is going up the YouTube charts.

Well, we should get to. We were number 55 out of all podcasts on YouTube this week, which is pretty damn good. Well, so far from the number one. Of course. Of course, we're working our way slowly there, but I'm just saying we only started in all. I do think on the more, I think we are at 10. I think it is almost inconceivably bad how much, how things are. now. We have reached an outside limit of anything that the nation has ever experienced. And it

continues to get worse. I mean, I would have said we were at number 10 before Venezuela. Now we're in Venezuela or not in Venezuela or something. Well, and who knows what happens with Venezuela? I mean, tomorrow Trump is supposed to be sitting down with the three big American gas companies, gas and oil companies to talk to them about the opportunities in Venezuela. And they're going to come out of that and go say, yes, yes, yes, and we're doing this. And they're going to do nothing. Right. Nobody wants to go to take gas out of the ground or oil out of the ground in Venezuela.

We'll be back on Saturday to discuss whether or not we've gone to 11, I guess. It's a strange week. There is no 11. It's 10. We've maxed out at 10. And then it's just, um, this. And then from there, it's the sky's the limit. You can't contain the top.

Okay, well, we'll be back and we'll do an update on Melania, I hope. And we'll have people's questions for Melania, too. Fantastic. All right, sleep well, Michael. I hope the anxiety of what's going on isn't giving you sleepless nights. I've had sleepless nights all my life. Call me any time. Okay, well, I'm still sleeping well for now, for now.

Really? Yeah, for now it's the only place you get respite. It's the only place. Unconsciousness. Unconsciousness. All right, Michael, we'll talk on Saturday. We'll talk on Saturday. Fantastic.

All right. So if you have been, thank you for watching and listening. Please leave us a comment on YouTube, especially about Mark Kelly. I know that's going to fuel people again. Don't forget to check out Obsessed. Our new podcast with Kevin Fallon, letting you know what he's obsessed about. and the best things to watch this week. And Michael, what else?

What have I left out? You and I are going to be at the 92nd Street, why on January 21st, talking Trump, Epstein, Venezuela. We'll have forgotten by Venezuela by then. It's still 10 days out. And Mark Kelly, if people are still grousing about that, I'm there to grouse that. but it will be a good evening.

And as you've pointed out before, it's a year and a day since Trump's inauguration of the second administration. So we can happily relive Lauren Sanchez in her frilly bustier under that lovely white coat. No, we can do the whole, the first Trump year in five minutes. we're just going to power through it. Yeah, so come and see us, bring your questions and tell your friends. And our Bee Beast level members, I want to give you a big shout-out. If you haven't joined the Daily Beast community, you really should. Just press the button below where you're watching this.

But big shout-out to our Bee-Be Beast-level members. Yvette Johnson, Me thinks, Betsy O'Farrell, Mills and Lins, Shell B, Max Quibbitt David Sherry, Thomas Moore, Maria Voltaine, D. Kujawatt, Sinja Lund, John H. Ovarocker, Deb K. Ostranda, Sandra Clark, travels with Carl, Andrew Beaver, Cappanator. Harry Clark, Dawn McCarthy, Daniel Doglover, M. Griner, Dysstone, Fulvia, Orlando.

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