The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump Can't Stand His Nobel Prize Humiliation

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

Joanna Coles and Hugh Dougherty dive into Trump-world’s latest chaos, from Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize humiliation to Pete Hegseth’s chilling talk of live-streaming a military execution. John Ossoff delivers a brutal debate performance as Democrats eye the midterms, while a Texas candidate vanishes from the campaign trail. Plus, Kimberly Guilfoyle is engulfed in a jaw-dropping scandal that could spell trouble for Marco Rubio. From Trump’s bruised ego to MAGA’s money trail, the week’s political drama just keeps getting uglier. #ad Head to https://brodo.com/BEAST for 20% off your first subscription order and use code BEAST for an additional $10 off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

U.S. voters abroad, have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabroad.org and click request my ballot. Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote fromabroad.org. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees, can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Hugh, the Nobel Peace Prize has clearly been on Trump's mind because on Wednesday he went

on one of his weaves about it. This thing, it lives in his mind. And of course we know why it lives in his mind is because Barack Hussein Obama got it. Donald J. Trump did not. The winner comes out and immediately laughs at Trump. There's an intriguing message here, I think, been sent by the Nobel Prize Committee. We're not giving this to you. And we're going to give it to somebody who it is impossible to impeach her integrity.

It's impossible to impugn what she has done unless you're Donald J. Trump. And we will see how he does it. We'll see how he attacked Navi Pillay. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. It's Friday, which means it's a catch-up of the week with Hugh Doherty.

the Daily Beast's executive editor, there is no news that Hugh hasn't read, doesn't have an opinion on. So we're going to be talking about Pete Heggseth's idea to stream an execution, seriously. We're going to talk about John Ossoff emerging from his debate. We're going to talk about the two mics, Mike Collins and Mike Rogers, which one is standing against whom? And of course, let's go into a little bit more of Kimberly Gilfoyle's financial shenanigans. And Eric Dieters, who's come out roaring against Don Jr's former fiancé. But Huey, I think we have to start with the news of the day. The news of the day, Donald Trump again failed to get the Nobel Peace Prize.

Well, Joanna, thank you for being here. Actually, before we even get into that, there's one thing I do want to say on your behalf. If you are not already subscribed to the Daily Beast, please join our growing family. We are heading for a million subscribers on YouTube. Thank you to everybody who does it. If you already subscribe, give us a like, even become a Daily Beast member. There's lots more to be done, a lot's more to be said. But yes, the Nobel Peace Prize.

Is there any prize that Donald Trump has wanted more? And is there any prize that he keeps not getting? Well, we learned this morning who's getting the Nobel Peace Prize. And let's just say that nobody is doing that at the ceremony. So, interestingly, not only did it not go to Donald Trump, but the winner, the winner, Navi Pillay, who's a former UN human rights and judge at the International Court of Justice, and certainly not someone, I think,

who's named Trips off everybody's lips because she's been very much under the radar. She actually referred to Donald Trump when she discovered she'd won the prize, right? She did, and we have an amazing clip that we can show out of what happens. Thank you very much. If you clap a little bit more,

I may share this prize with Trump. A sense of humor. A sense of humour. She's funny. She's clever. She puts war criminals on trial. I mean, she has an absolutely amazing background resume. She was, one thing we should say is in this video,

she learned that she had received the Nobel Peace Prize when she was actually at the same court in Nuremberg where the Nazi war criminals were put on trial and found guilty. So an extraordinary sweep of history. Yeah, a fantastic sweep of history, actually, for her to be recognised. So, of course, Donald Trump claims that he should have got it because he's actually ended eight wars, though, of course, the Ukraine and Russia war continues, despite the fact he promised at the election, that he would end it in his first 24 hours, and it was really a very simple thing to do,

very simple thing to do. Hugh, the Nobel Peace Prize has clearly been on Trump's mind, because on Wednesday, he went on one of his weaves about it. So perhaps he was hoping for a more positive end to his week than he's actually had. Let's see if we can play that clip. Last time they gave it to a young lady who was a fabulous person. And she said she didn't deserve it that I deserved it. And she gave it to me.

And I said, wow, what an honor. I settled eight wars. Another one is coming. I got all the hostages back. I did things that nobody else has ever done. I'm not bragging. I'm just telling you the facts. No president probably has settled any wars.

I settled eight wars. No president has settled any wars. I settled eight wars. It was a lot of weave. This thing, it lives in his mind. And of course we know why it lives in his mind. It's because Barack Hussein Obama got it. And Donald J. Trump did that.

not. And we also know that, you know, one of the things that this makes very clear this morning, the winner comes out and immediately laughs at Trump. And one of the obsessions that Trump has had is that the world was laughing at America before he became president. And I think people will remember when he went to the United Nations and said, people used to laugh at us. They're not laughing anymore. And people started laughing at him. There is nothing that gets inside Trump's head. Sorry, Michael Wolf, I'm not crawling in there. I'm just using the phrase. There's nothing that gets up in his feelings, like people laughing at him. He's going to be furious. Interestingly, a couple of hours have gone by, and we have not heard the fury and

the anger that we expect Trump to have, but plenty of opportunities for that to come. and yeah, it does not look like this very distinguished, she's 85, by the way, this jurist Navi Pili, you know, this very distinguished and respected figure is going to be in the Oval Office handing it over any time soon. I'm sure he'll attack his truth social sooner rather than later. Natalie Harp is probably sharpening her nails to get ready to start frenzidly typing his outrage. I mean, it's not been a great week for Donald Trump. Let's be honest. And of course he was hoping he would win the Nobel Peace Prize and get it in a bona fide way as opposed to what happened to him last year when he snatched it practically out of the hands of Venezuela's Machado.

And then, of course, dismissed her and said she wasn't popular enough and got in bed with the, you know, Nicholas Maduro's number two, Delci Rodriguez. What an extraordinary turn of events. He grabs the Nobel Prize. vespice pies from the actual winner as she's trying to give it to him and then basically cast her off. Yes. And we'll see how he attacks Navi Pillay. One of the things that she is being or that has led to her being honoured in this way is that she expanded the definition of genocide to include rape. It was something that had, you know, we know this is one of the horrors of

genocide's past has involved horrific mass rapes, and she was able on the International Criminal Court to expand the definition there. And of course, rape is a touchy topic for Donald Trump. He has been accused of it. He has been found liable for sexual assault. We saw him expressing sympathy for the Cornell 7 who've been accused of rape. So it's an intriguing, there's an intriguing message here, I think, being sent by the Nobel Prize Committee. We're not giving this to you. And we're going to give it to somebody who it is impossible to impeach her integrity. It's impossible to impugn what she has done. And unless you're Donald J. Trump. And we will see how he does it. Well, I think in that weave there as well, you see his grandiosity. And I don't know if he actually

believes that he's ended eight wars. I don't know if he even knows. the countries that he's talking about. We know that he wasn't much of a traveler. No. I mean, he would go from golf course to golf course largely in Europe before he became president. He'd only been to Washington seven times before he became president in 2016.

So it's just a sort of fascinating idea that he thinks he has ended eight wars. And we actually had, and I hope we can flash it up on the screen for those who are watching this on, on you. YouTube, a diagram of all the wars that he says he's ended in countries that I'm confident he has no idea where they are on the map and he has no idea what the wars were about. But this sense of himself as a peacemaker is fascinating given how antagonistic he is and how vindictive and how he's used this second term for retribution of his enemies. actually I just want to go aside and one thing of his knowledge of geography

is that in his first term he described two countries that most of us have never heard of he talked about nipple and button that was in fact Nepal and Bhutan and then he read off a prompter he read a country called

Thailand when he obviously meant Thailand the whole psychological peacemaker thing, it's extraordinary because, yeah,

this guy is boasting about dropping bombs on Iran. He's boasting about, you know, annihilation, and he has launched more these new strikes in Central and South America

against drug boats or alleged drug boats, supposed to drug boats. He's called them terrorists. There's a sort of bloodthirstiness that I know we're going to talk about and, you know, relative to Pete Heggis, that there's like, he has, he, he, he Trump, at the end of his first term, ordered a whole load of federal executions, something that had not happened, you know, for many,

many years in a sort of frenzy at the last minute. And at the same time, he's determined that he wants to be remembered for ending eight wars. And as you say, where these wars are, what happened, how they came about, how they ended. None of that matters. The number itself is kind of fungible. And he's always like, there's another one on the way. Well, it's clearly not Ukraine and Russia. That's not going to get settled any time soon. It's obviously not Iran. That's not looking good.

It's not Yemen. That's not looking good. I don't know. Perhaps is there one in a country that we don't know about that we've all been mispronouncing? I always get up thinking I'm going to eat healthy today. But then I look at a sad bowl of salad leaves and I think, well, that's not going to get the job done. that's when I reach for Brodo. This podcast is sponsored by Brodo, which is bone broth,

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additional $10 off if you use the promo code, Beast. Well, perhaps Steve Wiccoff and Jared Kushner are on their way right now to try and do some business deals because they've discovered. And apparently they're the only people. They're the first people to discover that international diplomacy goes much better if you're doing some business deals. I'm always just mindful of how Donald Trump, instead of going to Vietnam, told Howard Stern that he was actually living a personal Vietnam trying to dodge catching STIs when he was

out nightclubbing in the 70s and 80s. And he said that was my personal Vietnam. So that's really what he thinks about being a soldier, being at war, but it's about avoiding catching an STI. There's no way that this whole, you know, the whole thing about Vietnam, look at his age, look at what happened to people of exactly that age, look at how defining it was for those at the tip of the boomer generation. It was the thing that defined their youths.

And there's no way that that's not weighing on him. There's also no way that he has any empathetic understanding of war. There's no sense in which this is somebody that read, I don't know, you know, we're talking about Vietnam. Did he read the things they carry, which is, you know, most people have read either at school or subsequently. Did he watch any of the war movies with any sense of that they were actually about futility? It doesn't look that way. This is a guy that watched Patton and thought it was an inspiration and didn't read any of the more critical. historical facts around it. It's all central casting. I think the thing is it's not real. And the

Nobel Peace Prize is a kind of symbol of this because we can look and say, yes, this is exactly what winner after winner after winner has done. You know, Nelson Mandela, who by the way, Navi Pillay was involved in defending. People like that, that's who gets the Nobel Peace Prize. And I think the sense that you get from Trump is he just wants this, it's a great British phrase I'm going to use, a bobble. He wants the bobble. A bobble, a shiny object. And it's the ultimate shiny object because he can't get it. Exactly right. And of course, President Obama did get it. Yes. As you mentioned earlier. So talking about blood.

Let's discuss Pete Hegeseth's decision that he wants to stream the execution of the shooter of the Fort Hood massacre. I mean, this is unfathomable in 2006. And obviously, it would be against the terms and conditions of any regular platform. So this is something that the Pentagon is saying that it will be doing. They will be streaming the firing squad execution of an American. So let me just set up how we found out about this, which is, I think, really instructive about Pete Hegesith. Peter Hexeth went to San Diego on Thursday. He went to...

Oh, wait a minute. Do you mean San Diego, the city that Donald Trump said, not much of a price to pay, Los Angeles. If the Iranians go up to Los Angeles, Santiago, it's the price he have to pay. We cannot say Pete Hegesith is putting himself in that line of fire. Finally, a brave defense secretary waiting there for the Iranians to strike. And so he went there.

He was supposed to welcome back. And his job was to welcome back the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Now, we all remember that name is now etched in, you know, really in the annals of shame. It was put at, it was sent on its mission to the Gulf. It was kept there for the longest period of time ever that a US aircraft carrier has not docked and given people some shore leave. One sailor tried to take his own life by jumping overboard and luckily it was saved. in the whole strike group, the aircraft carrier and the destroyers and other vessels that escort it, they have admitted that there were eight suicide attempts.

We heard from relatives of those on board about the appalling conditions, about the food. And this crew was finally steaming back to its home port on Thursday. Pete Heggseth could have just welcomed them and thanked them for their service. But instead, he also did an interview from the flight deck with a right-wing YouTube blogger called Jack Posobieck. And at the end of this interview, which was mostly Pete Hexeth complaining about the media for reporting on what had happened on the USS Lincoln, he was asked about the upcoming firing squad execution, which had already been announced by Pete Hegesh, that this would be done

by firing squad of Nadal Hassan. Nadal Hassan murdered 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, absolutely horrific, worst terrorist attack on US soil after September the 11th. He had been in touch with Anwar Al-Aki, the American-Bomb preacher of hate, and he appeared to have been inspired by him. He was not, we don't, nobody believes he was directed. He was basically this sort of archetype, lone wolf terrorist attack her, but American-born, and this was not, you know, kind of from

foreign soil. He had been a psychiatrist in the American army for his career. He was addued to be shipped out to Afghanistan, and he went and shot 13 people. And at the time, it became this conservative talking point that the army did not charge him with terrorism. Now, there's no point in re-litigating this. He was found guilty, and he was found to be eligible for the death penalty, and then he was given the death penalty. Death penalties did not happen under Obama. Trump 1 did not move on this death penalty. Death penalties did not happen under Joe Biden.

He was fiercely opposed to death penalty and commuted many of the sentences on death row. That left Nadal Hassan as a very unusual prisoner. Normally on federal death row, you are under the ages of the Justice Department. but Pete Higgseth suddenly has his own death role with its own person on it. The military have not done an execution since 1961. This is something we have never seen.

I was going to say in our lifetimes, there are people, obviously, there are people watching this who date back, you know, who are, I'm sure, more senior than I am. But we have never had in the United States a firing squad execution in the military system since World War II, and we have to look back even further for other examples. So Hexath got on the deck, and in this interview, and he's kind of wearing kind of fake uniform, let's be honest, Posobieck asked him, what about this? And Hexas suddenly says, we are going to make sure that people see it. And he doesn't quite elaborate on it.

So obviously, everybody, including ourselves, our reporter Lauren Hartley, was immediately in touch with the Pentagon, and they said, on background, a Pentagon official says it will be live streamed. And she told me this, and I was, you know, my jaw was on the floor. The idea that there is going to be a live stream of an execution, first of all, Joanna, you're right. It's completely impossible for any normal platform to do it. If we tried to do that on YouTube, which we are, you know, many people are watching us, that breaks the terms of service. We would be, we wouldn't just be, you know, suspended or sent a nasty email, we'd be deleted. They would never want, they would never allow us to upload

a video ever again. It's... Well, and Congress would be up in arms. The Senate would be up in arms. It would be... I mean, this is of such barbaric imagination. It's incomprehensible. And it takes us back to a dark moment in American history. The last two public executions, there's some sort of historical doubt about what's classified as the last public execution in the United States. States, the more high profile of the two of them, and you will not be surprised that this happened to a black man, in 1936 in Owensboro in Kentucky, the execution of Rainey Bathia went completely wrong because the executioner turned up drunk and people, there was a crowd who watched this spectacle unfold. Of course, there were doubts over the integrity of the

trial and it was so bad that the state of Kentucky had decided at that point to abolish public execution. Given that we've just also had a terrible week, where Krista Pike was twice, twice injected and woke up four days later and said, where am I and who are you to the people in the room. I mean, what happened with the execution that you're talking about that went wrong, the executioner turned up drunk, but how was the plan, what was the plan to actually execute the prisoner? This prisoner was hanged and the noose round his neck and because the executioner was drunk, nothing happened for this extended delay and eventually a sheriff deputy stepped in and

caused the gallows to, you know, the floor to open and the drop and therefore execute the prisoner. The next year, there was another kind of public execution in Missouri. Missouri, that's it. And, you know, this is something that we're both from the United Kingdom. Charles Dickens led to this practice ending in the United Kingdom. That's how long ago it is. Well, public executions take place where? They take place in North Korea, in Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Iran, Iran, Iran. I mean, how could I forget? And Afghanistan, we believe, because the Taliban is back in power, they were famous before 2001 for absolutely

horrific public executions. And Somalia, there appeared to be public executions there. It is largely an ungoverned space where this has been happening. Yeah, public executions are horrific. And the other thing, you've mentioned to all those countries, they don't live stream them. Do we think that Pete Hegseth was drunk when he suggested this? I mean, Pete Exeth is a man who was intoxicated when he was running to Veterans Affairs organizations and promised that if he got the job as the Secretary of Defense, that he would stop drinking? I'm going to advance a theory that, no, I don't believe he was intoxicated. In fact, I believe what he is is intoxicated with power.

And I think this, you know, absolutely jaw-dropping announcement has been condemned widely, as you can imagine, by human rights groups. Hillary Clinton has just been tweeting about it this morning, saying it's beneath the dignity of our country. I think this is a conscious effort by Pete Hegesith to position himself to run for president. What we know about what will happen, the army has regulations on executions. Those regulations, there's 17 pages of them. They date back to 2006 and they've not been updated and they make crystal clear that executions are by lethal injection and are not public. It's spelled out in these these regulations. They were adopted by the chief of the army staff and the secretary of the

army at the time. They haven't been overturned. They haven't been updated. So it's almost inevitable that somebody is going to go to a court, a military court, and say that he's not following army regulations. This is not going, this is illegal. It's almost inevitable that that if that gets appealed, maybe it ends up in front of the Supreme Court. It kind of puts Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in a bit of a spot. But, you know, even the most, you know, Brett Kavanaugh conservatives are hardly going to say, yeah, let's have public executions. Yeah, I can't see even Amy Comey Barrett agreeing with that. Amy Comey Barrett is a devout Catholic and the Pope is very, very clear that execution is not good. It's not allowed. It's not Catholic doctrine. And conservative, political conservative

of Catholics in this country have managed to kind of quietly get away with it, but making it a public thing is bad. My theory is that Peter Hexas knows this is going to be blocked and he is going to make it a cause-celebra either in office as Secretary of Defence or if he is getting booted after the election. And I know there is some skepticism that that might happen. I know Michael Wolf thinks he's actually more likely to stay than to go right now. But either way, he has just given himself epic amounts of publicity and an epic amount of appeal to a particular base. Yes, I was going to ask you if the midterms go badly for the Republicans, which by, at least by the polls, and goodness knows the polls have been wrong before, but if the polls are right, there will be

a shellacking for the Republicans in the midterms. Donald Trump will probably look for someone to blame because that's what he does. and Pete Hegzeth, he's already said in public that Pete Hegzeth sort of persuaded him to try the war in Iran. He's sort of distancing himself from it, or at least he has done. So it's possible that Pete Hegzeth would be a sacrificial lamb after the election, in which case he's established a base and a connection with the MAGA base for his own platform for 2028. And as you say, this becomes a core celebrity. Yes, and it's worth remembering that the Dalhassan, this was a celebrated, a celebrated, it's a horrible word, but this was a, this was already a case that was a cos-seleb that in that conservative MAGA id, it's in there, it's in the lizard brain, people will remember it. And I think for for Hegs, that this opportunistically is a great talking point, particularly if he gets fired. If he doesn't, it's still great as a talking point.

among that group. And, you know, I think I can't see it as anything other than absolutely barbaric. And I kind of feel like it's hard to imagine that many right-minded people, right-thinking people would not take that view. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about an appeal to a base. Yes. And also, no one's saying that Nadal Hassan, who strangely was a psychiatrist, is a good, guy here. Do you think that Pete Hegseth's old employer, Fox News, would run the footage. If the Pentagon streams this, does the footage get run by Fox News and the other news channels, do you

think? I would say absolutely not. I think even if you are thinking this is an amazing piece of television, you are also, if you're Fox News, if you're any of these things, there is no prospect of Democrats not going after you, of people suing you, of difficulties just unwrapping and unwrapping for weeks, years to come. The one upside of this would be absolutely, we know it would get an audience. Of course it would get an audience. After that, there is only downside. There is nothing that is going to be good about it. And obviously, the, you know, the key broadcast networks of NBC, ABC, CBS have licenses, which can be, you know, standard. There are fundamental standards that can be enforced. And there's no, there's no great

word for this. What are we going to call it a pornography of death or something? There's no way that that is something that people are not going to be absolutely outraged, would be, that could even be considered to be on their screens. I think the fact, to me, the fact as they present themselves right now are that this is not going to happen and that dilemma is not going to come up, but that Pete Hexeth is going to exploit it to his own ends. I should say, by the way, that many of Pete Hegesith announcements, in fact, don't even get airtime on Fox News. There is a conspiracy theory among MAGA that he has been banned from his old network. Dan from his own network.

Well, I wonder if he was also trying to distract from his workouts. He is, I mean, I'm convinced that he wanted to be Secretary of Defence because he just wants free training, free gym time. Every time you see the man, he's sort of straining on some kind of obstacle course, trying to look as if he's super buff. And I'm like, why are you wasting our time and the military's time by running around, pushing up, and trying to do pull-ups. It's ridiculous. But he didn't look as if he was in the best of fitness this week. No.

I'm sure you'll remember, Joanna, that there was a time, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago when military training fitness was incredibly trendy and people were doing it in urban parks with former members of the military. Pete Hexeth has, as you say, he's got real ones on hand and we've got an amazing clip that shows what happened when he got a workout. out. We should have set it to the Benny Hill music. We really should. He reminds me of when my

younger son was four, he got some camouflage gear, which he put on. He got some army camouflage gear. He put it on in his bedroom and he said, can you see me? Can you see me? And he was convinced that he disappeared. Pete, we can still see you. Even if you're in camouflage gear, we can still see you. It's just, it's just remarkable. I'm a slightly. I run a runner, Joanna, I run a bit. And every time I do, you know, a 5K or whatever, each time, it's like, oh God, it's getting worse for me. So I would have sympathy for Pete Hex's, but he brought that on himself. You know what? Let's have that clip again. Let's play that clip one more time. Let's play it one more time. It's Friday. We need something. We need a laugh at the end of this week. Let's see it one more time, please. Oh, it's fantastic. I've got chariots of fire in my mind. Okay, so last night, lots of debates, lots of debates.

We're recording this on a Friday morning. By the way, I just want to refer people to tomorrow's inside Trump's head, where Michael Wolf and I double down, as Donald Trump would do, on Pete Hegzert. We go into his background. Why is he like this? Also, what does Jennifer Hegsa think about them stream, live streaming and execution? I think we need to know. She's a former Fox News producer.

They met on Fox News. We should find out. Is this the two of them channeling their desperation for ratings, I wonder? Anyway, we should find out what Jennifer thinks about this. But last night was debate night. And in Georgia, it was Mike Collins versus John Ossoff, the Democratic hopeful. Well, it was Mike Collins versus John Ossoff. I think a debate is a generous term.

Other people have called it a murder. It was an extraordinary hour of television. John Ossoff, 39, we have seen him dismantled Trump appointees. Mike Collins, we've got a picture of them up on screen right now. To those who are watching it, you will be surprised to learn that Mike Collins is only 59. He looked like a man who had been torn apart, and he really was. John Ossoff is the sitting senator, which always gives you an advantage. And he came in and he started by saying, this is going to be the trial of Mike Collins.

And he hammered Mike Collins over what is an absolutely extraordinary track record that Mike Collins has of proximity to vile anti-Semitic white supremacists. And that's just his family. That's just his family. We've got to play. In fact, this is the moment to play this clip. Let's play the clip. Let's play the clip. Mike Collins is attacking your voting rights.

But that's not a surprise when you consider who Mike Collins is. This is a man who cheered on a group of young men who were mocking a black woman on a college campus with monkey sounds. If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a Billy Club. I mean, first of all, who's heard the term Billy Club, except in history of classes. It's such a great, such a great use of it. And to mention John Lewis in Georgia, you know, this is, the reference is so perfect, so emotionally resonant.

And the problem is that Mike Collins, this isn't a wild accusation. This is based on reality. John Collins' son-in-law is a white supremacist. John Collins' son-in-law tweeted a vile meme is one thing to call it, which was anti-Semitic, and said, oh yeah, my wife, my wife made it for me. Mike Collins has a selection of campaign volunteers and workers who, Arlo Rezbozito, revealed this week, have been associated with former members of a explicit. white nationalist group, that white nationalist group had been set up by a guy who said,

I'm a fifth generation member of the KKK. Mike Collins has never been in a position before like this where John Ossov went after him and went after him and went after him. And at one point, the moderator started to ask the questions as well. And I said, what do you tell your daughter and what do you say at the family dinner table about these white national, these white national links. And his response was to say, that's my family, which is not the response you want to hear. Why do you think he agreed to this? Because we know that John Ossoff has emerged over the last year in particular as, I mean, your word was dismantle. I think of him almost as a, I mean, it's as if he's filleting a fish. When he confronted Pete Heggseth in one of the hearings when

Hegeseth was asking for 1.5 trillion. He brilliantly attacked Jay Clayton. He's been put in charge of national security, Donald Trump's choice for national security. And when Clayton wouldn't say that Trump had lost the 2020 election, Ossov gave it a beat. And then he said, isn't this humiliating for you that you can't say it? Isn't it humiliating? And Clayton just sat there like a fish, gaping out of water.

I'm mixing my metaphors there because I'm thinking that basically John Ossoff stripped Clayton of a backbone. And of course, now Clayton has just been put in to run AI. Yes, super intelligence. Yeah, national security. We know thanks to John Ossoff, there's one thing he doesn't have is super intelligence. He looks like a fat, sweaty old man. And this debate last night was my... Mike Collins, it was absolutely, it was forensic, it was clinical. Why on earth did Mike Collins turn up?

Well, the simple reality is Mike Collins is down, on average in the polls at the moment. He is down nine points to John Ossoff. Now, to put that in perspective, John Ossoff won in a runoff by just 45,000 votes. It was a tiny sliver of victory. And in six years, he has turned that from being somebody who had to go to runoff against a deeply flawed candidate, David Perdue, a man who'd been caught red-handed trading stocks during COVID. He turned that round into this, you know, astonishing lead. And what, for a time we thought of as, you know, a deeply Republican state in Georgia, clearly recently become a bit purple.

But he's turned that into this extraordinary lead. If you're Mike Collins, your only chance of any, you know, any takedown of John Ossoff would be to have a debate. But you have to be intellectually prepared and you have to not have more baggage than, I don't know, JFK arrivals. Yeah, I mean, it was also interesting because, as we know, because of John Ossoff's filleting at, with Jay Clayton and with Pete Heggseth, he's really emerged as a democratic, I guess you could say, darling. We've seen clips of him and he's done short bursts in select committee hearings when you've only got five minutes for questions. Here he was exposed for an hour and he totally commanded the stage. He's up against a weak opponent. However, Mike Collins is not someone that really brings very much to the table.

He also looked like he was gasping for oxygen and as you say, he's 59 years old and he'd aged by the time of the hour. was over. So I think there will be a lot of sort of, you know, huge size of relief about John Ossoff that he appears to have really what it takes to go the distance should he become a candidate in 2028. Oh, there's no doubt that this debate sets him up if he wants to run in 2008. It sets up this, that Georgia, if the Republicans had planned to keep spending money in Georgia, I think it's very unlikely that they would do anything other than. than pull it out now and move it to places where they need to shore up a struggling incumbent or a struggling candidate like in South Carolina. This was no doubt about it the strongest.

And also, you know, it wasn't just that it lasted an hour. The clips of it this morning are huge on social media because John Ossoff is such a good orator that he speaks at a cadence that appears to be perfect for Instagram, for Facebook, for Twitter, for social media. And that, of course, will only grow momentum for him. But he was not the only person, of course, you just said Joanna, debating last night. In fact, it was Battleground State after Battleground State. So let's move to Michigan, where Abdul Al-Sayed was up against another Mike, this time Mike Rogers. Exactly right. He doesn't want to talk about it. $2.7 million in Florida, my guy. Yeah, I'll talk about. You know what? Did you sell your yachts?

I never owned a yacht in Florida, brother. Oh, really? What was your yacht? You had two of them. Let me tell you this one thing. Two yacht, Mike. Two yacht, Mike. I mean...

That was a good... That was a good in there, Al-Saiad. He's also, again, extremely good for social media. This younger generation of politician coming up now who understand that the audience is not just in the debate room or on the television that's broadcasting it, it's out there on social media. Well, you know, Abdul Salida is 41.

Mike Rogers, and again, I have to say, there seems to be a pattern here. Mike Rogers is only 63. He doesn't look great. He also aged in the hour that he was facing Abdul Elfnay. I think this was quite a lot. And this was a much closer debate. And this race is much closer. While Ossov is, you know, somewhere around between seven and nine points on average

ahead of my car. Collins, the polls in Michigan are putting El-Said ahead by maybe a point, maybe two points on average. There are some that are showing him not head at all. There are no polls in Georgia that are don't say Osov is going to win. In Michigan, this is a real battleground, a real battleground state. And El-Said has been a controversial and at times troublesome candidate for the Democrats. Those issues came up again last night.

He was asked about Israel and he was asked about Iran. how he handled himself on that stage, he was faster, he was younger, he was punchier. I think anybody watching this would say it was a punch up, it was a fight, it was a brawl, it kind of lacked any substance. The Ossoff one was a prosecution of a flawed candidate, but Ossov got lots of lots of detail in about what he would do, about the flaws of Trump's economy, about the difficulties that people feel. And in Michigan, those things when they got mentioned were much more in the context of two guys having a fight. So I think there's no doubt that the takeaway, the winner of this battle

was Abdul El-Said. He looked sharper. And the question there is, does he convince the people that were unwilling, were reluctant to vote for him? And that's much harder to tell. And fair to point out that Mike Rogers was a popular congressman, although he fled to Florida at the moment. His congressional duties were finished. He did. He bought a house for $1.6 million. And, well, he'd claimed he didn't have any yachts down there, but it did have a boat lift. I don't know what you have a boat lift for if you don't have a yacht. Who knows? But the interesting thing about Mike Rogers was a prominent Michigan politician for a lot of time. And this is an election in which it's pretty clear. that being a prominent politician may actually run against you. He had thought,

and to some extent probably not wrongly in terms of what has happened in the past, that having had a lot of exposure to the people of Michigan over a long time would be a good thing. Abdul Al-Said has been able to put a lot of that round his neck. He raised issues from Mike Collins' has passed, including privacy and surveillance. Mike Collins chaired the House Intelligence Committee in the late 2010s, and there's a notorious moment in which warrantless surveillance that was being done by the Bush administration is raised, and he says, well, if you don't know your privacy has been breached, then that's not a problem. Now, that quote has been around for, you know, multiple years, but El Saeed was able to situate it with this outcry, which is a

particularly strong in Michigan and a few other states about flock cameras. People feel that they are being spied on, and Abdul Saeed was able to tie that to his record. So having this record, you would have thought in the past would be a strength. He'd been on TV. People knew he was a congressman. People would say, oh, yeah, I trust that guy. And instead, Abdul Saeed was able to prosecute his record, impeach him, as it were, as a candidate by pointing to what he'd said in the past. And that's a pattern that we have seen across the country that people quite clearly are responding to an idea of change. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes.

A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings. The end of jobs or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. So we've got John Ossoff, a democratic darling. We've got El-Sayed, who's been more problematic for the Democratic Party, but is emerging as more of a darling and will certainly emerge as a darling if he can win Michigan. With a James Talariko, James Talariko now ahead in the polls over,

Ken Paxton. Ken Paxton, of course, Donald Trump's candidate. He put him in there over the right wing, John Cornyn because John Cornyn had displeased him. Ken Paxton, possibly the worst candidate currently running. Even his own party impeached him when he was Attorney General of Texas. But James Tullerico has been missing in action for the last few days. What's happened to him? James Tayloricoe, last seen in public or in person on September the 28th. He came to New York to do a fundraiser. These candidates come to New York all the time. There's a load of billionaires that are right around here and they are willing to give money.

There's much more money available in New York than elsewhere. So people come here. And that's when he was last seen. After he got back, he went to urgent care. His campaign have said. And he has the flu. and he has not been seen since. Now, this is problematic, right?

Talarico is a very successful candidate so far. He's only 37. He's been a member of the State House. He has incredibly charismatic presence. He has an amazing amount of money that he has raised. And he's obviously up against this deeply flawed candidate, Ken Paxton, a man who, by the way, this morning, the fourth leak of a tape of him saying stupid stuff has come out.

Oh, what was this morning? So I missed it because obviously we've had a couple, not least him blaming the president and saying that the Trump of Paloosa was a disaster for him and that his numbers had gone down since Donald Trump was putting himself on the ticket. Yes, so this morning, the guy cannot stop himself being taped. This morning, he is discussing John Cornyn and saying that John Cornyn, wants him to lose and revealing, and one of his aides reveals an anecdote that John Cornyn, in fact, told somebody else, yeah, he wants Ken Paxton to lose so Republicans learn a lesson.

Now, sure, Ken Paxton, you know, wants to know this, but he doesn't want everybody in the wider world knowing that John Cornyn wants him to lose. And instead, you know, this tape is crystal clear, clearly taking an iPhone really close to. him. I don't know. Does the guy not realize he's being taped all the time? Can he not just shut up? However, we have, you know, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, the deep red, the deep blue parts of this state now have a problem that James Talarico is not expected to be seen until Sunday. So he's been out of action for 12 days. And maybe he's lost his voice. Do you think it's possible he's lost his voice? Do you think it's possible he's experiencing? enormous stress because there's a lot riding on him at this point. He can't have imagined when he embarked on this that the campaign would become quite so high profile. There's no world in which he anticipated this. This is somebody that the momentum started for him

when he went on Joe Rogan. And Joe Rogan had him on because Joe Rogan lives in Texas. that projected him into this sort of podcast world. He was incredibly fluent. He could not have expected that he'd be running against somebody so flawed. And he could not have expected the money to flow in. He couldn't have expected that Barack Obama would be on the phone to him. So yeah, that sounds incredibly stressful. They do talk a lot. I can understand that. I'm sympathetic. Talking here is giving me a sore throat. And to those in the comments who point out, I like the sound of my own voice. You're not the first. My mother beat you to it. So you can be sympathetic, but come on. You know, this is the chance to flip Texas and you vanished. What, what?

Well, let's give him, here we, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that flying to New York, he caught some sort of bug on the plane. He went to urgent care. They've said to him, take a week to just get better and then give it your all for the next two weeks before the actual midterms. Anyway, James Mellarica, we wish you a speedy recovery. We interviewed him on the Daily Beast podcast, I want to say, four or five months ago now at this point. And he actually had a sore throat when we interviewed him.

Now I'm remembering, we interviewed him in the evening there. It was after a fundraiser that he'd had. He came on. It was quite late for us. I think it was 8.30 for him in the evening. So perhaps he's just run himself ragged and he needed a bit of time to recoup. Well, I think you've been very sympathetic, Joanna. Well, let's hope it's not the plague, the plague that burst out of a text tube in Russia this week.

Thanks to and funded in part by this plague brought to you by RFK Jr. Who allowed money to go to that lab. Oh, RFK Jr. back with measles. It's just remarkable, isn't it? More cases of measles. since, I think, collectively, the mid-1990s at this point, five people have died of measles, a disease that have basically disappeared from America.

25 years ago, and it's come roaring back under the aegis of RFK Jr. Still junior, as Michael Wolf always jokes, at 73. Our final story is poor hapless Marco Rubio, who has flown to Greece to give him. His sermon on the mount, okay, okay, he was standing in front of the pantheon, not actually the mount, but he's giving his defense of Western culture. He's essentially raising his hand and saying, I am going to be running. And this is about the future of our century and it will be decided in the next decade about Western values. And I will be your proponent of Western values.

And what does he get asked about? he gets asked about the ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Gilfoyle, formerly married to Governor Newsom, formally engaged to Donald Trump Jr, and now, well, now in the pocket of Eric Dieter's. Please explain. Please explain. For those of you who haven't been following this story,

it's just, well, it's crazy. Even by Maca terms, it's crazy. What an extraordinary odyssey at Kimberly Guilfoyle you've covered some of her accomplishments. The one that we all know is that amazing moment in 2020 at the Republican National Convention, and we can play it now. Ladies and gentlemen, fighters for freedom and liberty and the American dream,

the best is yet to come. I mean, she looks so awkward doing that, doesn't she? She just looks so awkward. It's a vita, it's a Milda Mark. Because, I mean, it's just, it's amazing. And she ends on a flat note as well, which is, you know, sort of, there's probably a Greek rhetorical term for what she did. She has been made ambassador to Greece after her split from Donald Trump Jr. Some people said it was a consolation prize. Other people said slightly more darkly. It was to get her the hell away from Mar-a-Lago. Well, I think that was Donald Trump that said that. I believe. Trump was heard saying, we have to get her out of here. But the problems and challenges of being an ambassador normally are getting on with the locals,

learning the local language. None of that has been a problem for Kimberly Guilfoyle. The problem is that her former sponsor, a man who gave her hundreds of thousands of dollars, this week, Eric Dieter's has released. a cash of texts and signal messages and documents and contracts which have blown open this extraordinary scandal in which she told him how to wire $100,000 to her to pay off credit card debts without being caught. Just to be clear, this was to pay off her credit card debt as she was going through the Senate

confirmation hearings, correct? Yes, because she said her view was that these debts would stop her from being good confirmed as ambassador. So Eric Dieter's is a businessman, a former lawyer, conservative talk radio host in the greater Cincinnati suburbs. He lives in Kentucky. He has run for office in Kentucky, and he is now a man scorned. He wanted Kimberly Gilfoyle's help to boost a court case, which he has been bringing for many years on grounds of alleged medical negligence by a doctor. That doctor went to Pakistan, where he has not been extradited. He wanted the US government to extradite the guy. The doctor is, the doctor is normally defended by an insurer.

That insurer said, well, the doctor, in fact, we can't defend, we cannot, you know, get involved in this litigation because the doctor was willfully committing misconduct. We only cover, you know, non-wilful misconduct. And the insurer is ultimately owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the Warren Buffett's vast conglomerate. So this is a sort of, this story has tentacles. And this guy needed, he felt, needed help from Maga World to push this case. And this case would obviously make him rich by winning it. That's how these compensation cases work.

And what he wanted to do was to get exposure. He wanted to get in front of people like Donald Trump, Kimberly Gilfoyle apparently, you know, seemed to have helped him do that. He wanted to be on Tucker Carlson's podcast, and he said that if he got on Tucker Carlson's podcast, he would give Kimberly a million dollars. Tucker Carlson, of all people, was asked about this and said, that sounds nuts. It does. It is. So they had this arrangement before she was going to be confirmed as ambassador. They exchanged text. They exchanged signal messages. Among the messages are her telling him, please don't text. Please use signal. Signal deletes

the messages. He was screenshoting all this. He obviously knew something was up. And then, finally, she's in front of the ambassadorial, you know, in front of the Senate for her confirmation, and she is asking him for this $100,000. And he is furious because he didn't get anything. He didn't get anything that he asked for. And he went last week or the week before to Susie whilst, among others, saying, if you do not get me a meeting with the IRS and take some action on the things that I keep asking for, I'm going to publish all these, and he did. It's amazing. He also is a bit of a musician, a bit of a troubadour, and he'd written a song. He refers to himself as a Kentucky outlaw because he was struck off as a lawyer in Kentucky.

A judge decreed him as basically chaotic and anarchic. And so he's reorganized himself, I guess you could say, or recalibrated as a Kentucky outlaw. He's written a song called Kentucky Outlaw. And another request he had of Kimberly Guilford was to get the lyrics in front of MAGA musician Kid Rock because he saw Kid Rock as an Outlaw too. And Kimberly failed there. So I wonder, I mean, this is the most egregious pay-to-play story one can think of and unusual in that you've got one party just giving up all the good. So we can see the text.

We can see the text from Kimberly saying, Honey, I just need you to wire me this money. And him saying, you know, hey, my wife's going to go nuts if she sees that I've sent you $100,000. And then you have Kimberly saying, you are going to cost me my ambassador. because she knows that this is not going well for her. This story was in the Wall Street Journal, who only last week did another story about Kimberly Guilfoyle,

where it became clear that she had threatened a group of Greek ministers suggesting that America will be able to undermine the Greek government as they were trying to do in Romania, at which point the Greek energy minister, who she was meeting with, took umbrage at this and told her that actually it was the Greek people in their democracy who would decide the future of the country, not America. So she's obviously been throwing her weight around too. Yes. And ironic that she was lectured on democracy in Greece because that's where Marco Rubio went to talk about the birth of democracy. This whole story

is, it's so crazy. It's not even the only bad leak out of the embassy this week. We also learned that she has been accused of being a diva of extraordinary mistreatment of the embassy staff, that she demanded one of them get out of bed and get her ice cubes at 4 a.m. because she was partying. She had two of them demoted as drivers because she didn't like how they take a left turn. And she has been, you know, spraying champagne and shouting abuse. And it's just, it's an extraordinary. Now, I just say the United States ambassador to the Hellenic Republic, that's her official title. You could get a prize if you could name any previous ambassador.

And you would certainly get, you know, more than a prize for being able to name a scandal. This is strategically actually kind of an important country. It sits, you know, between, you know, where Europe meets Asia. it sits, it used to sit on the, you know, the boundaries of communism and capitalism. And well, and also where it meets the Middle East, right? Yes. And, you know, there are, you know, there is American, there are huge American strategic interests in Greece and stability. But all of that, for years, this has been a, you know, a very, very stable relationship that Greece has had through it some, through the American ambassador.

And now we have absolute chaos. The Democrats are going to. to be all over this. She tried to get this debt paid off before she was in front of the confirmation committee. But Jamie Raskin, who's going to be, if there is a blue wave, will be an absolutely key figure in the Democratic House, points out that the rules begin when you are nominated. So everything that she did during the period when she was nominated and when she went to, as she texts this guy at one point, Ambassador School, everything is open to scrutiny and the Democrats are obviously going to scrutinize this. And they are going to have the opportunity to get Eric Dieter's in front of them. They're going to get all his files,

clearly. I think he's probably trying to send them now. And they are going to be able to they're going to seek to open up Kimberly Guilfoyle's books. And I think very tellingly, the last 24 hours, there has been stone-called silence from Maga about Kimberly Gilfoyle. Hugh, where does this leave her boss, Marco Rubio? Marco Rubio has just been in Greece, as we said. He's made his opening gambit for his own presidential run, we're assuming, 2028. He's completely undermined by all the questions from reporters because this story is breaking and clearly timed to be as disruptive

to Marco Rubio as possible. She is his employee. She works for him. He is Secretary of State. Shouldn't he have fired her by now? Well, obvious. I mean, the obvious answer to that, Joanna, is yes. But here's Marco Rubio's problem.

He has had been stuck with a series of ambassadors who come directly from Donald J. Trump. This scandal, unbelievably, there's another ambassador involved in it. One of the things that Eric Dieter's wanted to get was access to a man called Billy Long. Billy Long was a MAGA congressman.

He was then made IRS Commissioner. And this is a point when he was IRS Commissioner, he was trying to get Kimberly Gilfoyle to get him a meeting with Billy Long. That's one of his grounds of dissatisfaction. action that Kimberly Guilford didn't pull off what he wanted. She singly failed to deliver on any of Dieter's request. It might actually be her best defence that she didn't do anything.

She just took the money. But Billy Long is now the ambassador to Iceland. So we have two people involved in this scandal. There's another scandal this morning unfolding in the Middle East with Tom Barak being accused locally of aiding a friend's business deal. They're ambassadors caught up in difficulties around the world. There's, you know, the one to Belgium put Cash Patel's girlfriend, I should say for for your, congratulations to her, Alexis Wilkins, on stage to celebrate July the 4th there.

You know, there's this crazy list of ambassadors. They are obviously not what Marco Rubio would want to have as serious and sober people pushing his view of the world. But all of them were imposed from Marilago. by Donald Trump. He can't really fire them without inviting Donald Trump to fire him. He is obviously, he went to Greece to position himself, these glorious shots, the sunset behind him, the golden light on the Acropolis, the references to Greek civilization, the linking of Greek civilization to the United States, the United States Independence and Democracy.

It was made for television, and nobody is playing it. Nobody is looking at it again. He took that camera crew in the crane, and he got asked about Kimberly Gilfoyle. He's got to be fuming, but he's pretty stuck. And also, as her boss, that's who the Democrats are going to summon in front of a committee. And I don't know. Do you fancy your chances against John Ossoff and people like that, Marco Rubio? they've going to have an absolute ton of evidence handed to them by Eric Dieter's.

And he's, you know, what's he going to do? He's going to go through the burn book against John Ossoff. What's he going to say to him? You know, this is really not a good place for Marker Rubio to be in. He clearly, you know, Marker Rubio is a major figure. I'm sure he can survive this, but it's going to be embarrassing. And why is he not fired her? Well, because he can't.

And people say that nobody's laughing at America. It's like a comedy, a new, it's a new episode of a comedy every day. Hugh, it's always, it's always a trip catching up with you. But this week, well, what a week? What a week? There's so many things we didn't discuss that I know. I can't wait for Michael Wolfe on Pete Hegseth because there is so much there. And I know you're going to be talking to Kurt Anderson as well on some.

I am. I am. So Huey will regroup next Friday all being well and I will see you back in the office on Tuesday and everybody have a wonderful holiday weekend and you know if you need to cheer yourself up rewatch those clips of John Ossoff from last night's debate or of Pete Heggseth being lapped. Or Pete Hexeth being laughed. I'm not saying I would have done any better but I'm not saying I would have done any better but I'm not running the War Department. Huey, have a great weekend. Thank you, Joanna. Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Pissarro,

and Neil Rosenhaus. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out, and we really appreciate your support. Your first Spotify ad is just a few clicks away. Launch a campaign today in minutes with Spotify Ads Manager.

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