The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump Is Melting Down Over His Unsolvable Mess

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles trace what they argue is a turning point for Donald Trump as the consequences of his biggest political bets begin to close in around him. They break down why Trump's Iran strategy has left him boxed in with no clear exit, how the war has reshaped his standing at home and abroad, and why even his closest allies may now be adding to his problems instead of solving them. They also examine the fallout from Lindsey Graham's funeral, Darlene Graham's Senate ambitions, Anthony Fauci's newly revealed diaries, RFK Jr.'s growing influence over vaccine policy, and the surprising White House tensions that expose deeper cracks inside Trump's orbit. Start your free trial today at https://shopify.com/dailybeast #ad  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There must be something we can do. What can we do? Do it. Donald Trump is the, is the Hormuz president. Hormuz hangs around his neck. The one thing that they should have forced. seen that was foreseen, he ignored. And that was the key vulnerability in this war. And it, you know, bit him in the ass. Michael. Joanna. Michael Wolfe, author of four books on Trump for anybody

knew joining us, because we tend to forget to introduce ourselves. And I'm Joanna Colt of the Daily Beast. Michael, do we have an agenda? And many other, many other books. books, which I, you know, I'm this, Trump sort of cancels out everything else, but let me stand by my other books which have nothing to do with Donald Trump. Fair, although two of them are books about Murdoch, which has a lot to do with Donald Trump. But I did not know that at the time, at least for one of them. Okay. Nor did Murdoch know that at the time.

So just before we get cracking, Michael, I want to remind people we're independent media. The reason that we can have these conversations which frequently go on. off the rails and where we both end up probably yelling at each other just as much as Donald Trump yells at his people is because we are independent. We appreciate your support. Please subscribe to The Daily Beast and you can get all sorts of tiers of membership and press the subscription button wherever you get your podcasts. So of course today, how could we avoid talking about President Zelensky and Benjamin Netanyahu in for Lindsay Graham's funeral? the yelling that's going on in the White House, Anthony Fauci up in front of Congress.

And who's more anti-vax? Here's a question for you, which we get to. Who's more anti-vax? Donald Trump or RFK Jr. And of course, is Todd Blanche going to get confirmed as Attorney General all on our agenda today? This is the beginning of, or perhaps not the beginning, but the end of the beginning of the beginning of the down. downfall of Trump? I think it's 96 days to go until the midterms. Well, yeah, I mean, I think, and this is part of, I've been trying to track this in a substact column that I'm writing called Downfall, which echoes back, shall I say, to a very, very good book about the last days of Adolf Hitler. Mm-hmm.

And a very good film. Yes. But yeah, no, and I think that there's this interesting moment that we've had. We got through this first year of Donald Trump, which was all him taking control, his, him exerting dominance, him seizing things, marching ahead in the way that we have almost never seen in. in American politics. Everyone was, to say the least, rocked back. And, you know, this new book by the New York Times authors.

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, regime change. You know, it's interesting because it takes the view, this is the most powerful presidency in the modern history of the presidency, or perhaps in the history of the presidency, or perhaps in the history of the president. And that's wrong. I mean, it is the, it's what happens with, with, sometimes with books, because they take a long time to, to, between between being completed and being published. And in that time, what we have seen is clearly Donald Trump in trouble. Donald Trump coming up against a whole, a whole list of his policy initiative.

that at the time were staggering that he was making this kind of claims, putting ice agents in the streets of American cities, but which have now come back to bite him in the ass. And I think, actually, you can probably go through the list of key Trump, second Trump administration policy initiatives and find that they all have backfired on him. Well, there were two human reminders of this at Lindsay Graham's funeral on Tuesday, President Zelensky and B.B. Netanyahu, who could not exemplify more to colossal, catastrophic mistakes that Trump has made, one backing Russia and the Ukraine-Russia war and the other, of course, taking Netanyahu's advice to bomb Iran.

Yeah, and I think that just summarizes the two most glaring instances of Trump's incompetence in managing foreign policy. And this shouldn't be surprised. I mean, what a man had hardly ever been abroad before he became the president, had shown no interest at all, has no background at all, and then went on to fire almost everybody who knew anything about foreign policy. And it has been all utterly instinctual. Actually, we had a discussion last week about his, the pillar of Trump's really intellectual view of the world. is a man by the name of Lou Dobbs.

That's right. The former CNN Financial and then Fox financial correspondent who believed in it, who led him down the tariff lane. Another rank dummy. I mean, a guy who only was whatever he thought was led by ratings, which is television ratings. And what Trump believes is also, of course, led by television ratings. But the result of that is, of course, he came in pronouncing he was going to solve the Ukraine problem overnight. Well, he did not.

But more importantly, his view of the Russian Ukraine situation was that Russia would certainly absolutely win. Remember, he said to Zelensky in the Oval Office, you hold no cards. Well, it turns out very clearly, Zelensky held all of the important cards. And now the situation is Russia at a continual disadvantage and increasing disadvantage. And Ukraine had a kind of shocking to everyone at a continual, a continual, a continual, a continual march forward. And not only that, but Ukraine has become the pivotal, the pivotal piece in understanding the whole new nature of modern warfare.

So Trump could not have gotten this more, more wrong. You know, he just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, an analytic mistake. It's just dopingness. If you've been sitting on a business idea, Shopify makes it easy to make it happen. Everything you need to start selling is included and ready from day one, including the moment your first customer is ready to pay. Shopify checkout helps more of them finish their purchase, and when they come back, their details are already saved, one tap, and they're done.

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That's Shopify.com slash Daily Beast. Once again, go to Shopify.com slash daily beast. Once again, go to Shopify.com Daily Beast. Well, and you think back to that terrible meeting in the White House where J.D. Vance leans across the sofa and sort of pins Zelensky to the chair with a sort of verbal assault on say thank you. You haven't said thank you.

And of course, now the Americans are going to the Ukrainians asking for help understanding, as you say, the new frontier of warfare, which is drones. And then we move on to obviously Bibi Netanyahu. And again, Trump's point of departure is I am the best friend Israel has ever had. And as the corollary to that is that Israel is the best friend I have ever had. And together we represent a pillar of foreign policy and a pillar of electoral policy within the Republican Party. Well, all that has fallen apart. B.B. Netanyahu is the chief reason we have gone to war in Iran in a war that was supposed to last three or four weeks and is now in its sixth month.

And also in that time, what we have seen is that the support for Israel has crumbled across, you know, almost in a bipartisan fashion. And it is a problem within the Republic, it's certainly a problem within the Democratic Party, which we should discuss because it's a key problem. But it's also a problem within the Republican Party. So these guys showing up at the White House is like, I mean, it is its own sort of white flag. The White House sending out the white flag with Netanyahu's visit. Interesting. Well, and of course, all this happening against the backdrop of Lindsay Graham's funeral. I want to draw people's attention to your substack, actually, which just dropped this morning. And the headline is Lindsay Graham in hell.

death can be a great PR move. Little more than two weeks ago, Lindsay Graham was a clown and an embarrassment for his abject sucking up to Donald Trump. Two weeks later, with the only difference being him having shuffled off this mortal coil, he's a saint. And then you go into something. We touched on that when we talked about Lindsay Graham on Saturday,

and we will come on to talk about Darlene in a moment. But what you say, you add something here, we hadn't discussed on Saturday. Lindsay Graham was playing both sides. He was hurt by the general narrative that he had become a lackey. And he wanted you to understand that he was running a much more sophisticated game than that. You want to be the last person in Trump's ear, Lindsay told me, saying the same thing that

almost everyone who talks to Trump says. But of course, that idea that he was the guy that also, along with B.B. Netanyahu, who had really encouraged Trump to bomb the hell out of Iran. And we have now footage that has surfaced in the Wall Street Journal of a documentarian that's been making a documentary about Lindsay Graham. And we've got some of the unedited footage here, which we're going to play for you. Some of you may have seen it's been on the internet this week, but it's very revelatory about both Lindsay Graham and, of course, Trump's decision to do this.

The clip we're going to play, it was shot in February as the bombing was beginning. I told the Trump this morning. Oh, he's Jack. It's the best thing I've ever done. He loves blowing stuff up. So, you know, there are a lot of people inside didn't want to do it. So I've had my challenges. But President Trump, when he gets into the zone, he lives.

listens, ask good questions, you know, no tweeting. He has done, he hadn't tweeted much at all. No drama. He's been a great wartime president. I said last night that Trump and Bibi are like Roosevelt and Churchill. I mean, they're the right two guys to confront this evil. They're like Roosevelt and Churchill, Trump's a great wartime president. I mean, it's too bad that he died and didn't get to face this document. which I hope is being put together as fast as possible by Alex Holder, the director. Mr. Holder, get on with it. But could you have a worse hostage to fortune? No, and let's just go over where we are right now in the sixth month of this war.

The no forever war is president now in a forever war. And he has been told quite explicitly. And I think that there was a recent maybe an NBC news report about this that with Trump, with Trump yelling, you know, essentially to AIDS, do something, solve this problem. What do we do? We need to do something. It's your fall because he has been told over and over again because there's nothing really left to tell him that that we have exhausted all. military solutions. A, we are running out of missiles and we will run out of missiles if this, if we keep up, if we keep up the pace, plus that there is effectively nothing left to bomb. So we have done everything an air campaign can do, that there is nowhere to go. There is nothing

more we can do except to invade to put troops on the ground, which is a, a non-starter of a strategy for Trump. That would really, that would finish him off. So therefore, we have done everything we can to wage a war against the Iranians. And it hasn't. There's nowhere else to go. And the Iranians have not only not been defeated, but they actually continue to be a robust enemy.

A robust enemy. He's stuck. He's stuck. He can't do anything. This is, I mean, he can retreat. He can admit defeat, which also he doesn't want to do. So he's yelling at people, solve the problem. There must be something we can do. What can we do?

Do it. But if he retreats and even if he claims victory and says it's all marvelous, the Iranians still control now, the Australian. of Hormuz, something they didn't even think they would be able to do. Yeah, that's the, it is the war of Hormuz. Donald Trump is the, is the, is the Hormuz president. Hormuz hangs around his neck. The one thing that they should have foreseen, that was foreseen, he ignored.

And that was the key vulnerability in this war. And it, you know, bit him in the ass. Well, I'm sure it's also going to bite Darlene Graham in the ass. On Tuesday, you said we were noting Trump's support for Darlene, who, of course, was Lindsay Graham's much younger sister. He adopted her after their parents died. She's now decided that not only does she want to represent him up until January, but she's also going to run in a proper election for his Senate seat.

Trump has endorsed her, but the people of South Carolina turn out to be independent, and they're saying not so fast. And as we noted the other day that he has endorsed her, but, you know, Donald Trump's endorsements don't necessarily stick. if the wind is blowing in the opposite direction, which it appears to be, it is very likely that he will he will retreat from this endorsement. Right. Well, and what C.J. Westfall, who is the chairman of the Dorchester County Republican Party has said, is people are going to be independently minded in this. And I don't think that Trump is the end or be all that he used to be.

So I'm pretty sure that Mr. Westfall, or Miss Westfall, I shouldn't assume it's a man, might get a call from the White House. What will technically happen is that there is within two weeks, I think, a primary, but there are quite a number of candidates. It's likely that she will probably come out on top, but not with 50%. So then there will be a runoff. And in a runoff, it is also likely that she won't prevail, that there is enough, enough annoyance with Donald Trump for stepping into this, for her presumption without any experience to run in this race. And the reason, and let's be clear about the reason why she is running,

She was appointed. Her appointment to fill out the remainder of Lindsay Graham's of her brother's term was a courtesy appointment. It happens before. There's no real logic to why it should happen except a courtesy. It's usually a wife, Lindsay Graham, who is gayed and doesn't have a wife or a husband or he was actually in the closet. So it was his sister who got the courtesy nod. And then it was Donald Trump who convinced her she should run. You know, Donald Trump gets into these enthusiasms in that little clip that we were in.

Lindsay Graham refers to it as the zone. And I think he suddenly saw this as a great story. She would be his candidate. she would be his, he would run her like he ran Lindsey Graham and this would be a feel-good story. And then the people of South Carolina, the Republicans of South Carolina said, hey, what the fuck? What about, what about us? And that's what we will see playing out in the South Carolina Republican primary. Donald Trump will be handed his something's head.

Well, and we shouldn't forget that he did an endorsement for the primary, in the primaries for the Republicans, for governor. And when it became clear that his candidate, Pam Yvette, who was the lieutenant governor, or lieutenant governor, as you guys say, wasn't going to, clearly wasn't going to win. He then co-endorsed her opponent, the attorney general Alan Wilson. So he's just floating around looking for winners. And as you said on Tuesday, for now he supports Darlene Graham. But the minute it looks like Darlene Graham may not win, and there are, I think, 13 candidates, as we're recording this, who are up against her, including the former governor, Mark Sanford,

who was a popular governor running. Trump may well either co-endorse or just forget all about it. We called the White House to see if he was planning to go down and campaign in South Carolina for Darlene Graham, and we got no response, which I suspect means he might rush down there at the last minute when he figured out who's going to likely win. But nonetheless, so. Now streaming on Disney Plus, the Hulu original series Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black, played by Emmy Rossum, on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur.

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you know, was about as good as it gets in terms of suck-upry. He couldn't have been more slagish. And then that was a double suck-upery because Rupert Murdoch, who is Sean Hannity's, boss was actually a Lindsay Graham fan, not a Donald Trump fan, but a Lindsay Graham fan, because that's an old, you know, essentially Lindsay was the last of the neocons. And actually Murdoch is among the last of the neocons. Very much among the last. How old, I mean, and of course he's outlasted Lindsay Graham by 24 years. By 24 years, that's how much older Rupert Murdoch was, right? Lindsay Graham was 71, isn't Murdoch 95?

Yes, no, I was just trying to think, he's, he's, I was thinking, oh my God, Lindsay Graham died 24 years ago and somehow, but yes, I get your meaning. You get my point. You get my point. Well, actually, we should just say, even though Sean Hannity was doing his best to lick the entire of Donald Trump as if he were an ice cream cone, Trump kept drifting off to sleep in it. And when he was doing his own eulogy for Lindsay Graham, he clearly kept forgetting whose funeral he was at, because he kept saying, that person, that person, and pointing at the

coffin as if he couldn't quite orient himself. He was drifting in and out of sleep. You could see at one point Marco Rubio looking really concerned, as Trump was sort of nodding. Then he jerked himself away because one does a little bit on a plane. You know that thing when you go to sleep on a plane and you're in a kind of sort of middle row and your head begins to drift and then you suddenly jerk up. He was doing a lot of that. But he also couldn't remember clearly who Lindsay Graham was at a certain point. And then there was the perfect tap on the coffin as he walked past. There was also another moment which I think reflected on this moment with BB and Zelensky and the White House

in which Trump pointed out that there had never been a war. that Lindsay Graham didn't like. And I think that he must have a little kind of, God, another guy who got me into this mess. So another guy who's in a mess, Anthony Fauci. Before we get, let's just spend a second on Sean Hannity because I never like to let him off the hook. Because if Lindsay Graham was among the chief sucking up pillars

to the Trump administration, Sean Hannity has got to be the chief. I mean, and this has gone on for two administrations. And a really interesting historical note that a broadcaster, theoretically, a news broadcaster, is himself one of the most important advisors to the president of the United States. Donald Trump listens,

one of the few people he actually genuinely listens to, is Sean Hannity. Why does he listen to Sean Hannity? But Sean Hannity gets ratings. Can you, for people who haven't read your book The Fool, it starts with the funeral of Roger Ailes. And I am going to get you to just recount going down to the funeral on Sean Hannity's plane. It's interesting how you've conflated several deaths here. Actually, the fall starts with an obituary. I wrote a theoretical obituary of Rupert Murdoch, who is, of course, not yet dead, but ought to be. But then also that there is the funeral of Roger Ailes,

and which I attended in 2017, it was in Palm Beach, and I flew down to this funeral on Sean Hannity's plane with Sean Hannity and a handful of other people from Fox News, including Kimberly Gilfoyle, who my wife, who was with me, pointed out, was not wearing underpants for the funeral. How do we know that she wasn't wearing? Was it a basic instinct moment, or was it? It was for my, yes, for my wife's, from where my wife sat, a basic instinct moment, yes. Wow. And remember Kimberly Guilfoyle. I, you know, we, they sent her off to,

Well, they sent her off to Greece, so we don't hear much about her. But remember those shrieks, her shrieking at the 2024 convention. The RNC, the best is yet to come, she was saying. She is one of the few ambassadorial appointments that they've managed to fill. That and, of course, Charles Kushner in Paris. The other detail I remember from the book is that Sean Hannity didn't want to give Laura Ingram. I think it was Laura Ingram, or was it Anne Colter? I always get them confused. No, no, no, no, it was Laura. It was Laura Ingram, but he didn't want to give her a lift back on his plane because she was drunk.

Stinking drunk, yes. And he kept saying, do you know how small those planes are? Somebody throws up in those bathrooms? Oh, my God. So she didn't get a ride back. She didn't get a ride back. Sorry about that, Laura. though she was very visible at the Fauci hearings. The Daily Show did a very good takedown of her because she is always complaining about people taking selfies of themselves at congressional hearings and select committees. And of course she was doing exactly the same at Anthony Fauci's hearing this week.

Did you see any of it? Yes, well, I saw. There wasn't too much to see since he wasn't answering any questions, but I did see quite a bit of people projecting, well, you could project anything onto him because he was a blank slate. He was a blank slate, but he's got hoist by his own diary, Petard. As let me rush to say we all would. Oh, for sure, and our emails and our texts. Not by his, but by ours.

Right. Do you appear in his diary? Probably not. I do not. Why do people confess, they keep diaries? Do you keep a diary? Do you keep a diary? Well, when you're a writer effectively, you do even if you don't, because you're always noting, I don't keep a formal diary, but I, but my life is an endless, endless bit of note taking.

But do you have a space where you write personal notes? What does that exactly mean a space? You mean a digital space? Well, you could write it on a digital space. You mean a little book. I, in a notebook. Every space that I have has a note that I have written to remember something, which I will in all likelihood forget anyway.

But I was reminded from this book, from mistakes to meaning, there is a very, I mean, there's such a cautionary tale in it, which is that. What is, what is mistakes? Well, from mistakes to meaning is a book written by Michael Linton and Joshua Steiner. We actually did a podcast with them earlier this year when it came out. And it's about mistakes that people make. And Josh Steiner is working for the Clintons at the time, keeps a personal diary. and having told investigators into Whitewater somewhat proudly that he keeps a diary, they immediately demand to see it.

And instead of burning it or saying he can't find it or whatever, he produces the diary, which then is used in evidence against his boss, he then goes in front of a select committee and has to deny that what he wrote in his personal diary was actually true. He said, oh, well, it was just sort of ramblings. It wasn't entirely accurate. You know, it was my first observations. And so he ends up reading about himself on the front page of the New York Times as the young, as the young Turk in the White House who's denying his own diary. And I couldn't help thinking when I read it.

Why on earth did you tell people that you'd written these personal notes? Because they are. And in fact, you know, a diary is a conversation with yourself that nobody else should see. I think Fauci's problem was he kept his diary, much of which appears very personal on government computers and things. You haven't read that book because it's not readable. I have read the book. You skimmed, you went over, you didn't read it.

Wrong. I did because I have an essay in the book about a mistake I made, which is why I like the book because it's one of those books that actually if you read it, you learn, don't put anything in email, never write a personal diary and have more children. My mistake was I should have had more children. Whatever. Just to go back, another point we have made many times, but a point always worth coming back to, because it explains so much, is that Donald Trump survives because he doesn't put things in email, because he doesn't write things down because he's indeliterate. So it is.

Is he illiterate? Because it seemed very clear that he was reading from the teleprompter at Lindsay, Graeme. Graham's funeral. I know everybody says, oh, he can't read, he can't read. But he seemed to be reading from the teleprompter, though he clearly went off at one point and said, let's face it, not everybody liked this guy, okay? Not everybody liked him, which is exactly why people like Donald Trump, because he knows that someone's written this thing for him. He's never read it before. He gets up there and he's thinking to himself, this is just sort of banal nonsense. I'm going to say the truth. Yeah, no. Well, this is an interesting question. And it's

actually a question for history. What does, I mean, the nature of Donald Trump's mind, where we, where we go so often, but the nature of his intellect, too. So does he read or does he not read? And in the early, in the first administration, in the early months, when most of the people in the White House really had little, little familiarity with Donald Trump. I mean, they hadn't worked with before. They weren't his friends. They were all just kind of recruited on the spot. And that became a question within the staff. What was his reading level? Because he didn't read. You didn't know what to give him, how much you should give him, how much you should summarize it. Nobody knew. And then the question was, maybe he doesn't know how to read or maybe he is semi-literate.

I mean, this was a significant question in how staff was to deal with Donald Trump. And there, you know, I think that the answer is, is, well, he can read. He didn't like to read. It was a hardship or a burden for him. And he would reliably, when he had text in front of him, in front of him to, in front of him to, as a speaking aid, he would depart from that because he would grow bored with reading or it would be too taxing. And the conclusion ultimately was you certainly could not trust his ability. You could not trust his level of reading comprehension. These diaries, the appearance of these

diaries is interesting and is a story in itself. So Fauci kept this diary in his, on his office computer, I suppose. In his office computer was a government computer, was part of the, was an HHS computer and it came to reside in its system. So among the lessons here is don't use computers that are tied to your own office. And I mean, this is like a lesson for everyone. If you have a job, I mean, really be careful of compartmentalizing the computers that you use. Because if you use your office computer, whatever is on it does not belong to you. Right.

And so at, at when, when RFK Jr. came, became the HHS secretary, one of the HHS secretary, one of the things that he did was, was look at everything that that Fauci had left on the office computer. Now, let's also note that RFK Jr.'s most successful book was a book about Anthony Fauci. So this was, this, the enmity here was already set up. The issue was already in place. Fauci was, was RFK's enemy, was a mega enemy, was a Republican enemy. So let's look for dirt. I mean, it's essentially, that is the modern political. formula, who's your enemy, let's look for dirt.

And what they found, you know, dirt is not exactly dirt, but it was certainly, it would certainly prove to be embarrassing. And then RFK Jr. handed this material to Senator Paul who had made, also had made Fauci one of his, his, his, um, his, um, a bet, nwar. Well, an RFK Jr., whose own diaries had been exposed and were recently this, well, they were exposed by a friend of his wife's as they were getting a divorce, late wife, and are the subjects of a biography about him that came out earlier this year, including his sex diary and the various conquests he had with the names and a numerical scale of how far he'd gotten with him.

them. Yeah. So his diary was much more, should have been much more explosive. It actually was not particularly explosive and is much more concerning, I would say, than Anthony Fauci's diary. Yeah. And Anthony Fauci's diary, it's him sort of both impressed by the fact that he's now mixing with the A-list and also finding it unnerving. He says that there's one bit, I went to a book party last night for Jonathan Carl, Jonathan Carl being the political correspondent at ABC, for Jonathan Carl's new book about Trump at Cafe Milano. I was totally swamped all night by people wanting to say hello, shake my hands and take pictures with me. I could not get away from it. Although some people may think this is great to have people treat you like Elvis Presley, but it was really very unnerving.

So this is being used. Let's just analyze this, because this is. being used as to highlight, and I'm trying to infer there, because I don't think this is what it says, but it highlight his shallowness, highlight his, the stars in his eyes, highlights, what else do you think the meaning of this is? Well, I think they're trying to suggest that he's a star fucker, that he wants. that he wants to be the center of attention, that he's using the constant broadcasts that the president gives about COVID to make himself more famous. And he's enjoying it.

And he's getting famous. And I think the suggestion is richer off the back of the pandemic. Right. But let's now talk about what a diary does. A diary is something you write actually for yourself. So in this passage, he's basically saying to himself, you know, this is really, this is totally unique in my life. This is, you know, as I, as I narrate my own day, this is really extraordinary, this thing that has happened to me. Now, anyone who has had a brush with celebrity would write that kind of passage.

Well, anybody who's got any interior life might write that passage. And also, I mean, some people write diaries thinking that they are going to be published. So there are different kinds of... Only British people. That's absolutely true. Really? Really? It's a completely true statement because it's a form among, it's a British literary form, the diaries and people write these diaries.

And I know many, many, many Brits who have over many years written these diaries as something that they will leave to their families so that their families can then make money on them after they, after they die. And it's a perfectly. Certainly politicians do, but politicians do that here too. I mean, presidents here do that. I mean, the first thing you do when you're, when you leave the White House is, you know, go and talk to publishers about how much money can you get for your diaries. It's not only a British thing. No, no, they don't. And they write a memoir after based on their diaries.

But the actual form of publishing a diary is a British literary form, actually quite a fascinating one. But it has no currency here. You could not go to an American publisher and say, I'd like to publish my diaries. But it's just a memoir in another form. My favorite diary, of course, is Bridget Jones's diary, which is completely made up and yet more true than a lot of other diaries. But it's not just a memoir in another form is the all-important thing. And it is that interior voice that is actually really interesting in a British diary. in that revealing aspect of this, when political memoirs here are neither interesting.

And the whole point about them usually is that they are not interesting. They are just a public relations tool by any other name. And the real point of a diary on the British thing is not public relations. It's actually the kind of personal warts and all record. Okay, that's a fair point. about access to a sort of truthful interior monologue that if you have the comfort of knowing it might be published after you die gives you much more freedom. I mean, Alan Clark's diaries, possibly being the best political diaries that were published, in which he describes

another member of the cabinet as the kind of man who buys his own furniture, which, I've inherited all my furniture. I will never have to buy any furniture because I'm grand and of a different class, a particularly passive, aggressive description of a British politician. But let's go back to Anthony Fouches. I've received a lot of honours over the last year and a half from a number of prestigious organisations. Unfortunately, there are so many of these that it is very difficult to fully appreciate them

as they all seem to pile up in a very intense time frame. Another time he says that a few days ago, Julia Roberts sent me a beautiful flower arrangement, mailed her my thanks. Scott Atlas, who's a rival scientist, still causing problems with his herd immunity issue. Right. And I don't find anything at all objectionable about this.

As a matter of fact, I find it kind of notable that he's that he's aware of this. And it's good to be aware of this. And then, you know, you can argue that there is a kind of, a kind of, he understands that he is that this celebrity moment is a freak moment for him. And also against the background, I'm seeing this as here, here a guy who has labored in anonymity, bureaucratic anonymity, classic bureaucratic anonymity. And then by this freak circumstances, a worldwide pandemic, he is, he becomes the, a significant, if not the, a main voice of it for several years.

Well, the other thing that's so interesting is how celebrities obviously get hold of his number and start calling him for personal, medical attention and advice. So we've got one here. Had a great call with Barbara Stysand. I accidentally buck called her later in the evening.

And she said she was going to call me soon anyway because she wanted to know if there was any difference between the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccine. I told her none. and then a later entry, Barbara called me on my cell phone today and ask me questions about her booster shop. Another entry reads, it's always good to hear from her, which is just, you know, celebrities get themselves to the top of the pack.

But the other people who get themselves to the top of the pack are exposing a level of hypocrisy, which is breathtaking, are Stephen and Katie Miller. Katie Miller is pregnant during the pandemic and is constantly calling or texting Anthony Fauci for advice. She now says, oh, he wrote the diary because he knew it was going to be published. And I was sort of enticing him to expose the kind of man he was. I mean, she is, she is truly a rank phony in the, I mean, let's spend more. Yes, let's spend some more time on her. She is really chilling in so many respects. I mean, he writes in her diary that Katie had anxiety because she was traveling.

She was tested positive for COVID when she was only 10 weeks pregnant. And he gave both Katie Miller and Stephen Miller advice on how to stay safe as they go to visit her parents, I think. So again, the hypocrisy of it because then they promptly call for him to go to jail. Now, the, I mean, the stuff that I found most interesting is when he's talking about his relationship with Trump and his interactions with Trump. And you get to see this incredible, both Trump's flattery and Trump's inattention. And also you get that flavor of Trump just talking and talking and talking and talking. So that becomes a very, I find a very compelling firsthand, a campaign. count of the difficulties and the challenges of dealing with Donald Trump when you're

when you have real responsibilities in government and you have to deal with this guy. Well, and you're dealing with a fast-moving pandemic and people don't know what's going on in real time and there's all sorts of alternative advice being given and nobody knows what's quite right. There's another point that I think it's important to make about appearing before Congress. And number one, the thing you do not want to do that nobody wants to do is appear before Congress at any time because its sole purpose is performative. All you are there, you are a bit player, a dupe in a process. So this is not an investigative body. It's not an investigative procedure.

It's just to score. It's so whoever has called you to appear, it is for them to score points and often against you. Right. No, your only job is to sit there slightly. It has no legitimacy. It has no legitimate. And people should start to recognize this.

This is, we shouldn't. pay attention to it. It's not there for anything. It's meaningless. It is intent is to obscure the truth. As I was watching, Fouchy, I mean, we were taken back to that horrifying time during COVID when no one knew what to do. And one of the books that since COVID, I have found helpful in understanding actually what went on and why children were kept in masks two years after the pandemic had started and well into a period when everybody was getting vaccinated is this book in COVID's wake. And what it's good at explaining is the position of people like Anthony Fauci. And I was just going to read a couple of paragraphs from it. It's by two authors, Stephen Mersedo and Francis Lee.

Expertise experts from failure. Elite groups can tend towards group think and mutual reinforcement. of biases, a self-righteous sense of moral and intellectual superiority can, in turn, amplify these tendencies. Public health, scientific experts derive their legitimacy from the perception that they represent objective evidence-based and fair-minded inquiry. But experience has shown that experts cannot always be trusted. Public health experts and elite scientists in most cases, no doubt sincerely believed they were operating in the public interest. The evidence that we present here also suggest that their

actions were mixed with conflicts of interest, the desire to avoid blame, protect reputations, and preserve personal privilege and institutional power. And I think it's always worth remembering that when we look back on what was going on. That sounds like astrology to me. Anybody could say that. Of course, that's true. Duh. You know, obviously experts are often wrong. Obviously people are... Michael, we've rarely seen times when experts spoke so confidently about things they often didn't know. Experts often speak confidently. They often speak confidently because, yes, because they're experts, yes, because they've promoted.

But often because the conventional wisdom rules at a particular point in time. And that's what people adopt. this situation, in the COVID situation, a wholly unique moment. Nobody knew how to respond to this. There was no model. There was no path through this except enormous amount of alarm and worry. And so people obviously overcompensating. Did they do this too long? Did they overcompensate too much? Absolutely all true. But the idea that there was any other way, that this could have happened since it almost in every country, nobody found that way, is a kind of Sweden found the way. There was all sorts of evidence to suggest. We don't have to re-litigate

COVID here. But what the book points to is how you end up in circumstances where children wear masks from the age of two in schools after vaccines have been operating in the country for over a year. Yeah, no, no, I mean, that's obviously true. But the paragraph, I haven't read this book. I just, just the paragraph that you read in speaking and speaking as a writer, I know the mistake of writing in those kinds of generalities. And if I read that, if I read that, and if that's the early in the book, I would have put it down. It's about the conflicts of interest that people have when they are trying to give advice.

and the foolishness of letting public health officials dictate economic policy. Okay, well, I don't, I'm going to stop myself here because I haven't read this, read this, this book. I'm going to send you a copy. I'm going to send you a copy. This is where you say, I'm not going to read it. No, no, I'll read anything. I'm delighted to do it.

And then we can have a discussion about this. I will be pleased to do that. I'm going to send you a copy of the book. Summer heats up in FX's. Shards. Set in 80s, Los Angeles, the Shards follows a group of beautiful, privileged prep school students who are preyed on by The Trawler, a serial killer targeting teenagers across the city.

This fever dream of youth, beauty, sex, and mystery is a must see. FX's The Shards, streaming August 5th on Hulu on Disney Plus. Sign up now at Disneyplus.com. All right. Donald Trump and RFK. the most anti-vaccine between the two of them? You know, this is confounding because, I mean, I've been following this closely. And I hear within the White House, there's a lot of discussion has been since the campaign

about RFK Jr. With the conclusion among everybody, or I don't speak to everybody, but I speak to, you know, a number of people. There's certainly the people that I speak to that are of K Jr., He's just a nutcase. I mean, it's obvious. It's obvious.

It agrees, agrees that there is something wrong there. And they roll their eyes and they accept that they're saddled with RFK Jr. But there's no, nobody has, maintains that he is a, he is a person who you might turn to for advice and counsel. reasonable policy decisions. Well, in fact, you would turn away from him. Exactly. So, and one of the things that they have within this, within the White House, it's a worry is the anti-vax position because the anti-vax position is wildly unpopular in the United States

of America, popular among a very, very small group of Maga, Maha, whatever. partisans or that core. So they have tried in every way to send the message to RFK Jr., cool it. But suddenly, you have Donald Trump calling RFK Jr. on the carpet for not going fast enough with his anti-vax program. So what's that about? Well, because I thought earlier in the year, you had said that you saw RFK was being pulled back, he was being diminished in the public space that he might be fired because this position, especially the anti-vax position, was not playing well with the base. So what is Trump doing here?

I mean, we know that Susie Wiles has tried to close down RFK Jr. Very much, Susie Wiles has been incredibly mature, I think, might be the word about the anti, the anti-vax context, which is to say, yes, the base wants it, but the larger country does not. This is going to be electoral poison, and they really have to carefully balance that. Now, here is Trump coming along, and this happens, of course, all of the time, which is professional people making mature evaluations, analyses of a situation, and then Trump blundering in and reversing it and not understanding it and making a mess, which it feels to me like this is one of those instances.

And also Trump's perception quite likely of his own weakness in the MAGA base. So that's what this was, that's what this says to me. He has a sense that his base is, that he's in trouble with his base. Now, let me say that in the context. Well, he's probably in trouble with his base because all their children are getting measles. That Trump is, well, not for that reason, though. And so I just wanted the context, you never know why Trump is doing things because he often acts without any logic whatsoever. But if you are trying to divine some logic here, it would be that he is, that there's a lot of

weakness in the base over the war, over the fact that he has competition, whether it's Tucker Carlson or other mega heads and conspiracy theories. He's feeling pressure there. So he's reverting to something that's reliable. anti, let's go heavy on anti-vax. They like that. So his base is not worried about getting measles, even if they are getting measles. His base, we'd rather get measles than get vaxes. So that's what, that is what the logic, if there is logic, let me point that, that's a very important point here, because there may not be. But if there is, it is probably that. But are,

RFK's head must be slightly spinning over this. Well, I think RFK is used to having his head spin from whatever substances. From the brain worm, from eating raccoon penis, from his various dalliances with heroin and snorting of cocaine off a toilet seat. I think he's used to head spinning, so he's probably feeling very comfortable indeed. Todd Blanche, Todd Blanche, Michael. Todd Blanche, who may go down. And here again, you know, it seems it's, what could Trump's logic be?

So there are two things which seem to be presenting Todd Blanche with some maybe insurmountable problems, which is that the, that he has, he has told Congress, that the slush fund, the settlement that Donald Trump made with the IRS, so the settlement Donald Trump made with himself to provide an enormous amount of money to compensate people who Donald Trump feels have been wronged by essentially the Biden administration. Todd Blanche has agreed that this is unpopular and they will not go forward with this. They will dispense with this. But he will put it in writing.

And the other part of this is Trump's immunity from IRS rulings. And so clearly Donald Trump has said, no way. I mean, I'd rather you not be confirmed than me having. having to give up my IRS immunity. What's more, they, although Todd Blanche has said that they will net this idea of this compensation fund for Biden victims that they're, that, that, that, that, you know, pay no attention to that. We're, we're, we're not going to go forward with that.

And yet they are going for, they found money from another, another source of money within the government to compensate these, these victims. a Donald Trump clear Donald Trump mandate. So he is, Donald Trump is willing to do exactly the kinds of things that are going to stand in the way of Todd Blanche getting confirmed. Now, even if he's not confirmed, he will continue as the acting attorney general. So Donald Trump may feel, well, what's the difference? I get what I want. Plus, he'll still be in the job.

any way, you know, and the only thing that's being lost here is, is, is, is, um, Todd Blanche being able to say on his, on his resume that he was the attorney general. So what the hell? What I thought was interesting was that, uh, the two holdout senators, both of whom are leaving, uh, Tom Tillis from North Carolina and John Cornyn from Texas, obviously knew that asking for this reassurance in paper was going to be the thing that would sink Todd Blanche, they knew that he wasn't going to be able to get that and that they did not think his word was good enough.

Yeah, indeed. And again, Donald Trump has not helped him over this hub. Well, and yet another sign of Donald Trump on his way down, that he can't get this through and he can't get his Save America Act through. Downfall. Downfall. the downfall of Donald Trump. We're chronicling it here three times a week where we go inside his head. Michael, we've got some poems. We've got some poems. First one is from Paul Watson. Trump fears

the call of the reaper as much as a Hezbole beeper. He can't trade snake oil for his mortal coil. The devil knows he's got a keeper. Quite liked that one. Thank you, Paul. One from Dave Hildebrandt. Donald Trump was an arrogant man who couldn't adhere to a woman. plan. He waddled about until he felled out, until he found out in his death, history named him a scam. And then we've got one more from edits. There once was a don in despondence, with trials and tribulations in preponderance. A late uncle he hath who taught the unabomber math. So in tribute, he bombed at the correspondence. That's a bit of a stretch there, edits. But it was, I really liked the way you brought in the late uncle he hath, who taught the Unabomber math.

Except, of course, we know his uncle didn't teach the Unabomber. It was just one of Donald Trump's crazy stories to make himself more interesting because he doesn't think he's interesting enough. And yet he is. Anyway, thank you for your poems. Keep them coming. And we've had several people have sent in alternate covers for Communion by J.D. Vance, which we will expose on Saturday.

We can have a competition and see which one you would buy, most likely to buy at Barnes & Noble. I really like it that you put, restore the second syllable to the word poem. Americans, you know, make it a one-syllable word. Poem. Like, tome. Well, whatever. Michael, as always, good to see you.

Thank you if you have been for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast. This is where I remind you, we are, What are we? We're independent media so we can have conversations like this where Michael and I yell at each other. It's always harder to talk to you on Zoom. I want to interrupt you in person. It's so much easier.

And people point this out to us in the comments. A lot of people get fed up with us talking over each other, which we tend to do less when we're in the studio. I think actually, I think they like it. They say they don't like it. But it is, it is, it makes it. real. Michael, I'll see you on Saturday. See you on Saturday, Joanna and Ryan. 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

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