The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump Is Obsessed by Burning Evidence: Wolff

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to dig into the unresolved contradictions around Jeffrey Epstein’s death and the evidence that may have vanished with him. Wolff presses on the implausibility of both the official story and the idea of a flawless cover-up, forcing Joanna to confront how a Trump-remade DOJ and FBI might handle “inconvenient” files. Together they explore whether possibly destroyed Polaroids, buried reports, or silenced insiders could really stay hidden—and what it means if they have. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So let's just think, let's go and take a step back. One of Trump's obsessions, a weird obsession, why didn't Nixon burn the tapes, dwells on it. I mean, asking the question, what was that dummy doing? What I would have done if I were there, I would have burned those tapes. They were his tapes. Why didn't he burn them? The word burn, he repeats it again and again.

Right. So destroying evidence. So is it possible that they could destroy evidence and there would be a cover-up evidence in the Epstein files? Yeah, of course. If, for example, they'd taken the polaroids you'd seen and burned them, wouldn't there be someone who would at some point report that to someone else? You know, the nature of cover-ups, do they unravel? I mean, I would say the only thing that is distinctly different at this moment in time. is that the Justice Department has been remade. The FBI has been remade. The question is, have they remade it enough?

Michael. So I've slightly lost the plot in terms of where are we with the release of the Epstein files? Trump says he released the cracker. Mike Johnson, as we're recording, is talking, saying this is all political. What's happening and what's happening with Brocahara and Thomas Massey? as a good part of his of his caucus is voting for to do exactly that. And have been sometime these brave men going up against them and Thomas Mass. Yeah, yeah.

So I have no idea about how this has become political. It seems actually a consensus has been arrived at. But let's do this where we are because I think it is hard to know what is going on. It is hard to know what will happen. It's hard to know what has happened. Right. So where we are right now is the Democrats released a handful of emails from Jeffrey Epstein, which came from the Jeffrey Epstein estate.

The Republicans then released 20,000 of them. So we have a, you know, and they, within the White House, what their strategy, and it's the precise strategy that they've, that they have, named is we are flooding the zone. So that's an old tactic. You got bad news. Will you pile on so much news, so much distraction that nobody knows what's going on? And this is coming from the oversight committee, correct? Yes. Yeah. The Republicans on on on that's the the, the Republican side of the oversight committee, they have released the overwhelming majority of these emails. Tens of thousands, rather than a handful. And what we have seen is many other people, including myself, becoming the story rather than Donald Trump. Donald Trump is in there as a story, but as a

one among many, many, many, many people. Okay, that's where we are right now. So call that sort of phase two, and I think we should go back to phase one, because phase one has been the great delay. So these files, I mean, really since the summer, it's like, why don't we release these files? Are we going to release these files? Donald Trump said he was going to release these files. Doesn't it go back to February, though, when Pam Bondi said, I have these files on my desk. Then they gave some to the influences. So close to a year, basically. Yes. So what has been, and now we're at the point, yes, release the files. We're back to that again. Remember Trump during the campaign is, oh, yeah, sure, let's release the files. Well, and Cash Patel and Dan Bonino, who are now running the FBI. Well, they were, let's release the files. Trump was okay. Yeah. Okay. But anyway, Trump is back to, yeah, okay. So we've come full circle on that. But what has happened within that?

year. And what brings Trump now to say to be so adamant against not releasing these files, adamant, risking, you know, enormously all kinds of blowback, including blowback from his own party, including blowback that may well have fractured the MAGA base. Right. And perhaps best personified by Marjorie Taylor Green. Yeah. I mean, I'm not even sure best. I think, I think from, Throughout the MAGA side of this, there has been, you know, what are you doing? This is, this is, this is not what you said you'll be doing? You're protecting. What are you protecting? Coming to the verge, even the MAGA people, of saying, you're protecting yourself. Remember, Elon Musk came out and said Trump is in the Epstein files. And then he deleted the tweet when, you know, it became clear the White House had put pressure on him. he said, oh, I did that. I was, you know, it was a fit of peak. Right. But let's go, so the more interesting thing is, we got that. He doesn't want to release the files. Files are, we can assume,

dangerous to him. Right. He doesn't want to release them. And we know that he's in the files. And we know that he's in the files. But now we're releasing the files. So what is that? So let's just think, let's go and take a step back. One of Trump's obsessions, a weird, obsession and it is an obsession that returns again and again. It's been, he's brought it up really out of the blue in conversations with me. I understand. I know many other people. It comes up. He comes back to it always. And it is, why didn't Nixon burn the tapes? Dwells on it. I mean, asking the question, what was that dummy doing? what I would have done if I were there, I would have burned those tapes.

They were his tapes. Why didn't he burn them? The word burn, he repeats it again and again. Right. So destroying evidence. Exactly. So, you know, I mean, I don't know. We've had, he's been sitting on these tapes for, he's been sitting on this, the Epstein

files, so called, for a year. in that time he's dismantled the Justice Department and remade it as a as a group of people who have a, you know, whose clear singular priority is his protection. Well, and as we've said, the number one, two, and three at the Justice Department were all his personal lawyers. Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, Emil Beauvais. Exactly. So what have they been doing during this time to this material? material, the Epstein files. And just to be clear, in as much as one can be clear in this,

and I know we've discussed this many times before, but people still ask, what is in these files? Okay. We've just done, we've done phase two. We began with phase two. That's the, that's the, that's the flood the zone. Right. We've gone back to phase one, which is, is what has happened in the year that all of the attention has been on these files, understanding Trump's obsession with Nixon that he didn't burn the tapes. Now let's go to phase three. Okay, before we do, can I just ask one question? The Oversight Committee released a ton of emails last Thursday, but those came from the estate.

The Republicans, yes, they came. The Oversight Committee, yes. So we have to differentiate here between the estate and what the DOJ has, right? They subpoenaed the Epstein estate. They got this material. The Democrats released a handful of emails. The Republicans then released another 30,000 documents. Yes. Right. So we have those that came out of the estate, but we also have, we believe, a trove of evidence the FBI had when they arrested him. Okay. So phase three. Phase three is the, is the release. lease of the Epstein files, except we don't really know what the Epstein files are. But even before we get to that, the House will pass this, is this a bill, a request, a subpoena? I don't know. But whatever it formally is, the House will have acted in a positive way on this. Then this goes to the Senate. We don't know how the Senate will act. And it may very well. be. This is Donald Trump. It may very well be. Yes, I'm going to say, I'll release these files because

I know the Senate is not going to pass this. We don't know, but let's assume that actually the Senate does pass this. Then, phase three, what happens? Well, actually, nobody knows what happens. The United States Congress is due something, but we don't know what that something is, because we don't know what the Epstein files are. We can't, we can't, we, that's never been defined. We don't even know where they are or who is in possession. The FBI is clearly in possession of certain material. They went into his house after, after, after he was arrested in July 2019.

And they, they emptied the house, they emptied the safe. They did the same thing for his, for his, for his, properties in Florida, New Mexico. But I don't know if they had access to his property in the Virgin Islands. Right. What about Paris, this house in Paris? And then I don't know if they had access to Paris either. So just some of the outstanding questions there. But they do. But they do. don't, the FBI doesn't have all of the information. I mean, there is, there is the Southern District in New York, which has its information. And there's, there is lots of information that went to grand juries. There's always a problem with the, with releasing grand jury information. That

requires a whole other set of procedures. And also you can't release information if it's the subject of an investigation, can you? If it's an ongoing investigation. I don't know, but there are layers and layers and layers of procedural and legal questions. Then there's information that's held in the federal district in Florida. Then there's information that's held with the local Palm Beach, I mean, the state prosecution. There is, one would assume, a reams of financial information. I mean, one of the other sides of this scandal is the banking dimension of this.

Another place, by the way, where Donald Trump is vulnerable. You know, Epstein's relationship with Deutsche Bank is involved with Trump's, also questionable relationship with. Deutsche Bank. And I mean, we can continue to go on to extrapolate where there would be information about Jeffrey Epstein. How much this is specified in, I mean, we haven't seen the, what the nature of the subpoena that they are sending, nor has there been a hearing yet, as there well should be, on where is this information? What is the nature of this of this information? Then we have to get into the chain of evidence here. You know, I mean, as I have said repeatedly, I have seen pictures of Donald Trump with in Jeff, around Jeffrey Epstein's pool, with a set of women age unknown, but which would certainly be a, at the very least, hugely embarrassing to the president. Will those pictures be there?

Have they been removed? Have they been removed? Have they been burned? Yes, exactly. I mean, all of this. And then that's, okay, so that's the next step of this, having figured out what this information is or taken whatever you're given. What are you given?

And the executive branch, the Justice Department, we assume, the FBI, but other parts of the executive branch, are effectively the curators of this information. And they can kind of release this in almost any fashion they want. You know, we're looking for it. We're preparing it. We'll send over this part of the Epstein files, which just conveniently implicate everybody else but Donald Trump. Right. We're going through this part and we're going to redact. I mean, have you ever seen it when the government gets in there?

Well, it just puts a black line through absolutely everything. Yes. There's nothing there. So, and again, where does it come from? You know, are we releasing from the FBI? Are we releasing from Maine Justice? Are we releasing from federal, from the individual offices of federal prosecutors? Are we releasing from the IRS? Are we releasing from the Treasury Department? Nobody else. And let's let's assume the Epstein story is spread widely over the government of the United States, which I think is certainly true. Are we releasing material from, from, from, from the intelligence community. Good Lord.

Well, and also surely there would be a danger that if they had taken, for example, the photos and destroyed them, that people would know that. And at some point these things come out. I mean, I understand he's put loyalists into the DOJ, but it's also packed with people who are career DOJ, you know, civil servants who don't want to see. justice. Well, you know, I mean, I would say that that would have been true. So there's another question. How truly successful has Trump been in remaking the Justice Department and at least the higher ranks of the Justice Department to be entirely focused on protecting him? You know, I mean, he could have been very successful at this point. I mean, he has, he has, I mean, on a, seems like on a regular basis, they're getting rid of anyone who would question, ask any questions. The thing that I think is

different about the Epstein files is the girls that were at the center of it, and so many people feel sympathetic to the victims. I mean, rightly so. But this isn't like a white collar crime where there weren't people at the heart of it. We know there was this industrial-sized network of abuse going on. And we saw the victims outside gathered again today demanding the release of the files. And I think internally, even if you are a Trump loyalist, there are people who have tremendous sympathy and want justice for the victims. Yeah, but that's, that's, that actually plays into the Trump hand.

and they can go through this in release material that relates to Epstein's abuse of these victims and perhaps other people in their abuse of them. And we just don't release any information that implicates Donald Trump. I don't think at any point this has been about protecting Jeffrey Epstein or protecting many of the people in Jeffrey Epstein's orbit. It has been about protecting Donald Trump. does happen next, we're waiting for this thing to go to the Senate, we're waiting for the Senate to vote on it. Can he get released? If Donald Trump just says release the files. Yes, he could.

Yes, he could. But let's assume that he's not going to do that. Or let's assume that he's so, well, he seems to have already done that. He has so cleans the files at this point. Right. I mean, there is, and let's go back to burn the tapes. What Donald Trump is not going to do, create a situation in which he himself could be implicated. So we're, we're, so I don't know where this, where this gets us. Okay, so we had Andrew Loney on the Daily Beast podcast yesterday who said that he'd seen correspondence between FBI agents that said that Jeffrey Epstein had been murdered in his cell by a fellow prison inmate.

and he's now trying to find more people that can reinforce that. It all sounds so conspiratorial and so absurd at this point, and yet have you heard anything? No, and I think that's bullshit, frankly. Okay. You think he committed suicide? No, I don't know. I don't know what happened there. I've said again and again, it's implausible that he would, that he died the way they say he died.

it is also implausible that if that happened, if there were such communications from FBI people, that this would not come out. These AUSAs are assistant U.S. attorneys are, you know, they're straight hours and arrows, particularly when it comes to protecting themselves. They don't keep secrets that could come back and bite them. And that's true, I think, also for FBI agents. So I can't, that seems implausible that a cover-up would have a successful cover-up would have been staged here. But having said that, since both things seem to be untrue, but one has to be true, I don't know. So is it possible that they could destroy evidence and there would be a cover-up evidence in the Epstein files? Yeah, of course.

That seems... But your whole point is they couldn't do a cover-up of Jeffrey Epstein's death. Why would they be able to do a cover-up of destroying the evidence? If, for example, they'd taken the polaroids you'd seen and burned them, wouldn't there be someone who would at some point report that to someone else? Well, you would think, you know, the nature of cover-ups. Do they unravel? I mean, I would say the only thing that is distinctly different at this moment in time is that the Justice Department has been remade.

The FBI has been remade. They can't have remade absolutely everyone. Well, they don't. Well, it's a question. They may not have, the question is, have they remade it enough. And a toss to our sponsor. And we're back, Michael and I, inside Trump's head, talking about the Epstein files. All right. So let me ask you another question about the Justice Department, given what we heard yesterday, about the James Comey indictment.

Let's talk about Lindsey Halligan, who you have been talking about for some time. She was put in as the U.S. attorney in Virginia. I mean, I just understand. It is crazy, unprecedented, unimaginable that Lindsay Halligan, who has never practiced criminal law, has never, I think, tried a case. I mean, who has been billed as an insurance lawyer. And yet, she has been made a U.S. attorney. It's not.

But the judge overseeing the Comey indictment appears to agree with you. I mean, the judge was flabbergasted and went down all itemized the way. everything that she had done wrong. First thing, she presented. This person was never been in a, quite possibly never been in a courtroom before. To be fair, she may have watched lawyers on television. Or may not. She may know nothing about anything, which it would appear is the case. She presented this case before the grand jury and made error after error after error. I mean stupid error, unbelievable error after error after error. And basically the judge said these errors altogether and or individually mean that the case will have to,

the case can't proceed. So it gets thrown out basically. Right. In such a profound way? Profound way. But, you know, not even, she was not even in the, there was just no professional. here at any level. I think of it almost as her bringing it in a foreign language, that she doesn't speak the language of the court, she doesn't speak the language of the law, and that's actually

the language you need to speak when you're bringing a serious indictment against the former head of the FBI, a Republican. I'll say. So at any rate, this is, yeah, I mean, it would seem that they're going to throw this out. And which becomes a loss for Donald Trump. I would say it's a you know, what is a loss for Donald Trump? That always is the question because what it would be a loss, a profound loss and a major embarrassment, a humiliation for any other administration. What do you mean that he'll just ride through it? Yes, but appointing Lindsay Halligan, putting Lindsay Halligan in that job would have been just not imaginable for any other president. Well, and it doesn't bode well for the other cases that was bringing. Even the people around Trump, you know, during the campaign because she was kind of in and out and one of his hot lawyers.

But the people around Trump would go, Lindsay Allegan. Well, and it also doesn't bode well for the other cases they're bringing against Tish James and they're trying to bring against Lisa Cook. Yeah, no, I'll say. And Jack Smith. So you not only have, you have two things here which are kind of run on parallel tracks. You have the injustice and the exceptional circumstance, the intolerable circumstance of a president trying to prosecute his enemies. We're in a world of authoritarianism, a world we know. never could have imagined we would find ourselves in.

And this is not done secretly. This is done out in the open. Prosecute his direction to his Justice Department. Prosecute my enemies. And also his enemies in the Republican Party, not just Democrats. Anybody who has crossed him. Okay, so you have that. Extraordinary.

But then on the other hand, you have the rank incompetence in the way that they do it. So it's an authoritarian and an incompetent authoritarian, which might be, I don't know. Maybe that's a better thing. That's the saving grace. Yeah. Maybe that's a better thing. So Trump has moved rapidly on as we're speaking. He's preparing to entertain MBS. I mean, talk about just moving rapidly on.

And world leaders are still coming to pay homage to him. Thoughts. Okay, but let me bring. I can bring MBS back to Jeffrey Epstein. Go on. Everything comes back to Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein, Epstein. And remember, the MBS thing is, you know, I mean, we should get into this in its particular.

Saudi Arabia, MBS. Remember, MBS is the first visitor to the White House in the first administration. Then there's Khashoggi. Remember, they cut up. Washington Post correspondent. They cut up Khashoggi and. And then Jared Kushner befriended MBS and sort of excused the Khashoggi thing and then got $2 billion from the Saudis. I mean, I mean, it's very important to see the Saudis in the Persian Gulf as this bottomless source of cash, a cash that's clearly flowing into the Trump family coffers.

I mean, there's now a big Trump something or other going up in Riyadh, I think, or there's plans for this. So Jared's business, affinity partners got kicked off with a $2 billion investment. Yeah, even in the White House, people in the White House would say that Jared was wholly owned by the House of Saud. By the Crown Prince. So, you know, and I mean, I think we, again, let's just come back, come back to this, the, the connection between the Trump White House and the Persian Gulf. I mean, I think it can't be, it is key, it's vital. It can't be, can't be overestimated. But there's also an Epstein connection to MBS. Epstein was quite close to MBS. I mean, this started before when MBS was the second guy. It wasn't necessarily clear that he was going to take over.

But anyway, a significant power in the family. Epstein giving MBS financial advice. Epstein once described. to me, it was illegal to bring unaccompanied women into Saudi Arabia. It was illegal to bring unaccompanied women into Saudi Arabia. He would dress the women accompanying him as flight attendants. I mean, he thought this was a... He would dress the women he was taking into Saudi Arabia as flight attendants.

Right. So they all had to put on a... costume at the end of the trip? Exactly. And then I said to him, well, what would happen otherwise? And then I remember he went, got your head cut off. Oh, my goodness.

But at the same time, he was there, and he was talking, in the months, the year before he died, he was talking about setting up and getting himself a house in Riyadh. I mean, this was, he was, this was a close relationship with, with, with, with the Saudis. You know, I mean, he would describe MBS as a, you know, he was a video game player and, you know, and. Okay, so he was a video game player who's now at the center of the economy of the Middle East.

Exactly. And at any rate, this all comes back to. Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Is there something bigger going on here?

We know that Maga is split. over here. Trump is saying release the files, assuming I'm sure that he thinks he can flood the zone and go after the Democrats who are implicated here with their friendships. So Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, you've been gone after. I mean, anyone who had an adjacency to Jeffrey Epstein, he's deflect, deflect, deflect. Very notably, the people around him, J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, have been very, very quiet. Right. And just let me add. He's already instructed his justice Department to investigate these people who have had relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, these Democrats who've had relationships.

Are we actually in a new moment here, which could be threatening to Trump? Or is Trump still very much in control? I mean, I think you can, I think there are two ways that you have to look at this. This is a president in his second term. He cannot run again. There is in all second terms, an inflection point. things start to go south. You just can't sustain your power. Your power literally begins to fall away. You can't get things done. Bad things get done to you. The second term is never successful

and it is never good. Why would anyone run for office at this point? Why would anyone run for office? So look at it this way. There will be an inflection point. Now the question is, have we arrived at that inflection point? And I think, you know, I mean, the truth is you probably get to these inflection points not not on an appointed, at an appointed hour, but you get there on an incremental basis. And I think that we can begin to see power is falling away. Is this the beginning of the end? Well, that's the question. Or the end of the beginning.

I don't know. There's always that dilemma. But, you know, clearly the Epstein thing, what does the Epstein thing represent? It represents Donald Trump's vulnerability. And it is not just the Democrats who are using this, as Mike Johnson seemed to try to insist today. It is the Republicans who are using this to, maybe the word would be, to test his vulnerability. And once again, a word from our sponsor. And we are back deep, deep inside Trump's head. Because also in the background is the drumbeat of the massive increase in health

premiums that people are going to see by the end of the year. And I think that's really what is motivating people like Marjorie Taylor Green, as much as she sides with the victims. And I think that appears to be genuine. She has a daughter in her 20s. But this sense of how on earth are these people going to get reelected if people's insurance premiums have doubled or tripled in some cases? I mean, there's a whole economic background here that, you know, people feel that they are being gaslit by Donald Trump,

who says the economy is great, prices are going down. He's not in the grocery store. Women in particular, and I think this is MTG's point, are in the grocery store, seeing the price of beef go up, seeing the price of fresh vegetables go up, seeing the price of coffee go up by 40%. Anybody who gets a Starbucks knows coffee's gone up. I would put this in a somewhat different way. I thought you might do. I thought you might do. Which is Donald Trump has been just incredibly an astoundingly successful politician.

He runs for office and everybody, you know, goes, you know, half of the country goes into some sort of trance. But when he doesn't run, he leaves all of these other people who have tried to be him or stress their loyalty or hang on to his coattails. They get, they get screwed. So I think we're seeing. here's a man who's not going to be able to run again, and here's a party that has to begin to figure out how it is going to survive without him. And it's exactly what Max Weber talks about, the chaos after the charismatic leader leaves the stage, that everything behind him is in chaos.

So this is all part of the inflection point. It's all part of not just his, not just his failure of his policy. but the sense that he's not going to be there anymore, and you've got to pick up the pieces, and you've got to find a way forward. Marjorie Teller Green is a very good example because there is a rank opportunist, if there ever has been one. She knows which way the wind is blowing,

and her finger is out there, and it's not blowing in his direction or from him, or whatever the metaphor would be. Yeah, no, no, I think she's a very interesting. I think another analogy would be a canary in a coal mine. I'll take it. So there was one moment with Trump and the press on the plane that stuck out, which is where he called a reporter of Piggy.

Did you see that? I did. I did. You know, and... Female reporter. You know, the Democrats have always, and the liberals and the anti-Trump people have always singled out those occasions. And kind of like, see, this is what...

what he is. And then the other half of the country is going, yeah, that's what he is. He calls it like it is. Right, he says it like he sees it. Yeah. So I don't, I'm not sure what that, what that means. That was a, that was a, that was a Trump moment and a Trump moment that has, that has worked for him frequently.

So we, we would say, oh, God, he must be losing it. Why would he do that? He would do it because it works. Right. And deflects. Deflects. deflects from what she was asking him, which was about why have you called for a release of the Epstein files? And now we're talking about, you know, him being a gross guy.

Which we knew anyway. And which half of the country knows and half of the country appears to applaud. If any chance this has passed you by, I am suing the first lady because she threatened to sue me for a billion dollars. but before she could do that, I have sued her, which means that I will seek her deposition and her husband's deposition and the depositions of anyone else who can shed light on her and her husband's relationship to Jeffrey Epstein. But meanwhile, I am inviting everyone to submit the questions

that they would like to ask Melania Trump if the deposition were theirs. She will be under oath. She will have to answer. It is the opportunity of a lifetime. So submit your questions. We're here. Ask Melania.

Here's a good question from Valentina Michava. Question for Melania. Can she explain why Donald's first wife, Ivana, was buried at one of his golf clubs? That's a good question for. her. I mean, we'd be nice to have her. I was just trying to think of the answer, but of course, I don't know the answer. You don't need to know the answer. You just need to ask the horse's mouth. Exactly. So here's a question from Sheila Townsend. Can you subpoena Gillen in this case against Melania? Absolutely. Okay. And can you ask her, were you ever concerned about the age of models

you met in the company of Trump and Epstein? I think we know the answer to that question. Okay, but you can subpoena her. Yes. Right. I thought we might just also have a moment because several of you wrote in to talk about the Sherlock Holmes story that you referred to,

but we couldn't remember the name of the story, and it's Silver Blaze. I think I've got that right. Several people wrote in talking about what was interesting. The point of the story is that there was some crime that happens in the night that the dog doesn't bark. The curious incident of the dog in the night also, that musical also gets its title from that story.

Originally a book. Originally a book? A short story or an actual book? An actual book. Have you read it? I have. Okay. I felt like I should go back and read it, but now maybe I don't need to, because the world is moving on so much. Anyway, thank you for pointing that out. Several of you wrote in. It's very helpful. We didn't know what burning daylight moment, now we know,

and the dog that didn't bark. But you said you didn't think Epstein was a reader, or much of a reader. or much of a reader? Yeah, I don't. He collected books, especially if they were inscribed by the writer. But I don't necessarily think he read them. And then there was the first edition of Lolita

on his bedside in Paris. and he actually had a professed to have quite an obsession with Nabokov and was often seeking out Nabokov experts to... Do you pronounce it Nabokov? I don't know it was Nabokov. Is that an English pronunciation? I think it is, or we may have them reversed. I may be giving the English pronunciation

and you may be giving the American pronunciation. Very possible. Actually, Andrea Hodel sent in a note from a last. are saying we should get a fashion expert to analyze Melania Trump, which actually I think is a very good idea, but especially because of the hats she wears that creates the sort of physical defense around herself, as if she's erected. Aren't you starting a fashion vertical? Michael, thank you.

We are. The looker. The looker is our new fashion vertical. We're going to be talking about style, beauty, ambition, and actually how you show up in the world, because our faces are now content and our bodies of branding. I didn't mean that to give you an opportunity. No, no, but you did give me an opportunity. Inadvertently, you gave me an opportunity to talk about it.

It's really about the fact that everybody's on camera at all times at this point. And our faces have become content. Our bodies are branding. You know this from your own Michael Wolfe, NYC, Instagram. People tune in as much for your cardigans and your choice of corduroy pants and whatever's going on in your lovely house, almost as much as they do for what you have to say. So it's really looking at that and examining it

and figuring out how much plastic surgery can one have. So I'm going to have to be a guest on that too? You could be a guest on that. Would you have plastic surgery? I would not, but that's me. If you did have plastic surgery, what would you have done? You really don't need any. As I'm looking at you, your face doesn't seem to have fallen in any way.

No, I don't think I've never. considered the question. Okay. It's never have been an option. Okay. Well, I have noticed that you like getting clothes from England. Almost all of my clothes are from London. Okay, well we have a very good piece

video from Scott Galloway on when he first decided to go bald and how it was actually an erotic experience. Does he have hair? Well, he probably doesn't have hair. Well, he used to have lots of long hair and then it was beginning to thin and then he decided, okay, I'm going to shave it off.

He got high and his wife shaved it all off for him when they were in Hawaii, I think. And it became his kind of go-to look. Well, it is. You might have noticed mine, too, but I would not have done that in such a, well, I don't get high. So. Well, you must come on the looker and talk about your look because you do have a distinctive look and that would be fun. We're covering men and women. Men account for 30% of procedures now.

cosmetic procedures. I see. You know, we could get you a free hair transplant. I've never known you with hair, so I can't even imagine what that would be like. I think that's not true, but you forget these. Hair is like a building in New York when it's taken down. You can't remember what was there. When we first met, which was 25 years ago.

Did you have gray hair around the edges? No, I think I had a full head of gray hair. No, you didn't. You definitely did not. I'm sure that I'm going to get pictures. We're going to get pictures. Anyway, check it out, the looker. Oh, Michael.

We'll be back on Thursday to discuss more. And who knows what will have been released by then? And we're still plowing through the first 26,000 emails that came up. Does this mean the estate has given everything over now? I assume. I mean, there's nothing in it for the estate. the estate has nothing to protect here. It's like just, you know.

Take them off our hands? Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, we'll be back on Thursday to figure out what, if anything else, has been released and to give you a progress report. And anything else you want to say? It's good for me. Okay.

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