The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump 'Reamed Out' Hegseth For Parade Fiasco

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Trump biographer Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to discuss how the president's $45 million attempt at creating a "menacing" military parade backfired into a yawning, low-budget cosplay. The author of 'All or Nothing' reveals the real reason Trump was furious at the troops, what Pete Hegseth got wrong, and why the U.S. military has moved on while Trump is still stuck in 1965. Coles and Wolff explore how Israel's strike on Iran played out while Trump sat bored on a D.C. bleacher—and why the war made him look weak, used, and irrelevant.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So fearful Donald Trump, the monster that we are all afraid of, is a, to mix a metaphor, paper tiger. I'm Joanna Coles, chief content officer of The Daily Beast, and you are listening to watching, possibly ironing your clothes to, or walking your dog to the Daily Beast podcast. Regular viewers will recognize that I am not in my usual habitat. Instead, I'm staying at the Carlton Hotel in the south of France in Cannes for the Cannes, creative festival, which celebrates marketing, advertising and creativity. So that's why I'm not in our usual studio, but I am fixed on all things America, not least, of course, Donald Trump's birthday parade, who better to unpack it with than our regular guest, who many of you love, and incredible comments from our last

podcast together, the man who lives in Donald Trump's head, Michael Wolf. Michael, let's waste no more time. Let's get into it. Okay, Michael, so much to discuss, as always. And you're in Cannes. I'm in Cannes. Wish I were there. No, you don't wish you were here. I do, I do.

I have been many times, and it's, you know, and it's the south of France. It's the south of France. Even with people you detest, which are most of the people who go to Can Lions, it is nevertheless still the south of France. Of course, all anybody is talking. about here is Donald Trump and the significance of Donald Trump. And I need to make a quick apology following all the comments we got from our last podcast because I misidentified Senator Padilla. I called him, or Padilla, as you call him, I called him Anthony instead of Alex. And actually, I didn't realize that he was the senior senator from California. For some

reason I thought Adam Schiff was, because Adam Schiff has been on the landscape for such a long time. I mean, but they're both new. Well, exactly. They're both new and relatively new in their Senator Earls. And is it Padilla or Padilla? You know, technically it's Padilla, but we're in America. People seem to refer to him as Padilla. Anyway, Senator Padilla, if you're listening, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were the senior senator from California. And I also fell guilty, actually, to hyperbole about the state of chaos, as I was referring to it, in California, which many people pointed out, it's just not true. It's a small area of L.A. that's in lockdown, which makes it even more egregious that Donald Trump has called in the National Guard over the head of Gavin Newsom,

who we spoke to last week. Anyway, I wanted to address those comments because many of you wrote in, and you're perfectly, you're perfectly right. So let's get that out of the way. And then we have another very nice comment about your bookshelf, which I'm going to come to right at the end of this podcast. But obviously, this weekend, it was the birthday parade. And I am unbelievably curious to find out what you thought of it. And then, as importantly, what the man whose birthday parade it was thought of it too, none other than our own president, Donald Trump. What are you hearing?

What are people saying? You know, it's really important to understand. when we think about Donald Trump, how much time he spends complaining. I mean, nothing makes the man happy. And spending $45 million on a birthday celebration appears not to have made him happy either. He's kind of pissed off.

I mean, he's pissed off at the soldiers. I mean, he's accusing them of hamming it up. And by that he seems to mean that they were having a good time, that they were waving, that they were, that they were enjoying themselves and showing a convivial face rather than a military face. Interesting. And he kind of reamed out Hegsteth for this. Apparently, there was a phone call, and he said to Hegis, you know, the tone was all wrong.

Why was the tone wrong? Why, why, what, what, what, what, um, uh, who staged this? There was the tone problem. You know, Trump, he keeps repeating himself. So that was the word on that, on that phone call was tone. I would interpret that he, you know, he wanted something menacing, I suppose, you know, something military like, something like, um, you know, we're, we're, this is, this is the most staggering force in the world and maybe it will come for you. Instead of, you know, I think it appeared to a lot of people that this was, that there was a kind of festive air. Everybody was actually celebrating, celebrating something, you know, the 250 years of the U.S. military,

probably celebrating that more than Donald Trump's birthday. But it didn't send the message that he apparently wanted, which is that he was the commander-in-chief of this menacing enterprise. Well, certainly having soldiers dressed up in costumes from 200 years ago would not send a menacing vibe to an enemy if they were looking at this. I thought it had the vibes of a sort of trade show, a trade show for the army. that the Clints that they were sitting on, the sort of theater that the VIPs were sitting on,

that Donald Trump was sitting on with Nexta Hagsas and Melania, it looked like it had been put up overnight, and it literally looked like something from a trade show. Yeah, no, no, I mean, it was not, none of this was sending the message that he seems to have wanted to send, which is that this was, which was a threat. I think that's what he wanted. And he got the opposite of that.

He got a kind of, you know, a kind of a Hamish gathering. Right. Which, by the way, no one went to. The other thing. So he's insisted, you know, put it out. He said 250,000 people. Stephen Chang put that out. Yeah, but that was from Trump.

Put it out, 250,000. That is it, 250,000. He kept saying this, you know, to everybody else. saying but, but 250,000. When, in fact, it was, I mean, the people I know there who were there said, tops, tops, maybe 40,000 and probably more like 20,000. You could see the empty bleachers. You could see as the drones pulled back lots of empty lawn.

Yeah, no, I mean, nobody was, I mean, who would go? You know, I mean, let's, I mean, it's hard to get anybody a draw to any parade. It's a parade. I can imagine that, I mean, as a parent of two boys, when they were little, I could imagine having taken them to that because they would be intrigued by watching the men march by. I mean, the thing I found most striking, and I admit I come from a land where I'm not sure Britain could do very much militarily now, but we sure can put on a good parade. And so the one thing that you can see is all the soldiers marching in time. And the thing I found really striking was that lots of them of the brigades in Camo literally weren't in step with each other. I think we're very bad at parades.

I think parades are like one of those old-fashioned entertainment things like circuses. I mean, you know, we've, the television has basically put those things out of business a long time ago. But this was a producer, my understanding is that Pete Hegseth knew who put the thing together. I mean, I don't know why Mark Benet wasn't involved in putting something together that felt more professional. Yeah, well, it's not even the professional thing that I think is most interesting, that somehow they didn't get the memo from Trump that he wanted threat and menace. And they got the opposite of that. Nice. They got nice.

The military is a nice military friendly. We're going to throw sweeps into the crowd, which is, of course, what they do. And do you think that was a deliberate misinterpretation of his message? Was this actually quite a smart, subversive take on his message? Or do you think it was just accidental, but they really didn't understand? No, I think it probably was subversive or better heads prevailed on. on this as a branding exercise. You know, I mean, Trump's thing, I think,

is to think of the military like we thought of it in the 1950s and 60s when Russia was the enemy and it was a Cold War enterprise, and it was sort of Dr. Strange, Lovian, and we were always, you know, the guys in the military were always ready to buy. bomb someone back into the Stone Age. And it was a threatening force then, which I think was very difficult, and many politicians found it very difficult to contain. But the military has changed

radically since then. I mean, it's now a sort of, you know, very, very PR-aware, HR-aware, kind of, you know, they bring in McKinsey consultants all the time. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a much more corporate, I mean, for better or worse, corporate image conscious and DEI, basically, complex organization. And I think that's what we saw out there yesterday. And that's not what Trump wanted to see. I don't think he understands that's what the military has become. Although, you know, in every situation in which he's faced with the military, the top brass,

he's always complaining about it. They're always pulling out PowerPoints to show him. And he's always leaving the room because he can't watch a PowerPoint. Right. Well, and you think, you know, obviously the future of military is much more technical. It's much more cyber. It's relying on drones. I mean, it was hard not to listen to that tank creaking in the silence down the street because nobody was cheering that it was like watching fax machines roll by in the age of the iPhone. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that it is, I mean, he is, again, you know, Trump is located somewhere in the past. You know, I've often put it as 1965, all of his references. And I think this, again, he expected to see that kind of military. Instead, he got, you know, the modern, the modern military, a complex organization with all kinds of. of constituencies, very aware of how it is perceived, of how it wants to be perceived. Yeah, well, I loved the robot dog. But what I was struck by was, he watching him watching the parade and he looked bored.

I mean, this is a long time for Donald Trump to sit still other than when he was jumping up and saluting. Melania looked bored. Marco Rubio was yawning. And Pete Hagezeth just looked extremely anxious to be sitting there next to the president in charge of this parade. Well, again, it's parades. Americans don't watch parades. Parades are actually boring. They're repetitive. They go on forever and ever. There really is no narrative. It's all old-fashioned. There's no narrative. It reminds me, actually, of I think, the second time Obama, Obama's second. second inauguration, he had to sit there watching all these little bands from small

town America and he was wildly chewing gum to keep himself, I think, sort of focused. But one was also struck that they're sitting there watching this parade, as you say, with no narrative whatsoever, while the narrative playing out in the Middle East is Israel and Iran going at it, an actual warfare going on while Trump is cosplaying. being commander-in-chief. It goes further than that. This war is taking place, and we are irrelevant to it. We were not concerned, even if Trump is rushing forward to kind of try to claim some kind of

influence in this thing, he had no influence. And in fact, it was basically against him. Basically, he got played. they used him, the Israelis appear to have used him as cover. He's carrying on a negotiation, which was seeming to go nowhere. And the theory was that that would go, that Israel would not attack until after that gambit was played out. And of course, they did attack, shocking no one so much as Donald Trump.

Oh, my goodness. So he's now, it feels like trying to muscle himself into relevancy by claiming that he stopped them from assassinating Iran's leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Is that, is that likely to be true, do we think? No, I think it's completely not. And I think they will, if they can, they will assassinate him. So what is Donald Trump now doing? He's gone to the G7. We're recording this on a Monday. It will air on a Tuesday. What are his advisors, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State's advisors, doing at this moment? Well, let's use the word advisors loosely around Donald Trump because, A, he doesn't take advice. And be, the people who are there to theoretically offer advice don't,

you know, are kind of dummies themselves. They have no advice really to offer. And this would be his golf buddy who he talked about in the last podcast, Steve Wittkoff, supposedly the special envoy to the Middle East. Yes. I mean, I think there are other people hovering around there too, trying to, trying to get close. You know, they all, they all kind of form a little scrum around Donald Trump because proximity literally you can measure it in inches is the currency there.

Michael, we just need to stop for some messages. We'll come right back. And we're back, still talking about the birthday parade. I think, and I think what the world is seeing, and you can see a transformation that has gone on here in the first early months of this new administration, everybody seemed kind of, the world seemed kind of stricken. What was he going to do?

What moves was he going to make? What ways would he destabilize the world order? And I think now people are starting to say, well, he can't do it because he's not going to do anything because he knows nothing. I mean, it's very hard to make moves in a complex situation when you don't have the details, the facts you don't really have command of what's going on on the ground. And I think more and more, this becomes the critique, a potent critique and an accurate critique of the Trump administration. They're completely incompetent. They just know nothing.

They bring no facility to think things through, to make a plan, to have a strategy. To have a strategy. You know, so the tariffs, you know, he can proclaim tariffs without evidently realizing that that would have a profound effect on the world's economy, a negative effect, which would come back and bite him in the ass. So therefore, okay, yes, to take those tariffs. Tariffs today, no tariffs tomorrow. Now we're just dealing with the same thing on this order of this plan of mass deportations. He appears not to have been aware that this would, that this would include, overwhelmingly include people in the agricultural sector and in hotels and restaurants, all of which he need, you know, are a substantial part of his, of his coalition and a substantial part of the U.S. economy.

And he figured this out apparently yesterday. Rowlands, the Agriculture Minister, is supposed to have called him and said, you need to stop the ice rates on farms because 60% of labourers are not turning up. Fruit is going unpicked and rotting in the fields. And so he then announced that he was sort of putting a halt on farm workers, hotel workers and restaurant workers. And clearly, I'm sure, some of his donors who own hotel. and own restaurants, were saying, what are you doing? And he must know, too, as someone that's

run construction, that's run restaurants and hotels that immigrants make up a large part of the taxpaying workforce. Well, he clearly did not know that or he clearly did not think that through, which is even more disturbing. So even stuff that he knows or should know, he doesn't appear to know. He's making his sort of statements out here and there's no connection to real life whatsoever, again, which goes back to what you're always saying. He's playing a president on television. This is a television show with no actual consequences in real life. And this is, so it's very important and very interesting to get to that point where I think lots of people are starting to realize this. So fearful, don't.

Donald Trump, this, this, this, you know, monster that we are all afraid of is a, to mix a metaphor, paper tiger. Right. There is no follow through because there can't be a follow through. If you haven't, if you have, if you have, if you don't have a plan other than the announcement of a plan, right. You're kind of screwed. I mean, what are you, what are you going to do when the plan kicks in and, and it starts to backfire? on you, which all of these things do. And by the way, that has also happened clearly in

in a full range of his foreign policy actions. Nothing happens. So we have Ken Griffin, big supporter of Donald Trump, saying at the time of the terrorist, America has lost 20% of its value, which seems an astonishing legacy for Trump. So he's now redire erected ice into the democratic cities, he says, partly punitive because, of course, we haven't even spoken about the King's protests. And I know you went on your own protests with your children in East Hampton, which I want to come to next. And now we're hearing that ice is actually running out of cash, that they can't just keep on supporting these sort of mass roundups of people. So will this stop inevitably too?

Yes, another instance of not thinking through this. Oh, we're going to do this and it costs a lot of money. Right. I mean, all of this, the idea of mass deportations is just a thing. I mean, it's like, you know, building a wall. Right. Which we haven't done and not are we and we are not going to do. It is a very complex, expensive, complex undertaking. with a lot of cause and effect that you have to think through because it's going to, it's going to impact so many other things that are vital to people. And, you know, there was a, there was a piece, and I should remember where, and I don't remember, you know, basically saying that a great many people in the, in the country approved of

of the things that Donald Trump says he wants to do, but a great many people, even more, found, found, were troubled by his methods. I mean, so you have these, this major, this major clash. It's, it's, this is kind of, kind of reality and illusion. He creates the illusion. the reality is something that A, doesn't work, that people don't like, and that C has to be reversed. Right. So why does this leave Stephen Miller in all this? Because Stephen Miller is sort of saying, we need to deport 3,000 people an hour. He's laying down quotas. He's the one that was supposed to be saying, you know, in Trump one, we didn't really know what was happening. We didn't know how to get ready for it.

We didn't know the system. We've come back. We know the system. Now we're going to get things done. And Stephen Miller appears to be the engine behind the ice strategy. It's one of the things that happens. And we've talked about this before. Trump, who is lazy, lets other people be in charge until they are perceived as being in charge.

And then they are no longer. in charge. So Stephen Miller is making a mess of this and he will at some point fall foul of Trump and be dispatched. A bit like Elon at Doe. Yes. And also that that happened in the first administration. You know, remember in the early days of Trump won, there were, you know, the Muslim bans and, you know, and there were pandemonium at the airport. That was, Steve. And that had to be reversed. That was Bannon, too, Bannon and Miller. And that was immediately, shortly thereafter, reversed. You remember that the instance of babies being snatched from their mother's arms, again, Stephen Miller. And that's, that's, that's, that caused, you know,

one person in the, in the, in the, in the inner circle, who I know to describe this as Stephen's masturbatory fantasies of immigration and deportation. So there is an awareness that Stephen Miller is a problem. And even Trump, Trump calls him Weird Stephen. Weird Stephen. Because he is weird, by the way. I mean, you can't spend a moment with him and not saying, oh, something off here. And what is that to do with?

what he doesn't keep eye contact. He looks very gray, but that's not enough to say he's weird. What constitutes the weirdness other than wanting to deport every immigrant? Yeah, he doesn't make eye contact. And then he talks to you in this, in this monotone voice. And it feels very wreaty. You know, the engine keeps the engine of his voice keeps going. And you kind of step back. Okay. Well, that's definitely not a cell for. Stephen Miller. But so, okay, so watch this space on Stephen Miller as ICE all starts that, as everything about ICE and the raids now annoys a lot of Republicans who have supported Trump up until now. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he has to, you know, and even when this, when the administration began, and another person close to Trump, who I, who, you know, I said, okay, what's going to happen here with this? And then, and it was, this person was very straight.

forward. Well, they'll try to deport everybody until the headlines get too bad and then we'll move on to something else. So where are Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Tucker Carlson now in terms of Trump's

you know, which one does Trump currently favor? I know Steve Bannon is out to the left, but he's frantically trying to get in again to fill the gap that Elon has left. And then you've got Tucker Carlson talking about the war.

That's the the crisis, I think, that's going to occur basically this week. Trump has to decide, I mean, there's going to be, there's, there is already enormous pressure around Trump for to, for the U.S. to give Israel its, it's, you know, deep penetration bunker bombs. And a lot of support for that in the Republican leadership. a lot of support to go in behind, behind Israel in this, in this, you know, death battle, it seems, with Iran. But that... And hold on. The bunker bombs are the bombs that are supposed to take out the military sites, the nuclear sites that are buried deep within the hills. Exactly, exactly. And only that we have. Israel doesn't have that capability, apparently.

So that is, but this is deeply, deeply, deeply, opposed by the core MAGA faction, which would, you know, I think is most publicly represented by Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. And they don't want any, they don't want any military involvement or they don't want us to give the bombs or they don't want it. Yeah, well, I think they want nothing. This is, you know, it's a, this is a, you know, they are classic, classic isolationists.

You know, and they're the America First. And then Trump came out and said, said this was, you know, another Trumpian thing. Well, how do they know what American First is? Because I made up the term. Right. I saw that in the Atlantic, right? That if I made up America First, so I must know what America First means.

I define it. I get to define it. Yes. And just to obviously make the point, he did not make up America First, that America first was a very potent right-wing conservative movement before the Second World War. Right, but he went no bat, of course. So he's, he, so Maga doesn't want any involvement. Do we have any sense of, and again, I can't hardly believe I'm asking this question, of what Trump

actually thinks would be the right thing to do here? I mean, he thought the right thing to do right up until, until this invasion began, he thought he would be able to squeeze the Iranians for a deal. And then everybody would say, oh, he got a deal. I mean, this is the thing, which he is essentially promising around the world. I'm going to solve all the problems because I'm going to make a deal. He has yet to make a deal. Right. And all the deals he promised, none of which have come true. And does he have a sense of this?

Is he feeling humiliated at all by, you know, obviously he promised he could solve the Ukraine and Russia within a day? He said within 24 hours, I could get that done. Does he have any sense whatsoever of his empty bragging and boasting? Are you really asking this question? If he did have that sense, he would not be Donald Trump. So the secret of being Donald Trump is to have a, a. A, no self-awareness. And B, always to assume it is someone else's fault.

Always, 100% of the time. He will always blame somebody else. He will never accept blame, never accept fault, never accept failure. All right. So we've got a big week ahead of us, which obviously we will be coming back to you to discuss. I want to read a comment that someone left, which I thought. was very well observed. This is by someone called Adventure Halley

866. 8366. I love when you have Michael on, but I'm always so troubled by his bookcase. Norman Mailer in five different locations and actually as you're sitting there, I can see a Norman Mailer right behind you. Bernard, oh, Norman Mailer in five

different locations like sprinkles on a cake. Bernard Malamut in three different locations, a lovely addition of 100 years of solitude. It's obvious Michael is a voracious. reader. I wish you would do a video just on that alone. Well, I would, one of the problems with maintaining a library is keeping books in place. So they get scattered. They did begin. And at various points, they are actually alphabetized

correctly. But. Well, you add new editions, new versions, new books, and then it's all thing. But if people, you and Victoria, your wife, have sort of launched a new Instagram page, which I feel we should just at least mention for people who are intrigued by the different backgrounds that we interview you in, in your lovely house in the Hountains. What it's called our, so my wife, Victoria, who does in, and when I do, I do this Instagram account and she does all, all of the, she does basically everything. The set dress. She does the step crossing. I just step in and do my, you know, my, say my piece.

But but, but, and people seem as, as, actually, perhaps even more interested in the, in the settings in the background, then they, then they do in what I have to say about Donald Trump. So she's just started a, her own Instagram focused on the house and the garden called our amaganza at home or house, our amygans at home, I think it is. Well, you can find it on Michael Wolfe, NYC at Instagram, because there's a sort of cross-connection to it. But I wanted to call it out because I think people are intrigued by your bookshelf. And at some point, we should do a podcast exclusively on your books, which ones mean the most to you, which ones you like, which additions, all of that.

But that's for another day. In the meantime, I'm obsessed by what you are. by what you intuit over what's happening with Donald Trump and also that what people tell you. And we're looking to a complicated week. Well, all weeks, of course, all Donald Trump weeks are complicated weeks. And in part because of this Trumpian thing, of everything changes. Everything changes on a dime. Because how do you deal with the fact that this didn't work out?

Well, you just do start, start, launch something else that's not. going to work out. Yeah. I mean, no one's talking about Doge anymore. Gavin Newsom had his moment, but now it looks like, well, the National Guard is still in that tiny quarter of downtown LA, correct? As far as I understand, but you know, you move on. Right. This is in a way the secret of Trump's survival. Right. The narrative just rolls on to something else. All right, Michael, great to talk to you as always. And if you have... have a comment on what Michael said here. Please feel free to leave it on YouTube. We love to read them. And you were right, I got Alex Padilla's first name wrong. He's not called Anthony.

But we've corrected it. That's the point of the comments. Michael, we will talk to you very soon. See ya. I totally forgot to ask Michael about his taking his little children to a protest in East Hampton, of all places. We'll do that on the next podcast. Thank you for joining you for us, please feel free to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast and the Daily Beast itself for updates of what's going on. We are independent media. We love your support and we love your comments. I try and read as many of them as I possibly can and I answer as many as I can too, but we love hearing from you. And don't forget, the Times call for it. Be Beast. This podcast was

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