The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 124. The Man Who Got To Trump (Michael Wolff)

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

How did Michael Wolff manage to penetrate and expose Trump’s inner circle multiple times? Will the Murdoch empire survive the death of its Patriarch? Who’s really in charge in the White House?  Rory and Alastair are joined by journalist and author, Michael Wolff, to discuss all this and more.  TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics  Twitter: @RestIsPolitics  Email: [e-mail] Video Editor: Josh Smith  Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to the restispolities.com. That's the restis politics.com. Welcome to the rest is leading with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And we have today with us a gentleman by the name of Michael Wolfe. And Michael is a, he's kind of more than a journalist. He's a writer and he's a chronicler and in recent years he's been chronicling the lives and times of two of the most right-wing powerful people on the planet. One of them is Donald J. Trump and the other is Rupert Murdoch. And on Trump, Michael has just published his fourth book about Trump. The first one, Fire and Fury, was a massive international bestseller, which made him a huge. huge enemy of Donald Trump, who've made the mistake of allowing Michael to sort of wander around the White House chronicling what he saw and heard. I'd be delighted to know in a minute whether he still gets any access at all. And the latest one, the subtitle kind of speaks to a lot

of the things we want to talk about, how Trump recaptured America. So Michael, thanks for being with us, and Rory White, you kick us off. Yeah, well, Michael, will you just begin by giving us the sense of that access and how you got that access and how you got to find out so much about the first Trump administration? Well, I'm not sure how I can say how I got the access as though there were some secret. There was no secret. I kind of in 2016 expressed interest and Donald Trump was like, sure, in that way in which nothing in the Trump world is particularly thought out. I was just there. I said, you know, I'd like to do this. And he kind of shrunked. I was brought in. I said, you know, I'd like to come in as an observer, and he thought that was a job.

And then I said, no, no, no, I want to write a book. And then he couldn't be less interested. So it was like, okay, yeah, sure, sure, sure. And that was my pass for basically seven months in the White House. And no one really knew why I was there, but they just assumed that if I was there, I was there for a reason. and under someone's approval. So just by keeping my mouth shut and smiling, I saw, practically speaking, most everything. And that's now, you know, seven years ago, began this relationship with many of the people around Donald Trump,

all who had a need, a driving need, to talk about their experiences because everybody around Donald Trump has an understanding that this is strange, weird, not right, even if they're part of it. Do you have any indication? I mean, I assume that the access is not as good now as it was, because they basically threw the book at you when you wrote the first book. It's actually better, I would say,

because I know so many of these people better. And over this period of time, the relationship becomes more than, you know, source in journalists. I mean, we're kind of, we're kind of friends. But there are also, some of them see you as an enemy because you exposed the monstrosity, the absurdity, the ridiculousness, the incompetence of the whole operation. You know, it's a funny thing. You can be their enemy and at the same time. I mean, there be their public enemy and their private friend. You know, the other day when Trump unleashed a post, you know, long, long post about

what a terrible person I was, and I was fake, and I was a loser, and I, you know, all of the Trump things. This was, as soon as he posted it, someone in the White House texted me a link, and with the link said, you're welcome, exclamation point. I mean, there are two realities going on here. There's living in the Trump reality, and then there is other, these same people being kind of normal. Michael, so much to talk about because this is obviously the central topic almost of our age. But I think one of the most bewildering things is the way in which he seems to have changed from somebody who, from 2017, 18, 19, seemed like a kind of buffoon, but who wasn't necessarily doing anything very radical. And it's quite difficult to point to what he actually

achieved that was any different. I think you've actually pointed this out. out that a lot of it felt like Mitch McConnell's agenda, to where we are now, where we're talking to you at a moment where really it feels like an existential threat to the world order, where if you're speaking as we are in it from Europe, you're looking at somebody who genuinely feels like he's tearing up some of the most fundamental aspects the last 80 years. Well, I don't know. I might challenge that. I mean, I think fundamentally one of the things about Donald Trump and the people who have known him well over a long period of time all kind of go to this point is he doesn't change.

I mean, he does the same thing over and over and over again. He doesn't grow. He doesn't rethink. He doesn't come up with new desires, really. To the extent that it seems different now, it seems clearer or it seems faster. It is still fundamentally the same operation, Donald Trump looking for a headline. And it's headline, headline, headline. And I'm not sure, you know, I think if you go back and look at the first month of the first Trump administration, there were similar kinds of things.

You know, we were banning people from these countries. You know, that whole series of announcements and executive orders, you know, a lot of which involves Steve Bannon at the time. You know, some of that happened, some of it didn't happen, but it was, again, mostly governing by headlines, which is where we are now. I mean, and to interpret, yes, I mean, it could be that the world order, as we know, it will never return. But it could equally be all of this as a kind of a punk rock provocation to no ultimate point. And with the likelihood that it collapses in on itself, which I actually think, think will happen. And I think, you know, the Elon Musk now is performing the Steve Bannon role. Steve Bannon lasted six months. I think probably Elon will last no longer than six months.

When the Fire and Fury came out, Michael, I interviewed you for GQ magazine. And you said at the time, the two people who were there, who were the most important people to, besides Bannon was kind of on the way out, were Hope Hicks, this young woman who was kind of looking after him on, you know, sort of logistics and making him feel good and so forth. And the other person you mentioned, I watched it again this morning, was Stephen Miller. Now, of course, he is still there. He has endured. Is he somebody that we should be looking at more than some of these other characters that we spend a lot of time talking and thinking about? No, I think that's one of the mistakes that people make around

around Trump, to look at the people around him and elevate them in some kind of specific and knowledgeable way. This is the person. This person is smart. They don't matter. No, nobody matters but Donald Trump. Everybody exists in his orbit and everybody really exists in their willingness to please him. And as soon as they stop pleasing him, they fall out of favor and usually fall out are usually, usually gone, except for actually the girls in Hope Hicks was the fundamental person of the first Trump administration. And now, you know, in this new book of mine, I wrote it right about his relationship with this woman, Natalie Harp. Tell us about her, because she says like she has one of the most, the weirdest jobs I've ever heard about in any political operation. She has no real job except to

attend to Donald Trump, to comfort Donald Trump or cushion Donald Trump, or to be the ultimate, the ultimate yes person, to say exactly what he wants to hear at any given moment in time. And she has done this. I mean, she came into the campaign in 2022 as a kind of a fetchic girl. I mean, just really, you come in, your intern, you run errands. She has risen to, I would say, to be the most important person around him, like Hope Hicks. I mean, she is certainly the person who spends the most time with him. I mean, fundamentally every waking hour, which led to a lot of speculation on, well, is it just waking hours?

And then that led to speculation, does he really do it anymore? And with the answer being, probably not. But he continues to surround himself with, these women, all who look alike. Michael, let's just sort of take one example to try to help listeners get what's going on. So let's take USAID. So that entire $45 billion budget has stopped. 10,000 people have lost their jobs. I mean, they're quite literally being pulled out of embassies all around the world. NGOs received successive stop orders over the last three weeks. So vaccination programs are stopping, emergency feeding stopping. Governments are teetering. Government site Jordan

that relied on $10 billion American money, government site Nepal that were relying on the U.S. for its funding. Help us understand this and help us how that works with the fact that he's breaking congressional rules. He's ignoring judges. I think you should look at it as the escalation of headlines. And one of the problems of ruling by headlines or existing by headlines, is that the headlines have to get bigger and bigger and bigger. That's what we are seeing now. I have to be bigger. And this is always the Trump, a Trump refrain, give me more bigger. But I think it also presents another danger to Donald Trump. It is difficult to imagine how this is sustainable and not just the USAID abroad. There is on every level.

Now, we are into a level of doing things that if you say, okay, let's play this out, how does this work? What happens from here? I think the answer is, well, you don't know. You can't even begin to imagine what happens here, which probably means that it's unsustainable and that it collapses in on itself. and that in the not too distant future, Donald Trump finds himself in a very, very difficult situation. So one of the things that I think has really thrown Europe back is the sense that for the first time we have the administration deliberately interfering in European elections. So during the German elections, for example, you had Musk trying to promote the far right against the government that won. We've had the threats against Greenland.

we've had these extraordinary outreaches towards Putin. We've had the sense of him showing kind of real contempt towards European allies. And Canada. And Canada, yeah. It suddenly feels for the first time as though we can't actually rely on the US president for nuclear guarantees or Article 5 protection of NATO states. It seems perfectly plausible to us that if Russia have rolled into Lithuania, Trump might be like, yeah, you know what, I'm having a great conversation with that emir and we're. sorting stuff out. I think that's wholly true. But the idea of relying on Trump in and of itself seems like one of the strangest leaps of faith that I can imagine. But having said this and having

outlined it, you know, don't you look back and step back and say, this cannot possibly work. This cannot possibly stand. There is no path here in which we got to get to the other side or which Trump gets to the other side. I mean, this is just creating. a world in which everybody, sooner or later, is against him. You know, to assume that Trump knows what he's doing, to assume that he has game this out, that he knows two steps, three steps down the road is false. He doesn't. This all exists in the moment. And because in the moment, you get the headline. I absolutely think we are in new territory. We have never seen a political leader with this kind of method and this kind of motivations.

But Michael, so with that interview that I did with you a few years ago, I asked you in this battle between the good guys and the bad guys, and we kind of both agree who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, who's winning. You said the good guys, I think the good guys are winning. And the reason we thought that, we both thought, Trump's not going to win. But then you went on to say, and I agreed with you at the time. He said, I don't think he'll run again.

And if he did run again, he definitely wouldn't, win. And there's another event we did together. You said, Donald Trump's not going to go back to the White House. He's going to go to jail. Now, he has won again. Well, he lost again. Wait a minute. Let's, let's, let's, you have to parse the episodes here. He did lose. Yeah, but he didn't go away. No, he did not go away, but he, he, he left the White House. Remember where he was. He left the White House in disgrace. He was impeached twice. He was rejected by every, significant figure in his party, not least of all Rupert Murdoch, who it appeared that he depended on because of the support of Fox News. And he won again, which he did, and then he rose again.

So, you know, it's one of the things, one of the extraordinary things, one of the things that I get to write about and why I write that he does these things that no one can, no one can imagine how this could have happened, that he could have this utterly disgraced figure could have risen again. So you might be wrong that this time he might actually end up not being hated by everybody. He might end up achieving things that last time he didn't because he's maybe learned a little bit. I don't think so. I mean, I think what happens is that he crashes again. Now, could he rise again after that? As we've seen, it is. certainly possible, and we are only saved by the fact that he's eventually, and sooner rather than

later, going to be too old to rise again. But yes, I mean, and it's part of that, that extraordinary character that lets him do rise again and do what he does, which is that he has no sense of an external reality, no sense of thinking about himself as others might think about him. I'm in disgrace. I've been disgraced. Well, that doesn't ever cross his mind. I've lost the election, which everyone knows he lost the election, but one person himself. And so it is living in that absolutely alternative reality that lets him rise again, but also causes him to do the things that bring him down again. Apologies, Michael, what is it about us that makes him able to flourish and live? What is it about his supporters? What is it about social media?

What is it about the modern age that allows this thing that you've just pointed out that is completely sort of unimaginable to happen? He's an extraordinary showman. I mean, let's remember what's the fundamental thing about Donald Trump? What's the thing that distinguishes him from every other politician who has ever walked the earth? He was the star of a reality television show for 14 years, not one year, not two years, 14 years. And, you know, reality's television is a very big. fixed formula. You know what has to happen in order to maintain the interest of your audience. Conflict, conflict, conflict. You just have to constantly invent new conflict. And it doesn't have to mean anything this conflict. You just have to say, well, who's going to prevail in this situation at this

moment. Michael, you mentioned there that he felt slightly dependent upon Murdoch and his newspapers and Fox News that became such a big part of the kind of drive for Maga. And then after January the 6th and the insurrection, Murdoch sort of pulled away. And then he realized that Trump wasn't going to go away and he fell back in with him. Just give us your interpretation of the character of Murdoch. Well, Murdoch hates Trump. I mean, as far back as when I spent a year interviewing Murdoch, you know, Trump was like one of those tropes that he would be.

bring up as, you know, one of the foolish celebrities who populated the tabloid world. I don't think at any point he ever took Trump seriously. And when he became friends with Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, that was a kind of running, running theme, that Ivanka's father was, you know, not remotely a serious person. When Ivanka took Murdoch out to lunch to say her father was going to run for president, he waved it away as too ridiculous to spend a moment of time even talking about. And then when he was elected, I mean, it became, I think, one of the great bitter ironies in Murdoch's life, his dream of electing a U.S. president and the person he elected was effectively Donald Trump.

And as soon as the election happened, and then January 6th, that was it. He not only wrote Trump off, but really rejigged Fox to make it what he believed would be impossible for Trump to ever run again. And the Ron DeSantis bubble was largely of Rupert's making. And one of the things about the election, I think, is this was a sort of a test. Who needed who more? Did Trump need Fox or did Fox need Trump? Which it turned out, Fox needs Trump. I mean, it is so fascinating this, but you're also pointing to something really bizarre.

So there is Rupert Murdoch who I guess would consider himself or would have considered himself unbelievably realistic, ruthless. He believed he had a finger on the pulse of the right-wing public. He felt that he understood politics and. media better than anyone. And he'd been at the game for 40, 50 years. And his conclusion was, this man, Trump is a joke. And he believed it twice. How did somebody like Murdoch, with all that knowledge, all that power, all that sort of Machiavellian instinct, get it wrong? What did he miss? Let us give Rupert his due. He is 94 years old. So he isn't the Rupert that we used to know. You know, I think that Rupert has never been a man in the television age. And, you know, another bitter Rupert irony is that Fox becomes the thing that he will be most remembered for Fox News. And it's the thing that he was least involved in creating. Fox remade the world in a way that Rupert Murdoch fundamentally didn't recognize.

All right. Michael. a quick break and then back for more. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers. The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, Cancer Research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung Vax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on TracerX, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked

lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs. Lung Vax is designed to train the immune system to spot these signs early on, destroying 40 cells before cancer develops. So it's not treatment, but preventative, with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year, focusing on people at higher risk. It shows what long-term research makes possible. For more information about cancer, Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancer researchukuk.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samark here from The Rest is History.

Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class

that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now,

whether you love her or loathe her. And we'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 177. a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you?

Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to obviously going to come back to Trump, but just finally on Murdoch. You seem to think, and we've seen a lot in recently coming out of this court case with the four kids and where things go. Do you think Murdoch is going to be one of those empires where when the big daddy dies, the whole thing kind of starts. to collapse. Yeah, well, I mean, remember, and it's always important. The empire has already gone away. So in 2018, they sold the bulk of the empire. I mean, they're kind of left with this facade,

the facade of the newspapers and Fox News, but the real empire is no longer, no longer there. But as to what is left, yeah, I mean, I think that there's no question that, you know, the empire will be inherited by four children who don't agree with each other. And the ultimate disposition will be, you know, I mean, just to, I assume to get rid of it. Not to mention that the empire rests on old technology, which in itself, it doesn't matter what happens, is already dying. It's not just newspapers, which clearly have been shunted off into some netherworld, but Fox News, which is cable television, which has a fine.

night life at this point. Coming back to Trump, of the things that people commonly say about Trump, right, the cliches about Trump, I don't know, he's transactional, you know, he's never going to allow anyone like Musk or Vance remain around for long if they get in the way of as he goes. Which of the cliches about Trump do you think are wrong? Well, I don't, I don't necessarily think he is transactional. I think there's only one thing that motivates him and its personal attention. When I first interviewed Trump, I had known him for years before in New York, but in his new political life in 2016, when it still seemed preposterous that he was going to be, would ever be elected president, I said, okay, okay, just tell me why you were doing this.

And he said, and he was perfectly comfortable with this, he said, to be the most famous man in the world. So I think that in everything that he does, this is, what he's after. So there's never an idea of the transaction, okay, you know, I'm going to get a slightly better deal than you are. I mean, yeah, this is sort of in the background. But in the foreground is I'm going to do things which give me more attention. Michael, what else do we get wrong? What other things do you sometimes read or hear people say about Trump, which are repeated as cliches? I think the media has always treated Donald Trump as though he's in politics, that the

Issues here are ultimately political issues, policy issues, legislative agenda issues, Washington, D.C. sort of issues, the bureaucracy, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't think that any of that is true. He doesn't think that way. He's not interested in those things. Politics itself, I mean, he either has no interest in or has contempt for and sees himself as being so much greater than. I am greater than that because I can command an audience. You politicians, you have no idea what you're interested in these petty legislative things. I have a base. And when he says a base, he doesn't really mean a political base. He means a fan base. I have people who are devoted to me, who just like to see me. Their pleasure is in me doing what I do. You start the latest

book with a quote from Jared Kushner. And again, going back to the first time we spoke for GQ, you described Kushner and Ivanka as an utterly preposterous couple who had no place in the White House. But you use this quote where you ask him kind of what Trump's future is. I think this is in 20, 2021. And he says, what was Nixon's future? What did he mean by that? Well, I think he understood that his father-in-law had left the White House in disgrace. He had been rejected by everyone who had previously supported him. He had no political future. You know, he blew it. So he's proved him wrong as well? He's proved them all wrong. Yes. Well, as I say, he proves them right and then he proves them wrong.

You know, when I was writing this book, you know, and I wrote it in real time, which is why it's come out so quickly after the election. And that worried me, as I went along, I was thinking, well, you know, I don't know the end of the story. But then I realized, if he lost, you'd read what I wrote and say, well, of course he was going to lose. But if he won, you would read the same thing and say, of course he was going to win, which is. is this strange poetry of Donald Trump? Fascism is obviously a big word that we apply to Donald Trump quite a lot at the moment. And there are clearly things that resonate from the 20s or 30s. There's the cult of the leader. There's the authoritarianism. There's this sort of contempt for constitutions, for Congress, for inspectors. there's the support of these fire right parties in Europe.

There's the admiration for Putin. There's this weird obsession with minerals. You know, when he's talking to Ukraine, what he wants to do is get $500 billion of stuff out of them. How far does that take you? How much truth is there in that? How much is it misleading as a way of viewing Trump? I think that the danger of fascism is that it implies that there is a plan,

that there is intention, that there is a goal. And I think that's a misunderstanding. If you start to think about Donald Trump that way, it's like much of the political press that tries to put him into a pretty conventional box. And then you misunderstand what's going on, that his motivations are different.

I genuinely believe from the motivations of perhaps any political leader ever, that this is. I mean, it is certainly a cult of personality, but it's not a cult of personality toward accomplishing anything other than to increase the cult of personality. Except he's now surrounded himself, I guess, with people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and J.D. Vanson, they do seem to have been involved for eight or ten years around the edge of a kind of tech theory of government, which feels very authoritarian.

Absolutely. But I would say that, at least to judge by... by what has happened in the past. A hundred percent of the people who have been around Donald Trump, their relationships have broken down, they've been humiliated, they've been publicly fired, often they have been indicted. No one has survived this. So to assume that Elon Musk will, because he has X hundreds of billions of dollars, or Peter

Teal because he's smarter than Donald Trump, I don't know. just has never, ever worked out for anyone. So I think we can reasonably say that for each of these people, it is their own hubris that has led them into proximity with Donald Trump, and they will pay for that. Michael, you said earlier that Trump had said to you his ambition was to be the most famous man in the world, and he's certainly got a long way towards that. Do you think it's also possible that the relationship with Putin can be explained by a desire to be the richest man in the world, which he currently think is Vladimir Putin. And that means that he has to turn America into a country as corrupt as Russia. Yeah, I think there's a little of that. Certainly.

I mean, Trump admires money, above all else, I would say he admires. He does admire money. Why Americans not more upset by the stuff that's happening? happening that to us just looks not even borderline corrupt, but outright corrupt. Musk's position, the conflicts of interest being decided by him and by Trump, the meme coin that he sold, the fact that foreign leaders can now just sort of ship their currency into that if they want to. And this feels very corrupt. Well, it is very corrupt. Why aren't people more upset? Well, I think that they will become more upset by this. That's number one. one. Number two, there is the Trumpian method here, which is whatever you are upset by now,

I'm going to do something more egregious that will upset you even more today, but then successively something else the next day. So it is very hard for people to get their footing. But remember, we're just weeks into this now. So again, this idea that I've said that I believe that this is unsustainable, eventually so much is piled on that it begins to collapse. I don't want to chase our tails too much, Michael. But when you're listening to Alistair and me asking you questions, is there something that's frustrating you there? I mean, if you were to talk to a friend after this interview and say, they kept asking me

these kind of questions, I wish these guys would get this out of their head. What's your experience of being asked about Trump? What are interesting questions and what are less interesting questions about him? Well, since I've been asked every question that one could ever ask. But I think it's very hard because he is the president of the United States. He has this enormous amount of power. He does things every day to demonstrate that. So the perfectly natural inclination is to treat him seriously, except he's not a serious figure.

So therefore, that juxtaposition is a hard reality. He must be serious because, because, but anybody who's ever spent any amount of time with him knows that he is absolutely not serious. I mean, not serious at any level. He doesn't care about any of this. He doesn't care what happens in the next two minutes. He's just, at best, an entertainer and everything that he does in any moment is about capturing your attention, making you listen to him.

That does not equate in any sense to what we think, what you guys think, what most people who do what we do for a living think of as a serious person in a serious historical position. He's a joke. Okay. Let's part of the joke for a while. I'm going to throw a few names at you of the other characters. I want either a word or a phrase that sums them up. J.D. Vance. You know, a lackey.

Bannon. On the periphery. Cast out. Kushner. Smarter than we have thought, than we might have thought. The survivor. Actually, the exclusively the survivor. Don Jr. and Eric.

Poor wretched souls. Malaria. You know, she may be the only one who is actually truly a match for him. Ah. In what way? She holds the strings. She plays him. She gets what she wants.

You know, in a way, she is his weakest link. So she could pull the rug from under him at any time. And what are her motivations? Are they money? Is it power? Is she into fame? She's transactional. All, all.

Money. All transactional. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also a kind of a hatred of him. I think she may even enjoy being this constant existential threat to him. Michael, given that he's not serious, is it possible that we could see him completely reverse fundamental positions?

I mean, is it conceivable that he could suddenly wake up and say, I'm now going to provide full security guarantees to Ukraine and give them another $100 billion and put U.S. troops on the ground? Yes, of course. Or some other alternative that we haven't thought of. Yeah, I mean, the idea of consistency doesn't exist in the Donald Trump world. So something will change there, of course. But presumably there are certain things which we can be relatively confident about. We can be confident that he quite likes tariffs. We can be confident that he's not very fond of immigrants.

Well, even there, go there. You know, that he threatened tariffs throughout the first administration. And he levied some. He took some off. You know, he responds on this issue pretty directly to the business community. The business community gets upset about this. You know, he'll find some work around. I mean, he'll never say we're taking tariffs off, but he will take them off. You know, and immigration, that has been a fundamental part of the Trump MAGA platform from the beginning. But did he build that wall? No, of course he didn't build that wall.

And even here, again, it will go. He will snatch children from their mothers until he doesn't. And then that's reversed. So essentially you're saying, don't take him seriously. But if you're the leader of another country, if you're the prime minister of Canada, the prime minister of the UK, the president of France, the chancellor of Germany, leaders in Asia, you have to take him seriously because he's the president of the United States. But if you were suddenly to morph from being a writer and a chronicler,

to an advisor of one of those people. What would you actually say to Akia Stama or a Macron Merz how to deal with this guy? What's the best way to deal with him? I think you just wait him out. I think you want to not make the mistake of engaging in the show that he wants to put on. Then you become just a bit player

and he's going to use you as he can. If you don't, if you just stand back and say, listen, this is a, we're just in an unfortunate and difficult period of very bad weather, but it will pass. Michael, the optimism is an interesting one, isn't it? Because I've just come back from the States, and of course a lot of people there are like, well, be fine. He's going to do badly in the midterms, and he won't run again.

But there's another more troubling possibility, which is that he's uncovered through the MAGA movement, a very, very deep vein of American culture and politics, which was probably there before. before he came a lot. I mean, probably goes back in forms to Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party. And that therefore, this form of isolationism, this contempt for allies, this contempt for America's international position, goes a long way beyond this single, unserious individual. And therefore, if you're the Chancellor of Germany or you're the Prime Minister of the United

Kingdom, you might well begin to think we need to create a stance, the world that isn't dependent on the U.S. and the way that it has been. Well, that's probably a good idea. would push back, I think that Trump is sui generis. I mean, I think these currents in American political life rise and fall. But Trump is unique, that he's tapped into these currents and benefited from them. But those currents can't easily replace Donald Trump when he exits. My final question, Michael, and thank you for your time, relates to journalism. You do get a feeling that he's always had a kind of love-hate relationship with the media.

He needs them, he likes the attention and so forth. But there is this very dark side to the messaging about the media that comes out through MAGA, that comes out through some of the moves that have been made recently, AP getting kicked out of the press corps, the threats to individual journalists, the threats to newspapers, Jeff Bezos showing himself to have zero spine,

all of this thing is changing journalism. Do people like you feel at all scared about what's going on? Well, I feel certainly depressed, and perhaps I should feel scared because God knows he threatens me enough. You know, being willing to use the Justice Department and his own lawyers to wage these lawsuits, which don't win, but they're taxing and costly. these are real threats. The larger threat is that the media itself, because it has become so concentrated, and I mean, the news media is subservient to other corporate interests, that there's a real fear that is penetrating everywhere. I mean, I would say that the media at this point is almost as intimidated or coming to the point that it may well be as intimidated as during the moment. McCarthy era. Trump is a real threat to any media organization that has any licensing concerns or mergers and acquisitions intent and interests. Michael, my final question is to try to clarify

what it means to have what you call a non-serious person in place. So one vision might be, he's kind of sitting on the couch with his friends and he's like, come on, wouldn't it be funny to invade Greenland, let's just make Canada the 51st state. Let's screw with them by putting out a social media video where I get to be a gold statue with dancing girls in Gaza. But there's a sense in which there's a nastier element to this. It seems to go a little bit beyond just trolling people, just kind of trying to irritate liberals. I mean, there's a sense in which many, many of these things put together have a much, much more unpleasant, sinister, nasty edge to them. And I wonder whether you could sort of explain that and how that sits in your theory of

uns seriousness. I mean, I think he could very well be an unsurious nasty guy. I mean, you know, he is a nasty guy. I mean, when you sit with him and hear him speak about other people, it's with a real meanness. It's with a real, it's cruelty. I mean, the way he treats almost everyone around. him, which is kind of gobsmacking that people return, he treats them as poorly as I've ever heard of

any boss treating anybody. And that extends to, again, with a remarkable consistency to great affairs of state. He adds that sort of signature meanness and cruelty and bully stuff. I mean, that's his personality. That's what he thinks, and that's what he thinks is funny. I mean, he does sit around and say these things to the people on his couch. I mean, he doesn't say, let's invade Greenland or let's take Greenland. He says, let's say we will. This is one of the refrains. Let's say, let's put it out there.

And again, it is trolling. It is, let's see what this reaction is. And maybe we'll get something out of this reaction. I mean, there is a case that you could make that you don't. have to govern by policy, you can just govern by headlines and maybe gain as much. Well, Michael, I love to talk to you. I assume there'll be a fifth book in the series, will there? I hope not, but I've said that after every book. Well, whether there is or there is, good luck. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Michael. And you've given us a vision of the bully pulpit in a completely different sense than that. You know, it's been fascinating. Thank you for your time. Really appreciate it. Thank you guys. And by the way, I love this podcast. You guys are amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. So, Rory, what did you make of my friend Michael Wolfe?

I mean, he's a great communicator. And he obviously knows an enormous amount about Donald Trump. I mean, I think it's unbelievable that story of the access. You've told me the story in the past. And he tells it a little bit in that first book, Fire and Fury. But it relates a bit to a leading interview we did with Michael Lewis, who was also given incredible access by San Bank. The idea that these powerful people are happy to just let a journalist just be in their lives,

sit in their offices for five months, listening to everything, and then produce a book. Presumably, you did not allow journalists to spend five months just sitting in Downing Street, talking to anyone they felt like. There was a few times when we had to let them in more than others. So, for example, Peter Stoddard, the Times, came in and it coincided. We didn't know this was going to happen, but it actually coincided with the buildup to the war in Iraq. so he got a pretty good book out of that. We had Nick Danziger in doing pictures.

So, you know, we did stuff like that. Back in the 1997 campaign, one of my first sort of little spats with Peter Mandelson, he was determined for his friend Robert Harris to have great access. And Robert is a great writer, as we all know. But I didn't want anything around us that was going to add pressure. So we sort of gave him a bit of access. Why would you really ever do this?

I mean, in my experience, the times I've really been royally screwed over is when I've allowed journalists to spend many, many, many days for me. For example, the New Yorker insists on spending nearly two weeks, seeing every detail of your life. Why does anyone think this is a good idea? I can see why somebody like Trump just thinks, I am a massive historic figure. Therefore, I should have people around me all the time who are writing about me for history. I think back to 1997, Peter Mandelson, probably was thinking it'd be nice if Robert was around and, you know, help, you know, and give him a good book and what have you.

But also, again, thinking this could be kind of historic and so you want that. The only time I ever did anything similar was, and there's still just sort of jury out whether this was a good idea or a bad idea, when the whole issue of spin took off in Downing Street and I was getting, I think I've told you before, I was getting more coverage than the leader of the opposition, which just. seems mad in our parliamentary democratic system. Not I, you know, as Tony Blair spokesman, but I as me as it were. And so I have this idea and persuaded Tony. Let's get Michael Cockrell, very serious documentary maker in to make a film about our media operation. It was okay.

It was a good film and I think he would say it was a good film. But I remember him saying to me, I got more media coverage for that film than everything else I'd ever done combined. So it's sort of defeated the object, you know. And so what Michael said to me before, when I've talked about this before, he said that it really was strange because when I went to see Trump, I think he thought I was begging for a job. And I just said this, and as soon as I mentioned book, Trump just sort of glazed over and said, go and talk to Steve Bannon.

I went to talk to Steve Bannon. And he said, well, if you didn't say, no, you might as well hang around. And he said, he hung around, just used to sit on different sofas and watch people covering it going. I think he's got enough humility to admit he got a lot of the stuff wrong in terms of predicting what was going to happen. But I think that's because he does understand Trump is this unique character that none of us have really ever known before. Yeah, I think he's, obviously, I've got an incredible amount wrong. I wonder, though, whether the challenge isn't in this, his fundamental insight, which is this is not a serious person. And a lot of the stuff followed on from that.

It was because he wasn't a serious person that he seemed so confident. that he wasn't really going to run again and wouldn't win again. It was because he felt he wasn't a serious person that he said he didn't, there wasn't any Trump has been really achieved anything in his first presidency. And I think we're now in a very different world. I mean, one of the things I was trying to get Michael on is that I believe this feels very, very different in 2025 to 2017. You pointed it out by comparing what Trump was talking about in the first few days,

which was how many people came to his inauguration first time around compared a number of executive orders. But the radicalism of the change, and this may partly be because the presence of Musk, is beyond imagining. And so part of the challenge is that Michael fundamentally is, let's ride this out. I'm pretty optimistic. This guy's not too serious. All he cares about is attention. It'll be fine. And I think we're in a much more dangerous moment.

I agree with you. And I also think that if you go back to Trump's first term, and you remember some of the the meetings that he had, say with Theresa May or Angela Merkel and the other leaders who were around at the time. And the coverage that came out was all about his body language. He grabbed Theresa May by the hand or with Angela Merkel. He didn't smile at her and he wouldn't shake her hand in the Oval office. Whereas this time he sits there. He's got Vance next to him. He's got Rubio next to him. He's got Besson next to him. He's got other ministers around. He keeps referring to them as they're doing the work. they're doing this, they're doing that, and he's doing, or as Michael would say, he's saying he's

going to do very consequential things. But if you think, you just think about what's happened in UK politics recently, defence spending going up. Now, you and I would argue that should have happened anyway, but would it ever happen without Trump coming in and saying what he said? I don't think so. Cutting aid, leading to the resignation of Annelie's Dodds, leading to some MPs making clear they're not happy with the direction. That has happened because of Trump. You know, we said on the night in New York that when we were there with Anthony Scaramucci and Marina Hyde and Dominic Sanbrough, we said that this could be one of the most consequential presidencies. And I think for good or for bad. Yeah, well, there's a natural sense of endless acceleration, isn't there?

We've sort of talked about this on the show that if you're in a politics of spectacle and attention, talking about reforming, you know, improving math scores in American schools is not half as interesting as saying, I'm going to invade Greenland. And therefore, the pressure, and he's done all this stuff in the first 40 days. Right. So how does he keep generating those headlines? You know, what more's he got to do? And it's also not just talk.

I mean, there was a loss of this stuff. You raised Project 2025 quite a lot before the election. And of course, people distance themselves. Trump said, I don't even know what this is. It's got nothing to do with me. You can now see so many elements of that strategy, just roaring through abolition and Department of Education, total transformation health, pulling out of the WHO, abolishing USAID, firing federal civil servants.

Getting really inspectors general, tons of stuff. So it's much more ideological. I mean, you know, he wants to say Trump doesn't have an idiotic. That may be true. But he's certainly created an ecosystem in which people with very, very strong ideological views are being given the space to push ahead with that. I've got to say, Roy, maybe this is a way of closing, but I noticed the boss of YouTube saying that some of our podcasts looked like they were high school productions. The light coming on to you and coming on to me is sort of quite weird at the moment. so I wonder whether YouTube will think this is a bit high school production

anyway we don't care we just like talking about stuff so it's fine but listen I enjoyed talking to Michael thanks for getting Michael on great bye bye