How Melania Has Abdicated Her First Lady Duties

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1:40The official part of being a first lady to do good works, she has converted into private enterprise for herself. The First Lady here is a corporate shill, and the First Lady as someone who is not the First Lady. I mean, at least who is not the First Lady who occupies the White House.

2:03Joanna. What? What? You've confused me, Michael. Michael Wolfe. We never introduce ourselves. We always forget. I'm Joanna Coles of the Daily Beast, and you are, sir. And I'm Michael Wolff, and I have written what seems like now innumerable books about Donald Trump. But in fact, there are only four. Only four. A modest four. Only four, but you've done a thousand Instagram posts. You've done at least a hundred Substack posts. And now we've done 150 editions of Inside Trump's Head episodes, I suppose. of Inside Trump's Head, where we go thrice weekly to explore what is the president thinking?

2:54It's like a question. What is he thinking? It's a muddle. It's a muddle. It's always, it's always a muddle. It's like the design on our mugs. So we have an incredible menu today. I feel like I would like to be one of those people that comes over and says, hi, I'm Joanna. I'm your server. This evening, I'm going to be taking care of you. And on the menu today, we have Melania. We have Natalie. We have Canada, which I can really recommend. Doesn't sound interesting, but turns out to be very interesting. And of course, we have the ballroom. We have the ballroom. So we have a lot to discuss. You're doing an accent here, but I don't know what the accent is.

3:33I don't know what the accent is either, actually, but I was just trying to sound like one of those actors that approaches you in a restaurant and they are in fact your wait staff but really they're an actor um you know them and i know them um but if you haven't already subscribed to the daily beast podcast please do and you can find us on substack now and if you hold up your camera phone or your phone camera in fact you can take a picture of this qr code and it We'll zoom you straight to our substat, or you can just go to thedailybeast.com. Are you still talking in this accent? No, I'm still talking in the accent.

4:12I think you're stuck in the accent now. No, I'm not stuck in the accent. I'm back to my regular voice. Back to my regular voice, Michael. All right, so she's back. Good afternoon. I heard you missed me. Here I am. Welcome to the White House. Yes, I am. Here I am. Okay, well, we know that accent. Yes. I would just like to say that there is a fine line between a tease and a taunt. And I think she has gone over it and that this is actually a taunt. You know I'm not here. I know I'm not here. Everybody knows I'm not here. But fuck you. And is that to the president or is that to us? I think it's yes, I think it's to the I think it is to everybody and also to the president.

5:06She is she comes and goes as she pleases. She's unregulated. She is defying or maybe maybe the better word is she's abdicating that role of being the the first lady, the official first lady role, which is to be a model. of domestic propriety and to do good works. So she's clearly not the model of domestic propriety, to say the very least. I mean, she has not spent one night in the White House in this term, which is coming on 19, 20 months. She actually hasn't spent a single evening. She hasn't spent a single night at the White House. She has not had an overnight. She's not slept, put her head on a pillow at the White House.

6:05And so domestic propriety, we've abdicated that responsibility. Then the other responsibility of doing good works. Now, theoretically, she was in Washington to make an announcement about this, about good work she was supporting. But it's a weird kind of corporate interaction, a sponsorship, which I suspect is the truck rental guy, Penske. Right. It's Roger Penske who owns IndyCar Racing, which is taking over D.C. this weekend with a race around the city. What could possibly go wrong? The cars will be going up to 200 miles an hour. I hope they spin off into the White House. Really what this was is a promotional event for Penske, for a corporate interest, the Penske family corporate interest.

7:05So which she has interposed herself in and she has been out there actually cultivating sponsors for herself, for her own business. So really, her official job, the official part of being a first lady to do good works, she has converted into private enterprise for herself. That's what she spends most of her time on, monetizing this theoretical and highly theoretical role that she has as the first lady and the wife of Donald Trump. I mean, this is something. I mean, among among all of the things that we have never seen in a White House, this is another. The first lady. Well, the first lady here is a corporate shill and the first lady as someone who is not the first lady.

8:01I mean, at least who is not the first lady who occupies the White House. By the time I hit my 50s, I'd learned a few things. Like how family is precious. Work can always wait. And 99 % of people over 50 already have the virus that causes shingles. Not everyone at risk will develop it, but I did. The painful, blistering rash disrupted my life for weeks. Don't learn about your shingles risk the hard way. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. So she got two million for this sponsorship for which they presented her a helmet, an IndyCar driving helmet with Be Best and Fostering the Future. that's what they got for it.

8:55They got a press conference at the White House. They got the imprimatur of the first lady, such as she is, with her two initiatives. So where do you think the money goes? Well, I mean, I'm sure that the money goes, will go in some sense to whatever they said, some, what was it, some educational program. But I think the larger point is then she cements her relationship to the Penske's in this situation. And then because she's operating her own business on the side, and it is a branding sponsorship business, that the Penske's will then are very likely, I would describe this for her as business development.

9:45business development so we know that she's had her own movie she had her own book both of which were called melania she's now got a new series do you know much about it it's a series amazon which did the movie is doing the series and um and i don't know if there is no i mean i mean uh in the film itself if you said do you know much about the film which i've seen i would say no i know i've seen it and I have no idea what it is. I mean, it's empty. That's what it is. It's empty content. That's what she does. Well, it's like, yeah, I felt like it was like a really long Instagram scroll, which I found both fascinating and utterly dull.

10:31Yeah. But I think it's all about what is she doing? She's selling herself, theoretically. She's selling Melania. I am a person who is part of this Trump thing, which is, as we know, extraordinarily popular. Trump Entertainment Enterprises. So there were several people gathered on the White House lawn. We should add that Fox, alongside IndyCar, is also one of the sponsors of fostering the future and be best. But one person who wasn't there, who was extremely significant by her absence, at least in my combing of all the photos and the footage that I could find, is, well, it was a marked absence because normally she's at the president's side, even as far as being taken to food truck one with him.

11:29I'm talking, of course, about Natalie Hart. What is the significance of Melania being there, holding hands with the president? Well, I have said, and I've reported before that Natalie Harp has been one of the issues that Melania has had with the White House and with her husband. And she has expressed to people that she does not want to be there when Natalie Harp is there. And this was also true about Hope Hicks in the first administration. So Donald Trump has set up this, you know, this awkward situation between his wife and his office wives, if you will. His first, the first executive assistant.

12:21And, you know, Natalie Harp is basically the person by his side. She's the one offering him his, placating him, soothing him, reassuring him, the person who is most there for him where his wife is not. You had one line in your Instagram post yesterday I wanted to explore a bit with you, which is you said that Melania was becoming MAGA's Princess Diana. What did you mean by that? I think Melania is regarded very seriously by the MAGA audience. And I think that they start to see her in that Diana terms. You know, she's estranged from the president of the United States. So you're forced to choose, as one was in the UK with Diana.

13:31Were you on Charles' side or were you Charles, who obviously was involved with Camilla at the time, or were you on Diana's side? Now you have to choose between Melania, the First Lady of the United States, the official First Lady of the United States, and her estranged husband who is spending all of his time with Natalie Harp. And do you think that Melania is as talented as Diana was in getting good press? I mean, Diana famous. Well, I think actually Melania has done this other thing, which is more, I mean, the Diana story is now 30 years old. So the press was a different creature then. Melania kind of disregards the press.

14:30I mean, she wrote a best-selling book, a huge selling book. She's done a documentary. She has a television. Her television series is coming up. So she's managed to create a media channel and relationship with an audience outside of the traditional media, who actually facilitate this by not pointing out that she has really abdicated her job as the First Lady. So, Michael, I wanted to ask you a question which I've been thinking about this week. Your book, All or Nothing, which chronicles Natalie Harp at some length. She's a major character in the book because she's an important part of Trump's inner circle.

15:21Your book came out February 2025, just after the election, because I remember as you were writing it, you were waiting for the election results. And then it came out right after the inauguration. So it was a very, very fast turnaround. It really took John Ossoff honing in on Natalie and articulating what a lot of people had noticed but not yet said out loud, that what the president appears to enjoy doing is flying around on his luxury plane traveling with Natalie. Why has it taken this long for Natalie Harp, who we have seen in all the pictures, we've been reporting on her at the Daily Beast. Why has it taken this long for the sort of official White House press call to understand that Natalie Harp is an issue, that she was in there without proper clearance, security clearance, and that she is the gatekeeper for both foreign leaders and business people alike?

16:24Yeah, well, it's been frustrating or curious to me that so many months later, this is now a top-of-the-page story. And what's the reason? I think it goes to the failures of the media in the age of Trump, and it goes to the nature of institutional media. And institutional media is very cautious, very frightened, I think, very reluctant to get out in front of the Trump story if no one else is out in front of the Trump story. So there is this story that everybody has known. You know, I mean, I was in my book. It was actually an excerpt of my book was in about Natalie Harp, was in Vanity Fair. It's been I mean, anybody who's following this would have known this story.

17:33So why now? Well, John Ossoff gave gave gave cover to people to find finally tell this story. And it's an extraordinary story. I mean, here is this totally unprepared, inexperienced young woman who has assumed enormous power and has a relationship with the president of the United States, kind of unprecedented, actually. So, you know, unprecedented in terms of its closeness, its intimacy, and its power.

18:38Even more, see if you qualify at row.co.health. Rx only for side effects of GLP-1 medications, including boxed warning. Go to row.co.safety. Additional row membership fee required. And we learned that from reading the letters at full that someone gave to you. And they express her vulnerability, her gratitude to the president for helping her through the grief of her late father. But also they reflect a sort of weird, I mean, you mentioned in our last podcast, and I saw it after I reread the letters, this sort of submissive nature of her to him, the sort of trad wifeyness of it. but also it feels like an obsessive relationship.

19:27You mentioned that the Secret Service were concerned about her because they thought she could be a danger to herself and a danger to him but it's hard not to read those letters and think oh these are the writings of someone who's unstable and it could be that she's unstable because her father died, he died by suicide that's obviously a very heavy thing for any person to deal with. So I'm not making light of that. But I've also discussed how what an irritant, and that's putting it mildly, she has been to the Trump circle, that the Trump circle itself, his senior aides and advisors have tried to get rid of her.

20:07They have seen her as a disruptive force, as a danger, as someone who is unqualified for the power that she has been given. And so this is a political story within that context entirely. And the media has known about this. I mean, this is in the Haberman book, which has come out, came out last month. Regime change. Or a month before this subject comes up. But the New York Times, and obviously Haberman works for the New York Times, has not focused on this until now. So why is that? And they would have known this anyway, because this is just picking up from what I wrote almost 18 months ago. Even if they've managed to avoid your book and Regime Exchange and the Exa, she's there in the photos.

21:14She's there in the videos. We can see this. Also, Haberman has the same sources that I had. I know who those sources are. I can see what they have said in her book because they've said this to me. So they know this story is out there. we can see it in pictures, can read it in my book, or if you're in the if you're covering the White House, you would have been told about it by the same people who told me about it. So why has the why has the press not said anything about this at all? Now, I can go back to this other instance, which was which was, you know, a curious thing that happened to me, which was so my book came out in February 2025, which is just when the second term was beginning.

22:12A month into it, and it was already everybody was freaking out, to say the least. And nobody knew what Trump was doing. And Trump seemed to be this threat to everything. And so my book came out. I had been booked as is customary on all kinds of cable television shows, CNN, MSNBC, blah, blah. And immediately, everything was canceled. So that was a moment we were beginning this thing, which I hope we're emerging from now, of the media clearly self-censoring about what could be said about Donald Trump. But also, you could say that the media is self-censored about what they've said about Melania. It's very clear that Melania hasn't been there.

23:06And again, and one's reminded of the coverage of Joe Biden's health, that this was a man who was unfortunately declining rapidly right in front of us. And yet it was very difficult to get people to say it. It was very difficult to report on it until the debate. The debate, then it all became fair game. And even Melania's joke about herself acknowledges, as you said, she hasn't been around. Is it a taunt? Is it a tease? But what it's also stressing is the fact that this has not been enough of a subject for the political media, for the White House press call. Well, let me suggest another aspect of this, because you're clearly right, that it's not just Donald Trump, it was Joe Biden.

23:55And then we're also looking at this Melania story. The first lady has abdicated, absconded. She's literally not there. That is a story of some, certainly of some interest and arguably of some import. So why not? I think there's another way of seeing this, that the institutional media has a great deal of trouble dealing with perfectly human stories. They have, you know, anything that goes into a psychological realm, they don't want to deal with. They don't have, they're not comfortable with it. It demands more nuanced writing than they're capable of. And it's and it's something they just sort of they abdicate their responsibility.

24:50Well, that's something that's something we don't really know about. You know, we don't know about the relationship of the of the first lady and the and the president, even though we know that she is not has not spent the night in the White House. Well, the other story that this was evident in too, even though it was a huge story online, and the trouble is you often dismiss things that are big stories online because of all the conspiracy theories, but it's the Epstein story. That it wasn't actually, I think, until we played one of your tapes of Jeffrey Epstein talking about his friendship with Donald Trump, that people understood that this was a real thing.

25:33And that was before the election. It was before the 2024 election. And you would have had there was certainly at that point you would have thought, OK, this is these are big headlines, which everyone should should that the American public should be aware of this before they went to the polls. Well, and it was also Jeffrey Epstein saying how unsuitable Donald Trump, his former best friend, was to be president, how he couldn't read a balance sheet. I mean, it wasn't just salacious. It was actually an interesting character analysis by someone who had known him really well. Yeah. Actually, I have an interesting sub stack piece, which I think will be published on Monday, which will be called 42 random things Jeffrey Epstein told me about Donald Trump.

26:27They're great. I know where you're getting the 42 random things from because your wife, who writes Our Amagansett House, has started doing very, very fun and informative lists of things like 42 things to know when a guest comes to stay or 42 ways to be a good guest. You've stolen this idea from Victoria. Exactly. Well, she granted me this idea. So she's licensed me this. Oh, she's licensed it to you. Oh, my goodness. You're going to be like the Trumps. She said, why don't you, what about all those things Jeffrey Epstein told you about Donald Trump? Why don't you make a list that's actually perfectly, it is entirely her idea.

27:08I thought the fact he couldn't read a balance sheet was one of the most interesting things. And you know who can read a balance sheet is Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, who we'll come to in a moment. But the press, the sort of self-censoring of the press and Donald Trump's aggression with the press and these constant$5 billion,$10 billion lawsuits. There was another one this week with the Center of American Progress who came out with a report that said that the National Guard had not had any significant impact on the fact that crime is going down in America's big cities across the country.

27:46So just let's understand what this was. This was perfectly straightforward data reporting. Crime is measured as a result of data that is processed by police departments and then tabulated. I mean, this is as objective as you can possibly get. Now, Trump does not like this, does not like the conclusions that you might logically draw from this data. So his response is to sue the people who have collected and analyzed this data. But they're suing him for, he's suing them for 5 billion. Let's be precise. He hasn't sued them. He has threatened a lawsuit. Right. Alexander Brito, his lawyer, has said we're going to sue you, but they haven't filed anything.

28:51There's not going to be a lawsuit here. There is going to be a threat. The threat has two purposes, actually. One purpose is to keep Donald Trump happy. So Donald Trump sees this and says, well, whatever he says, and he says, sue these fuckers. Let's sue these fuckers. And then his lawyers who are, you know, rolling their eyes. But they have to do this. They have to issue the threat to keep the client happy. But and then the the larger point of this is that it intimidates everybody else. You know, nobody in the media wants to get a legal letter, a threat from no less from the president of the United States.

29:43threatening billions of dollars. I mean, that is going to, again, it's going to cost you. You're not going to be fined a billion dollars or five billion dollars. You're not going to go to court. None of this is going to happen, but it's still going to cost you X hundred thousand dollars in legal fees. And it's a distraction. Well, the Center of American Progress, I think he's gone after them for five billion dollars. He only came after you, Michael, for one billion dollars. Yeah, no, I'm starting to feel slighted here. Well, you know, who knows, but you better hang on to that compound of yours in the Hamptons.

30:22My cottage, you've promoted into a compound. I've been to your cottage. It's not really a cottage. It's not a cottage as I would think of as a cottage, which is a two-up, two-down in England. You know, curiously, my house here served for a long period as a boarding house. Well. Side of the road, you know. I think you've just made my point for me that a cottage would not be a boarding house. You wouldn't be able to put many people up in a cottage. Well, it was a boarding house in the 19th century. People had to share their rooms. Oh, they did. Okay. Well, well, well. Spotify Advertising connects you with an audience that's engaged and ready to discover your brand.

31:09Launch a campaign with Spotify Ads Manager. All right. So two weeks ago, we had a decision from a Washington court that the ballroom was essentially illegal. It had no congressional approval, but it gave Donald Trump another two weeks to keep building while the case was referred to the Supreme Court, who yesterday made a ruling. Two weeks ago, you said Donald Trump is screaming at his contractor, build faster, build faster. And they claimed to the Supreme Court that 65 % of the ballroom had already gone up. Now, you can tell from the photographs that that's not true. There are drone photos showing there has been significant work, but it's definitely not true.

31:54So where do you understand the ballroom to be now? Well, the Trump administration has said to the Supreme Court that it is too late to stop work on the ballroom. It has gone past the point of no return. and and in effect i mean the supreme court has done the thing that it has now done repeatedly during the trump years which is to not make a decision but not to but to allow whatever the issue is to proceed and in this case that's what they've done here they've said okay we're not we have yet to make a decision on this but we are lifting any we are not we are not staying the construction. This can continue on while we deliberate, and we're going to deliberate for as long as we damn well please.

32:50In that time, of course, it will get to that point of no return. I mean, you will have something that cannot be, for all practical purposes, no court can say, get rid of it, because it already exists. And that is the game that Donald Trump has played, Which is a very New York real estate game. That's what you do in New York. New York, especially Manhattan, is a very hard place to build. Anything you build is a fraught enterprise. And you are in a race against many groups trying to stop you. and that moment when you can no longer be stopped. Right. I remember an architect friend of mine who was working in Manhattan said it could take 10 years to get permission to put up a building in New York.

33:52He moved to Shanghai and within three weeks he was putting up buildings because it's so difficult in Manhattan. And so Trump's modus operandi was to take buildings down as fast as he could and to build buildings without permission. and then worry about asking for permission later, at which point the building's basically done. Yeah, that's sort of it, part of it. I mean, more classically, you do get your approvals, you do start to go to work, and then you are sued right and left by all kinds of groups in the city with their particular interests. And then your fight is against them, and it's just a fight against time.

34:34There is that moment in which the building exists. Okay, so there was a good line in the, I think it was the Wall Street Journal talking about this, which I wanted to read out because it has the sort of ominous line to it. If, on the other hand, the High Court allows a lower court injunction against construction to take effect while the case continues, one of the most hallowed sites of the nation could be stuck in extended purgatory. The unfinished construction zone would sit idle indefinitely, able to be finished only in the unlikely event that a gridlocked Congress approves it. So in theory, we could sit there with just this open building.

35:27And that will be part of the argument to go on, that your alternatives are a building that shouldn't be, that no one wants, that shouldn't be there, that's an eyesore. Or a hole in the ground, which is an even larger eyesore, or they will argue that it's a larger eyesore. So you get to have to decide between two realities that each have their own obvious drawbacks. But that is the situation. That is the creation of reality. That's the reality Trump that has created, which will then enable him to get the reality that he wants. Well, and he'll also argue that leaving it unfinished will be a terrible security lapse.

36:23Well, that's it. I mean, he's entered this idea that there's that this is all about security. I mean, this this is a Johnny come lately argument. I mean, his first argument was a ballroom. We need a ballroom. We need a place to where lots of, you know, where I can be on stage as often as I want to be. And then when that ran into problems, then it became we need this for the security of the nation. Now, as it happens, the White House as it exists now, and underneath the White House is essentially a military base. And that has no one up until recently, Donald Trump, has said that that was insecure or inadequate.

37:14So it's your assumption that the SCOTUS just kicks this down the road, that Trump keeps on building. SCOTUS doesn't want to take this. And so they just what do they do? They say, we're going to come back in September. How can they prolong their debate about this? Well, they can prolong it as long as they want. There is no deadline for which they necessarily need to decide and no pressure other than their own pressure to get to a decision. So what is this will be? I think it's obvious what this is going to be. It is going to be that that moment will come when they can't do anything else. They can't turn the clock back.

38:05So the ballroom is a fait accompli at this point. I would say. Now, the interesting thing then is what happens, I suppose, in a post-Trump era. It is quite shocking how we already knew it was 90 ,000 square feet. So it's double the size of the current White House. But when you actually look at how high it is and how big it is, it's really remarkable how it dwarfs the White House. It's actually shocking to see it take place. Well, let's just leap forward here to imagine one of the issues that will face future politicians, future presidents after the Trump era is what do we do with what's left? How do we, if the country decides, as I think it will, that this was a wrong and destructive direction, the Trump direction, and so much has to be undone.

39:18I don't know. I mean, I would say that in undoing this, you will want to have symbols, very clear symbols of the undoing. And, you know, to take down the physical manifestations of Trumplandia, I think, might become something that many, many, many people would get behind. Well, I'm assuming that they will take off all the gold accoutrement and they'll remove the sign, the Oval Office in that horrid font, and they will remove refurbished and renovated by Donald Trump off the side of the Kennedy Center where the tarp now appears to have been installed permanently. And apparently the carpet that was put in the bathroom, which smells constantly of pee, I would say they would probably want to get rid of that.

40:23It reminds me of that scene at the beginning of Succession. Do you remember when Brian Cox stumbles in the middle of the night into what he thinks is the bathroom, but in fact is the closet? And he pees in the corner of the closet, then stumbles out and realizes what he's done, and I think just gets back into bed. I don't know why I'm reminded of that scene. Well, I can think of several reasons why you might be reminded of that scene, but we'll let that pass. You know whose name struck me this week as a glorious literary name actually is Jameson Greer. Jameson Greer has apparently been leading negotiations with Canada representing the American side.

41:06But Jameson Greer to me feels like one of those loyally names from a Dickens. Dickens, but where you can just imagine Jameson Greer sat behind his enormous desk with his pen. You know, there's just something literary about this name. But in fact, he is a real character and he's been leading the negotiations against or with Canada, which of course ended. Yeah. Yes. Go ahead. Go ahead. Which broke down yesterday in quite some moment of fire and fury from the Canadian side, which is – and there are interesting things about this. I mean, there are first thing, Jameson Greer is a famous within the Trump orbit, a famous dummy.

41:55I mean, which is interesting because so many people within the Trump orbit are dummies, which is a whole. A subject that we should come back to that the that in almost everybody who has dealings with the Trump administration comments on this of how stupid the people in the administration are. how unprepared they are to deal with their particular portfolios. You know, I mean, Pete Hegseth may have gone to Princeton, but the idea that he is qualified to run the Defense Department is ridiculous, and everyone knows that. RFK Jr., the scientific brain of the century, is the, as Stephen Chung would say, the scientific pea brain of the century.

42:49I mean, it goes on and on. But Jameson Greer is also in this crowd another dummy and who has been put into this process of negotiating trade deals, you know, as really the someone who just has to deliver Donald Trump's ultimatums. Now, the way this has worked around in so many of these things is that everybody knows the stakes here. Donald Trump wants the headline of an agreement. What is in the agreements themselves is mostly things that are of such a amorphous and nebulous nature. Everybody will be able to get around them or renegotiate them in the coming days, weeks and months. The GLP-1 pills you've been hearing about are on row.

43:50Yep, they're here with clinically proven ingredients for weight loss now in a pill and now on row. Two FDA-approved GLP-1 pill options, both at the lowest cash pay price available. Get real results from a daily GLP-1 pill. Now on Roe. To see if you qualify, go to roe.co slash choices. Rx only. Go to roe.co slash safety for serious side effects and boxed warning associated with GLP-1s. Well, and perhaps most obviously seen in the memo of understanding, which was about the most amorphous kind of document you could issue for a forum. for a foreign negotiation to end a war in theory. Exactly. But all of these trade agreements are also like this.

44:35Donald Trump wants the headline. Donald Trump wants to make certain claims. And that is at a distance from actually what will happen. So what appears to have happened with the Canadians is instead of accepting that, OK, we're going to have to, you know, you know, there's all this blah, blah in there and we'll be able to get around this in the future. Mark Carney said, no, no, that's it. I'm not I'm not I'm not doing this. This is your this is this is essentially not being negotiated in good faith. We're walking away. We can't deal with you. And and that's going to be great for him politically.

45:25And it makes the broader point, which is also just from a standpoint of logic and principles and reality, good that someone has finally done this. Mark Carney, who Christine Lagarde, she revived his nickname as the George Clooney of finance. And he seems an interesting leader to go up against Trump because he's not, as you said, he's not a typical politician. He'd never held elected office before he came in as prime minister. And he completely reversed the Liberal Party's fortunes there under Justin Trudeau. It was 20 points behind in the polls. He came in. He won the leadership contest easily.

46:14I think he got over 80 % of the vote. And he's someone who's got a business background. As we know, he ran the Bank of Canada and he managed it through the 2008 financial crisis. Well, I would go further to say that Donald Trump is the person who reversed the fortunes of the Liberal Party in Canada. And remember, the Conservative Party, they were basically moving in to Ottawa. And suddenly in this, you know, Donald Trump comes along and says, we're going to make you the 51st state and we're going to levy tariffs against you. and we're going to, you know, screw you over every which way we can because you're Canadians.

46:55And for some reason, Donald Trump has the thing against Canadians. And that suddenly and in the in the in the person of Mark Carney, clearly an intelligent person of some level of competence and probity became the anti-Donald Trump. Well, do you think also that Donald Trump was jealous? Because there were all those, in Trump 1, there were, I think, memes of Melania looking like she was thoroughly enjoying hanging out with Justin Trudeau, who in the spectrum of world leaders was more to the high charisma bent. Apparently, and partial to celebrity women. Well, obviously having great fun with Katy Perry.

47:46In fact, I ran into the two of them earlier this year at a conference, actually, and he was talking about how much he was enjoying being off that kind of circuit. And you could tell that having to deal with Trump had taken a toll on him. I have one Justin Trudeau story, which if you will indulge me, I was at a party. I don't think I've told this on the podcast before. I was at a party about four years ago when a friend approached me and I was overcompensating in my head because I realized I'd agreed to help this friend's son who was trying to get into journalism. And as she approached me with this tall, good looking young man who I vaguely recognized, I went into overdrive with him and said, oh, I'm really excited to talk to you about getting into journalism.

48:33You're really going to like it. Your mom speaks really highly of you. and he leant forward and put out his hand and he went, Justin, Justin Trudeau. And I realized that I have mistaken the prime minister of Canada for my friend's 28-year-old son. So A, he looked too young to be a prime minister and B, he didn't want to go into journalism, Michael. He was quite happy being prime minister of Canada. But I do think that Mark Carney is clearly a much more sophisticated operator, but more of an old-fashioned nature than Donald Trump. I mean, you mentioned before we hopped on the podcast that he seemed like an old fashioned Republican.

49:11Yeah, well, he is. I mean, I think he is a relatively certainly middle of the road and fairly conservative in manner. And I think in politics, too. I mean, he's a he's a person and he's in the fiscal responsibility department. Well, and I think he's also practical. I mean, he was at the Bank of England. He was the first foreigner, although, you know, he's from the Commonwealth, but the first non-English person to run the Bank of England. And he went through Brexit. I mean, obviously a person of enormous accomplishment. Of competence. And I think competence. And who has had the good fortune to be the contrast gainer to Donald Trump.

49:56Right. And I'm sure everyone in Canada is, you know, is suddenly feeling the opposite of helpless, which I think was the feeling. I mean, you know, the United States, the disparity between the power of the United States and the power of Canada is significant. And the Canadians have relatively little, not none, but these are not equal players. The Canadian leverage is significantly less. And this is a potentially difficult moment for Canada. And I think to have had to have somebody who says to Donald Trump in a way that's quite different from the leaders of other countries who have also been in this position to say to Donald Trump, you know, you know, shove it, essentially.

51:04Well, and I'm sure Mark Carney saw what was happening in England. He saw Keir Starmer, who was not a good politician and also didn't have as much of a political background as other politicians he came from. He was a lawyer and he had run chambers and he'd been the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, but was not a good politician. Get outmaneuvered by Andy Burnham, who's now the Prime Minister of Britain, who's also a contrast gainer to Donald Trump.

51:37Yeah, I haven't seen Andy Burnham be much of a contrast gainer to anyone but Keir Starmer yet. But I think that, you know, but the Keir Starmer thing was we're going to do everything possible to accommodate Donald Trump. Yeah, I am the Trump whisperer, remember? We're going to suck up because that won't seem that dignified, to say the least. But at least we will not be socked with all of the things that Donald Trump might sock us with. And I think that played very poorly. I mean, I think it doesn't play. Whatever you give Donald Trump, he will want more. Whatever you whatever deals you make with Donald Trump, he's not going to keep them.

52:28Whatever threats on top of everything else, whatever threats he makes, he won't really carry through on them anyway. So so to to try to play this guy on his own terms is going to backfire. So Mark Carney to say again, shove it. We're walking away. We're leaving the room. I think actually from inside Donald Trump's head, he's panicking right now. He's not accustomed to this. He doesn't, you know, this makes things much more complicated. He doesn't like complications. So he's in the same thing suddenly with the Canadians as he is with the Iranians. And I think in the broader sense, the world sees Donald Trump's game and knows, A, not to play it, and B, that it doesn't matter.

53:32I mean, he's a paper tiger. Well, it's ironic that the Iranians are showing the world how to deal with Donald Trump. And of course, you know, Carney has operated through crises. He said at Davos earlier this year that the middle powers needed to figure this out. He's making his own trade deals with China, which annoyed Donald Trump. And clearly things are going to be more expensive in Canada and in America for a Canadian export. There are others. You know, the Ukrainians, you know, I think are another model, you know, with Donald Trump threatening them, you know, So all kinds of, I mean, throwing Zelensky out of the Oval Office, basically saying you had to give in.

54:20Russia is much more powerful than you. You have no cards here. And the Ukrainians just basically weathered all this, just waited him out. Well, sometimes, Michael, it takes a poet to put this into a neat package for us. And Garfreed, our Limerick Laureate, this is based on an interview I did with Ruben Gallego, the senator from Arizona last night. So this was a quick turn from Garfreed. Said Gallego, quit bombing Iran. You've no exit, no end and no plan. With a Fox host in charge and a spray tanned Mirage, we'll be back in the sand once again. Thank you, Garfreed. Good work this week. And good work to you, Michael Wolff, exposing Natalie Harp.

55:10And those letters that you showed us at the database have gone everywhere. They were dominating all the social media sites yesterday. You have been so far ahead on the Natalie Harp story. Yeah, I don't know whether it's good work or not, since it took a long time. I would say good work should have been, you know, let's look at what's going on in this White House from day one instead of day whatever we are at now. So I did try, Michael, to buy us tickets for the Indy car race because I thought that you might enjoy a secret last minute trip to Washington to watch very noisy cars driving round and round.

55:58In fact, the tickets that I tried to get in the premium section were completely sold out. So we'll be back on Tuesday to discuss it. And I very much hope that anybody going doesn't get hit by a car. I always think those things are potentially lethal. And the idea of doing it in the middle of a big city with lots of people strikes me as foolhardy. So let's hope a car doesn't come flying off and crash into the White House building and delay the ballroom even further. You know, it also occurs to me that the Penske's have all kinds of significant media interests. So I wonder how that impacts their new relationship with the First Lady and presumably with the White House.

56:45Well, perhaps they're hoping that they can start a magazine with her. Melania the magazine. She's had a book. She's had a documentary. She's got a series. She needs her own magazine. She was, after all, a model. A magazine. A blog model. Jeez, remember magazines. Remember magazines. I do fondly, Michael. I do fondly. If you have been, thank you for joining us. We'll be back on Tuesday, back inside Trump's head, poking around. Ryan, John, Rachel, Neil, Heather. I think that's it. I think that's it. Thank you, Paul. Michael, have a very good rest of your weekend in your Hamptons compound. Cottage.

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