I Know the Truth About Trump's Demented Greed

0:00Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way. Because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai slash Spotify. It's a fair exchange. I'm Donald Trump. I'm the president of the United States. I should get something out of this. It's not just grift for him. It's truly revenge. A revenge that he deserves. And a step beyond certainly any kind of grift that I'm familiar with. Even historical grift. It's a whole much more elaborate psychology here.

0:49Yeah. In which he deserves it. It's not cynical as much as it is demented. I mean, he literally sees this world in which he deserves to get this money. He deserves the reward.

1:10Michael. Joanna. We are back together in person. I never thought it would happen. Oh, for God's sake. I realize we should be at the state fair. We should have gone down to D.C. because we keep saying we're going to go on the road and explore America. We should have gone down to the state fair. Other than the fact that it's 100 degrees in Washington, so we would truly be the only ones there, which is no reflection on the state fair. It is a reflection on the fact that no human being can be in Washington, D.C. this week. But it's also a reflection on the state fair. It may be, but, you know, I want to defend Trump on this.

1:50Really? There's nobody there. There's nobody there apart from a man who... Yeah, totally, absolutely true. Politicians can't put on these kind of events. They're just too square. They are too square. I mean, politicians cannot do entertainment. Even Donald Trump. Oh, come on, UFC he did. UFC, you might not be a UFC fan, but that was an event. Good point. That was. Actually, Donald Trump is great at this. So what is he... Let me reverse it completely. Right, reverse. Yeah. Okay, well, I wish we'd gone to the state for 100 degrees or not. I'm now used to 100 degree temperatures, and we could have darted in and out to the Trump Hotel for AC.

2:34I'm grateful. The Trump Hotel is not the Trump Hotel anymore. Oh, is it gone? Yeah, gone, gone. Okay. I'm grateful for not being there. We could have gone to the club there, the club that costs, in theory, half a million dollars to join, which has Don Jr. on the board. Yeah, no. Listen, I am available to go places. You can't go places because you are always somewhere else. I was. You've given me such a hard time over this. It's so unfair. I was, as you know, in the UK for a long time. Then I had to go to France. But now I'm back. Now I'm back. You know what we should ask people? where should Michael and I go?

3:15No one has to go to France. They kind of do. They kind of do. Anyway, I realized my son is investment number one, and I actually, for the first time ever, got a dividend because I got to stay with him free of charge the first time ever. So the long investment is beginning to pay off. Well, we should ask people, where should we go? We could go to, you know where I've never been and I'd like to go? Mount Rushmore. We could go to Mount Rushmore. The only place I wanted to go was Greenland. And what happened with that? Yeah. Well, what did happen? It fell off the news. No one's going to want to pay for Mount Rushmore.

3:54No one's going to want to pay for Washington, D.C. It's the Dakotas, right? Mount Rushmore. OK, so I wonder if the Dakota tourist office would like to pay for us to go. I think we could give it some good publicity. We could also Photoshop it. You could do it on your Instagram with your face at the edge of it. So it's all those presidents and then Michael Wolff. You're truly cheesy. I'm high on two coffees this morning. That's the issue. Just before we go, I just want to remind people what we're going to be talking about today. So we've got the SCOTUS decision and we're waiting for the birthright citizenship to drop any moment.

4:33We've got the straight of Hormuz, who's paying for it. We've got the staggering levels, new levels of Griff, just as you thought the Griff couldn't get bigger, it does. And then we've got a surprise for Michael, a surprise from the past for Michael. And - You remember those quiz shows when I was growing up when they used to bring out someone from your past? Yes, it's a bit like that. We've got a surprise for you, a bit like that. And, of course, no surprise, asking you to support our independent conversations because we're independent media with a subscription to The Daily Beast. So press your subscription button wherever you get your podcast.

5:13You can become a friend of the beast, which has all sorts of incredible benefits. Friend of the beast with benefits, indeed. Kazakhstan. Critical minerals. Big deal. Tungsten. Tungsten. who knew that it was necessary to make everything more lethal? I did. Oh, you did? I did. And obviously the Trump boys knew. Everybody does. I think Howard McNich knew too. Who is out to make a buck. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's an extraordinary story. Go on. I mean, I can't even, I mean, the grift is the grift and the grift is there, But this is like just completely out in the open. We're the Trump boys. So, I mean, get this.

6:04So the United States is financing a mining deal in Kazakhstan, a deal promising to make billions and billions. And I'm sure the U.S. probably should do this. Makes a lot of sense. but but um the trump boys so the sons of the president of the united states have gotten a piece of a deal that is that is um possible the deal is possible because the united states is putting up the money for it so therefore the sons of the president of the united states are directly benefiting from the taxpayer. Right, right. And so the United States is putting up the money to build the critical facilities to start the mining, right?

6:59Exactly. And then there's this other interesting thing that there's this investment bank, air quotes, investment bank, in the middle of this, Damani, it's called. And Damani, where are the offices of Damani? Well, they sound like they should be in Tehran. Where are they? No, they're in Trump Tower. Oh, they're in Trump Tower? Yes. Of course they are. Of course. This is like, does no one care? Does no one see? But let's go back. It's possible they don't. Donald Trump says nobody cares. And you may not be wrong. You're eating French fries at the beach and you want to take a quick dip in the ocean.

7:41So you put a seagull on watch. That's not security. That's catering for the seagull. There's a reason you wouldn't trust a seagull with your fries, just like there's a reason why Morgan & Morgan is America's largest injury law firm. Morgan & Morgan has a proven track record of fighting for the people for over 35 years. With over$30 billion recovered for their clients, Morgan & Morgan knows a thing or two about fighting to get you the compensation you deserve. Hiring Morgan & Morgan is like hiring an army to go into battle. They've got more than 1 ,000 lawyers and 100 offices nationwide. If you're injured by someone else's negligence, you deserve to be paid.

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8:45let's go back to the the the really interesting thing is what donald trump thinks about this um and and we we tend to think of the see him this is he's completely cynical just just give me the money i don't think that that's exactly the case i think it is that he is profoundly in his mind, in his head, believes he deserves this, that he has a fair exchange. I'm Donald Trump. I'm the president of the United States. I should get something out of this. And is this because he feels that he was persecuted during the four years? Well, yes. And that's also the thing. So it's not just grief for him. It's truly revenge.

9:39a revenge that he deserves. So it's revenge. That he is due. Right, that he, right, right. So, but this is, I mean, this is an important thing and a step beyond, I think, any, certainly any kind of grift that I'm familiar with, even historical grift, in which the grifter is not like, I'm going to, you know, I'm doing it, I'm feathering my nest. It's a whole much more elaborate psychology here in which he deserves it. He is the system. This is all Donald Trump always against the establishment and the system. And they've done me wrong. So I should be paid. So he's sort of self-adjudicating. He's readdressing the balance.

10:40He feels that first time out, he got a rum deal. Right. How much money did he make from his first administration? It's not cynical as much as it is demented. Demented. I mean, he literally sees this world in which he deserves to get this money. He deserves to be rewarded. Okay, well, his sons are getting rewarded and nobody seems to care. The sons are just the agents of this, obviously. I mean, that's the other thing. The sons are, you know, just the Trump wackies and money is delivered to know who. Right. The irony here is that Donald Trump was broke when Mark Burnett picked him up to be on The Apprentice.

11:29He played a successful businessman when he wasn't, but he got paid a lot for the show because the show was so successful. And now he's in office for the second time as president. He turns out to be a successful grifting businessman. I mean, he's going to leave with a lot more money. It's pretty easy to be a successful grifter when you're the president of the United States. That's the point. And yet the last few presidents. That's why we make a thing. You know, you shouldn't, if you're the president of the United States, you shouldn't be self-dealing. Duh. Right, right. But that's what's extraordinary.

12:05Because if you look back over the last few presidents, none of them were accused of doing that to any great extent, right? Maybe there was sort of fishy stuff with Dick Cheney, right? At one point, he had shares in BlackRock and Halliburton, and they were being used in the Iraq war. But there was nothing like the scale of what's going on now.

12:30There's nothing like the transparency of what's going on now. There's no effort to hide this. Although Domani, the so-called investment bank. Who's on the board of Domani? Well, I think the Trump boys have an advisory role. Yes, exactly. Have an advisory role. Exactly. So, demented, not cynical. I mean, that's the other thing. It's the other, I think, profound misunderstanding about, once again, we've talked about this before, about how to understand what's going on in Trump's head. There was a piece, I can't remember, in the Times recently about the election stuff, about Trump trying to subvert elections.

13:21About how his, well, your point, I think, that his campaign strategy is to try and sow confusion around. Well, no, it's actually more about, you know, he believed the election was stolen from him. And then the Times position, which is common, you know, flat-footed position, was that, you know, that he's cynical, that he's trying to, you know, that this is, he's just using this as the excuse to do what he wants. Again, I think a profound misunderstanding. And the truer way to look at it is that he believes or has come to believe, or it has been so convenient that he has convinced himself that this is absolutely true.

14:09So this is a more serious condition than I'm a cynical guy and doing this. It is, again, demented. He has come to believe, he comes to believe in his own realities. And that's a more serious situation than someone who is just exercising some meretricious strategy. Or greed, or greed, just exercising extreme, deep levels of greed. Right. There's a logic to that. This has departed logic. All right. So is he going to eventually put up a toll gate on the Strait of Hormuz? I mean, what's happening? I don't know if we're at war or not. We have a memo of understanding that both sides are hurling things at each other.

14:51It's all a mess. And also, it feels like it's going to be one of those things that now just carries on going, that there are going to be four areas of violence. I mean, I think you have it. I mean, I think that Iran has won. I mean, they made it about the Strait of Hormuz. So that's it. We've been saying it's the, you know, the Hormuz war. And they seems to have actually won. They control it. It's unbelievable. I mean, there was an announcement today or a story about the possibility that Oman and Iran have gotten together and that they will together impose this toll on the strait and split it.

15:42God knows how. But nevertheless, there was the Strait of Hormuz before this war began was free passage. Right. Now it is not. Now it is controlled by Iran. That is what Donald Trump has achieved. Also terrifying to be on one of those tankers and not know whether or not you're going to get through. Well, that's the point. That's how you how you control the Strait of Hormuz. I understand that. But for the poor men, and I'm sure there are very, very few women, you know, actually running those tankers through, you're sort of taking your life in your hands. that's why you don't go through. That is precisely the calculation that gives you control over the Strait of Hormuz.

16:32You don't know. It's existential unless you pay. And then if you pay, you get free. And it now looks like it's going to be$2 million a tank of the coal. Donald Trump is not going to want to not be in on that$2 million. Yeah, well, I don't know how he gets in. And I mean, I mean, this is this is this is you have to cast this larger. This is such a phenomenal fuck up. Right. I mean, in every single way. And there's another aspect of this that basically, you know, this this deal is going to free up an enormous amount of ash for the Iranians. I mean, all of the three hundred billion dollars, all of the sanctioned money is going to funnel back from them.

17:19So let's get this. The original goal here, and this really was originally the paramount goal, was to get rid of the regime. Right. The result, the end product now of this effort is to finance the regime. It's crazy. So the regime is going to... It's crazy there is more outcry about it. Well, there's a fair amount of outcry, but it's also a complicated subject. And that's one of the interesting things that will be in terms of the midterm elections. Four months away, is this forgotten by then? But it's not that complicated. Donald Trump ripped up the previous deal under the Obamas, the JCPOA. The minute he ripped it up in 2018, the Iranians started enriching uranium again.

18:12And then he created a much worse deal where we are, as you said, financing the new Iranian regime. The people didn't rise up as he'd called on them to do. And we're stuck now with tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, all of which had been played out by previous American presidencies. and they'd all resisted the siren call of Benjamin Netanyahu to go to war for Israel's bidding. Well, absolutely. I mean, the tragedy is actually the low threshold of what is complicated in American politics. So that should not be complicated. One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is how easy it is to go through life just assuming everything is fine until something isn't.

19:05I feel like so many doctor's visits end the same way. Everything looks fine. Drink more water. See you next year. Meanwhile, I'm left wondering, am I getting enough nutrients? How's my metabolism? What should I actually be focusing on? That's why I'm excited about superpower. Superpower takes a completely different approach. They send a licensed professional to your home or you can visit a nearby lab and you get testing across more than 100 biomarkers. Then everything shows up in one app with insights into your heart health, hormones, metabolism, vitamins, minerals, biological age, and more. What I love is that it doesn't just give you data, it gives you an actionable plan and tracks your progress over time.

19:51So you're not starting from scratch every year. Take control of your health with superpower. For a limited time, our listeners get$20 off to unlock their new health intelligence. Head over to superpower.com and use code BEAST for$20 off your$199 superpower membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about superpower. So tell them Inside Trump's Head sent you to support the show. Can't you just slim it down to worst deal? Worst deal ever, Not best deal ever, worst deal ever. Okay, we're just slimmed it down to that. Okay, worst deal ever. Yes. But it actually has to be attached to the prices at the pump.

20:42Well, the prices at the pump, the prices for fertilizer, the prices for food. Everything is more expensive when gas is more expensive. Because you have to move things around. In four months, he now has four months for those prices to come down. Will they come down? I don't know. Well, the price at the pump has come down a little bit, but the other prices are going to be baked in for the next, at least I would think, 18 months because everything's gone up. Plus there's inflation at 4.5%, even though he says he doesn't care about inflation. Price at the pump. Everything else is built in, and yes, it creates an effect and creates a mood, but the pump is what everybody experiences.

21:24They see it. Said like a man who I don't think goes to the grocery store very much. I bet you go to the fancy grocery store in Amagansi. You go to Citarella and pick out nice fresh fish. But I bet your wife does the actual grocery shopping. Actually, that's completely not true. Really? Yeah, I go to the IGA and I go all of... Okay, how much is a pint of milk? How much is a pint of organic milk? Oh, not a pint. What are those? What is that? Half a quart? $3.39. $3.39? That's unbelievably cheap. You're not buying organic. No, of course I'm not buying organic milk. You're not buying organic milk.

22:00No. You've got children. You should be buying organic milk. You don't want antibiotics and hormones in the milk. Can't believe you don't have organic milk. God, you're so privileged. Well, organic eggs and organic milk feel visceral to me. This is expensive. I can't believe you pay so little for your milk. That's impressive. It's impressive. I can't believe you have organic milk. You don't go to the grocery store. I do go to the grocery store. I go to Instacart. That's an online grocery store. This is totally not true. This is appalling. You don't. And I'm sure you haven't. When was the last meal you cooked?

22:39Oh, I cook all the time. Oh, you don't cook all the time. I do. I've been to your house. You bring it in. Sometimes I cook. Sometimes I cook. You know what? I just came back from a month of cooking for my dad. Okay, we're now down to, I cook all the time. Sometimes I cook. Okay, all right. I do occasionally cook. I do occasionally cook. Okay, well, I cook every day. Do you, though? Not a single day passes. All right. So Iran's winning the Battle of Hormuz. Donald Trump is losing the popular imagination at the moment, I think it's fair to say. and he's digging in on... Well, it's a catastrophe.

23:22I mean, he's literally looking at a catastrophe in every race, certainly in every poll, but in also every swing race. This could go down the drain for him like that, literally on November 3rd, which is four months from now. Everything could change. Essentially, Donald Trump could go out of business. Well, and he could have a historic loss, right? Well, that's what I mean. Right. The biggest loss ever. Biggest loss ever. People love the loss. No, I mean, it is the end of, as a matter of fact, you know, I've started to write this

24:06little substack digression column or whatever we call them called downfall. which is because I think that is very clearly what we are seeing in almost every aspect of this, his mind, his body, his policies, and his popularity. So it's an emergency for him. What do you do? What do you do if you're Donald Trump and you are looking at the end of everything you theoretically have achieved? And the Supreme Court has refused to side with him on E. Jean Carroll. So he's now officially a sex abuser. So we have a sex abuser in the White House. So the midterms, four months away, what he has now doubled down on.

24:58I mean, he's not doubled down on any change in direction of his policies. He's not suddenly becoming a a kinder Donald Trump. One thing you can say for Donald Trump is that a focus group is not at all times running in his head. As it is for so many Democrats. But so he's looking at this. I can still win this. I can still eke out a victory here if I screw around with the election rules. And that is now also what he's become singularly focused on, obsessed about. So obsessed that basically he stopped the work of the United States Congress because it won't pass the law that he wants. Save bill, the save bill.

25:50Yeah, whatever. Which in effect creates a whole new series of hurdles for people to vote, which would theoretically, not necessarily, by the way, but theoretically help the Republican vote. Right. But the Congress isn't going to pass this. And they keep telling him we can't pass this because we don't have the votes to pass this. Never mind. Stop everything. You have to do this. A pass. Get rid of the filibuster then. No, no, no. We're never going to get rid of the filibuster, Mr. President. It doesn't matter. Obsessed. Obsessed, you know, in, again, that demented kind of way. Right. Very fixed on it.

26:32And of course, it worked for him before when he denied the results of 2020. I mean, it worked for him as a kind of rallying cry for all his people. And everybody fell into line when he got reelected. I mean, it's astonishing the people, especially, well, obviously the Republicans, who at the time said, you didn't win, sir, you lost the election, sir, who then circled back and said, you won the election, sir, of course, you were cheated out of it. I mean, it's astonishing how many people with Ivy League educations, proper, you know, people that should have known better pretend that he actually won.

27:0720. Yeah, no, and that was a curious thing because I had begun writing a book about the election then and was kind of on the scene talking about, that was actually a rich moment because it was this landslide. Yeah, because a lot of the Trump people who were out of jobs suddenly were talking but literally at that moment January 6th happened Um, and it was, I mean, the election happened and, and everybody, the whole Trump white house was like, okay, we don't want any part of this, of this denial. And then the crazies, Rudy Giuliani people came, came in and then January 6th that happened. And then you just thought there was just that absolute moment when you thought this is over how could it not be anything but over every republican leader in the senate you know shaking their heads well and some of them have been truly frightened by what happened on january but but almost immediately thereafter was three days after January 6th, White House people said, okay, seems bad.

28:32Let's put a poll in the field. Let's put a poll in the field. And they put a poll in the field, I think X number of days, eight, nine days later, the poll came back showing yet an overwhelming popular support among Republicans for Donald Trump. And that almost immediately brought everybody, the general Republican leadership, any Republican office holders back into the fold. But why would people take notice of that when he just lost the election? Because he maintained that base with the Republican Party. So it's not Democrats who were suddenly saying that it's Republicans who understood at that point, that elemental thing, Donald Trump still controlled the Republican Party.

29:27So that has been, you know, that's this theme that you have to keep looking at here, that the Republican Party itself has no control over the Republican Party. It's Donald Trump who has that control. Well, and he appears to have control over the Supreme Court, though at least there were two decisions this week that didn't go his way. One was the Mississippi mail-in voting, which allowed people to still mail in votes on election day and count votes that arrived after election day, something that he's pointed to in California and said, oh, this points to fraud, even though no Republicans in California are saying it points to fraud.

30:07Might point to a slightly sloppy election process, but not to fraud. And then, of course, the refusal to allow him to fire Lisa Cook on the board of the Fed, which he tried to do because largely she was in line with Jerome Powell, not wanting to reduce interest rates. So he tried to elbow her out of there. And then, of course, this decision that they were not going to look at readdressing the E. Jean Carroll case for$5 million. But the larger thing was a victory for him, which is basically he got the power of vast expansion of power to fire almost anyone who works in the executive branch. So any agency that's controlled by the executive branch.

30:58And at least traditionally, those agencies have had a sort of a complicated level of independence. In other words, it wasn't easy to fire them. Now it is easy to fire them. Essentially, he's been given direct control. Not they exempted this out, direct control of the Fed, but direct control of all of these other agencies, which is one of the things from the beginning, from 2017 what he has wanted. This is, remember Steve Bannon talking about the war on the administrative state. This is what this is. He can just now declare victory in the war on the administrative state, not victory in the war in Iran, but on the administrative state.

31:51So which is, you know, which is my belief that that's what the Supreme Court is doing, is threading this needle, that it is not for them, not an issue of constitutional law anymore. It's an issue of what we have to give Donald Trump, what we can withhold from Donald Trump, what we have, what fealty we owe to Donald Trump. And they're doing this in a very, very careful basis, which is in itself, Rob. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions.

32:45Ask yours at claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai slash Spotify.

32:55Right. Okay. Well, we woke up this morning to Moscow receiving more drones. They're not receiving more drones. They're being attacked by more drones. Okay. They're being attacked by more drones. What they have to do is get more drones, but they don't have them. Okay. So Moscow is under fire for Ukraine. Everybody, it turns out, needs more drones. Okay. Except Ukraine. Yes. The Ukraine, the supplier of drones to the world. Exactly. And I'm not calling it the Ukraine anymore. It's just Ukraine. Very pleased with that development. Ukraine's coming out on top at the moment. Well, one of the interesting things, I think they certainly are.

33:38And one of the interesting things from the inside Trump's head view is that he picked wrong. He picked the wrong side. I mean, which is kind of, you know, another thing you would think that he would be held to account for. Well, and against all the advice. You're a loser. You pick the losing side. And against all the advice of his advisors, you know, Lindsey Graham.

34:10Well, even that. What is his obsession with Russia? Why does he want to be friendly with Putin? I understand the strongman thing, but none of this makes sense. Why would you, as Georgia Maloney said, why would you treat your allies like this? Why are you sucking up to Putin and Xi and not being more friendly to your allies? Why aren't you supporting Europe? He looks at a map and he sees Russia. That's big. Right. All that land. All that land. Frozen tundra. Ukraine, much smaller. I'm going to go with the big guy. And I swear to God, this is the level of analysis that occurs here. I mean, again, this kind of thing that no one, no, we don't have the capacity to appreciate how phenomenally stupid Donald Trump is.

35:05And it's not just stupid. It's how phenomenally incurious, how phenomenally uninterested in any information, unable really to take in any information. Well, and also especially historical information. There's no context for what he does. Well, to say the very least. Right. And would be resentful about there having to be that context. So how does he, what happens to Russia and Ukraine at this point? I mean, I know that Europe is very anxious about Europe. Well, that I can't tell you. You can't? Oh, I thought you were going to say I'm going to tell you. But, you know, I think we can, I mean, the truth is that this is, this is complicated.

35:54And everything in this war, which is pretty interesting, I suppose it's like all wars, but this seems to happen in a much speeded up sense, that there's an advantage and it's a technological advantage, basically. And then it exists until the other side compensates and comes to parity with that advantage. But they haven't got that yet. Russia's taking so long. No, they haven't. I mean, they have at several points during the this has been going on for four plus years and at several points they actually that they actually have. I mean, this is I mean, the the pattern of this war is is is is Ukraine manages to come out to secure an advantage and then Russia meets that advantage.

36:46And then it goes into a stalemate until the Ukrainians come up with an additional advantage. So how long this goes on? I mean, I think the Ukrainian hope that the Russians are going to have to say, you know, OK, let's figure out a way out of this. I mean, almost a million Russians have been casualties of this war. So it certainly does seem that at some point Putin is in trouble. Now, remarkably, he has not been in that much trouble to date and still may not be in that much trouble. In the Trump narrative, it would have been so easy for him to have seen, if he can see anything besides big, small on the map, that the Ukrainians were, that this would be a, it would have vastly redounded to his credit to have been on the side of the little guys.

37:50Well, and to have managed to bring about the peace deal, he promised he would bring on his first day in office. But by backing the wrong side. And remember when Zelensky shows up in the Oval Office, he says, you know, he said, you know, you don't have any cards. You don't have the cards. And he said, sir, I don't have any cards. They had all the cards. Yeah. It's still my favorite joke when he says that about the Iranians. you don't have any cards and they have the straighter four moves. Such a good line. Not my line. I've found it somewhere, but it's a very good one. All right. So we're recording this on Tuesday morning and we've just got a newsflash that the Supreme Court have struck down Trump's executive order demanding end to birthright citizenship, something that's enshrined in the Constitution, and yet it's still a 6-3 decision.

38:48I don't think that there was anyone who thought this would go in any other direction. No, I think that's right, but I'm still staggered that three justices dissented.

39:04Gorsuch, Alito, and I think Clarence Thomas. It must be Clarence Thomas. Alito and Thomas are 100 % Trump. 100%. Well, they're even further to the right of Trump, I think. Conspiracy theorists almost at this point. Yeah. And they're old and they're racist and they're... And they fly their flags upside down. It doesn't make any difference. So two people, you can just put them aside. They don't really count in a kind of logic. You're asking for some logic here. They don't count. So Gorsuch, I don't know what the... I haven't read the... Well, it's literally just come out, so we're trying to marshal our thoughts on this.

39:48So I would say six to three in this context is... It's unanimous. ...a recognition that... This was an absolutely lunatic thing to bring. Absolutely ridiculous. And I don't think the Trump people thought that this was anything else, but this is performative. Yeah. But like having, yeah, it's performative. Okay. Well, happily, it's been struck down. Because how on earth would you enforce it? It's utterly unenforceable. It was never going to happen. Performative. Can we talk about the most attractive couple in politics, the Newsoms, who are made to go to the White House, aren't they? I mean, his hair, her hair, they are of deep Bravo type, Bravo the channel fabulosity.

40:38Yeah, you know, I was at the fateful Biden debate in Atlanta. I think it was in Atlanta. Yes, I certainly was there. Yes.

40:56one of the one of the one where biden failed to answer and it caused the yes and start of all our problems and that was the the thing that i mean that was kind of kind of extraordinary because you know they did this biden did this debate and then after all of the surrogates come out on the floor and um and you wait for them and the republicans came out the democrats didn't come out because they had no idea what to say. And then finally, they came out in a scrum around Newsom. I mean, he was, they were kind of all, and what you saw and what you focused on was his hair. First thing, he's very tall and the hair is kind of extraordinary.

41:46And you really said, okay, if being the President of the United States is at least one factor is about what kind of hair you have, then he might have a very good shot at this.

42:17yours at claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai slash Spotify. So what we heard last week from Gavin Newsom was that Trump has started investigations into him. This is politically motivated, obviously, according to Newsom. Yeah. I mean, I think it turns out that this investigation began almost a year, somewhat about a year ago in a U.S. attorney's office. Now, you know, Trump obviously controls the Justice Department and has enormous sway with U.S. attorneys. But apparently, so this may or may not be Trump, directly Trump related. Apparently, there was a whistleblower involved and they started an investigation in the U.S.

43:08attorney's office, I assume in California. And this is to do with how Gavin Newsom raises money. And it's basically pay for play. That's the accusation that he receives. Yeah, no, I mean, there's a good Wall Street Journal article. Well, let me let me say this is this is an article by the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which is particularly tends to not tends to almost almost always takes a Republican and conservative voice. Although not necessarily a pro-Trump voice, we should point out. They've been a robust opposition, actually, at the Journal, both the news pages and, it turns out, the pages.

43:55Sometimes the editorial page. At any rate, it says, reads, For years, the governor has leveraged his power to get businesses to cough up cash for progressive causes. Two beneficiaries are nonprofits founded by his wife, Jennifer Siebel. Never a good look. The Representation Project and the California Partners Project. She has collected more than$1.9 million in compensation from the former. So it's not only her organizations, but she's getting paid. The question is, on what basis do you raise this money? Well, they're called bested payments, right? And this may not be, you can probably argue, which they will certainly argue, that this is not illegal at all.

44:52It is, though, as the, this is politics. And so theoretically, it is the appearance of conflict that we seek to avoid. Now, that may be an old and discarded point of view. Donald Trump wiped it away. The appearances don't matter anymore. But it also could mean that Gavin Newsom, who is the front runner for the Democratic nomination in 2028, not that he will remain the front runner, but certainly at this point, could be knocked out by something like this. Well, it also says that he's raised, I mean, the total amount he's raised since 2011 is$350 million, right? Which, according to the journal, has poured in since he became governor in 2019.

45:49That's a lot,$350 million. Yeah, no. Behested payments. And they're legal, but they're not seemly. And maybe they're not. I mean, obviously, there are some questions about the legality of this. Right. Or there's a mischievous whistleblower and it's going to cause him damage. Yeah, but these kinds of things, and we should start to log these kinds of things because it's highly relevant to 2028. And what Gavin Newsom has done has leaned in to the Trump way of handling it, which is to say they're coming after me. It's a witch hunt and putting it center stage as opposed to putting it in the background and telling people not to worry about it.

46:39So he's actually campaigning on this now. Yeah, fascinating. We will continue to watch. Yeah, no, and I think that, I mean, this is the kind of, this kind of thing is actually a test of your mettle for getting the nomination. Right, this is why you need time to run. In other words, in order, yes, in order to be the person who should get the nomination, then you see if you can survive this kind of stuff. Yep, and do you think he's going to survive it? I think he's thriving on it.

47:19Yeah, the questions are, should he survive it? And then, will he survive it? Okay, fair. Should he survive it and will he survive it? All right, you mentioned hair as a candidate, and we have a surprise for you. Who is this man with all the hair? Long ago. See, I lost that hair. Come on. I would never in a million years have thought that this was your hair. I would never. I imagine that you would have very bushy hair. Look at this. This is magnificent hair. For those who aren't watching us, for those who are actually listening to this, what we have found is, I guess, is this your high school yearbook?

48:04It is. It's Michael. It's a picture of Michael, a photo from his high school yearbook, in which his hair is magnificent. It's shiny. It's straight. It's curled in basically a bob just behind your ear. And then there is a description of you. Can I read the description? Arguing a point with Mr. Kerner in English, Mike Wolfe, student council president. You swapped. Student council president concerned with the problems of the school, the cities, a serious student of history, philosophy, his dazzling rhetoric leading to victory in debates, discussions. Mike Wolfe, introverted but serious and with fabulous hair.

48:47That is election-worthy hair. You could win elections on that hair on its own. I've seen that hair. You see, but that's the problem with elections. You have to be able to continue the hair until you are of age. Should I get a hair piece for you? I would just like to see what it looks like. I mean, it's magnificent hair. It actually, for the first time, made me think about what it's like losing your hair. I was the best day of my life. It took a lot to keep that hair. You know, you had to tend that hair. Yeah. This hair. No tending. Did you actually make a decision to just shave it all? At some point, yeah.

49:28I feel like ever since I've known you, you've not had any hair. No, I haven't had hair for decades. Right. No, I remember Scott Galloway saying it was a huge relief when he got rid of his hair. What, have I ever known you with hair? How old were you when you started getting bald? I'm in my 30s. Huh. So your kids cannot remember you with hair? No. Fascinating. Anyway, this is election-worthy hair. No wonder you were… Do you think I'm handsome? Of course you're handsome. No wonder you were school president. You won the school presidency because of your hair. It's a really underestimated thing in politics.

50:07Have we ever had a bald president? Well, I mean, Eisenhower was not a guy with a lot of hair. But he had some hair. That was a real comb-over. It was a comb-over. I mean, and it was a not. And television was less of a thing then. Yeah. Television was less of a thing. Anyway, Gavin Newsom's got fabulous hair. His wife's got fabulous hair. His behested payments are legal, according to the Wall Street Journal. And he says he's being investigated because Donald Trump has launched a witch hunt against him because he knows that Gavin might win. You know who is getting a surge of attention is Andy Beshear.

50:53Andy Beshear is never going to be president. The man speaks in policy paragraphs. I had a dinner with him last summer in the Hamptons, of course, where everybody shows up. All Democrats show up to raise money. I think some Republicans show, but the Republicans stay in Southampton. Southampton, yes. The Democrats moved to Wayne Scott in East Hampton and very much Saginaw. And he was, you know, I thought I was, you know, extremely nice guy and extremely intelligent. Governor of a red state. all of this, as dull as you could possibly be. I mean, it was the people at this, there were only a few people at this dinner, but everybody was a prop in their eyes.

51:39Well, he's milquetoast, isn't he? I mean, he's governor of Kentucky, so red state, that's impressive that he's done that. But he doesn't have the charisma, I think, to be president in the age of social media and everything else. Well, a conversation that will continue. Bit of a stray there. Poor old Andy Beshear caught a stray from our conversation. However, we will be back and we'll be back on Thursday. We're not going away. Unless Donald Trump launches a witch hunt into us. I think he has launched one into me. Oh, he has? Oh, I have. Do you have an update on where you are with his wife? Yes, but let's save that for Thursday.

52:21Okay, so Thursday we'll be back. We'll talk about the update in Michael's case, suing the First Lady. And if you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to The Daily Beast. And you get all sorts of special perks for membership, especially if you join the either Bee Beast tier level or the Beast Friend, Friend of the Beast. Friend of the Beast. Friend of the Beast. Thank you, Ryan, John, Heather. Rachel, and Neil. So the good news is we have so many B-beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out, and we really appreciate your support.