These Are the 10 Things that Terrify Trump Most

0:00Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for$15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three-month plan equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. When you spend enough time around great companies, you notice that the best ones treat trust as a growth strategy, not a box to check.

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1:24you'll be showing up on game day. Tecova's denim. It's made for boots. Top of his list, top of the things that plagues him is being seen as stupid. For one reason, because he is stupid. You know, and I think that he probably does have some learning disability. That is one of the roots of his major insecurities. You don't think someone's been elected to president of the United States. I mean, they can be many things, But you don't think that they're an idiot, someone who knows nothing about nothing. And that really is Trump. He's not as other presidents. He's not like other people.

2:09Michael. We must remind people we will be at the Terrogram Bullroom in L.A. October the 20th at, I guess, 7 p.m. 7 p.m. Pacific time, obvi. If you would like to come and join us and see Michael completely unplugged, no holds barred, unedited by moi, he will be in full form. And you can buy tickets at beast.pub slash ithlive. That's beast.pub slash ithlive. Or you can go to Ticketmaster and just tap in inside Trump's head. Are you looking forward to it? I am. Good. I am also looking forward to it and very much looking forward to meeting people. There are some meet and greets, which I'm very excited about because there's nothing more fun than talking to people who've actually listened to us.

3:03Pressing the flesh. Pressing the flesh. Running for president. Oh, you are running for president. Michael wants to run, I guess, as an independent, right? As a writer. As a writer. As a writer. The first writer candidate. Well, they all go and monetize their writing afterwards, right, with J.R. Maringo, whoever. Who co-wrote Obama's memoir? Did he write it himself? He probably did write it himself, didn't he? Two volumes. Yeah, no, I think he did. Probably the only person who did. At least he claims to, yes. All right, so today we have a special episode. But they still have a lot of people around them.

3:42What's this? Well, the people, they call out. I have no one around me. I write, I write. But these people have, oh, what's getting it? Can you get me the thing? And remember what I said about that? Get me that. So it's a different writing experience. Different writing experience. Fair. And don't forget, please subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. We are going to have, I hope, a conversation I've really been looking forward to having for some time, actually. We're really going to go deep, deep, deep into Trump's head where we go three times a week to try and explain a president who really rules with no regard for anybody else.

4:20Is that fair? Just to remind people why we do this journey every week. No regard to anyone else. No regard to anything that has ever been done before. No regard to what will be done in the future. No regard to literally anything. It is just one man who exists in his own bubble and fantasy world, which somehow has become our world. All our world. All our world. So we were, I mean, obviously Michael and I have endless conversations when we don't have microphones in front of us. And we try and pare everything down when we do have actual podcast conversations. So we leave out the dull bits. But one conversation we've been having is about what is Trump actually afraid of?

5:10Is there anything he's afraid of? He behaves as if he's not remotely afraid of anything, including a drubbing at the midterm elections. And so Michael made a list of the 10 things that he thought Donald Trump was actually afraid of. Well, and I made this list counter to the list that you made. And the list that Joanna made was a list of things that most people would be afraid of. Right. Including death. Including looking. I wondered if he looked at Mitch McConnell and thought, oh, that could be me. And the thing that I try to say in this list and the thing that I try to say all of the time is that Donald Trump is not like you, nor I, nor anyone we know or have ever known.

6:05Yeah, you sent me back a text saying, stop trying to normalize him. Of course, he's not afraid of any of these things that I'd listed. Instead, you came up with a much more interesting list. And then we thought, well, we should do this as a special episode of the podcast because what he's afraid of, well, it illuminates so much about him. Okay, so the first thing you say about him is, well, the first thing is… No, you have to, because our printer doesn't work, so we can't print out. Still doesn't work. Our printer still doesn't work. So I'm going to show it to you on my iPad. Yes. But. He is, I mean, I think top of his list, top of the things that plagues him is being seen as stupid.

6:58For one reason, because he is stupid. And we should say that the point of going through these fears is to understand why he is as he is, because actually he's a man that's been created through his fears. And all of his things, you know, of declaring himself a genius. Stable genius, a very stable genius. He declared himself a stable. He said that after my book, Fire and Fury, came out, obviously. kind of suggesting that he was less than a genius, much, much, much less than a genius. And as a matter of fact, there was a moment I was trying to think at which point this was that Steve Bannon and I were talking about what Putin might have on Trump.

7:57And Bannon went through all the things, dismissing them, the pee tapes. If that came out, that really wouldn't bother him because Trump would just say, that's not me. Even if you saw Trump in the picture peeing on the mattress, he would just say, no, it's not me.

8:19Or whether there was financial stuff. Financial stuff doesn't bother him. All of those kinds of things. But then Bannon got to the point, he said, what I think Trump has on him are his college transcripts. And his college transcripts, which would be from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. And in fact, during the campaign, during the 2016 campaign, there was a fear that those transcripts were going to come out. And then they came down very hard on the University of Pennsylvania and basically said, you know, we will take every action against you if those transcripts are not buried.

9:02So always that kind of thing to be revealed as a person, as a dummy, because he is a dummy, because he doesn't, I mean, he has throughout his school years were always a complete catastrophe. I mean, his, you know, and I think that he probably does have some learning disability, which I think is very, you know, uncomfortable for him. I mean, he is, that is one of the roots of his major insecurities. If you've ever landed in another country and immediately started desperately searching for airport Wi-Fi or realised you now have to figure out how to get a local SIM, there's a much easier way. It's called Saley, the eSIM solution from the security pros behind NordVPN.

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10:43Use code BEAST at checkout to get 15 % off your first purchase. That's 15%. The details are in the podcast episode description box. Why hasn't Fordham, his first university, released the transcripts? Do you think anybody's asked Fordham? Because he went to Fordham first and then he transferred into the undergraduate program at Wharton, right? I think because he's Donald Trump. He threatens you. He'd tie up anybody in litigation. I'm sure that he has already gone and secured these transcripts at both Fordham and the University of Pennsylvania. Okay. All right. We haven't seen his tax returns either.

11:30I mean, he's pretty good at this. It's incredible how we haven't seen his tax returns. We haven't seen his high school transcripts. We haven't seen either of his college transcripts. They have been so successful in locking that stuff down. And you know if they were good, he would have floated them out there immediately. Well, you know that they're not good. Right, right. Well, can you also tell the anecdote of the guy that when you were at the beginning of writing Fire and Fury and you're wrestling trying to understand, as many people have done, what actually is going on inside Donald Trump's head?

12:05And someone says to you, you don't get it. Tell that story. Okay. So one of the Trump people, a guy by the name of Sam Nunberg. And Sam Nunberg was really one of Trump's first political political hires. Sam used to work for Roger Stone, and that's how he came into the Trump orbit. And he became really Trump's first political operative. And then they ultimately, in 2016 or maybe late 2015, had a falling out and Sam got fired. But for many years, Sam remained the go-to person. People in Trump world who are trying to understand what is going on with this guy would call Sam because he was regarded as being the guy really inside Trump's head.

13:03And when I was first getting into this, first trying to understand, and when I started to report on Trump, trying to start to write Fire and Fury, I was in the White House and I had no no preconceptions. I actually thought, well, Trump could be a very interesting president, you know, disrupt or rule breaker. I mean, that turned out to have very bad consequences, but it could have had actually positive consequences. Who knew how this was going to go? But in those first months in the White House where everybody was confused about what Trump was doing and what kind of guy he was and what was the goal here.

13:44And And I went to Sam Nunberg and I sat down with him and I said, just, and I was trying to work this out, out loud. Was he good? Was it bad? Was this, did he know what it was? You just couldn't tell. And then Sam looked at me like I was, I mean, like he was incredulous. And he said to me, he said, you don't get it. And I said, what? And then Sam said, he's an idiot. And it suddenly came clear. You don't think someone's been elected to president of the United States. I mean, they can be many things, but you don't think that they're an idiot, someone who knows nothing about nothing. And that really is Trump.

14:42Okay, so number two, the thing that he's afraid of, it is completely counterintuitive, again, for a president of the United States. Information, and that was also from a Steve Bannon perception, that he said that Trump was an information phobe. And this is related to being stupid in that he can't process this when people give him information. And in the early days in the White House, and again, the people in the first administration, Trump had no political contacts. There were only really two politicians that he personally knew, Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey. So he arrives in Washington and everybody who fills the White House, they don't know who he is either.

15:39Everybody is kind of getting to know each other on the job. And that's totally unusual, remember, because most people run for president and over a long period of time, they have long political careers and they're surrounded by people who have worked for them for a long period of time. I mean, even Steve Bannon, who was essentially the number two in the White House, had only really known Trump since the previous August. So everybody's in the White House and they're trying to figure out this guy. And I remember one of the things, and everybody's asking everybody else. And then one of the observations, they would say, but, you know, he doesn't read.

16:30I mean, this is so difficult to get him information. You would put it into, you know, you would try to give it a format, bullet points or one paragraph. But all of this, he would do this gesture, just kind of wave it away. So you couldn't put something in front of him. And then they would say, you know, so that's a problem. But then that's compounded by the fact that he doesn't listen. So there's just no way you could get any information to him. Because there's lots of speculation that he can't read. A lot of discussion. Was he actually illiterate? Was he semi-literate? Or he could be dyslexic.

17:18Was he dyslexic? One of those things. but there was obviously a dysfunction when it came to words on the page. Right. And yet he does seem to be able to read from a teleprompter. Even that, remember, often those speeches, he always deviates from the teleprompter. Right. And that, again, it's very uncomfortable for him. I mean, in a sense, he understands he's better. He is more Trump when he's off the television. When he's off script, when he's gone off script. But that's partly because he has learned to do that. So this is all a kind of way of compensating for the things that other people do rather naturally and rather, you know, and that keeps them out of trouble.

18:12And he's, I mean, in a sense, he invites that. He's come to invite that trouble as a way of compensating. Right. So these are his coping mechanisms, which in a normal or in a person who's not president of the United States wouldn't necessarily matter. I mean, it's incredibly high. I think it's something like 23 % of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 have dyslexia and compensate by, like Ari Emanuel does, making 300 calls a day and then having an incredible memory as opposed to having things written down everywhere. But that's not what we don't think that's Trump's issue. Well, I mean, I think that can be part of it too.

18:59But I think there's gradations of this. And I mean, one of the things Jeffrey Epstein used to point out that Trump, and remember Trump, the myth of Donald Trump is as the greatest businessman in America, he couldn't read a balance sheet. Right. Because on top of everything else, he's innumerate. This is one of the reasons numbers, the numbers become, there are 60 ,000 people at a rally or 40 ,000 people at a rally. And that becomes for Trump hundreds of thousands because the numbers don't mean anything. I mean, he can't envision them. He can't conceptualize them. It's just a random expression of a lot of people.

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21:14He is terrified of information. He can't absorb it. Anything that's written down. There's a terror and you can see when you give him something, when you hand him something, of something written in front of them. I mean, something happens in his face. He doesn't want to see it. Right. He panics. Push it away. Yeah. I feel a bit like that when I have to look at my bank account. Just panic. Panic. Get it away from here. Get it away from here. Okay. So what's the third thing that you think is important in his fears, which you would think would disqualify him to be president? He doesn't want to have a conversation.

21:57He can't have a conversation. He's afraid of having a conversation. He's afraid of having a conversation. I mean, he's afraid of having a conversation because he can't actually think in the, he can't respond in the moment. If you say something to him, he can't address it in a conversation, which is I say something and then you say something related to that. He can't do that. So he'll talk over you or talk parallel to you or not let you talk at all. So there is no discussion. I mean, let's think about this. When your answers come out of the sharing of information, of parsing things with someone else who might know something, of everything being additive, of people thinking out loud and having their thinking clarified against what someone else is saying.

23:04So this doesn't happen with Trump, can't happen with Trump. He doesn't let it happen. It's all, I mean, that's why it's all broadcast for him. I'm talking, I'm going to continue to talk. I'm not going to give anyone the opportunity to get a word in edgewise. Why? Well, partly because I'm the dominant person. I don't want to listen. Why should I listen to anyone else? But that is also compensation for the fact that I can't. I can't absorb what someone else is saying. So he must be terrified of being found out the whole time that he can't really read. He can't absorb information. He can't have a regular conversation because he can't really understand what you're saying.

23:48You know, I don't know. I mean, a normal person, that would be true. And at some level, that's true. But he is so successful at these things that that's become, everybody else is a weakling because they're reading stuff or talking to people or getting good grades. And he has somehow superseded all of that, transcended the need for these things. Okay, so fourth.

24:25Fourth is being excluded. I mean, here is a guy, and I used to see this in New York, that he would always be everywhere. So fear of missing out was top of mind for Donald Trump. He had to be, he didn't exist unless he existed in every situation. So if there, And this is partly a status thing that any party, any gathering of people that he felt he should rightly attend, he had to be there and he would force his way in. Right. Gate crashing. Yes. He was. But where was he trying to get? What would his ideal invite be that he wasn't receiving or that he was terrified he wasn't receiving? I mean, we've all experienced the fear of missing out.

25:25Yeah, but just think in New York, all of, I mean, he's out every night. Right. Every night. And so you would, over the years, you can begin to see that there's no why, there's no there, there. There's no inner being there because he's out. It's all external. And the fear, the constant of having to overcome rejection. I mean, any possibility of rejection. I mean, I remember Jeffrey Epstein told the story of one night they showed up at a restaurant, this would be in the 80s, a restaurant called Mortimer's, which was the restaurant of that time. and he was turned away and it just threw him into panic.

26:19It was an existential moment. Humiliation, right? Humiliation. So social humiliation, just terrifying. But also it's not just social humiliation. He's a social climber. I mean, let's understand that. Isn't everybody in New York a social climber? No, you're a social climber. I'm not a social climber. and I've seen you socially climb Michael well I've seen them sometimes you're forced into this position of having to do sus but but I have always hated it and and and I hope most often rejected it but there are many people in New York a whole layer of people who live just to do this That is their justification in life, that they can social climb.

27:06And Donald Trump is the ultimate expression of that. I mean, his relationship - Well, he social climbed his way to the presidency, so that's not bad.

27:19Yeah, but even that, I mean, that's - Well, it's compensatory, is what you're saying. Yeah, well, I think that social climbing to the presidency for Donald Trump makes that seem like it was somehow logical, when in fact it was completely illogical. But he has gone on. And Donald Trump has been kind of cast out so many times. So he's always clawing his way back. Well, it's also his rage, I think, isn't it? What he's done is he's been galvanized by the rage of exclusion. Yeah. And I mean, he's just cockroach-like too, that he comes back. You know, there are those moments, you know, there was that moment in New York, sort of the late 90s moment when he had just become a joke.

28:20I mean, the bankruptcies, the Atlantic City, a joke. And then he clawed his way back into through reality television. Right. And even that was not something, you know, they went to many people, you know, on The Apprentice, you know, he was not the first choice. He was down the list, and he got himself in there and then, of course, made a completely unexpected success of that. Okay, so he's afraid of information, of conversation, of being excluded. And being alone. But even here, this is a different kind of thing. I think most people are afraid of being alone and they get a mate. You know, they get a husband or a wife or a girlfriend.

29:16And then they're afraid of being trapped or claustrophobic. But he doesn't. His idea of not being alone is just surrounded by people who just listen to him. So the Oval Office, let me get this. I've never seen anything. I've never imagined anything could be like this. I mean, the Oval Office, we all have an idea of the Oval Office, which is not an inaccurate idea. It's the President of the United States. You get to go in the Oval Office at moments in which the President is using the full weight of his office to impress you or to, yeah, I mean, it's really a thing. I want you to know that I am the president.

30:11I speak in the name of this office. And so when I was in the White House in those first six or seven months, you would sort of peek into the Oval Office and it would be filled with people. It was like people waiting for a bus. I mean, just rows of chairs. He would be sitting behind the desk going blah, blah, blah, blah, about God knows what. And people would be sitting there. And where did you sit? Did you sit at the side with your little notebook out, sort of writing down? Were you taping things? Where were you so that you were observing but not being over-observed yourself. Yeah, sometimes you would just try not to be noticed.

30:59I mean, my whole thing was for – I tried to avoid people asking, what's that guy doing here?

31:12And which no one did because everybody assumed that if you're there, you were – Right, you've got a reason to be there. You're supposed to be there. And you could have said that for anyone else sitting in the room. And there would always be 20 people in the room, 25 people in the room. What are they doing here? Who are they? And they were just the audience. And Trump would, you know, the interns, Trump would say, come on, come on, sit down. And then he would go blah, blah, blah, and it would go on forever. And so that's his idea. The idea of not being alone is not to connect with someone. Right.

31:51Just to essentially have an audience. To have an audience. To have an audience. So the audience is the whole thing. So the presidency is his ultimate, it's the ultimate kind of. Well, it's a pulpit to the ultimate audience. Well, it just, yeah, and it's just the ultimate buffer to his loneliness is having this vast audience. You know, so when I first asked him, why do you want to be president? And this was in the spring of 2016. And he said to be the most famous man in the world. That's really about, in a sense, about not being alone. Mm-hmm. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for$15 a month plan that I've been enjoying.

32:40It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three month plan equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Default terms at mintmobile.com. When you spend enough time around great companies, you notice that the best ones treat trust as a growth strategy, not a box to check. Vanta helps companies build and prove trust from day one. Its agentic trust platform connects compliance, risk, and trust at enterprise scale.

33:19Vanta delivers a 526 % return on investment over three years and pays for itself in just three months. Learn why over 16 ,000 of the fastest growing companies use Vanta at Vanta.com. And yet at the same time, you say another of his fears is not wanting human contact. I know. I mean, this is a crazy guy. I mean, I mean. But Marla Maple said they had the best sex ever. And what am I to make of that? Well, I'm just wondering what kind of contact he has. I mean, I don't know what kind of sex Marla Maples likes. Fair, fair answer. And also we think, in fact, that he said that to page six or whatever, right?

34:10We have no idea if Marla Maples said that. And in fact, for someone who is having the best sex of her life, she left him or they split up pretty quickly. And Melania clearly doesn't want to hold his hand. She may be similar, that she may not want any human contact either. But the point is that he doesn't like shaking hands, right? Despite the fact that they say his hands are so bruised because he shakes so many hands. But your point is he's a germaphobe and he doesn't want to touch. Yeah, no, no. I mean, always up until, I mean, I think he's had to learn how to shake hands or have to become willing to do that.

34:45But long ago, and I remember him in New York when you would run into him at, you know, at night at some event. And actually, when you went to any event in New York for a period in the 1990s, there would be Donald Trump. Right. But when you saw... And then I would say, you just kind of instinctively put out your hand and he never, never took your hand. What did you just withdraw it? Did he pat you on the arm? Did he grab your shoulder? Did he give you a hug? No, oh, no, no, no. He shakes Putin's hand. No, it was always that kind of, there was always standoff. And he's always, you know, that big overcoat.

35:22Very, I mean, a very armored guy. Okay, so doesn't like human contact. And frightened, you say, of being mocked, fearful of being mocked. Yeah, I mean, he's, it's interesting because he actually has a kind of a sense of humor. So he's very good at, well, I'll put it this way, he's very good at mocking other people. And that can be very funny. So when you're with him, he'll say things about other people and you'll think, oh, this guy is kind of great. Until you realize the kind of cruelty there and also that he's going to say terrible things about you as soon as you leave the room. But he is also cannot, you can't say things about him.

36:19I mean, that's why, you know, this venom to the press is really about it mocking him. It's not really about a political issue that the press is opposing him. It's about being mocked. And you can go back to that famous 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, which some people say is a motivation for his presidential ambitions because Obama from the stage mocked him. Well, they actually showed a mocked up version of the White House with Trump on the top of it, didn't they? I mean, the most sort of weirdly prescient mockery you could have imagined. Yeah, no. I mean, this is a thing. He is incredibly thin-skinned.

37:12I mean, he'd obviously actually been thinking of running for president way before then. I mean, Ivana, in her memoir, talks about telling the Czechoslovakian police when she was being debriefed, that she'd married Donald Trump, that he had political ambitions. But it certainly feels like the Obama mockery triggered him. I actually think that's part of the thing. I think that's bullshit. I don't think. I think saying president is like me saying and anyone saying they're going to be president. I mean, this is just part of the performance of me, me, me. I'm going to put my name on a building. But the idea of him becoming president was, I don't think, ever actually in his mind until the moment he became president.

37:59It was a performative up until that point. It was, I'm going to, you know, this is a way to get more famous. And then suddenly he's president. I mean, this is one of the, you know, that historic, a turn in history, a breach in history that I think years and years from now, people will go back to. This is something that should not have happened. Right. Well, for sure. Okay. Another point that you say is related to his older brother who died of alcohol. Well, I think it's related to. I don't think it's related to just his older brother. I think his father was an alcoholic and I think his mother was an alcoholic.

38:44I think the whole everybody in the family was an alcoholic. So, and that is a thing. That's kind of a major thing. I cannot have a drink. It's not just I don't drink. I can't have a drink. Right. Push that away from me. Right. And Susie Wiles famously said in an interview something which you say Donald Trump says about himself, which is that he's got an alcoholic's personality. He says this all the time. I mean, and that becomes a kind of weird excuse. Well, I have an alcoholic's personality, but I don't drink. Therefore, I can't be blamed for anything here. And then I've also been around him trying to get a drink.

39:25And? It's very hard. Apart from the Diet Coke. Yeah. I mean, I've had dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and Melania, and they say, would you like a drink? Yeah. And then it never comes. Does Melania drink? Can't tell. I don't know. Should have observed that. Yeah, that would be interesting to know if she... She doesn't look as if she drinks particularly, but who knows? This idea of him not being forgotten, of not being included. And one of the first things, so I kind of got to know Donald Trump, the extent that one can know Donald Trump, when I was at New York Magazine. And I wrote the media columns, so somehow he connected me, media, and would call me up.

40:21Um, and, um, and it was all about, I mean, most people, when they called you said, oh, you wrote this about me and that was wrong. And, you know, blah, blah. Um, he would call up and say, why didn't you write about me? Right. Because he wants to be the center of attention. Right. So you wrote this article, which, which as I recall, in many instances had nothing to do with Donald Trump. You should have called me. I could have told you whatever. and then you would say yeah yeah I'll call you again the next time and then you would get a call from someone else in his office and they would say Mr. Trump says you want to interview him and you would say no I said sometime I'll oh yeah and then they would say yeah I wish you would so it's always that kind of That kind of thing.

41:19And then famously, of course, he invented his own PR person who was him. John Barron. Yes. Right. And in the White House, they joke about that when there's a leak and everybody says, where did that come from? They say, probably John Barron. John Barron, i.e. the president himself. So do you think his biggest fear is just not having attention? Like what's going to happen to him? We know when he lost the 2020 election, he went back to Mar-a-Lago, he regrouped. What happens when he leaves the White House knowing he can't come back? Well, he's never going to leave. I mean, he's never going to leave in that way.

42:05Well, you've said he's going to go to Mar-a-Lago and set up his own administration. Yeah, I can do this. This is completely clear to me. I mean, a Democrat will win. he will not let a Republican win in 2028. He will return to Mar-a-Lago with billions of dollars that he's extorted from corporate America with which to set up a alternative White House. I mean, so there will be, and we will have the feeling often that there are two presidents or two competing centers of attention in the United States. Is his fear that he will at some point not be the most famous person in the room, not be the most powerful person?

42:52No, because he's good at this. He will continue to do this. He will do this. You know, he's he knows how to do this. Nobody else knows how to do this like he does. Why is he Donald Trump now? Because every day there's new conflict. Every day there's there's there's new drama. Every day, Trump is at the center of some other story. Now, he will have a Democratic president to compete with, but competing with normal people, let's assume the next Democratic president is at least a semi-normal person, a person who sees their job as essentially and ultimately an administrative and bureaucratic function and trying to maintain some idea of respectability and some idea of what the presidency traditionally represents.

43:54And they will then be, in counter to that, will be this guy who's making a commotion every day, issuing statements, issuing insults, and who is much more interesting. Much more interesting. Or at least much more eye-catching. Right. You can't take your eyes off of him. He's the train wreck that everybody stops to rub a neck at when you're going along the highway. And he recognizes that attention is dominance. So he's afraid of losing attention. I think he would die without it, yes. I mean, he's afraid also of not being a winner. So he can never be a loser because he would not exist then. And to be a winner is to be the dominant personality, the dominant voice.

44:52I mean, the person who, you know, and he will create a situation that the Republican Party remains beholden to him. So is he, just circling back to the first thing that I assumed he was afraid of, death, is he afraid of death because he will cease to, well, he'll cease to be, obviously. I mean, is he actually afraid of death? No, I don't think he – I don't think – I just won't be around. I think, you know, to be afraid of death, you have to have some level of self-awareness. And he gave that up a long time ago. As I said, he's an empty person inside. It's all external. It's all exterior. So does he think about death?

45:42Does he think about tomorrow? Does he think about anything other than what he's thinking about right at this moment? Does he think about anything other than the attention he is getting at this very moment? No. He's not as other presidents. He's not as other presidents. He's not like other people. Right. Right. I mean, there is something so phenomenally broken here. And that's a whole other discussion, how this happened, the alcoholic parents, the cruelty. I'm sure all of that.

46:21I was just watching the Lizzie Borden show on Netflix. I actually had to stop watching it because it's just a terrible, obviously she was going to kill her parents. But I think when I was watching it, I thought Donald Trump probably had just a terrible, terrible, when he grew up, it was probably terrible, a terrible, horrible father, horrible mother. And anyway, here he is now, horrible Donald Trump. Well, I found that one of our most interesting conversations to get to his fears. Well, we'll be back on Tuesday with more Inside Trump's Head. What are your thoughts on that conversation? What are you afraid of?

47:11Possibly Donald Trump remaining in power. What are you afraid of? I'm afraid of everything. You name it, I'm afraid of it. That's not true. It is true. If you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. And a big shout out to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, and Neil Rosenhaus. See you on Tuesday. 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. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much.

47:54Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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