Why Trump Is Raging at Enemy Who Keeps Beating Him

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. He is stuck. This is the worst mistake he has made. He cannot. He has tried literally everything. I'll give you any kind of agreement you want if you just stop this war. Plus, I will pay you to stop this war. We'll give you anything you want if you just stop the war. And they won't stop it. They keep coming back.

0:47They know how to play him. So this is a whole process of trolling Donald Trump.

0:56Michael? Joella? Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. All right. Again, I mean, I feel like it's impossible not to start by just saying so much to cover, not least. I think death is inside Trump's head. I think he's obsessed with it this week. Well, I'd like to hear your reasoning on that because I think being obsessed with death assumes a level of self-awareness. So unless you see a breakthrough on that end, I don't see how we get to the other end. But explain. Give me your… So my theory, which I'm prepared for you, obviously, to demolish the moment I finished it. And I should just say, I'm Joanna Culls of The Daily Beast.

1:47I'm talking to Michael Wolff, author of four Trump books. And this is our thrice weekly. I can't even imagine how many we have done today. Like 150 or something. This is us spelunking inside Trump's head looking for meaning in what is essentially a government of one. Fair? Fair descript? Yeah. I mean, looking for what motivates him. And, you know, because he is not motivated by the things that, or at least my thesis would be, he is not motivated by what motivates other politicians. He doesn't really care about policy. He doesn't really have an agenda. He doesn't really think about his legacy. He thinks about whatever random thought comes into his head, and that often is precisely what motivates him.

2:48But in a broader sense, he's also motivated by attention. Donald Trump wants attention for being Donald Trump. And I wonder if he's been thinking about his death and how he's going to get attention in death. And maybe that will be his most attention moment. And I say that, why do I think that death is inside his head? Because he did a crazy truth social post, which I'll read out in a moment. We had the moment of him changing planes, so he had to give up his fancy new Air Force, Grift Force One, for the safer plane because the Israelis had told him that there was an Iranian threat on his life, which he knows because they've been after him for some time.

3:35The new leader, Mochaba Khomeini, has said that he wants to avenge the death of his father. And then I think you have Tyler Robinson, who's been, we've had preliminary hearings this week, because he's the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk. So you have all these things floating around that I think I don't see how they cannot be in Trump's head. And then you've got Mitch McConnell ferried out of his home three weeks ago in an ambulance. And nobody's really heard from him since apart from Scott Jennings. You know. Sure. I mean, the interesting thing is so many of these things, this is not the first time that he's encountered these things.

4:30The plane, he has always issues with airplanes. The Iranian situation, oh my God, it just goes on and on and on and on and on. The Supreme Leader's threats against Trump at this point. And we don't even know if the supreme leader is actually alive. Right. So the supreme leader may actually be Mitch McConnell at this point. So, you know, this has a ritual feel. You know, the Iranians are always doing that kind of, you know, death to Americans and et cetera, et cetera. And also he has faced the Iranians trying to assassinate him before. not very effectively, by the way. So I don't know. And I just doubt that Trump really thinks that existentially about anything.

5:27And to the extent that he considers his mortality, I think it's to consider it as something that is that has no end, that there is no immediate mortality even for an 80-year-old. And by immediate mortality, I mean nowhere in the medium or even long term. He is Donald Trump, And that distinguishes him from the rest of humanity, which is certainly an element at all times of what's in his head. Okay, so I'm going to read his Truth Social post, which triggered me to death is inside his head. I could do my imitation. I may go into it, but let me start normally. A thousand missiles are locked and loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran with thousands of more, his grammar, not mine, to immediately follow should the Iranian government act on its threat pronounced in many corners of the globe to assassinate or attempt to assassinate the sitting president of the United States of America.

6:40In this case, me. Orders have already been given and the U.S. military is ready, willing and able for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran. Praise be to Allah, in caps, President Donald J. Trump. Well, you know, yes, that is ridiculous and outrageous and preposterous and and a sign of some kind of some surely some kind of demented bearing. But it's hardly unique. This truth social is no more all of those things than thousands, literally thousands of other truth social posts from Donald Trump. And he's always threatening. He's always throwing out numbers that have no meaning.

7:37He's always setting deadlines that are subject to extension. This is just more of the same. I mean, this is what Donald Trump does. He repeats himself. This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. 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. Okay, well, the other thing, and then I want to go on to the Iranian leader's messages that he's been posting on Telegram.

8:25But the other thing that made me think this was that they are upping security at the White House. So as we know, there's been a curious scaffolding that's gone up around the front portico of the White House, which apparently is to do with them strengthening and rehabbing the columns, but also reinforcing the front door to the White House. If ever there was a metaphor, there is one because they don't think it's secure enough. So I think this is playing on his mind. I don't see how it can not be. And then here's what Mochtaba Khomeini is saying. And as we know, his father was killed in the initial bombings on the 28th of February.

9:09He's been apparently badly injured. As you say, we haven't seen him. So he could now have morphed with Mitch McConnell and the two of them have become a joint nemesis of Donald Trump, a Siamese twin of nemesis for Donald Trump. But he says the revenge, this revenge. So he's saying he wants to avenge your pure blood and the blood of all those martyred in these two wars by bringing the criminal and dishonorable killers to justice. I'm not going to try and do an Iranian accent. This revenge is the demand of our nation and it will most certainly be carried out. These criminals, whose names are known from top to bottom, will take to their graves the unfulfilled wish of dying peacefully in their beds.

9:56They should know that this does not depend on my personal presence or that of any other official. The revenge for his father's death will be accomplished. And he stressed that soon freedom loving people throughout the world will each carry out part of this divine mission. That was in Axios this morning. And to that I say, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is everybody. What does that mean, yeah, yeah? It means this is all a ritual rhetoric. It's all performative. It's the ritual rhetoric that the Iranians have been issuing toward America and American leaders since 1979. And Trump's own rhetoric is effectively ritual.

10:44Now, I think there is a bigger problem here is that he can't get out of this situation. So if he's thinking of anything and perhaps a kind of death comes into his calculations here is that he is stuck. This is the worst mistake he has made. He cannot – he has tried literally everything. He has offered everything. I'll give you the issue now is a peace agreement or a ceasefire agreement that he that he went into so quickly and so desperately that it means anything to anyone who reads it. So so he's he's he's tried that. I'll give you I'll give you any kind of agreement you want if you just stop this this war.

11:35Plus, I will pay you to stop this war. Literally, the billions of dollars that we have, of Iranian dollars that we basically have control of because we've sanctioned this money, we'll release that. We'll give you anything you want if you just stop the war and they won't stop it. They keep coming back. They know how to play him. So this is a whole process of trolling Donald Trump as that statement from the alleged supreme leader or the alleged the alleged statement from the alleged supreme leader. Do you think in any way that he was impacted by seeing the kind of long posters of Donald Trump, we will kill you that were unfurled over the week long funeral this week of the of the Supreme Leader of Machabi's father?

12:38Well, you know, I do think it does get under his skin and he is somewhat paranoid about this. And let me go back to something that we've discussed before, but I think it's one of those great snapshots of Donald Trump, that during the 2024 campaign, he had been warned about the Iranians and plots against him. He goes out to Montana to campaign for Tim Sheehy, who was running for the Montana Senate, who ultimately won that race. But it was very, you know, they were, he was, he literally had a sense of his head being down. And he was saying to people, OK, you know, Solmany, because they had, remember, they had, they had, he had issued the death order against Solmany.

13:33And and that was that was the issue that they were theoretically avenging. And and so it was like nobody mentioned Solmany. I mean, he was literally like, as nobody mentioned it. OK, don't mention Solmany because he was I think he he was genuinely afraid. And then but Tim Sheehy comes out on the stage and then goes goes into a rant. Donald Trump is the greatest president we have ever had. He is the guy who killed Soleimani. And all of the aides are going, oh, my God. And Trump is looking around furtively. And then Sheehy goes on. So I want to say that I love the Avenger of Soleimani. I loved. So that became a constant campaign joke.

14:24Soleimani. But I also wonder if this is cumulative as so much post-traumatic stress is. I mean, the impact of Butler, the Butler of Pennsylvania, when Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate him and did or didn't give him a wound on the ear. And that was that sort of his perhaps most astonishing moment when he gets up and he goes fight, fight, fight. But then there's the guy who hides in the bushes and now there's this. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I get it in that you would think that this would certainly have an effect on anyone. On anyone. Yeah, on anyone. And I think when you are the president, this is something that you live with.

15:14And you're surrounded by an enormous security retinue. And that's kind of omnipresent. And it's hard not to have that in your mind, that it is always your mortality is always on someone's mind who is very close to you. They just surround him. So I think that that's yeah, that has to be a factor. But I think the larger factor is that he's at a point in his presidency, a point in his political career, a point in the war in Iraq. He just doesn't know what to do. He can't he can't you know, he would not be feeling what you think that he's he's he's feeling. were things going better for him, better for him politically.

16:02I mean, so I think the death thing is probably more clearly related to his polling numbers than it is to whatever threats the Iranians are making against him. But I do think it is a moment in which that might feel existential for him, not as a matter of his death, but as a matter of his being unable to assert his dominance.

17:00So what does he do here? I mean, the Iranians seem to have completely outmaneuvered him. The Strait of Hormuz is closed again. He's threatening that if they kill him, they'll be obliterated again. although none of that makes sense because if they were to kill him, a new president would take over and very possibly change strategy and change policy. Yeah, and let's also remember obliteration. We've heard this word before. He returns to it. Trump, remember, has a very limited range, which is part of the problem in dealing with his own problems. So what happens here, Michael? Is this that Iran turns out to be an unsolvable issue for him?

17:52Yeah, I think we've seen the answer, and it's not necessarily related to Donald Trump. These presidents get into these forever wars, and they can't get out of them. They don't know what to do, and it brings their presidencies down.

18:12Okay, so— Which the Iranians know. So that becomes a kind of this becomes a sort of a part of the battlefield. We can't win a war against the United States of America in terms of sheer military force, but we can win it in a different battlefield that now exists in the global consciousness and the political consciousness and the media consciousness. No, if you're the Iranian leadership, you almost couldn't have manipulated this better. Granted, they've taken a lot of damage. They've lost 40 members of their top leadership team in terms of what we know. But in terms of outmaneuvering Donald Trump, they appear to have done it.

19:01He started this and now he's very much on the back foot and it looks like he may well lose the midterms over it. Right. And it's, you know, killing all of those those 40 members of the top leadership turns out to have made it only more difficult to come to a settlement here because nobody knows who's in charge. Nobody even knows if the guy who is in charge is alive. Well, similarly with Mitch McConnell. I mean, why haven't Mitch McConnell's team simply released a short video of Mitch in bed wishing his supporters well and thanking them for his support? Maybe this is a new political strategy. Maybe this is really compelling politics.

19:55All the attention is on you, but nobody sees you. It's kind of perfect. I mean, if Tom Keene wins in New Jersey, wins his race, then it will become something we will see politicians disappearing all the time. That's so funny. Well, Donald Trump must be furious that Mitch McConnell is getting as much attention as he is, because as we know, they hate each other. And suddenly Mitch is the center of attention. So, I mean... We had an interesting moment at the Daily Beast this week, because Scott Jennings said that he had talked to Mitch McConnell. He said that Mitch McConnell had phoned him and they talked for 20 minutes and they'd been batting around policy and things.

20:43And we actually called CNN to see if Scott Jennings was held to the same account as their reporters. And CNN issued a statement to us saying that this is very much Scott Jennings' experience, that he is not held to the same account as CNN reporters, and that this is Scott's story to tell. But they were very clearly distancing themselves because until people have seen a proof of life video of Mitch McConnell, it's unclear what state he's actually in. But there's another thing I wanted to discuss with you, which is the subpoenas that were issued, seeing as we're on the theme of journalism, to New York Times reporters who had reported on the fact that Air Force One was being swapped.

21:31Oh my God, totally. I mean, that seems like crazy overreach by the administration. Now, there are two issues here. The administration's ongoing war with the media. But in effect, this is overshadowed by Trump's obsession with the airplane. So, you know, he, I mean, this happened. The subpoenas went out because he's storming around. And then people have to react. The people around him have to react. We have to give him something. This is crazy. They go, OK, crazy. But, you know, we got it. We got to do something here. And and it is crazy because this is one of the subjects that he is crazy on. Now, he is crazy on many, many subjects, if not every subject.

22:18But this is then a question of degree. And he is his craziness about airplanes is up there with with the craziest of all the things that he's crazy about. Well, but it's also the crazy of him using the law to try and shut down journalists. Right. So these are journalists from The New York Times who were woken up by people with subpoenas. repeaners demanding their presence in court on Wednesday for what they say was breaking security rules. Absolutely. I mean, this is preposterous. It will be thrown out of court. It's the kind of things that no presidents would do because they understand how the country works, how the Constitution works.

23:10It's absolutely out of bounds and also absolutely from any kind of political, tactical, strategic point, absurd. So what it says more about is what's in Trump's head. Why would he be doing this? And yes, there's the issue of the media and he reacts badly to whenever the media challenges him, but that happens all the time. In this particular case, what he's reacting to is about the airplane because it is one of those things that is just he just can't get away from. You know, during the campaign, it kind of marked the 2024 campaign, certainly among the people around him, because the plane, Trump Force One at that point, was always going out of commission.

24:07It was an old plane and, you know, lots of things were going wrong with it. And he would fly into stupendous rages. People would get fired. People would I mean, it was it was these were the blackest moments of the of the campaign. And there was something about the plane and that in what kind of and that represented a certain control he had. And when it went out of when when he was without that control, he he he just flew into a panic. And I suspect that is exactly what is going on now. The plane represents him. I think maybe this is even more to the point. It is that stand in for his power, his dominance, his ability to be the commander.

25:06Well, I mean, I was talking to Hugh yesterday on the Daily Beast podcast about it, and it's the longest plane out there. There's no world leader that I'm now starting to do Donald Trump's hand gestures. But there's no plane out there that matches it in terms of length or luxury, apparently, and clearly, as it turns out, security features. Yeah, no. I mean, I think that he becomes invested in this. You know, he's always invested in his planes. I mean, one of the things, the constant, this point of friction between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump was that Trump often could not afford to fly his own plane.

25:54So he had to hitch rides with Epstein and Epstein would constantly remind him of this. So that became Epstein's dominance over Trump. And I have, you know, it's a it's a kind of a trope among among billionaires that whenever you are with billionaires, one of the subjects that always comes up is their airplanes. and often that their airplanes are broken and the maintenance requirements of these airplanes. So it is apparently gets under the skin of all people who own their own airplanes. But particularly, this is a Donald Trump thing. And the people around him, and I've heard this, I've heard countless stories on that, are, you know, it is alarming, worrisome.

26:46I mean, his overreaction is knows no bounds when it comes to many things, but particularly his airplane.

27:16That's claude.ai slash Spotify.

27:46Obviously, this is the large. Yes. But the larger question, has Trump beaten the rap? And I think I think you can argue that he that he has that. And one of the ways he may have beaten this rap is to have gone to war with Iran and caused himself even a bigger headache. But nevertheless, it was one of, I mean, certainly the war in Iran has been one of those clear things that's overshadowed the Epstein controversy. But then there's this other thing, which I think is interesting. They released the Epstein files, implicating a long list of other people because they have exchanged emails with Jeffrey Epstein.

28:35And the one person who might be most implicated for his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein did not send Jeffrey Epstein any emails because he doesn't send anyone any emails. He doesn't use email, which is, of course, Donald Trump. So, I mean, his wife, his wife has implicated herself in this because she used email, but not Donald Trump. So, yeah, I think that at the end of the day, you know, he may have beaten the rap. So in tomorrow's Daily Beast podcast, I interview Andrew Weissman, the former general counsel of the FBI, and he says on no account should Todd Blanch be confirmed as attorney general, largely because of the Epstein files, because the way they were put out there.

29:37You know, I mean, I think maybe the more pertinent credential of Andrew Weissman is that he was the effective number two on the Mueller investigation. Right, the Mueller investigation into Russia. But he, you know, adamant that Todd Blanch should not be confirmed, that his putting out of the Epstein files was a disgrace, that there's three million more files to come out. And he says there's clearly a smoking gun to do with Donald Trump in the remaining files that have not been released. Otherwise, why wouldn't they just put them out there? I mean, he's convinced of it. But on the basis of just because?

30:19Well, I think on the basis of the fact that they've been so squirrelly about. Right. But that's a because, just because. He doesn't know anything and he is not specifying anything that might be in these remaining files about Donald Trump. Well, I urge people to listen to the interview, which will go up tomorrow, because he lists a whole series of reasons about the Epstein files. But the idea that Donald Trump has beaten them, possibly, as you say, by launching a war, well, we couldn't have anticipated that when the files were released. I think they were released around the holidays in December, because there was all that overtime that went to...

31:04That was the first tranche, and then there was the second tranche, yes. Right, because there were all these stories coming out of the FBI of people having to work through the holidays that they were desperate to get these things out there, obviously when people weren't paying attention. But as you say, he may have caused a war to avoid it, and the war ends up being the thing that brings him down. But I mean, I think the Blanche thing is interesting. And I mean, sure, the Blanche should, by any logic, not be confirmed. But that's true about virtually anyone else in the Trump administration also.

31:45So Todd Blanche is not unique. But there is a way we've we've we've talked about this this before. And I think it's interesting. And it's and it's my advice for the Democrats on how to how to approach the Blanche confirmation hearings in a way that might actually get him not confirmed. I mean, otherwise the Democrats will just do the Democratic thing and essentially saying, taking the Andrew Weissman line, this is a terrible person and should not be confirmed because he has terrible policies. And then it goes and then it becomes just a partisan split. But were the Democrats to ask Blanche about his own political past when he was a Democrat, when he was an abortion supporter, when he was a just a kind of regular New York liberal?

32:52I think that that could well antagonize much of the MAGA movement. Well, it is unique that a president is appointing his own personal criminal defense lawyer as the attorney general. That has never happened before. And actually, Trump tried it once before. In the first administration, he wanted Rudy Giuliani to be the attorney general. And that didn't fly precisely for this reason, that people within the administration says, Rudy, what are you talking about? Rudy's an abortion supporter. Rudy stands for nothing that the MAGA side stands for. And so that didn't work. and together with the fact, by the way, that when Trump discussed this with Rudy, Rudy said, Jesus, I don't want to work that hard.

34:00He doesn't want to work that hard. Well, to be fair, Trini worked quite hard as New York mayor. There wasn't a single opening of anything, the opening of a pothole that Rudy didn't turn up for. I remember covering him when I was working at the Guardian. I was the bureau chief for The Guardian. I remember spending a couple of days running around after him, and he was helicoptering here, there, and everywhere, all over the boroughs, just a whirling dervish in action. Obviously a job he loved, and he's never had anything like it since. Right, but he certainly didn't seem like he wanted to go back to being a lawyer, which frankly is what you are when you're the head of the, of the DOJ, or at least what you used to be.

34:48Now you're a political arm of Donald Trump, which Todd Blanche has made it clear that he is very willing to be. Right. And remember that Matt Getz was actually Donald Trump's first selection for Attorney General when he came back in Trump II and realized he was not going to get that passed through the Senate. Matt Goetz had his own legal problems. I think that's why Donald Trump thought he would be. Yeah. How do we pronounce it? Matt Goetz. Okay. Florida, former Florida congressman. And he was, yeah, the only one who didn't make it through that round. Right. He was the first one not to make it.

35:32And after that, the others all got through amazingly, including Pete Hegseth. Okay. So let's talk about Mark Wayne Mullen, who it turns out has been working stealthily to increase the number of people deported and the number of people arrested. They're hitting targets now. Sort of two and a half, 3 ,000 people a day are being arrested. And then, of course, we've had this terrible shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Arejo in, I think that's how you pronounce it, in Houston. It's interesting because what we see is that their strategy has been exposed. So go back to along with Iran, Epstein, I would add Minneapolis to

36:23the crises, the clear political crises that Trump has had in this second term. And so Minneapolis was terrible. And they seem to have decided to answer that by pulling back, by changing personnel, by somewhat of a U-turn in terms of their, if not in terms of their policy, in terms of their behavior. But now we learn that this is not true at all. They were just, their only U-turn was that they were doing things which were out of public view. And now they have come back into public view in a, I think, in a substantial way. They shot somebody. They killed someone. Now they will clearly make the case that this was a person in this country illegally.

37:23But this person had been in this country illegally for 30 years, made a life, had a family. He had three children. He had a job, he was paying taxes, and he was shot like Renee Nicole Good in his car. And the feds have said, well, he was using his car as a weapon, he was trying to run over the officers. Eyewitnesses say, no, that's completely untrue. And of course, the officers weren't wearing any kind of cameras. So we don't have body cam footage of what actually happened. And amazingly, We don't appear to have CCTV footage. And of course, this is all going on against the background of the investigation into Alex Preti, the ICU nurse who got shot in Minneapolis and the shooting death of Rene Nicole Good.

38:19and the feds have stood in the way of that investigation. This is landing on Todd Blanche's desk and the state itself is now saying, well, we have to do an investigation into this because nobody's looking into it properly. Nobody knows what actually happened here. And this has to be bad for Trump.

38:45Um, yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to think in, there's, there are several ways in which this is bad for Trump. Not least of all, you know, it turns out that they are, that they are deporting numbers, unprecedented numbers of people every day, arresting and deporting, deporting people. So then the question, I think the immediate question in the midterm question is, how does this impact the Latino vote, which has been, you know, was a significant fulcrum of Trump's 2024 election? Well, and also, how does it impact the black male vote, which was also something that Trump crowed about having going on?

39:37You know what he says, like, the blacks love me, the blacks love me. But the removal of TPS, the temporary protective status for Haitians, for Syrians, also has a knock on effect, not least for, you know, the health service, frankly, in which so many of them work, certainly Haitians work. So the calculation here, and this is a cold calculation, is that they will sacrifice that vote against the MAGA vote. Does this galvanize the MAGA vote, the white, you can argue, fundamentally racist side of the Trump party? And is that enough? Because if it turns off Latinos, if it turns off black men, presumably and black women too, then how is that a big enough coalition?

40:42It's not a big enough coalition to get him elected. You would think not. And I'm interested in the workings behind this, which I don't exactly understand, because this is a boneheaded political move, or would certainly seem to be. So why are they doing this, especially given what happened in Minneapolis and they saw the reaction to that? Then they clearly understood it. OK, we can't go on like this anymore. Right. They took the head of ICE, Greg Bovino, out of Minneapolis. They shipped him back to California. He's now out saying he wants to do a run for president schlepping around in his kind of Nazi inspired black leather coat.

41:35and then they brought obviously they brought in Mark Wayne Mullen to take over from Christy Noem who got fired yeah yeah no I mean they're they're the the the the plan was to send a different kind of signal in which they seem to have sent a different kind of signal until now you know and the problem with this is that this is always it's always going to come back to somebody getting killed. Masked men with guns who are under trained, who who's who's whose mission is a is a quota. It's essentially a quota system. We've got to do this. We've got to hurry up. We've got to meet our quota. Shoot him.

42:20So shoot that guy who's in our way. ugh but where does this come from that's the thing so is this we've discussed this before of Stephen Miller's kind of extraordinary power and influence in this administration which continues right he is the only he is the only person I know within this administration who basically has an untethered portfolio. It's like you deal with that. Okay, yeah, the immigration thing, you know, you deal with it. And you deal with it as you see fit. And Stephen Miller, who is a, you know, I mean, I don't think that there's any way to couch this other than he is a flat out racist.

43:18I want this to be a white country. What's wrong with this country is that too many brown people are in it. What are we looking at? What are we facing? We're facing in the years ahead the possibility that it will be a brown majority country. We've got to stop that. 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. Ask yours at claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai slash Spotify.

44:04What even can his conversations with J.D. Vance be like? J.D. Vance married to Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants. I mean, the vice president of the U.S. has three children. Whose conversations with J.D. Vance? Well, Stephen Miller's. I can't even imagine. How did they talk together? What common ground could they possibly have? Well, I think we should come back to the Vance, to the larger Vance question. I mean, Vance just wrote a book about Christianity, basically saying this should be a Christian nation. I'm confused about that, too, because he converted to Catholicism. And so is he saying this should be a Roman Catholic nation, which most of the MAGA base is not Roman Catholic.

44:56So I'm confused about that, which we should come back to. But clearly, there is the thrust of the Vance point of view is not that dissimilar from the from the Stephen Miller, the Jewish Stephen Miller view. I mean, I'm confused about everybody's identity here, but they clearly want a nation that, A, the nation is not now and has, by any demographic viewpoint, will not ever be again. And, yeah, so, you know, shoot them down dead in the street. OK. So we think Trump has beaten the rap for now on the Epstein files. We think he's stuck in a war he can't get out of. We think that Stephen Miller and J.D.

45:54Vance can't even imagine what they talk about. I just saw a possible fallacy in our argument about, or maybe my argument about Epstein beating the rap. If Todd Blanche, it is possible that Todd Blanche in his nomination could go down on that issue. And if so, I think that would open, clearly open up Trump's vulnerability on Epstein. Well, I'm sure the Democratic senators looking forward to grilling him are spending the weekend. One hopes they're spending the weekend researching everything they could about Todd Blanche. I know, but just I'm sure they are. But just let me repeat that the silver bullet is abortion.

46:45Ask Todd Blanche about his views, his lifetime of views on abortion. And if they can get Todd Blanche to acknowledge that he has had a pro-abortion thought in his life, which he certainly has, then that would kill this nomination. uh well graham platner's officially out of the race we've talked about him for the last couple of episodes he's finally handed in his papers and said he's withdrawing not but not before saying that he wanted a vote in or he wanted influence in who should replace him which at this point just let me just let i i have an a possible perspective on on on um on platenure because i had a bunch of people at my house last night for dinner social media stars um of a much younger generation um um um direct from from the taylor swift wedding um so that level of people and it was i said so give me what's your view on on the graham plattner situation and what did they say what did they say they said who they said who so i i just want to say that we mean they've forgotten him already no meaning they never heard of him no no irrelevant irrelevant to them.

48:25Well, what did they say about the wedding then? Oh, the wedding was fantastic. It was flawless. Do we have any details? Yes, but I would be remiss in sharing them. What's the point in having details if you're not going to share them on a podcast? But it was, no, it was, you know, it was apparently we miss the wedding of the century. I think that's what's known as a pod tease, where you say that you had people who were at the wedding for your house at dinner, and now you can't tell us what they said. Do we need to know that they were even at your house for dinner? Well, I think the larger point is that we live in a bubble world that whereas Grim Plattner is of crucial concern to us and other people in the political firmament, it is not, to many other people, perhaps a much larger group of people.

49:28And that is possibly, again, goes to the Democrats' misunderstanding of what is important in this world.

49:42Well, I would have thought that the younger women in the group that you had would have been interested in Graham Plattner's, in the accusations. I know that you would have thought that and the Democrats would have thought that. In my passing focus group, that would not be, turns out not to be the case. Do your passing focus group have any comment whatsoever on Trump's SAVE Act, Trump's insistence that people coming to the voting booth should bring some sort of national ID, photo ID to prove they are who they are, which is the one thing he's now trying to drive through Congress? Yeah, that did not come up.

50:30But I think it is also one of those other things, too, that goes to a Trump obsession. Can't get it out of his head. So he's been told in every way possible that this will not pass, cannot pass. There are not the votes for this to pass. So even forget whether this is a good idea or a bad idea. It just is dead in the water. That often happens in Congress. But he won't give it up. And in fact, so much so will not give it up that he refused to sign a piece of what would appear to be very crucial and positive bipartisan legislation that everyone could have gone back to the voters with about housing.

51:24Housing. Well, and that became law anyway yesterday, right? Well, it did. It did. But so it not only became law anyway, but he got no credit for it. Right. And instead gets the opposite of credit for pursuing this piece of legislation that will not pass. Well, he's an 80-year-old man, Michael. He's an 80-year-old man. Okay. So we have a couple of limericks. We have a couple of limericks for people. One is from NKFI1JK. That mango color, that rust, will become dust onto dust, which he knows very well, but he never will tell all his evil but must. I thought that was quite appropriate, given that today's theme feels like what's in Trump's head, death's in his head.

52:26That was your view. That was not my view. Okay. Well, my view definitely is that death has squeezed its way into his head under that strange, strange pompadour that he insists on doing. I would find Trump a more sympathetic figure if that were the case. Well, I'm not saying I find him sympathetic. I think he's kind of thinking about how could he make the... But I'm saying it was. If Donald Trump, if you're right, and Donald Trump is thinking about death, I think that makes him more sympathetic. It makes, you know, we all think about death. I don't think Donald Trump does, which makes him a different person from the rest of humanity, which I believe he is.

53:10okay fair well we'll agree as they say to disagree but we will be back on tuesday to talk more about what we think's inside trump's head if you have been thank you for joining us please go and enjoy the rest of your weekend and michael do you want to thank our team ryan heather max the intern John Neil and there's one more that I'm forgetting Rachel, Rachel Passer Rachel Rachel, thank you Rachel 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