Why Trump’s Hegseth Problem Exposes His Fatal Flaw

0:00There are two polls here. Pete Hegseth is running for president. Pete Hegseth is on the verge of being fired by Donald Trump. Hegseth is getting some bad press. Somebody's got to be blamed for Iran. Pete Hegseth is in this job because Donald Trump is intimidated by competence. He can't deal with people who know things because, for the obvious reason, because he doesn't know things. Similarly with Pete Hegseth, much of the issue with Donald Trump is a management failure. He can't seek the advice. He can't seek the counsel. He can't acknowledge what he doesn't know.

0:42Michael. Joanna. Oh, I want so badly to talk about Tom Tillis's ex-post on Pete Hegseth. I want to talk about what on earth is going on in Iran. I want to talk about, well, a little bit about Gloria Steinem, who we both knew. I want to talk about the Iranians retaliating. And I want to talk about the Republicans who are terrified that Donald Trump is going to hoard his 400 million that he has in PAC money and not spend it at all on the election, but instead spend it on his presidential library. Where should we begin? Well, and I know that interest rates are not your favorite subject, but they are one of my favorite subjects.

1:32So perhaps we can drive by the interest rate crisis, which is at the center and reflective of the world crisis. that we are, I think that there is suddenly a dawning recognition that the crisis that we thought we were in is even more serious than we have ever thought. And we could talk about Donald Trump asking people if he should rename the Strait of Hormuz the Trump Strait. Trump straight sounds like something incredibly unlucky that you would get in a game of poker. Or we could just never talk about Donald Trump again. Well. What would we do? What would we do? What would we talk about, Michael?

2:23I don't know. But first, let me remind people, if you don't have a subscription to the Daily Beast podcast, please press the subscription button wherever you are. We are determined to get to a million subscribers by the end of the year. And we are making steady progress. Michael, it's extraordinary to think we've been doing this, I think, for 160 episodes. We're into our second year, Joanna. We're into our second year, like Donald Trump, Michael, like Donald Trump. Gloria Steinem, though. Yeah, well, here's your opportunity to, when a cultural icon dies, to redeem yourself. Oh, you mean because of my…

3:05Dolly, yes, yes. Right. Your Dolly diss. My Dolly diss, which was sort of an inadvertent Dolly diss, to be fair. Gloria Steinem. Well, you should give your story because I was thinking, oh, I can talk about Gloria Steinem. And then you totally one-upped me. So give your story first because it's a good one. I think the interesting thing about Gloria Steinem from a meta standpoint is that she really has in this long cultural era of cultural turmoil, which begins in the 1960s and really doesn't stop and still goes on to now into the Trump era, which in so many ways can be traced back to the 1960s, either as backlash or development or whatever.

3:55You can see it in some sense as all of a piece. And one of the people who has been there, track that from the beginning until yesterday, has been Gloria Steinem. Yeah, but say the other thing, too, about the impact she had on your career. She's the first person who published me. So when I was 19 years old, the first piece of journalism that I ever sold to a magazine was to Ms. Magazine. and an editor there by the name of Susan Brody, a woman who I became very friendly with, and she sort of brought me in. And again, I was 19 years old. I was a student at Columbia University. And she brought me in to meet Gloria, who seemed very skeptical about why they should, why they should be publishing a 19-year-old man.

4:58boy. But nevertheless, they did. And all kinds of good things actually came out of that for me. And can you remember what the piece was about? I had been one of the first men to integrate a woman's college, which was Vassar College at the time. And so I wrote a piece about this and they published it. I don't understand. What do you mean you were one of the first men to integrate Vassar College? Vassar College was a woman's college. Right. But I thought you went to Columbia. I then got a job at the New York Times and left Vassar College to come to New York and go to Columbia because I had a job.

5:50Oh, so you were a college dropout. Well, I was a college, but I was, no, I was a transfer student. You were a transfer student, like Donald Trump, who went to Fordham and then transferred, and actually like Barack Obama, who went to Occidental and then transferred to Columbia. Exactly. But then that was the, so I came to New York, and I came to New York because, you know, So I got this job at the New York Times, and I was ready. I don't know. And I wrote this. I was at the New York Times. I wrote this. Then I wrote this magazine. I have no idea what a magazine piece was. And I remember I wrote like 10 ,000 words.

6:39And then I sold it to Ms. Magazine, and they cut it down to 1 ,200 words. And I thought, hmm, okay, that's what a magazine piece is. Great. Well, I'm so glad that you didn't storm out and say that you refused to be edited because I've certainly worked with occasional 19-year-old men who would say things like that or indeed 25-year-old men who refused to be edited. But it's good that you took to the editing. I assume that there are some women who might not like to be edited too. Yeah, but it's more men. It's more men and men don't like to be edited by women. And actually, I'll never forget my first piece editing for New York magazine was a writer who was particularly irritated to be edited by me.

7:24And he came in and he put his feet on my desk and said, I hope you don't mind if I put my feet on your desk. And it was such a weird, aggressive gesture. anyway there are plenty of men and women who don't like to be edited but in my experience it's more been men well I would like to remind you that your job as an editor is to deal with difficult writers and not my job as a podcaster is to deal with difficult writers not to resent them and not to get them to leave, to take their articles and go away. That's your job as an agent. Michael Wolff, I have spent my entire life being surrounded by difficult writers.

8:10But I too was friendly with Gloria Steinem. I liked her a lot. I was trying to remember the first time I met her, actually. But I do have strong memories of hanging out with her. And she was so much more fun than people realized, obviously very glamorous. And when I took over as the editor in chief of Cosmo, I took the entire editorial staff over to her lovely apartment on the Upper East Side, which was sort of gorgeous and filled with all sorts of trinkets and tchotchkes from her travels. And we sort of sat and our editors who were younger than me was still absolutely entranced by her. And she talked about the challenges of the times and the pressures on women and the coming threat of Donald Trump, which she saw.

8:57and I mean like Donald Trump as you say she sort of was astride the last sort of 60 years and understood that culture was really important and was so much more glamorous right up until the end I went to quite a few things she used to host things at her apartment sort of 20 30 40 uh people and they were always fun you always ran into interesting people and she was very good at just having conversations. And as she got older, she would just sort of sit on her chair. She had one or two chairs that she sort of sat back in. And then she would just point to people and people would start talking. And it was a sort of salon, if you like, a feminist salon.

9:39But I'm sorry that she's died. To me, she's a figure out of this great day of the magazine business in New York. I mean, that's the moment in which I came to New York, the moment in which my professional life was built, because magazines were incredibly powerful and incredibly vibrant. And you could just start them as they started Ms. Magazine, basically from nothing. Actually, Ms. was started inside of New York Magazine, which just a few years before that had been started from nothing. both magazines which well you and i worked for new york magazine and um i actually worked for basically all the magazines that flourished for uh for you know essentially you know close to 50 years and then stopped flourishing i'm not sure did ms magazine ever make money was it a viable business concern i have fear it probably wasn't uh yeah i i think for for uh for For a while it was.

10:48For then, like so many magazines, it wasn't. Although it went on for quite some time. Well, rest in peace, Gloria Steinem. If you're traveling anytime soon, here's one thing that'll make your life a whole lot easier. Instead of scrambling to find airport Wi-Fi or trying to buy a local SIM card after a long flight, just use Saley. It's an eSIM from the cybersecurity team behind NordVPN. and it gets you connected the moment you land in more than 200 destinations around the world. Setup takes just a few minutes in the Saley app and once you arrive, it activates automatically. They also have flexible data plans, whether you're away for a weekend or a month.

11:33So you're only paying for what you actually need. I also like that it's more than just mobile data. It helps block annoying ads, trackers and malicious websites while you're on the go, which can even help cut down on data usage. And if you travel often, you can earn credits towards future plans and even unlock perks like airport lounge access. Download Saley in the App Store or by scanning the QR code on this screen. Use code BEAST at checkout to get 15 % off your first purchase. The details are in the podcast episode description box. Here's a question, and I actually know the answer to this. Did Donald Trump ever meet Gloria Steinem?

12:19And the answer is he did. And he said in a conversation that I had with him, he said very nice things about Gloria Steinem. Well, he would have appreciated her celebrity, right? And he would have found her fabulously attractive, I think. I'm sure she would have been repulsed by him. At least I like to hope that she was repulsed by him when she first met him. When did they meet, Michael? Well, I don't even know. I mean, certainly she would have been repulsed by the latter Donald Trump. But Gloria Steinem was very much a creature of New York celebrity, New York celebrity life in the 60s, 70s and into the 80s.

13:04And at some point in the 80s, she became sort of larger than just celebrity life, which Donald Trump would not become larger than celebrity life. he would become kind of smaller until, I guess, The Apprentice. Yes, and then he swallowed us all.

13:30But, yeah, no, I mean, that is that interesting moment of how many people during a long period of time, how many well-known lives Donald Trump intersected with. And at any moment, those people could have said, well, I guess they could have. What could they have done? How could they have stepped into history and said, this person is evil? But they didn't. They actually said, this person is a joke. And that's how Donald Trump gets from point A to point where we are now, because everybody thought he was a harmless joke. Yeah, and they thought he was a character, a particular kind of New York character, very self-evidently self-made.

14:24I mean, you know, the fact that he appeared in movies like Home Alone made him iconic internationally, too. I think I mentioned once on the podcast that when I was the bureau chief for The Guardian and then later for The Times of London, the one persistent person they would ask for was, can you do a profile of Donald Trump? Can you get an interview with Donald Trump? And I never had any interest in doing it, more fool me, because he seemed like a joke figure. But to people in London, he seemed like the real deal, a glamorous, successful New York businessman. Now, it's interesting that that that that point.

15:01So he had that had sort of sort of jumped to London because at that point, the late 90s, mid 90s, late 90s, certainly you kind of weren't allowed to write about Donald Trump in respectable publications in New York because he was a cliche. you would say Donald Trump and people would go, oh yeah, forget that. So interesting that he managed to have a life in London. And then he had a renewed life as soon as The Apprentice started. Right, right. Who knew? But here we are. And, you know, I think that there was, I mean, we're sort of looking at a set of things now, including the ballroom, including all kinds of projects, including the constant deportations, and a theme emerging, which I think has always been true about Donald Trump, but very much at this point in the administration, this getting away with it.

16:10and you sit back and you think, well, he won't be able to get away with it. Obviously, somebody is going to step in and stop this ballroom. It's obviously illegal. He's obviously building it outside of all of the ways that these things get built in Washington. Generally a cumbersome process, but a cumbersome process because it is protecting a heritage. I mean, it is about things, things that have meaning, and you don't want to destroy that. It's actually being conservative about these things. It's conserving what is worth saving. Donald Trump, however, has skirted around that entirely and been allowed to.

17:05And there was the decision this week, the Supreme Court, this decision which lets him go forward with the ballroom. And I think that there's been a lot of commentary that actually Donald Trump beats the justice system, beats regulations, beats laws, beats rules by moving. Well, in a sense, just by ignoring them. Who knew? Who knew all you had to do was just ignore things, move faster than the courts move. and you get your ballroom and you get so many things actually. You get to deport people. You get... Well, you get your name on the side of the Kennedy Center, although that seems to be one thing that is, you know, now it's just renovated and refurbished by Donald Trump.

18:03You get to wage a war, actually, without seeking approval, a war that once you've started it, No one can stop you, apparently. And actually, you can't stop the war because you've started the war and it is unstoppable. Well, it's the old business adage, isn't it? Get on with it and ask for forgiveness later, except that let's hope that with the decision to go into this illegal war with Iran, that it may be the single thing that actually beats him in the midterms, that people have had enough for it. They're paying the price of the pump and they're not going to give him forgiveness. They're going to say, nope, you campaigned on doing the opposite to this and we've had enough.

18:52I am intrigued by the fact that Republicans now think that Donald Trump is unlikely to spend the 400 million he's accumulated in his pack on them during the election and that they are anxious. There was very good reporting on this in the Washington Post today that he's going to keep the money for his presidential library. Which is to say he's going to keep the money for himself. And the presidential library is, I mean, we should begin to parse this. The presidential library, this is really an excuse to create a presidency in exile. So in 2029, he will return to Mar-a-Lago as he did in 2021. Twenty one.

19:43Twenty one. And he will then proceed to run the Republican Party, proceed to demand that his influence be accounted for. He will go on being Donald Trump. And now he will have this enormous money with which to do this. Right. And he's got his plane, Griff Force One from the Qataris. And he has his plane. But this has always been a thing. He has always been. It's a kind of a consistent issue in the Republican Party. Donald Trump has had had has enormous fundraising skills. And and he doesn't share that money with the rest of the Republican Party. This was this is this was true in the 2024 campaign.

20:42Actually, it was true in the 2022 midterms that there was an enormous pressure on Donald Trump to to to take some of his PAC money and spend that on Republican races. And and he didn't. Do you think he will give some money to Ken Paxton in Texas, his friend, the AG who's been impeached and running for Senate? No, I don't think he will. He doesn't want to give this money. I mean, he sees this as my money. He refers to it as my money. They want my – this is a constant thing. They want my money. Well, at least there's been pushback on him over birthright citizenship again today. I don't think that's the right way to see this.

21:38I think the right way to see this is that the Supreme Court, as as unambiguously as it could possibly do, ruled against his efforts to curtail, curtail birthright citizenship. That, however, did not stop him from then then attempting to find another way around birthright citizenship. which the court has now blocked that for the moment. And this further decision will not stop this. He will go on. And this is the way, this is getting away with it. How do you get away with it? Even when they say you cannot do this, well, you come up with some other cockamamie rationale. You effectively exhaust everyone.

22:35You keep rolling the ball down the hall, I suppose. It is an extraordinary display of not bowing to, you know, to all of the things that we expect a politician to bow to. Well, and you would expect him to bow to competence in the military and to want to have the best possible generals running what is turning into a war that he cannot get out of. And yet he's got Pete Hegseth there, as we talked about on Tuesday. The Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, resigned. His chief of staff also resigned in April. And now we've got Tom Tillis who's leaving the Senate. So, of course, you know, if only he could have said this earlier, but calling on Donald Trump to fire Pete Hegseth, his secretary for forever wars, following Dan Driscoll's resignation.

23:41And I want to read Tom Tillis's ex post. I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country. And just reminding you that he is retiring as one of the senators from North Carolina. This is Hegseth. He is intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force. Note there the use of the word soberly. I think he's using it specifically, right? Because what do you call him? Colonel Vodka, which was Roger Ailes' nickname when he was at Fox.

24:31And then he goes on to say, if we had a secretary of war who maintained the same priorities and forward thinking, he would be fighting to retain talented leaders like Dan and the many flag officers he has forced into retirement. Instead, he is creating a leadership void at the top of our military ranks. I mean, that's not great to have an outgoing Republican senator saying that about the Secretary of Defense. That's curious because let me parse that a bit. There are two polls here, binary. Pete Hegseth is running for president. Pete Hegseth is on the verge of being fired by Donald Trump. Those two things are very real possibilities and they kind of exist at the same time.

25:19But two, but the interesting thing about this Tillis statement is that if Donald Trump had the intention of firing Pete Hegseth, and I'm sure that is on Donald Trump's mind. I mean, it's always on his mind for everyone. Um, but, um, and, you know, and, and, and Hegseth is getting some bad press. There's the, somebody's got to be blamed, blamed for Iran. Uh, Driscoll is somebody that, that Trump seems to have liked and seems to talk to. So yes, um, Pete Hegseth could be fired. Um, and really it's just a question of what Donald Trump wakes up in the morning and says, is it in his mind I should fire Pete Hegseth?

26:05But Tillis, a Trump enemy, calling for Hegseth to be fired means that Trump can't fire Hegseth. So Tom Tillis has just saved Pete Hegseth's job. And do you think he's done that on purpose or he's unwittingly saved his job? No, I think unwittingly. I'm sure. Tom Tillis feels the freedom to speak his mind and to say what everyone, 100 percent of everybody in Washington, Republicans or Democrats, feels about Pete Hegseth. This is not a secret. Pete Hegseth is a, you know, I think of the worst thing. He's a blithering incompetent, an alcoholic yes man, a suck up, a man who who who has who knows nothing and no logic would say he would know enough to run the military industrial complex.

27:04He was a second lieutenant in the National Guard. That's his military experience. Yes, he was promoted to major, as people point out, but only after he had finished his duty as a second lieutenant in the National Guard. And but otherwise, his primary qualification is that he was a the weekend, a weekend television co-host. So what in the name of God would he know about running the the United States military and by extension, the entire military industrial complex at a moment? I was just going to say, at a moment in which we are in the middle of basically a revolution in terms of munitions, logistics, supply.

27:59So the transformation that is taking place now is as great as any in the modern age. And we've got Pete Hegseth on the job. Or is he on the job? I mean, it would be better if he weren't on the job. Well, the wife is on. Then the wife is on the job. He may not be, but Mrs. Hegseth. Mrs. Hegseth, Mrs. Jennifer Hegseth, the third wife, who's essentially moved herself into the Pentagon and her best friend to be an advisor to Pete. And of course, just reminding people that Hegseth actually did run two veteran affairs organizations, and he was drummed out of both for incompetent management, financial shenanigans, and being intoxicated on the job.

28:49Anyway, I just want to read that line from Tom Tillis one more time. He is intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense. Chilling, chilling words. And then you have... But that can also be extended and should be extended to the other person. I mean, he is, Pete Hegseth is in this job because Donald Trump is intimidated by competence. So when James Mattis was the Secretary of Defense during the first Trump administration, Trump came to loathe him because Mattis had a high degree of expertise and the willingness to correct Donald Trump.

29:41No, that's wrong, he would say. Well, I think all the generals around him tried to do that. Wasn't that John Kelly's problem too? He was chief of staff at one point after, I want to say, Rance Priebus, is that right, that it was John Kelly that came in? And then basically tried to be a chief of staff and Trump had enough, didn't want to be bossed around by people. Well, it's not just that he doesn't want to be bossed around by people. It's that he can't deal with people who know things because, for the obvious reason, because he doesn't know things. And that's similarly with Pete Hegs said. If you've been put into a job and the people who report to you know more than you do, I mean, this is a problem in almost any executive capacity unless you have a temperament in which you can listen to advice, in which you appreciate advice, in which you get along with people who report to you.

30:50which neither of these guys do. It is ultimately all of this and much of the issue with Donald Trump is a management failure. He can't do the things. He can't seek the advice. He can't seek the counsel. He can't acknowledge what he doesn't know. Well, the last line of Tillis's tweet is I urge the president to find a new leader at the Pentagon who will retain and empower our military talent rather than diminish it. And he might have done that, except for Tom Tillis telling him to do it. Right. Because, again, it is someone telling him to do things. Let's move this out because, I mean, Hegseth is right at the center of so many things that are now going on in the world.

31:45I mean, And we are at an inflection point. And I think a lot of people are suddenly starting to appreciate that the inflection point, the crisis that we're looking at, the world, the global crisis, is profound. And, you know, not your favorite subject, but my favorite subject, the interest rate situation, is reflective of this. I mean, it's one of those things about interest rates, that they are the real predictor of everything. They are the thing, no matter what you want to do. I mean, that's an interesting thing for Donald Trump, who believes that his voice, his executive orders, his will can dominate everything, change everything.

32:42Well, it can't change interest rates. interest rates have a will of their own. Well, and interestingly, even when he tries to put in his own person at the Fed, first with Jerome Powell and now with Kevin Walsh, neither of them are reducing interest rates, which is what he longs for. I mean, both of them have pushed back on him. Well, they can't reduce because Donald Trump believes that you can reduce interest rates by saying reducing them. He calls them to reduce the interest rates. interest rates are by their nature are connected to everything else. I mean, James Carville famously said, you know, when he would if he dies, he'd like to come back as as the bond as the bond market and these things.

33:28So you have I mean, interest rates are stand at the intersection of of now all kinds of things, including including oil, including the war in Iran. And it's not just the war in iran it's actually war in well there's the russia and ukraine war war in iran the war i mean these are pivotal things these are these are intractable situations which threaten to pull pull so much else into the vortex um um russia and ukraine the iranian war and and uh which is pulling in all of the other countries in the Persian Gulf, in the Middle East. You have a new war with the Houthis and the Saudis about to, which has been quiescent, now about to break out again.

34:23And this is a moment in which the world has traditionally depended on the United States for being the power counterweight to chaos, really. Well, the policeman, really, a global policeman. And you saw what happened yesterday when America started bombing Iran again. And Iran then bombed U.S. army or military facilities in bases in our allies, leaving them trying to figure out whose side are we on at this point. And, you know, and you have Putin, Putin, who is in a corner. What does he do? What does he do? I mean, the Europeans are afraid that he is going to deflect the war, the problems he's having with Ukraine by moving the war or moving his troublemaking to Europe itself, to NATO countries.

35:28Well, he's already been doing that with cyber shenanigans, with the unexploded bomb that was found at Leipzig airport. There are all sorts of little incursions that the Russians have started doing in Europe that actually I'm not sure the Americans are fully aware of. I mean, public opinion is fully aware of. But this feels so real when you are sitting here in Europe, as I am at the moment. Yeah, go ahead. No. Well, and then I was just going to say, and then you have this weird invitation to the G20 that Trump extended to Putin or extended to the Russians. And with everybody going, what's that about?

36:10What is the meaning of that? Actually, does Donald Trump appreciate the meaning of that? Or is this just Donald Trump, you know, a way of distracting from the fact that the other G20 nations are questioning the U.S.? I mean, basically saying, what the fuck are you doing? I mean, everything hinges on what the U.S. is doing and nobody knows what the U.S. is doing. Well, and I think the U.S. doesn't know what it's doing, right? Right, because Donald Trump, as we're constantly pointing out, makes up his mind and then changes his mind. And he doesn't know what he's doing. Meanwhile, China is supporting Iran and China is supporting Russia.

36:53He's buying oil from both of them, despite the fact that Donald Trump claims that the Trump straight, as he's asking people if he should call it, is fully blocked. It's fully blockaded and no one can get in or out. And then you have this ongoing tariff signs, which he cannot get out of his head. Another instance of getting away with it, the Supreme Court went and said, basically, you can't, you know, your your tariff policy is is not legal. Well, that hasn't stopped him in the least. And and so we have a tariff. We know tariffs. We know the effect of tariffs. Tariffs is to undermine the economy.

37:34We know the effect of tariffs is to is to is to raise inflation. We know the effect of tariffs will be to put pressure on interest rates. So Donald Trump wants interest rates to go down, but has imposed a whole range of tariff policies, the effect of which will be to raise interest rates. So either he has no idea what he's doing, and that is certainly true. He doesn't care, and that is certainly true. Or he has some other kind of mendacious reasons for doing what he is doing. And let's remember the tariffs, it's not only this ridiculous tariff policies, but it's constantly changing these tariffs.

38:31Well, and let's also, you know, remember, as we spoke a little about on Tuesday, and my goodness, our comments were on fire this week, Michael. We had, I think, 2 ,000 comments against data centers and very much in your corner on data centers. And one person for data centers. Well. Joanna Cole's Memorial data centers. I'm for responsible data centers. I'm for responsible data centers. Well, no one says I am for irresponsible data centers. Okay, but you're against data. You sit in the Hamptons and you're against data centers because you just are, despite the fact that we wouldn't even be able to have this podcast if it wasn't for some data center somewhere helping us.

39:18And you should see my little satellite. Ryan, can we flash up the picture of my little satellite on the lawn at the moment? You threw in a canard there. It's not just the Internet infrastructure that people are talking about. It's this whole new AI infrastructure, which creates a situation in which the number of data centers have to be multiplied algebraically. The data centers are far larger than the data centers that have come before. Eat more power, demand more water, et cetera, et cetera. and corrupt more communities. Well, actually, I was going to say, and also floating the stock market at the moment.

40:05So you say, what else is Donald Trump up to? I think he's trying to make as much money as he possibly can from AI, to your point, so he can float his own administration from Mar-a-Lago when he leaves office in 2029. No. And just to add to the general atmosphere of crisis, the world economy now depends on AI, which is entirely debt financed, which could crash. I mean, if it crashed, which is not at all improbable, then that affects everything. I mean, it could be 1999 or all over again. I thought you were going to say so much depends upon the red wheelbarrow and reference your fellow Patterson, New Jersey, William Carlos Williams.

40:55Well, you know, and it's not 1999 that it would be. It would be really 2007, 2008. I mean, so the entire world, I mean, in 1999 was just the dot-com, you know, the dot-com economy crashed. This would crash. All economic, the entire economic system at this point is now hitched to AI and to the development of the AI industry, which is, you know, who knows? It's another who knows what's going to happen there. I know I was making the analogy to 1999 because it was tech related obviously 2000 but this isn't just tech yeah no I get it it's global it's a global impact and yet is it a better time to be alive now than it was 40 years ago you're going to live longer you've got better access to health care well 40 years ago was the got a cell phone 40 years ago was the 1980s was there appreciable I mean.

42:11There's a lot of advantages to having a tech world. I don't think there's. Maybe we should all go back to smoke signals. No, I think you could challenge that. What are the advantages of a tech world? I mean, you're on tech boards, so you're paid to say this. But I would say, what are the advantages? We literally couldn't be doing this podcast with me in Yorkshire and you in the Hamptons if we weren't tech-enabled. We couldn't have done this in the 80s. We couldn't have done it. You would have still been writing and the world would have been podcast-free. No, I think it would have been a good thing.

42:51Totally. I think it would be. I mean, podcasts now, podcasts like ours, have made a significant den in the book business. Would I rather have a book business or a podcast business? I'd rather have a book business. I'd rather be writing a book than doing this three times a week. Well, Michael, no one is stopping you. You sound such a commotion. Such a commotion. Well, no one is stopping me except that, I mean, there has been a marked change. I mean, we all go where the audience is. You know, alas. So anyway, I go back to 1980. Well, I would not go back to 1980, not least because of the terrible hairstyles and the awful fashion.

43:441980s was a decade better forgotten taste-wise. Or one can argue that all of the problems actually start in the 1980s, that that's when deregulation, which Trump would come to embrace. And that's when money, the very idea of money, of value began to exponentially increase. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan rose to power. Indeed. So let's go back to the 70s. Oh, I was here in the 70s. That time wasn't so good either. Also terrible for taste, the 70s. Absolutely terrible. Poor Rod Stewart with that kind of throttled collie hairdo. We do not want to go back to the 70s. Let's go back to the 60s.

44:39My time. Right. Good Lord, really. And sitting on the edge of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was the early... And the world was poised for nuclear war. And the 60s is a terrible time to go back to. You have the president and the president's brother, Anne Martin Luther King, assassinated. You have the Cuban Missile Crisis. You have Vietnam. What are you talking about? This fantasy that everything was better in the past. We live in a less violent time now than we have done. There was an excellent program on the BBC this week about how, actually, there were two really interesting things on the BBC this week about how living in modern times is so much less violent than it used to be.

45:25and also how Donald Trump's attacks on London going on about how dangerous London is has had an impact on tourism in London. And now people turn up and they go, oh, my goodness. In fact, there was a very funny comment, I think, on another podcast, The Rest is Politics US, where Alistair Campbell, one of their co-hosts, said that he'd been at a conference in London where he'd run into an American who said, I almost didn't come, but then I figured out I really wanted to come to London, but don't worry, I brought my own security. I mean, as if London is somehow this, you know, godforsaken place in the way that Donald Trump is always trying to present Washington.

46:07Washington is nothing like that, nothing like a godforsaken place. And people have been going to restaurants happily until he showed up. And your point? My point is that we... Your point is it's a great time. Donald Trump is a great president. No, that's not my point. I don't like Donald Trump at all. Trump's world is a fantastic time. My point is that it's very easy to fantasize the past and think that it was a wonderful time. And we've now established we don't want to live in the 80s, the 70s, or the 60s.

46:43You're eating your organic lettuces with your heavenly little children around you in one of the prettiest places in the United States. So I really don't think you have anything to complain about. I've had heavenly children around me in other decades, too. Good. Okay, well said. I just go on having heavenly children. So talking about a heavenly place in the U.S., what about Maine? Susan Collins now fighting for her seat. She's up against Troy Jackson, who came in to replace the Democratic candidate, Graham Plattner. um susan it turns out senator collins has got tremors evident in an interview she did this week with politico why don't you be more like margaret j smith because they never would have voted for she was very conservative i mean listen there's a very good chance susan collins will be defeated i mean this is this is as we go into these into these midterm elections each of these this is This is where we are.

47:45This is the drama and and and the reality that these swing elections, we don't know what's going to happen. And they could go. She could be defeated. The Senate could go to the Democrats. But equally, equally, the Senate could, the Republicans could hold the Senate and the Republicans can do much better, even possibly hold the House of Representatives. And the background of this is, I mean, there are probably two forces here. The one force is this enormous antipathy to Donald Trump. I mean, his disapproval radians are at the lowest he's ever experienced and as low as any in the modern presidential era.

48:41But balance that with his aggressive action to seize any advantage possible in the midterm elections. And that includes a disruption of the mail-in voting. And it really is interesting to see how much mail voting has become a standard in modern elections. People vote by mail now. Well, the president votes by mail. The president votes by mail. If you disrupt that, what happens? And the answer is nobody knows, except that what we do know is that it would be some form of chaos. Chaos, as people around Donald Trump always say, chaos is his friend. So so so we have we have that we have another. There was a piece, I think I think in the Times this week, Times Post about about dark money.

49:55So there is more money than ever before and more right wing conservative money coming into these elections. We don't know who it's from. We don't know where it's from. It's just all we do know is that there are staggering amounts. We have the specter of marshals, United States marshals going into voting polling places. What does that do? What is the feeling when you show up at a voting place and it's militarized? again we don't know what the effect of this is going to be they are being they are being officially weaponized they are there i mean remember they are not there in past elections so they are there now this is making a clear difference making a clear statement And we don't know what they are going to do.

51:02We don't know. We don't know their effect. We don't even really know their intention. What are they there for? What what is the goal is the goal to stop people individually to question them to they are they are there. We can assume not to protect, but to intimidate. So we've got the health condition of Susan Collins, which she's kept secret for decades, although it's been clear because she speaks with a tremor. She's got something that she says is called benign essential tremor. I've had it the entire time I've served in the United States Senate. It has absolutely no impact on my ability to do my job or on how I feel each day.

51:45I'm sure that Joe Biden's failing in office has led people to think, Susan Collins, she's 72. She may have had enough. 73. Okay, 73 then. I mention that because... Because you had a birthday last week. Because you had a birthday last week. And you too are 73. Okay, so... Alas. I think you should stand for Senate, Michael. You should stand for Senate. But she's certainly in a tight race up there. She is in a tight race. Who knows what will happen? Michael, as always, excellent to see you. We will be back on Saturday, back inside Trump's head. Who knows what will be going on? We'll be in a global financial crisis.

52:37What will have happened with the war in Iran? Will the Russians have done more to destabilize Britain? Or the world. Or the world. Interesting, though you still see this as British-centric. It's good. Well, it's just because I'm here right now. Very nice. Because I'm here right now. And did I mention I went to a former dark satanic mill? You referenced them on Tuesday when we were talking about data centers and we were talking about those enormous industrial buildings that symbolized the Industrial Revolution. And I went to one yesterday that's been repurposed as an art centre, Saltz Mill, which is just outside Bradford in Yorkshire and is now a David Hockney gallery and has a very nice, very nice diner with it.

53:29And weirdly, I ran into someone from your town while I was there. So go figure. Go figure. These places can be repurposed, though I don't think anybody's going to be repurposing data centres. I agree. They're not architecturally exciting, but they are possibly essential for a modern world. You see, you can't get away from it. You're just hooked to data centers. But I just want to, the background, because it's a great line, Dark Satanic Mills is from a William Blake poem, which was then turned into probably, could it be the central hymn of British churches? Well, it's certainly the best hymn, I think, Jerusalem, which people might know from Chariots of Fire.

54:20Was Chariots of Fire the last British movie to win a lot of Oscars? I hope not. I don't. That I don't know. But certainly it gave that song a kind of a worldwide notoriety. Yeah, absolutely amazing him. Anyway, Michael, as always, good to see you. If you have been, thank you for joining us and a big thanks to our production team. Joanna Coles, until you're back, remind me. Well, I'm back in the US next week, but we're going to be talking on Saturday. We will. big thanks to our production team ryan murray john romero rachel passer heather passaro and neil rosenhouse 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