Has Vanity Fair made MAGA look ugly again?

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0:30globe. We are respected again like we have never been respected before. To each and every one of you, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. God bless you all. That was Donald Trump's address to the nation last night. Of all the things we were expecting to hear, it wasn't necessarily a rambling reinvention of the economic facts of what he'd like to be saying about the country right now. The problem for Donald Trump is that the economy is not performing as well. And he's sort of saying to the American people, when you think the cost of living is too high, you're wrong. We're doing just fine.

1:14Can he get away with that for much longer? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Emily. And there'd been so much speculation about what was going to come in this address to the nation, because when the networks agree to clear their schedules and say, yep, the president can speak from the Oval Office, it is normally momentous news. You know, the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden or whatever it happens to be. And we thought that it could be potentially announcing the invasion of Venezuela had begun. No, it wasn't that. We thought it could be something about the release of the Epstein files because they're due to come out very soon.

1:59Indeed. No, it wasn't that. And instead of which, it was this kind of rally style speech, not as long as a rally style speech. It was went to 18 minutes on the state of the economy and essentially saying all your problems that you currently face are Joe Biden's fault. And all the wonderful things that are happening now are entirely down to me. I just don't know whether you can delineate like that on an economic message. I genuinely thought it was a hijack of primetime TV. He appeared like a drunk standing up on a crowded late night tube carriage and suddenly just addressing the passengers within it, barging into people's living rooms just the week before Christmas with nothing to actually say.

2:53And it is a very Trump thing to do that. He loves a public address. He loves that sort of the sense of, you know, the state of the nation, the speech of the nation. Commanding everyone's attention. Commanding everyone's attention. As you say, we'd gone away thinking, we'll wake up to some really big news tomorrow. What will it be? And I woke up to thinking, where is it? Why is no one covering it? Wasn't on the radio, wasn't on the TV. I thought, yeah. He sounded angry and he sounded quite confused. And he sounded like he'd sort of written a script that had a story to tell, but then he sort of, as ever, diverted from it.

3:31And he got his facts wrong. You know, why was he talking about inflation being the highest ever under Joe Biden? That's just not true. And so you have to, as ever with these moments, go behind it and say not what he's telling you, not what he said, but why he felt he had to say it. And why he felt he had to say it, I would suggest, is because this hasn't been a particularly good 10 days in Trump land. The Vanity Fair piece, which we're going to discuss at length a little bit later, I think may have rocked some of those around him. the polling which shows his deep fall from popularity particularly in the last couple of months and this endless question about why americans do not trust him on the economy anymore when that was how he came to office not once but twice yeah so you said he sounded angry and confused i'd agree with angry i wouldn't agree with confused when we played that clip at the very top what you'll notice is he is speaking in perfectly constructed sentences donald trump last night was sticking to autocue he had been told by susie wiles his chief of staff you have to stick to the message written down and the reason why that was being impressed on him so much and the reason that he asked for a state of the nation address and you're absolutely right you know when you think that one of these things is happening it has to be something mega it is because if you pull the curtain back that his message on the economy is not landing and he is getting blamed by more and more americans for the fact that they're feeling that life is really tough and so last week he went to pennsylvania and delivered kind of an economic speech which was the start apparently of the affordability tour where donald trump goes on the road and tells americans it's great and it's getting better instead of which he kind of went there and said it's all a hoax.

5:32It's a Democrat con job. There is no affordability crisis. And all the White House kind of messaging people are tearing their hair out thinking, no, that's not why we're doing this. And he said, you know, kids don't need many toys at Christmas. They can just have one or two dolls. They don't need a load of pencils. They can just have one or two. And it was kind of it's he sounded like the Grinch who was in denial. And so he was told this time, right, stick to message. No con jobs no hoax the economy is getting better and the big gamble from the white house is that the economy is going to improve substantially next year there's been all this talk of is there a you know is there a bubble around ai and is there going to be some kind of crash the white house folk believe that the economy is going to carry on motoring and people will start to feel the benefits when the one big beautiful bill tax rebates come in he effectively announced as you say emily sod all last night i mean there was kind of there was something about uh military veterans getting a christmas okay let's talk about that i mean that is military veterans getting getting a pay out it is a warrior dividend sorry sorry 1776 i mean spot the number 1776 dollars to one and a half million u.s service members in the coming week and step back and say okay well if you're a military service person you're probably delighted to get the christmas money that's great but put it in the context of what's happened over the last month, where you have had this growing rumble about war in Venezuela, about regime change in Venezuela, and you have seen Democrats and Republicans actually take to the airwaves to say to servicemen and women, you do not have to fight illegal wars for this president.

7:23Be very careful. You do not get pulled into an illegal war for this man. And I wonder if Trump on one level is sort of saying, well, here's a payoff. Do what I ask you. Take your money. You're in my service. This is how it works. This is, you know, we use the word a lot, transactional. Don't forget who you work for. Here's your payoff. Now come back when I ask you. Yeah, look, that's very dark. But we've seen so much that is pretty dark about the way this administration operates. And look, when people get their tax rebates next year and their kind of filings and from the IRS as a result of the one big, beautiful bill, it's true that there will be dollars going back into Americans' pockets.

8:07But America and the bit that Donald Trump weirdly left out of his speech last night is the reason that there have been the biggest price hikes in American history is because of his tariffs policy. If you're buying goods in America that have come from outside of America, everything is costing you a lot more. And the reason he folded on his tariffs against Brazil was because so many agricultural products come from Brazil, coffee, etc. And so Trump decided, Christ, you know, I know I want to punish President Lula, but I've got to stop now because it's making prices more expensive for ordinary Americans.

8:42And so you can see that there is a, you know, the dotted line from tariffs to affordability is not that difficult to understand. And I think it is so easy to spin so much stuff from Trump's position and in Trump's shoes. But I'm just not sure the economy is one. And if you go to the polling, then Reuters, Ipsos, right? I mean, they are not sort of left wing radical think tanks. They are pretty much the sort of the heartbeat of neutral news, Reuters. A poll showed just on Tuesday that 33 percent of U.S. adults approve of how Trump has handled the economy. 33 percent is not good enough for what he needs to get past his voters in an election year, the midterms next year.

9:36and I think that he probably has been sent out to go and repair the damage and I'm not sure that you can just sit there shouting at people that everything is fine that the economy is fine that it's a democrat hoax that it was still somehow Joe Biden's fault when people can look outside the window it's that whole thing of like you know don't say some people think it's raining some people don't think it's raining go and have a look out there see if it's raining if it hurts you if If you don't think things are improving, if things have got more expensive in your life, then you're just not going to believe the economy is getting better.

10:11Whatever your president is shouting at you from your TV screen. Yeah. And the reason why this is so important now is we're less than a year from the midterm elections. And there was some interesting other polling data that I was reading about, you know, the view of handling of the economy. And it will not surprise you to learn that the overwhelming majority of Republicans think that Donald Trump is handling the economy very well. but it's only 80 % approval rating so 20 % of the die-hard MAGA crowd don't like it. Overwhelmingly Democrats think that Donald Trump is handling the economy very badly some kind of 91 % but the killer facts I think for the White House are that the independents in the middle 67 % think that he's handling it really badly and so you know if the elections are won on being able to get those sort of people to the polling stations kind of in November then that augurs pretty badly for the Republican Party maintaining their hold on the House and the Senate and this stuff will be seismic because if Trump loses both or one or other then his ability to do anything in his last two years in office will be seriously curtailed and so that is why Trump went on TV last night to address the nation didn't say very much and i just don't know whether it washes that one year into your presidency you're still blaming biden and using things which have been fact check he said 100 of the new jobs that have been created have gone to americans you think how do you know that there's no way of knowing 100 of the jobs that were lost they were all being done by illegal immigrants 100 i mean anytime somebody uses 100 you just know it sounds metaphorical it sounds made up yeah exactly yeah and so that is what trump has done and you know look we know that trump is able to shape reality better than any politician we've probably seen in our lifetimes and define what is real and get people to believe what he says but if people feel that they are struggling when they go to the grocery store or they're filling up the car with gas or they're paying the electricity bills that is real and no amount of donald trump saying it's all fantastic is going to change that fundamental reality of what it costs to live.

12:31Let's hear him talking about how much he's going to reduce drug prices by. This is the latest claim. I'm doing what no politician of either party has ever done, standing up to the special interest to dramatically reduce the price of prescription drugs. I negotiated directly with the drug companies and foreign nations, which were taking advantage of our country for many decades to slash prices on drugs and pharmaceuticals by as much as 400, 500 and even 600%. Hang on, so if you cut prices by 400%, the drug companies are paying you to have the... Because if you drop the prices by 100%, they're zero.

13:15Yeah. And so they're paying you. Now, the drug companies, that's very nice. Well, if you get it to 600, then you've really got yourself a bargain. You're rich. Yeah, you are. And on the subject of that, you know, the tax credit for the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, which is the insurance premiums that people pay, are about to run out. And Donald Trump wants to replace it with a still yet to be identified new way of funding health care. And suddenly a whole group of moderate Republicans have said, no, we're voting with the Democrats to stop this. And so there is now going to be a vote in the House next week to make sure that those tax credits don't run out, because that's going to have a ruinous effect on people's insurance policies and their access to health care.

13:57And so while Donald Trump is talking about, look what we're going to do in terms of drug prices. No, it's going to get worse for millions of Americans in the next few days unless moderate Republicans stop him. Yeah. And all those legislators have got to go back, leave Washington and head back home to their voters, their constituents and say, well, what have we got? Yeah. Right. When their voters are saying, what have you got for us? Are we going to see premiums go up? They can't hide behind, you know, the domes of Washington. They've got to face them. Right. They're all at home now. They're all at home for Christmas.

14:31And I think this represents another important strand of, you know, I think you framed it absolutely brilliantly. like what the hell was last night all about i mean the other problem that donald trump faces right now is that you can see cracks appearing in the maga coalition among republicans who are getting fearful about their voters and you know do you prefer the wrath of the voters or the wrath of donald trump well if you want re-election you're more worried about the wrath of your voters and at the moment that is pushing some people to think i have to break with trump over some of this and so Trump is not getting his way in the manner that he was in the first six nine months of this administration when he seemed to be all-powerful he does not seem all-powerful now powerful sure still able to use the bully pulpit still able to intimidate a huge number of lawmakers but increasingly there is a sense growing that you can fight back and you know to retail a green on one wing over the release of the epstein files but others on the economy are doing that yeah and trump is having to therefore be much more careful about how he frames his messaging in a moment we're going to be talking about the close-up photos in the vanity fair article and what it tells you about maga about the press and the relationship now between the public and the private in Trump's circle.

16:12The News Agents USA. So if you caught our episode yesterday on the News Agents, we began to talk about the interview that Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff, did with Vanity Fair. Not one interview, but a series over the course of a year of about 11. And the reason it made waves is because of her candor, quite frankly. And a lot of journalists, a lot of people in America have been trying to figure out whether she made an error in what she said or whether she was sending a message to the president and others around him of what she means. The president has rallied to her side. She is indispensable to him, Susie Wiles.

16:55and it is very unlikely that he will want to see her go over this. But one of the other facets of this Vanity Fair interview, which is really generating quite a lot of discussion at the moment, is the photography, in particular the close-ups. And the photographer of this piece was Christopher Anderson. And I think it is quite noticeable that the very first bits of media, social media coverage that Vanity Fair put out was not the big wides of this interview, but these incredibly intimate, unforgiving close ups of each member of Trump's team. and you may have seen some of these without even realising but one of them is Caroline Levitt who is Trump's spokesperson and it is so close on her face, on her lips in particular that there has been commentary online about how you can see her sort of Botox lip filler injections around the edge and I think it raises a question of whether this is just, you know, frankly gossipy and mean and brutal for a woman in the public eye or whether it is telling a bigger story about what matters to MAGA or whether it's telling a bigger story about what a piece by Vanity Fair in 2025 is and whether it can be the undoing of characters in Trump's circle if they are made to seem less perfect than he imagines they are.

18:39All the time that I was in Washington doing, you know, kind of doing the White House beat, you would go to the White House when Trump was president and all the women would be beautifully made up. I mean, no one was kind of looking like they've just pulled on a pair of jogging pants and a sweater and come to work looking like that. You had to look the part for Donald Trump. And Donald Trump is very particular about physical appearance. He makes very disparaging remarks about people being too fat or too small or too ugly or too this or too that or whatever it happens to be and comments on people.

19:13You've got a very fine head of hair, sir. You know, so physical appearance is everything to him. And you would think that kind of agreeing to do the Vanity Fair article and the photo shoots that go with it. You would be conscious of what you're going to present to Vanity Fair and take an interest as well in what the photographer is doing. I mean, the Washington Post caught up with a photographer and the questions that they ask him, I think, are really interesting because they asked why he left these close ups untouched up. And if you think about it, it's a sort of, I mean, he says it's a curious question to ask.

19:53And what he says is that he does close ups because it's his attempt, this is his words, to navigate, circumnavigate the stage managed image of politics, cut through the image that the public relations team wants to be presented and get at something that feels more revealing about the theatre of politics. He said, I've done it to all sides of the political spectrum, not just Republicans. It's part of how I think about portraiture in a lot of ways, close, intimate and revealing. So I think when you read that as a kind of statement, it sounds totally, you know, justified. And it's like, of course, you want to cut through the politics and you want to cut through the image.

20:29And this is the whole point. You want to show somebody's real self. But I also think that it's a sort of it's a convenient way of explaining what he's done, which, frankly, has created waves. And I think if if you are part of a team that goes towards a photographer and says, yes, you know, we're going to do Vanity Fair, you're assuming. I mean, what is Vanity Fair? Vanity Fair is something about vanity in the title. There is. Exactly. But there's I mean, you know, if you go back to your trollop, then that's about sort of shattered image and illusion. So, you know, get the irony. But I think Vanity Fair is also a glossy magazine.

21:09If you sign up to doing a glossy magazine, do you expect a glossy photo shoot? You probably do. You probably think it's what it says on the tin. Well, look, you just kind of quoted a bit of Christopher Anderson. He talks about this as well in the interview that he's given, where he says, you know, there's the other side of Vanity Fair. He says it's celebrity. Sure. But there's the other side of Vanity Fair, which is real journalism. I'm surprised that a journalist would even need to ask me the question, why didn't I retouch out the blemishes? And he says, because if I had, that would be a lie.

21:39I would be hiding the truth of what I saw there. Do you buy that? Well, I think that it's a really I mean, I think it's a really live discussion. Yeah, I think it's amazing because I think that if you pose for a photograph for a magazine, which I have done on occasions, you kind of think that the photographer will treat you. You'll be looking for the best shots. And, you know, often you kind of say, oh, can I have a look at the photos of what I want to see and what will work? and is this showing me in the best light or not? It seems that they have said, you can do what you like. And now they're paying a price for it.

22:17It's so interesting. Yes. So when we do, you know, if you do a photo shoot for a magazine, every woman I know knows the tricks. You know, please don't shoot from underneath. Please shoot from on high. You know, let me check the shots as I go along. It's kind of like, it's kind of a given. There is an unspoken relationship, I guess, with a photographer that you're both trying to get the best out of this shot. And you'd also ask, is there going to be hair and makeup? Yeah. You know, you'd find out. Which I think, actually, I think they said they came ready made for the photos. But there is a line in this piece in the Washington Post where Anderson is trying to photograph Susie Wiles, the chief of staff.

22:58And she goes, you're too close. She pushes him away because she clearly realised what was happening, that photo. So Caroline Levitt, I don't think does. Marco Rubio weirdly sort of comes out better of it. And the line that is the most telling of all is from Stephen Miller right at Trump's side. Right. This sort of, you know, the deputy chief of staff, essentially running the show. And he turns to Christopher Anderson and says, should I smile? Should I not? Should I look at this? And the photographer says, do what you need to do. And Stephen Miller says in what I mean, comes across in the piece as a slightly threatening voice.

23:34you have the power to be kind in what you do. And Anderson goes, so do you. So do you. In other words, I'm not the deputy chief of staff controlling most of America right now. Now, who knows if that exchange ever took place? Who knows? We've only got one account. And who knows whether it was said in humour or whatever? Who knows? But I do think it's sort of, it goes to the heart of veneer, right? And MAGA, as you've said, You've painted this portrait of how important the aesthetic is to MAGA. If you look at Sydney Sweeney, who's now doing her latest round of publicity for Euphoria, a lot of the chat is about the MAGA, the MAGA-ization, the MAGA-ization, I don't know, of the woman's look.

24:22The MAGA-aesthetic. The MAGA-aesthetic, where you have your Botox, what the shape of your mouth is, whether you conform to a certain archetype. And for anyone listening who thinks, oh, my God, the news agents have lost it. They've just gone into complete sort of filler gossip. I think it does go further than that because it's about pleasing the president. It's about pleasing the man at the center. If he sees those pictures in Vanity Fair, if he sees them online, does his perception of those close to him, of Caroline Levitt, change? Does he say, hang on, I thought I had this perfect Barbie. I don't think that now.

24:59Why can't I see all the fillers in her lips? Does it actually change whether he thinks she is as good at her job as he did a week ago? So there'll be a twofold process would be my guess on that. The first part of it will be to attack Vanity Fair, to attack the photographer, to attack the journalist, to say it was a stitch up, to say it was fake news, to say they misrepresented, they misled, they lied to us. La la la la la la la. And yet that's the normal MAGA playbook. as soon as you see something anywhere that you don't like. But the second part will be something like that. And, you know, you saw that, you know, Donald Trump kind of never really got on with John Bolton because John Bolton had this kind of ferret under his nose of a moustache.

25:42And there were other people as well. He just didn't like the way they looked. You know, H.R. McMaster was too short for Donald Trump to be a general. But James Comey, who was the director of the FBI and was six foot eight, was too tall for Donald Trump. And Donald Trump didn't like that either. The aesthetic does matter. And yeah, you know, people might listen to this and think, oh my God, Maitlis and Soapal, you've completely lost the frigging plot so close to Christmas. I think it does matter. And I think it's really fascinating. And also, I mean, well played Vanity Fair. This article does not come out.

26:15The magazine is not published until January the 20th and everywhere on social media. It's the most red thing of the moment. But would you say that they have played fairly? That's my question, because, you know, it's all very well a photographer saying, oh, I like the unvarnished truth. But frankly, every photograph that you take is a product of its context and its setting. You can choose good lighting or bad. You can choose near or far. You can choose up or down. Have they been slightly underhand in the way they did this? Because I think you could argue that they went into this sort of willing a photo shoot that they thought was going to show the heartbeat of power at the centre of the White House.

27:01And they've come out sort of looking ridiculous. So I like the description of politics as a contact sport, which is played by consenting adults. And they are consenting adults. And if they don't know what they're doing, they bloody well should have done. and more fool them for allowing a camera photographer to stick his lens, you know, three inches away from your nose. And not asking for copy approval. And not asking for copy approval. All the rest of it. Which is extraordinary because if there's one thing Trump always gets right, it's his media timings, his media appearances. I mean, generally, he knows how to do the look.

27:39There was a famous occasion when ABC was filming in the Oval Office during the first term and his chief of staff had a bad cough and coughed and Trump says stop okay we've got to do this filming again let's go from the top and he starts telling the cameraman who was not working for the White House he was working for ABC News he's right why don't we start with a mid close-up and then come in and then we pan around and you open it out I'm the producer here I'm the producer here I understand content I understand the visual image and so for Trump where the visual image is so important for so many of his staff to have got it wrong with Vanity Fair, he will be looking at them and thinking, you idiots.

28:26The News Agents USA. Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show. That is Donald Trump talking about MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino, who who was taken from his podcast, obviously, to become deputy head of the FBI. And Dan Bongino was a conspiracy theorist who believed that the FBI hadn't properly investigated the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania of Donald Trump and was responsible for all sorts of terrible things. And he was put in number two. But he fell out very fast with Pam Bondi, the attorney general. And I mean, there's no surprise that Bongino is going. the question was never if but when i do think there's something weird though about how phlegmatic trump is i mean to our last chat he's just saying yeah well you know the guy was running a really successful show and i guess he wants to go back and do it i mean that is a weird place to be when the deputy director of the fbi yeah just think he's gonna have a better yeah having a better life going back to his podcast i mean much as we love a podcast and a lot of people have sort of said well, you know, Bongino has been unhappy for a long time.

29:43He's threatened to leave multiple times. I just want to bring up a quote that he made during a Fox News appearance. This is when he was just three months into the job. He said, I gave up everything for this. My wife is struggling. I stare at these four walls all day in D.C. by myself, divorced from my wife. Well, not divorced, but I mean separated. And it's hard. Can you imagine? He's the deputy director of the FBI. And he's moaning about having to stare at four walls in D.C. It beggars belief that you could get somebody right at the top of service to their country and go, oh, yeah, I'm a bit bored.

30:19I'm not earning as much money. I think that tells you a lot about sort of where we've arrived at 2025. The president himself doesn't even think it's weird that he's lost this guy now. He'd much prefer to go back to his own show. Yeah. But I also think that Trump saying, oh, he wanted to go back to his own show. it papers over the cracks and the fights and the rounds that have been taking place over Epstein, over law enforcement, over what to do with the FBI, over the investigations into perceived enemies of Donald Trump. All of those things are tearing at MAGA. And so it's kind of quite convenient to say he just wants to go back to his show.

31:00Although there is probably from that quote, as you say, a degree of truth in that, because obviously Mag is about making money. It's not about public service. It's something he can understand entirely. Completely. Entirely. Because, you know, enrichment is what you do. And that is what Donald Trump recognises as success. We're going to leave you there. Have a lovely Christmas. Yeah, Happy New Year as well. We are back on January the 6th. January the 6th? Yes. Did anything ever happen on January the 6th that you can remember? No, can't remember anything. No. What's what happens in 2026? All right.

31:32See you then. Bye-bye. Bye. This has been a Global Player original production.