Real Reason Trump Is Never Going to Recover: Wolff

And he's rightly cornered. He doesn't know what to do because no one knows what to do. He's gotten himself into a situation that he can't get out of. The no forever wars president is right now trapped very clearly in a forever war. On a tipping point scale, this is very much, very clearly, I think, indisputably, the beginning of the end. Michael. Joanna. What's happening, man? What's happening? We're recording this on Tuesday morning. The president has thrown out lots of ultimatums. Well, it's possible that the world is ending. Well, I would just like to say that. I mean, it is, I mean, essentially Donald Trump is right now, as we speak, threatening to end the world. I mean, civilization, I think in his words, civilization as a nation. In his words, civilization as at least the Iranian people know it. So we are at a moment, a critical moment in which he is essentially saying, I'm going to go further in warfare than we have gone since the Second World War. I mean, I don't think any American president, I'm not sure any leader, Putin possibly, but the exception of Putin, has ever been this explicit in his intention to create a level of destruction that the world has not seen in a very, very long time. So this is like, let's not hold back here. Now, this is Donald Trump, so we have no idea what's going to happen, and he can scamper away any second. But right now, at this juncture, it's sort of could be darkness at noon. So we're recording this on Tuesday morning. We have no idea what's going to happen. But what's going on where we go three times a week inside that big head of his with its moldy hair and its orange complexion and its increasingly hunched neck? He's cornered, obviously. I mean, he doesn't know what to do. When he doesn't know what to do, the threats get greater. The language gets more explicitly, well, stupid, of course. Violent. Explicitly violent and threatening. And he's rightly cornered. He doesn't know what to do because no one knows what to do. He's gotten himself into a situation that he can't get out of. So the no forever wars president is right now trapped very clearly in a forever war. And the sort of foolish bragging which would work well in a television show, in a reality show. And we're always talking about how this is the spin-off and how he looks at everything through the lens of a reality show. This is reality. And there's been so much knock-on effect from the bombing campaign against Iran. And his sort of ridiculous comments like five presidents didn't have the balls to do this. I am the only person that can do this. And in fact, what he's brought us is a crisis around the Strait of Hormuz that no one had heard of really before he started this. No, no. And he's off. The balance of power there has been altered not in our favor. So before it was just a free passage waterway. Now, essentially, the Iranians have taken over the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, before the war, they had no claim on the Strait of Hormuz. Now they have a claim, and they have actually a kind of stranglehold. I mean, nobody knows what to do. The balance of power, literally the balance of power has shifted because they've figured out that all you have to do is, well, actually all you have to do is threaten. And that inhibits insurers and boat owners and everybody who might try to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. So therefore, it's an embargo on 20% of the world's oil without really doing very much. Right. Well, and it's the most extraordinary story yet again of David and Goliath. That America strides along as Goliath. Hexas shouts that we've got the biggest military in the world. We've got unfathomable bombing capacity, which is true. But it's not always what wins in the end. As we know from the last few wars, and the thing that really irritates me is that this makes you root against Donald Trump. So you're rooting against America, which nobody, no American actually wants to do. But it's hard to feel anything but unenthusiastic about this foolishness. Yeah, and it also goes to the point that not only do you have to be the most powerful nation on Earth, but you do have to be a little bit intelligent. And Donald Trump and his collection of stupids, and these are stupid, stupid, stupid people. I mean, more stupid because they're wedded to Donald Trump's stupidity. Right. I mean, you cannot be. I mean, structurally, you cannot be around Donald Trump and be smarter than he is. Then you won't be around him. So the entire intelligence, the entire IQ of the American government has been lowered by Donald Trump. What's interesting is that he knows he's cornered, despite his ludicrous press conference, which we can go into in a minute. But he's already started laying the blame for Hexeth and for JD Vance. And there was a wonderful moment where JD Vance gets caught out. Trump throws it to him and says, how's it going? JD Vance, how's the negotiations going? And JD Vance isn't expecting to have the ball thrown at him. So he's kind of obfuscating because he really doesn't know. And it's very clear that Trump is saying, this is on JD. And we know that JD didn't want to go to war. He's got a book coming out called Communion, How He Found His Faith Again. I'm sure he did find his faith again after working for Donald Trump. So JD Vance is thinking, when's my book tour starting? How can I make some more money out of this whole thing? He doesn't want to be lumbered with a war. And more importantly, JD Vance, who will run for president in 2028, at least run for the Republican nomination, is set up to be the MAGA candidate. But the MAGA candidate has to be a No Forever Wars candidate. And suddenly, Donald Trump has linked JD Vance to a Forever War. I mean, it's pretty smart from Trump's point of view. I mean, I'm definitely not rooting for JD Vance. So it's pretty smart that he's managed to put a grappling hook around JD Vance, who was trying to get away from the war. And then another one, around Pete Hexeth. Whoever the nominee is going to be, and he is going to undermine. Of course. So it doesn't matter. And why not start now? Right. But he's obviously figured out that both Hexeth and JD Vance are sort of young enough to possibly present as a kind of new future for America. And he's not having any of it. And they're both going to get lumbered with the blame for this war, which is not going well. And Marco Rubio, actually, because he sort of somehow managed to really associate himself with the 24 hours of glory in Venezuela at the moment, seems a little less slimed. Fair? I mean, Rubio just looks exhausted, too. I mean, Rubio is just an old neocon. So I mean, he's going to get, as the neocons always do, going to get saddled with this war, and he's going to go down. These wars don't work. So he's going down, too. Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, the principle is that Trump will bring anybody down. There cannot be another Republican president. Off to him. Because that would supersede Donald Trump, who is going to leave office and go back to Mar-a-Lago as the once and future president. He will be Donald Trump. Any new Republican president compromises Donald Trump's identity. So that won't happen. At least Rubio has the decency to look anxious about this whole thing. Every time you see a picture of him, you look like his soul's left his body. He's a really sweaty guy, too. And he looks older. His face is crumbling in on itself. And he looks utterly panic, whereas JD Banz just looks swollen. Spring is finally here. And I know you probably have plans for a night of fun with friends. Well, here's a product to help you wake up well after a night at the bars. It's called Z-biotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink. And it's a genetically engineered probiotic invented by PhD scientists. And here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for rough days after drinking. Z-biotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink enables your body to produce an enzyme that helps break down this toxic byproduct from alcohol. Just take pre-alcohol before you hit the town, drink responsibly, and you'll feel like yourself the next day. So just go to zbiotics.com forward slash dailybeast and use code BEAST at the checkout for 15% of your first order. And if you're not satisfied, they offer 100% money back guarantee. All of these people are the people around Donald Trump. So everything that they think and everything that they feel and every action they take is about reaction to Donald Trump. What will Donald Trump think? How will Donald Trump's hit back at them if they don't do it right? What does Donald Trump expect of them? I mean, this is. No, it's embarrassing. And the way they said yesterday in the press conference, and this is all possible because of the great courage of Donald Trump, because of the majesty of Donald Trump, you're just like, you sound ridiculous. Nobody has agency here. Everybody's agency has literally been removed by Donald Trump. I mean, just think of Donald Trump as you would think of the world around Stalin. He could kill you any minute. Right. And you do not want to be. Just a. You don't want to be the first person who stops clapping Stalin, right? That's the side. Exactly. What comes out of his mouth is a reflection of what's going on in his head, obviously. And it's bonkers. And it's obvious he's cornered and panicked. I mean, I was the truth social on Easter morning, which Tucker Carlson has now flagged in a particularly Tucker-like way. And obviously, for Tucker's own benefit, is like that post was the fuck. Well, it was, what was it, open the fucking straights, you crazy bastard. Exactly. And so Tucker Carlson has said, I mean, I think his main issue is saying fuck on Christmas more. Easter, darling. On Easter morning. And so we can burnish Tucker's Christian credentials. But it also goes to the fact that this is nuts. What is the man saying? What is the point here? And also from a strategic level, he is raising the expectations of what he will do of obliteration and Armageddon and the end of the world, which he is not going to do. So he is going to raise the expectations. And then he's going to have to run away from them again. Right, Tucker. So how can this be good for Donald Trump? Well, and he sent the truth social out on Easter morning, probably having woken up to the realization he's been attacked by the Pope. So the Pope addresses his crowd. It's his first Easter, first American Pope, that those who have power should use it peacefully, which is obviously not what Trump is doing. And then there was the strange conversation when he was asked about his God on your side during the Monday press conference. And he was like, God is great. God is good. And he and Hexeth have sort of dragged God into this. For obvious reasons, for political gain. But it just feels ridiculous. No, it's really, I mean, that's the other thing. The believability gap here, or in my day during the war in Vietnam, what we used to call the credibility gap, is, I mean, I think we are seeing that again, what he says versus what the reality is. And this goes back to always that metaphor that I come back to, the split screen. Because Trump is obviously a television performer, so you might as well stick with the central metaphor that we always come back to. And in this split screen, it is Armageddon and obliteration and the full force of the United States military, the greatest force that the world has ever known. No one's ever seen anything like it. No one's seen anything like it. Which is true. Except for then in the other screen, you have the Iranians whose military has clearly been degraded, if not devastated, nevertheless managing to hold the world hostage. So it is, again, in this Trump thing, these absolute contradictory realities, which he does not know how to bridge. Well, and the other thing is when he goes into his speeches, you can see him then trying to sort of wander off. So he attacks Biden as a retard. And he says, you know, he goes off. There's some sort of moment there where he pulls in North Korea. And he says, aren't you pleased about the way I've, you know, I've got a great relationship with North Korea and actually Kim Jong-il or whichever one it is, said that Biden was a retard. So he says that twice. Then he says that he inherited, he said this twice in the last two or three days, he inherited a crippled and dead country, which he's now made into the hottest country. I mean, again, falling back on his language that he used for his team of lawyers that you always used to say. I'm just going to say, yes. He used to say to you. I may not have the best lawyers, but I've got the hottest lawyers. And now he may not have the best country, but he's got the hottest country. Many people saying it's the hottest country. No, I mean, it's just so embarrassing. It's so embarrassing. But it's beyond embarrassing. I mean, it is. And it goes to, it reflects what is going on in his head, which is all kinds of weird, all kinds of dangerous, all kinds of incoherence. So he doesn't know, he doesn't know not only what he's doing, but he doesn't really even know what he's thinking from moment to moment. Well, at the Easter egg hunt or the Easter egg roll at the White House on Monday, he was signing things for children. I think he was signing eggs. And he said, you know, this was Joe Biden. He wouldn't be using a pen. He'd be using the auto pen. And there's a child looking at him. And the child just goes, what? And the child has no idea. And you're conscious that in Trump's head, he's just like, Biden, Biden, Biden. No, actually, in the presence of children, he always says something strange. Right, super aggressive. I think that was that. Remember when he told some child there was no Santa Claus? That's right. And Milani was just standing there, and she's become even more silent. Hello, I say nothing. I'm totally silent. I mean, she was standing there grinning as he was talking nonsense about an ever-tongue equipped in that country. I mean, it's this other thing. Because I mean, I've seen this. I've literally witnessed this countless times. Trump there, blah, blah, blah. And everyone around him kind of holding their breath. Right. What is he going to say? Now, it's not as if the people around Trump think that this is normal and logical and business as usual. They think this is crazy. And they also kind of think, when is the world going to call them? I mean, how do they? I mean, it's a sense almost of, are we going to get away with this again? Well, and perhaps please don't let us get away with this again. I mean, I'm really concerned that actually Susie Wiles getting treatment for her cancer is actually part of this whole thing. What are you hearing in terms of? Well, I wouldn't go. I mean, this is that sort of assumes. Is that giving her too much power? Well, no. But it assumes it's anything, something different has happened. I mean, this is what has been. Nobody's. This is the story and has been the story every day of certainly the second administration, but also the first administration. Right. But you just started this conversation by saying he may bomb a civilization out of existence tonight. It has ramped up. No, it is worse. Well, it is in this situation because I think this situation is the worst situation he has gotten himself into. So this is. And I think we can go broader on a tipping point scale. This is very much, very clearly, I think, indisputably the beginning of the end. He's not going to recover from this. Right. He can't recover from this. And so he is. This is like, oh my god. And the danger is to take everyone with him. I mean, he does. I mean, he's already, he's going to take everyone around him with him. But what does it do? If were he to actually do what he's threatening to do to Iran? I'm just trying to think. I can't almost imagine the effect of this because, A, I don't think this is going to happen. And I may absolutely be proved wrong. It is Donald Trump. You don't know. He is a crazy man. So does restraint, you know, taco kick in some point today? I don't know. I expect that it will. But if it doesn't, dot, dot, dot, I don't know. Is he listening to Tucker on something like this? How many times have we gone over this? He doesn't listen to anyone. I know, but he reads the room. The thing that he does do is read the room. And in the room, there are a lot of people saying this isn't a good idea. Especially his, I mean, even Marjorie Trader Green, who's turned out to be a truth teller about this and sent out a post saying he's lost his mind and you're all in complicit and everybody in the cabinet. And I wish I'd been in the cabinet, but I wasn't. And I can say this stuff is complicit in this craziness. This is all true, except for the fact that he's in this, he still has to deal with this circumstance. And he doesn't know how to deal with it. I mean, he literally doesn't know how. I mean, what do you do? I mean, in normal Trump business as usual, he would declare victory. But we're over that line. That's not believable anymore. Him declaring victory would immediately, it would immediately be clear that we had lost and the Iranians had won. And the other side of that is that he can become more aggressive. But more aggression only seems to give the Iranians more backbone, more determination to use the leverage they have against us and actually the world. Right. And it's actually a very biblical story. I mean, the irony of Trump and Hegzeff clothing themselves in the Bible is that this feels a very biblical story and that it's a giant power that's trying to crush a little power or a smaller power, I should say. And the smaller power manages to sort of intelligence its way through it. Well, actually, the greater irony is that it has turned Iran a regional, here to for a regional power, into a superpower. Into a bigger power. Yeah. Yeah. So J.D. Vance has been dispatched to Hungary, as we speak, where he seemed to be out of touch with what's actually been going on. And of course, a little ironic, too, that he's been dispatched to Hungary to support Orban, who doesn't look like he's going to win the election on Sunday. Well, let's talk about that because I think that's also a theme, a key indicator at this moment in time. But tell us this story because this is priceless. Well, I'm reading it from our swamp column, which we drop every Tuesday and it's written by our excellent White House Chief Correspondent David Gardner. J.D. Vance flew overnight to Hungary to suck up to the country's right wing leader and Trump buddy Victor Orban. But he clearly didn't check his messages before going on stage for a press conference in Budapest on Tuesday morning. Moments after mentioning he had a note from Steve Wyckoff that he hadn't had the chance to read. And then of course, because he's J.D. Vance and he can't resist doing this, he goes, wouldn't you like to know what's in it? Because the guy is so unpleasant. So unpleasant. A Reuters reporter has to tell him to check his messages and he should have read it because he didn't seem to know that the US had launched a wave of strikes against Kaga Island. So dozens of military targets across the island were hit. And J.D. Vance didn't appear to know any of it. So he said, wouldn't you like to know what's in my text? Well, we know what's in your text. Kaga Island is being bombed. So he's there with his poor little wife and we need to talk about an excellent piece that we ran by Nal Scavell, who pointed out that Ushavance has started a podcast where she reads books to children. And actually, if you go down the piles of books that she has, it's all very subversive. Wait a minute. So this is a podcast for children. It's a podcast for children. Children listen to podcasts now? Who knows? I mean, sadly, not many people listen to it at all. Isn't she a kind of a kind of here too far the premise that children should not be on devices? Very good point. Very good point. But were they to be on devices? Were they to be? They could listen to Ushav's podcast. But it's actually a very subversive podcast. And of course, it's the book. She opens with Peter Rabbit, Taylor Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, female author who got rejected by all the traditional male publishing houses, publishes the books herself, makes tons of money and becomes an environmentalist. And of course, little Peter Rabbit is a bit like an immigrant who runs into the garden, big agriculture. Mr. McGregor, the farmer drives him out, steals his jacket. And then the next book is of a little, I think it's some sort of creature, a rabbit who is driven around by all the presidents going back some time to Reagan and Biden, but not Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the only president missing. So White House, I think we called the White House for comment because this is actually Ushav being rather subversive and nobody's noticed apart from us. You're always calling the White House for comment. Have you ever gotten a comment that is anything other than an insult or dismissal? No, but we still call them anyway. Yeah, well, I mean... Because you're in old fashioned, this kind of journalistic conceit. Yeah, and because we know as it happens, as Caroline Levitt told a panel last week that we're in her head, that she likes to hang out with her kids because then who cares what the daily beast thinks? Go back to Vance and in Hungary. Yes. I mean, I think that this is really interesting. So Victor Orban has been taken up, and this was true in the first administration, to buy the MAGA people. So he was the indicator that the MAGA movement was spreading around the world. He was taken up first by Steve Bannon, and then he was taken up by Tucker Carlson. And of course, Orban has always been very close to Putin. And of course, Donald Trump has always had a mysterious relationship with Vladimir Putin. But so this was part of the MAGA movement spreading around the world. So right now, Orban is in trouble. Orban will probably lose. So this could not come at a more dicey time for Trump and the MAGA movement, or a more, depending upon how you look at, a more propitious time. This is, again, the, I think we are seeing the writing of an end of this finally. And I'm going to now, from here on in, insist that this is what we're... This is the beginning of the end of Trumpism and MAGA. And also when J.D. Vance landed, a slew of emails came out from, well, between Putin and Orban, with Orban saying, you know, I want to help you in Ukraine. Tell me how I can do that. Suck, suck, suck, suck. Right. Suck, suck, suck. And then it became clear that the Hungarian foreign minister had been taking information from EU meetings and giving it straight to Sergei Lavrov in Russia, the Russian foreign minister, for, you know, to help the Russians in the war with Ukraine. So embarrassing for J.D. Vance. And it looks like Orban's going to lose. No, I think it's... So he sent him there, I think, deliberately. I mean, it feels like he's away with it. To hook him to that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that they're kind of desperate. I mean, this is other... They are seeing the writing on the wall here. And it's interesting that they're looking at Orban like you might look at a MAGA person in some state who needed support. I mean, this is... If Orban goes down, that's a red flag for them. I mean, I don't know what they do. I don't know if they can ignore that. But it is one of those other things on the march to the midterms and on the march to the end of Donald Trump. But it's significant that Donald Trump hasn't gone there for an unexpected last minute visit. He sent J.D. Vance. Yeah, I mean, I think that would be... I mean, where Donald Trump to show up in Orban to lose, even Donald Trump is going to have enough restraint not to set himself up like that. Right, but he's managed to set up his number two, is all I'm saying. Yes. And of course, he has set himself up in this war, which again, he just can't get out of. He's stuck. It is going to bring him down. And let's just talk about how this helps China and how it helps Russia. Well, it clearly helps China in almost every way, not least of all. It is... I mean, China has over the last number of years, which the U.S. has not done in which... Or at least the U.S. attempts have been repeatedly frustrated by Donald Trump, developed by the U.S. and developed alternative, a whole alternative energy industry. So the impact of this loss of oil on China is so much less than all other places in the world. It makes China... I mean, their industry has been proved out. Their investment in this industry will make them... The leaders has made them the leaders in the development of alternative energy around the world. They will reap the benefits of this. While Donald Trump is ripping out windmills and stopping every kind of renewable energy he can do here. Extraordinary. So let's talk about Steve Bannon. Okay. So Bannon is... The Supreme Court has taken steps which will allow Steve Bannon's conviction on contempt charges to be vacated. Now, this is because the White House and the Justice Department has basically said, we don't want to pursue this anymore. We think this is... We think that this is wrong. We wouldn't have pursued it then and we want this to go away. And let's just remind people he spent what, four months in jail for this? I think three months. In Connecticut. Yeah. I mean, and this was a contempt. He refused to appear before Congress and this was with regard to January 6 and what he knew about that. He refused to appear. He was then held in contempt and that conviction was upheld and he went to jail for three months. Now, this is part of the... I mean, Donald Trump's systematic effort to forgive everybody who was implicated and dinged in January 6. But the interesting thing about this is the Trump-Bannon relationship. So, Bannon... I mean, Bannon was the man who probably got Trump elected. He took over the campaign in August 2016. He imposed discipline on it. I mean, he had a vision of how to do this and was the guy who should get the credit for Trump's victory, which has always pissed Trump off. And then Bannon went into the White House and pissed everybody off and billed himself as Donald Trump's brain, which was... Well, then there was a famous cover of time where Steve Bannon was sitting behind the resolute desk, looking as if he were in charge, which Donald Trump... I think that was the beginning of the end for Steve Bannon in the Trump White House. Right. So, Steve Bannon lasted until August 2017 and then he was out and he was a kind of... And let's point out that one of Steve Bannon's problems was that he became my significant source in my book Fire and Fury and said all kinds of terrible things about Donald Trump and everyone in his family. So, there has always been a amount of tension between them. So, the interesting thing is, what did Bannon have to do? What was the negotiation to get Donald Trump and the Trump White House to support him in getting this conviction thrown out? It wasn't...I can guarantee it wasn't free. So, and I suspect that it was that Steve made a promise to go easy on the war. Oh, interesting, because he's anti-war, anti-forever wars. Anti-forever wars. He's a central MAGA voice, continues to be a central MAGA voice. So, that is my theory. So, when you say it wasn't free, you're not talking about the regular pardons economy where you can pay to get out of jail and people have done frequently. Yeah, no, this is going to be something. This is much more valuable. Exactly. Okay, that is interesting. Exactly. And you always made the point when he came out of jail and we sent a reporter up there to watch him come out, that Trump hadn't organized. This was not one of those scenarios where you get picked up in a flash car and brought to the White House or someone from the White House meets you. He was just left on his own. Yeah, I mean, Trump doesn't like Bannon. Can't stand him actually. He's an irritant, has always been an irritant to Trump. You know, I mean, he's clearly brags. I mean, Steve brags about how much smarter than he...of course he's smarter. And just as a... I am not now speaking to Steve, but have had a long relationship with him and have always thought that he was incredibly entertaining, insightful, and of course, utterly opportunistic. Well, you sort of outmaneuvered him, actually. I mean, interestingly, you know, because he brought you on board into the White House, you sat there for seven months, you then produced the first book, which everybody says this can't possibly be true. Michael Wolfe is exaggerating. And in fact, if anything, you were under playing what chaos it was. But in fact, you actually outplayed Bannon. Well, perhaps he didn't understand as a source quite how... I think that he understood that he was... We were in a symbiotic relationship. You were both in a chokehold. Yes. So he wanted to kill Donald Trump, and I wanted a story. To kill Donald Trump. No, I didn't want to kill him. I just wanted the story. I wanted the story. So he was willing to give me the story because at that point he so hated Donald Trump. I mean, that's an interesting example of someone who actually was willing to talk about the pain of working for Donald Trump, of how much Donald Trump made everyone around him, makes everyone around him suffer. So the other person that you used to get the story, and now you're telling the story on your sub-stack, is Jeffrey Epstein. Much more controversial figure even than Steve Bannon, which is hard to be. Although Bannon and Epstein then became a duo. Well, because you introduced them. But in this week's episode, which I read with great interest... And this is just as... So I am writing the Epstein story as I know it, on an episodic basis, in installments every week, which is on sub-stack. So this is a kind of a 19th century novel form. Right. It's a sort of pamphlet that drops every Monday, and it has a cliffhanger to it. And in this particular one, you bring together what I think is fair to say the most diabolical people in New York, without quite understanding what you're doing at the time. So you're trying to bring together a consortium to buy New York magazine. You call more to the... Well, I was in New York Magazine where we both worked at the time, was put up for sale, was owned by a private equity group who had no idea what it was doing. And was put up for sale in 2003. And when magazines are put up for... That's always a dicey moment of what's going to happen there. Usually nothing good. So I was... And I loved working for New York Magazine. Best job I ever had. So I called one person... I knew sort of one person in New York who had millions to spare and love the title of being publisher, a man by the name of Mortimer Zuckerman. And who then owned the Daily News, and before that he had owned the Atlantic Monthly, but he was a guy really in the real estate business. So I called him and said... Because we knew each other and we were kind of friendly. And I said, would you be interested? And then he sort of got excited about it, but also wanted to do it with others because it's the magazine business and even a billionaire knows not to buy a magazine. Well, I think it's probably fair to say New York Magazine was losing money, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. Well, it was, yes, it had lost money for some years. Yes, as most magazines were. But at any rate, he said... So I called him and he said, okay, well, we got to get other people in. And he said, do you know this guy, Jeffrey Epstein, who I had known in the two previous episodes on the... Well, I'll explain the background of how I knew Epstein. And then it was after Epstein came in, 10 million, I'll put in 10 million. And then I got the call and it was actually Epstein who called me and said, I just spoke to Morton and he's going to bring in Harvey Weinstein to this deal. So you literally have Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein as your hopeful benefactor. Yes, no, no. And then this other guy, Nelson Pelts, who's a rapacious raider. And whose daughter, I think, is married to Brooklyn Beckham, Nicola Pelts. Yes, Bingo. Brooklyn Beckham, who no longer speaks to Victoria or David. It's a lovely group of people. But also we should point out, we were there at the same time and it was your magazine too. So you then had to go work for the other people who then came in. But at any rate... Well, that was Bruce Wossestine. So explain what happened, though, because in the story, for those of you who haven't read the substack, there's a good sort of drama moment in the story. So I am... There was a... This was going on and these guys, more Jeffrey, Harvey, whoever, kept saying... And I kept saying, hey, I'm hearing other people are trying to buy this magazine. No, no, no, don't worry about anything. And can I just mention, actually, because I've now remembered another character in all this, that every Monday, Keith Kelly, then the reporter for The New York Post, would be writing updates. He was a very good media reporter. Everybody in the media read him. And he was writing weekly updates, if not more than that, about what was happening with your bit. And I remember thinking, I don't know who these people are, but I hope they win because I want Michael to stay at New York Magazine. Anyway, please continue. Yeah, no, no, no, this was a very hot... This was everywhere. David Carr in The New York Times, who was then their media reporter, covering this constantly. I mean, there was a time, now quite some time ago, when what happened in the magazine business was a very hot topic. Right. There was a time. Hard to believe. That time has gone. But also, wasn't there a moment when Harvey Weinstein finds out that you're involved and says to Mortz and come on, you have to get rid of Michael Wolff? Yeah, no. Epstein calls me and says, oh, yeah, Harvey doesn't like you. He wants you fired. And then he says, did you write something bad about him? And I said, I said, everybody writes the bad things about Harvey. And then Epstein said, well, he's an animal. Don't worry about it. I'll take care of him. Epstein says about Harvey Weinstein. He's an animal. Well, it's hard not to... Takes one to no one. Takes one to no one. But anyway, the denouement of this is that there's a New York magazine awards luncheon, which you were at. You were, I think you were the main organizer of this. I was the organizer of that lunchtime. Yes. I was filled with the great and the good. But it was the first time they'd done it. And I felt massively under pressure to pull in as many celebrities as I possibly could. And actually, we had a very good lineup of people. We had Meryl Streep and we had Kevin Klein, who I think gave Meryl an award, but it's possible she gave him an award. We had Caroline Kennedy, who'd just been put in as head of some partnership at the New York schools. She was space to raise resources for it. It was actually a very glamorous group of people. But then I was sitting between, and this was discordant to say the least, I was sitting between Hillary Clinton and Roger Ailes. Then the head of Fox News. Who I don't think had been invited, Roger Ailes. I think you supposed to tell him and put him in. He was, yes, yes. And I had to reorganize the seating for everybody because you were like, I'm bringing Roger Ailes. Yes. Anyway, I was there between these two who were actually rather cordial to each other. But anyway, sitting between these two, my phone rings and it's Jeffrey Epstein. And he says Bruce Wasserstein. Bruce Wasserstein is another financier. Five times more, I think. And so he said, Bruce Wasserstein has bettered our bid. We're done. I said, what do you mean? What are we going to do? And he says, and Epstein said, what do you mean? What are we going to do? We're done. Let me get back to you. I got Clinton here. So he had Bill Clinton. Yes. Who probably knew that Hillary was to lunch and he had a couple of hours to play with Jeffrey Epstein. Yes. And that was it. There you go. Okay, well. Where would we be now? Oh my goodness me. You would have been in business with them. It's probably better that you were. No, I would have been in it. Honestly, it's so much better that it never happened. No, I felt immediately, I mean, I felt both that moment in which you can feel both disappointment and utter relief. And I remember sitting you next to Julianne Moore at this lunch and then you replaced her with Roger Ailes. Yeah, I had to get out of here. And I was like, who would replace Julianne Moore? I couldn't. In what world would you replace the heavenly Julianne Moore with Roger Ailes to sit next to? No, Roger Ailes was great and a great talker and incredibly funny and all kinds of bad things, but also smart. Julianne Moore was just not interested in me and she's a movie star. She's a movie star. I've always liked Julianne Moore. I think she's a very good actress. And I've sat next to her at lunch and actually always found her very lively and entertaining. Really? So there you go. So you left New York Magazine, you went to Fanatuffer and I left New York Magazine too. That was a bit of a trip down memory lane for us, which was kind of fun. But this is how we met. We sort of begin at New York Magazine. Yeah, well, you got me the job at New York Magazine. You said to me, you should come and work at New York Magazine and I'm very glad I did and it was enormous fun. And magazines have disappeared. I've never seen an industry disappear faster than the magazine business. I mean, the music business reinvented itself, television reinvented itself, magazines have just disappeared. I mean, I spent my entire career in the magazine business and then for it to, um, puff, gone. Well, now, now you're on Substack and people can read this episodic story. No, well, it's interesting to go down all of the people on Substack. Everyone I've ever known in the magazine business is on Substack. Well, I noticed you were number one on Substack, so you must be doing something right. Um, I'm trying to think what that is. I guess you just... Well, I think you're writing about Epstein and people want to understand the actual truth of what you experience. Well, Epstein and I'm writing about Trump. I mean, these are the, I mean, how many subjects are there, frankly? Not too many. Right. I mean, the entire world has become obviously reshaped by Donald Trump, not just by his mendaciousness, but by his command of such attention still. I mean, still, and we go back to this, all these threats against Iran and what he's going to do and he's going to end civilization as they know it. I mean, this is all, and let us never forget, about putting the attention back on him. Yeah. Well, if he gets prosecuted for war crimes, at least they've got lots of evidence of what he was planning to do. It's not like he can say it didn't mean it. And to be, well, prosecuted, I wonder how that happens. Well, that's for another time. Well, that's for the Democrats to win the midterms, you know? Well, they still can't prosecute him for war crimes if they win the midterms. No, but let's take it one. My point is let's take it one step at a time before we go from here straight to the Hague. If you want updates on Michael Wolfe's sub-stack, you can click on the QR code and magically he will come to life. Are you reading it? You should be reading it like Dickens used to do that. He used to go and read his things. Why aren't you reading them? Should I read it here? Maybe we could, every inside Trump's head episode could now become a reading of... No, you could read it on sub-stack. Read it on sub-stack. You should be reading it like Dickens did. You could even apply a beard and dress that up as a... Okay, well, let's... Okay. You know, I just read my Murdoch book. So my Murdoch book is now 10 years old, but you know, since Murdoch... You've got two Murdoch books. Which one? The first Murdoch book. And since he's going to die any minute, making the world a better place. Is he? Because he's just had his 95th birthday and his mother lived to 103. So he could have... He's got good genes. Nobody has good genes to take them past 95. He's already on borrowed time. When that ends could be right this very minute. But anyway... He had Antaran. He had Medok Antaran. Yes, anyway, I read this because I think the publisher now expects that with the passing, with the coming death of Rupert Murdoch... People will want to hear Michael Wolf read his life story. And I kind of... Have you ever done this, read a book? I have. It's very... Except I read my book and I was like, this is terribly badly written. I can't believe I did this. And I was extemporizing. I had the exact opposite feeling. Of course, that your book was brilliantly read. Oh my God. But I will say that at the end of my reading, my book called Love Rules, about how to find real relationship in a digital world, the engineer looked up and she said, this book has helped me enormously. And then she unfolded her romantic life and we discussed it and she felt that the book had been very helpful. So there you go. If you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to The Daily Beast. And what else? Thanks to our incredible team. Such an incredible team. They are an incredible team. Devin, Rachel, Ryan, Heather and Neil. We'll be back on Thursday and who knows if Iran will still be standing. Okay. Okay. Online, in person and on the go.