The Reason Why Trump and His Goons Are Scrambling

This person who I was speaking to yesterday described it as, he said, everybody's plotting. Marco Rubio is plotting, Haguezeth is plotting, Jared Kushner is plotting, and J.D. Vance is plotting, but J.D. Vance doesn't really know how to plot. Well, and I think they have J.D. Vance saying, I'm against this. I don't think it's a good idea, but if you want it, Mr. President, I will support you. And I don't know how he comes out looking loyal because it's going to be clear that he was a source on this. The only one not retrying to retreat is Pete Haguezeth. Too dumb to know that he has to retreat. Okay, so after Michael and I recorded today's Inside Trump's Head, we had sensational breaking news that Melania Trump has made a long and frankly astonishing statement about Jeffrey Epstein. It's the first time we've ever heard from her in person about the biggest scandal of her husband's presidency. She claims she never met Epstein until the year 2000, said she knew nothing about his crimes, and even explicitly denied having a relationship with him. So it really is all quite sensational. And of course, even more sensationally, Michael is actually suing the First Lady himself about Epstein. We're going to dive into it and analyze every word on our next episode on Saturday, but don't let the Trump's ability to drive the narrative divert our attention from what's going on in the straight of Hormuz and the peace talks going on in Pakistan led by J.D. Vance. Let's get into it. And just to remind you before we really get into it, because goodness knows there's a lot of urgency today, don't forget to subscribe to The Daily Beast. We're independent media. We appreciate your support. You can smash the subscription button wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to The Daily Beast for up to the moment news on what the hell is going on. Michael. Yeah, Joanna. Oh my God, I have no idea what's going on. Nobody has any idea what's going on. I think that I do. And I think it's interesting. And I think you can, I think there's sort of a beginning, middle and end here. And it begins with his threats. I'm going to destroy civilization. And what that meant as soon as he said it is that he was not going to destroy civilization. And so he got himself into the end point of something he could not do. I mean, he could not do for, because it was morally reprehensible, because everybody around him, because it was just an unsustainable threat. Also, he didn't know how to do it. How would you destroy civilization? And also, it's a childish threat. It's like when a child says, well, I'm going to leave you all and storms out of the house, and then they're hiding in the garden. Totally. But that meant at that very moment, it meant effectively the opposite of what he was threatening, because it meant because he couldn't do this, that he had to get out of the situation. So immediately, he was ceding the absolute high ground to the Iranians. I mean, it means he had to accept any possible deal, because what happens if it got to be eight o'clock, and there was no deal? Well, then he was going to be then shown to be a fraud and a fool and, you know, and a naked emperor. So he had to do a deal, and the deal that he did was essentially, what you win, we lose. So, I mean, there is no other way to see the outcome at this point, as that the Iranians have significantly bested the Americans. Now, I mean, he did this thing, this two-week ceasefire. Now, that's in, within the Trump circle, that's a kind of running joke. Whenever he has in, whenever he's in doubt, whenever he's in trouble, whenever he's asked the question that he can't answer, he goes to the two-week response. We're looking at that, we're going to get back to you in two weeks. I'm going to have an answer for you on that in two weeks. I mean, everybody goes, they look at each other two weeks, and he is, he actually has discussed this, and this is not just off the top of his head, it's a week people still remember. Two weeks they never remember. Now, where he came up with that formula, I have no idea, but it actually tends to work. It totally makes sense. To work. And so, at this point, the two-week ceasefire means that in two weeks it will be, it'll be a situation in which the smoke will, there will be enough smoke so that he won't have to directly face the issue that he has achieved nothing in this war. Right. He's achieved nothing. No regime change. They took out the leadership, but it stayed the same. They still have the enriched uranium, which they said, which the Americans said they were after. And strategically, the straight of her moves that hadn't been in play now appears to be entirely in the control of the Iranians. So, in effect, this has actually been yet another shitshow. No. I mean, I think there's, I mean, just, and I think it's worth making the point, the thing that he cannot do after this two-week ceasefire is go back to war. So, he is locked in. He has locked the Iranian gains in. And I mean, what, we're, so we're in a thing. A lot of people are talking, you know, throwing around the Suez Canal example for the for the Brits. But it actually is much closer to George Bush mission accomplished or for Joe Biden's exit from Afghanistan. It's that moment, those tipping points moments in which you cannot recover. I mean, the Biden administration, there's only really one story in the Biden administration. You know, it has nothing to do with Joe Biden's senility. It has nothing to do with anything. It has to do singularly with the exit from Afghanistan. At that point, which was, you know, a debacle, he couldn't recover. His numbers never recovered after that. And also the imagery. Who couldn't forget the people clinging onto the planes as they took off and then falling from the planes and the dreadful loss of life and the very quick rolling in of the Taliban undermining everything in America and spent 20 years. Yes. So, at that, these are, those moments which are unforgettable. I mean, you can't, I mean, war has the attention of the world and it's the attention of the world in victory, which never comes, or ignominy, which at which point we have, we have arrived. Well, and both those moments, Afghanistan and mission accomplished, a moment that Donald Trump has himself repeatedly mocked as mistakes of previous presidents. And his whole thing was, I'm not going to do that. We'll never have a forever war. I would never do that. And look what he's gotten himself into. No, I think again, and we've started to have this conversation. I think we should have this conversation repeatedly now that this is the moment. Everything has begun to come apart. And it's not going, this Humpty Dumpty moment, it's not going to be put back together again. Humpty Dumpty moment, I love that. So, where does this leave his cabinet, Michael? What are you hearing from inside the White House about what's inside his head on it? Yeah, totally. And I had this kind of fascinating discussion yesterday with, you know, let me be careful on how I characterize this person. But I would say that this is a a highly placed deep state person who has a daily interaction with the White House. And this person's critique of the moment is that this person, let's avoid gender here, this person has has has has never seen so many people in the seat of power, let's say, who are so rattled. I just, I mean, I mean, rattled about everything rattled about about their own careers, rattled about what happens tomorrow. And at some level, rattled about how the government continues to operate and then at some level rattled about the fate of the of the country. And this person also says that no one is getting a clear message from POTUS, that's quote unquote. And which means that that he, POTUS, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, is also probably rattled. He doesn't know what's going on. He does not know what to do. He, at some level, recognizes that he has gotten himself into a corner, which he can't get out of. Start up your new business now with Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US from household names like Momofuko, Untuckit and Skims to brands just getting started. Get the word out like you have a massive marketing team behind you. Create attention grabbing emails and engaging social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. On the back end, everything lives in one place. Inventory, payments, analytics. So you're not stitching together five different platforms just to operate. And if you hit any snafus, don't worry. Shopify is always around to share real advice with their award-winning 24-7 customer support. It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash Daily Beast. So where does this leave, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, JD Vance, who I saw in the excerpt from Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman's book, which is coming out called Regime Change, that JD Vance, whether or not he spoke to them or not? Let's get to that in a second because I have some clear views on that and I think it actually helps. It's kind of a roadmap, not the way the author's intended, but nevertheless a roadmap to what's going on. But this person who I was speaking to yesterday described it as, let's see, he said, he said, everybody's plotting. Everybody's plotting? This is what this person is. Marco Rubio is plotting, Hegseth is plotting, Jared Kushner is plotting, and JD Vance is plotting, but JD Vance doesn't really know how to plot. So that was the thing. And I think you saw, so the New York Times did a big lead up to war. Now, the context of these kinds of pieces is pure Bob Woodward. I mean, Bob Woodward has written at least, I think, multiple books about various presidents going to war. And that's what sort of the preeminent newspaper reporters try to emulate that. And they got a lot, Maggie Haberman and her acolyte, Jonathan Swan, got a lot of people to talk to them, apparently, which is an indication, one indication of people plotting. Of them planning how they're going to exit this, how they're planning their futures. When you say plotting, do you mean they're plotting their own futures and they're plotting others down for it? And they're plotting because they know they're in a mess and they have to figure out their own way out of it without being blamed. That's quite the definition of plot. You got it. Yes. And so everybody is in this mix. And you can tell a good part of this story is coming from JD Vance. And the Vance point of view is clearly not me. I was not the one who did this. I was just at best trying to be loyal while I told them again and again and again. This was a bad idea. Well, and I think they have JD Vance saying, I'm against this. I don't think it's a good idea, but if you want it, Mr. President, I will support you. So he's trying to look loyal, supporting the president, but also advising against. Right. I don't know how he comes out looking loyal because it's going to be clear that he was a source on this. The only one not retrying to retreat is Pete Hexeth. Too dumb to know that he has to retreat. Well, Pete Hexeth saying that they can go back in any time they like. And although there was one line, and I think it was from this story where he says they have the enriched in rhanium still, owning the president knows how he can get it out. What did he said? Oh, I know. He was asked how they will retrieve the uranium. And Hexeth said that's something the president will resolve. I think you're going to have to try that, but you're going to have to try a bit harder. Yes. And then overall of this is that you have BB Netanyahu in the situation room. So why do we... The answer to why we went to war is because BB came to Washington and Trump was like, oh my God, these guys are so smart. They know everything. They're Mossad. And he's the thing which is always a kind of Trump thing that Mossad, you don't want to mess with Mossad. It's Mossad. I mean, it's really, I don't know. It's gotten into his head that this is the knee-plus ultra of spies and intelligence. So alongside us inside Trump's head, we're alongside Mossad. Yeah. And BB, he seems to have known, he seems to have played this exactly right with everybody else saying, I mean, the Israelis are there only for one account, which is their own, as well they should, I suppose. But in this situation, and the Israelis are always trying to get the US into backing their positions that are fundamental, I mean, are good for them and bad for everybody else essentially, including, certainly in this instance, the US. So also, there's Tucker Carlson pops up in the middle of this, and that's interesting because he's a direct quote. So he went on the record here. And we should talk about Tucker because Tucker has been almost more than anyone on the MAGA side out front on this. I mean, he's been devastating in his critique of the president. Tucker is, without question, I think, setting himself up for a presidential run. I mean, he is the anti-war candidate, the anti-war MAGA candidate. So that's all interesting. And the other, to me, interesting thing is that this is another example of another demonstration of the New York Times failure to portray what's going on. I mean, because essentially, it's all there. They've laid out the fact it's a portrait of a president who who won't listen, can't understand, overly impressed by the people around him, who he thinks knows more than he does, and who lives in a place separate from Cartesian reality. That's there. But at the same time, they write this stuff partly because they're such terrible writers. I mean, it's essentially AI could have written this. And it produces a Bob Woodward effect that this is a kind of deliberation, council process. And within a range of options, a fair-minded one is selected, rather than a president who is totally out of the... We're not in... We're so far out of the realm of normal statecraft. And even that is normalizing it just to use those words. The man is a bloody incompetent who does not know what he's doing and who has committed us to a war that... To an incredibly costly and destructive war, which will gain him nothing. Because he can't do... He can't... He can't process. Yeah. I mean, but the New York Times have, and they've done this repeatedly. Why are we in the Trump mess partly because of the New York Times? Because they don't have the intellectual capability to express what's going on. And they don't have the courage to express what's going on. But mostly because they literally don't have the intellectual tools to describe what's in Trump's head. This episode is brought to you by Rakuten. The big secret all savvy shoppers know, Rakuten makes your money go further. Shop with Rakuten to get cashback on top of seasonal sales. Discover fashion, tech, beauty and more at hundreds of your favorite shops, like M&S, JD Sports and Just Eat. It's free and super easy to use. Just shop as normal and stack cashback on top of sales and savings. Join for free at rakuten.co.uk or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Well, what's also curious about it is that they go around the Situation Room table. They have descriptions of where everybody's sitting. And Trump is sitting to the side. He's not sitting at the table because he wants to watch the video that the Iranians have put together or the PowerPoint. And Netanyahu is also sitting to the side. Basically, everybody after Netanyahu has left goes round and says, the Israelis oversell, particularly John Ratcliffe, head of CIA says, well, this is what Netanyahu does. He just oversells. Then there is the reference to Trump weighs it all up and then goes with his instinct. Yeah. What does that mean? And you're like, well, what is his instinct? What is his instinct? It means he has no thought process, no way to evaluate this. He's just a fucking fool. They can't say this. I mean, they've masked that. That's produced grievous consequences that we continue after all this time. Maggie Haberman has been a constant reporter on this beat. She works for the most important influential news organization. And she fucks it up all of the time because she is perfectly reasonable, nice person, a decent person, and a good reporter. She's just a terrible writer and a terrible thinker. So she can't express this kind of what needs to be expressed here, which is the president's brain is missing. Yeah. Well, I'm sure the book will sell well. I found the piece pretty riveting reading actually, because I love all that detail of where people are sitting. But again, it's that thing that the president trusts his instincts. And you're like, he has no instincts, his instincts for what? Well, I don't know if the book will sell well. I think it is so far behind the eight ball at this point in time. And I think the reading public and the voting public is so far ahead of this. And understanding there is something really radically phenomenally wrong here. And to treat this as though it is just another Bob Woodward, the president goes to war, a typical president goes to war is wrong and more importantly, unhelpful. Well, and what is interesting is that the Republicans themselves are now coming out and saying 25th Amendment, the president's lost his mind. There's no appetite for this in the Maga base. We talked on Tuesday about Alex Jones, who's ironically calls himself a truth, who is horrifyingly untruthful most of the time. But on this apparently has got it right. Similarly with Marjorie Taylor Greene calling everybody in the cabinet, which of course she was never invited to join. So one has to weigh up her personal animus about that. But her saying you are all complicit, you are all complicit, you know, he's lost his mind, you're not doing anything about it. You have the results of the election around the country, various seats up for grabs, and a big swing to the Democrats, even when the Republicans won. A Republican is replacing Marjorie Taylor Greene, but with a much, much, much smaller majority in Georgia there. And as you mentioned, you have Tucker Carlson, who I've now added rumble to my stable of social media platforms. And he was talking for two hours this morning, I was watching him about what a terrible mistake this has been. You know, I mean, I've known Tucker for a long time, and I like Tucker. And I think Tucker is often smart. And Tucker is often the whisperer behind any between how to, Tucker is a great source. It's been a great source for me, I'm sure he's been a great source for many other journalists. But the thing about Tucker, and there's many things you can say about Tucker's level of ideological opportunism. But one of the things that he has been for many, many years, 20 years, consistent about is having been in Washington, been around the people who make the kinds of decisions that have almost inevitably resulted in mistakes when it comes to military engagement. And it's not the military so much as the arrogance of the civilians who are directing them. I mean, he has been consistent saying that this never, ever, ever, ever in any circumstance works. Well, and it's always a tendency for leaders of countries, any country, Putin, no exception, that when things are going badly at home, which obviously they are for Trump, you start meddling abroad. And as if somehow by doing that, you will shift your own population, your own voter bases attention from what's going on at home to abroad. Nobody in America wants to focus on Iran, nobody cares. No, well, this is another one of those things that used to work. I mean, George Bush in 2004 managed this to his advantage. I mean, this all went a cropper. But that was because of 9-11. So we'd had 9-11, a truly shocking event. We were both here, we were working together at New York Magazine. So that set the stage in a very different way. This attack on Iran, especially after the 12-day bombing apparent obliteration of Iranian nuclear facilities last summer, we thought we'd dealt with that. And then suddenly, because Netanyahu got intelligence that they could take out the leadership is really why we went in apparently. That worked. But this is not something anybody cares about at home. The only reason it happened is because Donald Trump is an incompetent. I mean, this is just utter incompetence of someone who does not have the intellectual skill set to have parsed this on the most basic level. So here we are with a justification from the New York Times, essentially. Well, and the thing everybody I talk to, I hear is how can one man have this much impact? Congress has just given up the ghost, it appears. And how can he have so much impact even when his back is up against the wall? He's still somehow enjoying it, enjoying playing president of the world. Well, of course. I mean, the center of attention for him, he still gets a piece of what he wants, which is to be at the center of attention. What he doesn't yet understand, because attention has worked so well for him in the past. I mean, his fundamental political calculation is if I get the lion's share of attention, nobody else gets any attention. And it's just not going to work on this situation because actually the war itself gets the attention and the failure gets the attention. And the fact that the Iranians are going to continue to declare victory and make him look like a fool. And there are 450 tankers in the Gulf idling as they try to figure out, will they be one of the tankers allowed through by Iran? There's normally a passage of about 100 tankers a day at the moment. There's between four and eight. And that is completely unresolved. And it's unclear how that is resolved into weeks. And I understand that he thinks, oh, people will forget into weeks. And actually, that's quite a good theory. I'm going to start doing it. But the world isn't going to forget because there's the physical need for tankers to get out of the Gulf. I mean, so I'm just speechless. I mean, I've never seen you speechless. This is our, what is this, our 98th, no, 97th podcast. And I've never seen you speak. There is, I just can never see you speechless. This is such a cock up. And it's a cock up that occurred so quickly. I mean, the interesting thing is... And so unnecessarily. ...is these messes that usually happen. I mean, there is, there's kind of cover. I mean, you go into it with a coalition, international coalition, you have goals, manageable goals that are, that can be set. And then a year later or X number of months later, you think this is not going well. I mean, so that we've compressed this, we've compressed this now to five weeks, a disaster, a historic international disaster in five weeks. We've seen the beginning, middle and end. And literally, he's handed the strategic victory to Iran with the Strait of Hormuz. So how significant was it for her own career, and I'm sure she's plotting too, that Tulsi Gabbard, the head of national intelligence, wasn't in the room where they were sitting around trying to figure out what to do about Iran? Well, I think she's on thin ice. Now, this deep state person who I was speaking to said, actually, in this conversation, we can test this person, that the next person to go is the secretary of labor. That is Laurie Chavez de Ramir, who has had a bit of domestic turbulence since she's been at the Labor Department. First of all, I think she was the first one to unfurl a huge portrait of Trump on the outside of the building. Her husband got accused of sexual harassment and was actually banned from the building, banned from visiting his wife in her place of work. And then interestingly, one of her bodyguards was recently removed after it appeared that they had developed a close relationship. I wrote a piece about this on Substack, actually, about women having inappropriate relationships with their bodyguards, the very people who are supposed to protect them. That would mean that he would have fired, the first three firings would all be women, because we had Kristi Noem, then we had Pam Bondi, and then we might have Laurie Chavez de Ramir. So I'm sort of assuming that he's doing that for attention and that he's sort of poking at women and his whole anti-DEI initiative. Yeah, I mean, my feeling would be that he doesn't really care he's just irritated, he just goes down the list. But why is he irritated with her? There were more people to be irritated with than her? What's in Trump's head that he is particularly irritated with this person? I would say I think that the answer is he wants to fire someone and she's probably expendable. She's expendable. She doesn't seem to have made very much of an impact. And of course, what we do have, as I recall, there may not have been a secretary of labor during the Biden administration. That's a good question. I think it's not a, you know, it's one of those things I'll get rid of, you know, what, anyway. But I'm sure she must be disappointed because in one of the cabinet meetings, she was one of the first to talk about, did he love the portrait that they had unfurled outside the building? And it was a particularly egregious piece of suck-upery. But let's be, let's, you know, I mean, I think this is not a very, who he fires at this point is not a very important story. It doesn't really, he has so moved the attention on his own incompetence that there is one person who should be fired here and that's him. That I think it marginalizes everything else. I mean, he has, he comes out of this this five-week war in which the world clearly sees him as the, as a much bigger, a much bigger menace to peace than Iran. Right. You know, Iran, which used to be the chaos and instability agent, it is, he clearly is the chaos and instability agent. He is the existential event which everybody in the world clearly recognizes. This is, this is, this is the central problem in the world. It's not Vladimir Putin, it's Donald Trump. It's truly horrifying. When you put it like that, it's truly horrifying. And I think those conversations are certainly going on in other countries around the world. How do we, how do we manage him? And then his having the head of NATO here on Wednesday evening, we're recording this on Thursday morning and saying that he doesn't really have any use for NATO anymore, that various of the NATO countries wouldn't support him, partly because he hadn't told them in advance what he was planning to do and that he would be punishing them from, from now on and maybe removing American military bases from their country. Well, let's, let's look at that because that's part of the question, what happens now? I mean, he will, he's going to understand he's in a corner here and he's going to react. And one of the things he's going to do, because this is the Donald Trump playbook, is look at who to blame. So, okay, we're going to get NATO, we're going to blame, definitely blame NATO. We're going to blame the Democrats. We're going to blame Spain, we're going to blame Germany, we're going to blame France. We, I mean, he's gone after Macron, he's gone after the, the prime minister of Spain, he's gone after Kerstama, you'll know Winston Churchill withering, withering criticism of Kerstama. The UK premiere. So, I'm going to make a prediction. Go on. He's going to blame Israel, partly because there's a case to blame Israel on this, but also because he's going to realize that he has to make amends with, with the MAGA base. And one of the things, the things that more and more the MAGA Grail is that Israel is, is the root of, of all bad things. You know, there's a fundamental piece of anti-Semitism there and then there is a fundamental, this is two things can be true at the same time. It is, you know, it is clearly anti-Semitic, but clearly Netanyahu and Israel have, have, have positioned themselves as the bad guys. Well, and, and he may have the opportunity to do it as everybody argues on about whether or not part of the ceasefire arrangement is Israel stopping bombing Lebanon. And Israel is saying, well, we're not part of that ceasefire agreement. We can carry on doing what we want. And the Pakistanis and everybody else are saying, whoa, wait a minute, of course you're part of the ceasefire agreement. That makes no sense. You're not allowed to go on bombing the Lebanese. Absolutely. I mean, and that's, I mean, that's just one part of a ceasefire agreement in which, in which has a whole set of terms, which it turns out no one has agreed to. No one has agreed to. And the 10 point plan that Iran has put forward, that Trump said they could work with includes them running the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. I mean, this is, this was literally a ceasefire. Let's agree to a ceasefire without any terms because we need a ceasefire. I will agree to any ceasefire. So JD Vance has been dispatched to Pakistan after going and doing his rallying cry for Victor Orban in Hungary. Does this mean that Steve Wittkoff and Jared Kushner have been demoted? No, not at all. I think it means... So what's the signalling of sending JD in though? Because they very clearly said JD is going into lead negotiations. Yeah, I think it means that JD is being pushed into harm's way. Can you imagine being JD Vance right now? Can you imagine he's got his book coming out on communion? He's being attacked by the Pope and by the Pope's emissary in Washington, by the Pope's ambassador, and here he is being sent off to Pakistan to do the impossible, to try and come up with a deal. I think JD is shaping up to be everybody's fool. Go on. Well, you know, I think everybody now, they've taken the measure of JD and JD is not a sophisticated player. He's not an experienced player. He's gotten himself all tied up in knots over what he has said before and how he has had to justify this and his need to suck up to a man who basically doesn't represent any of the things that JD has built his own base around. So I think people more and more realize he's in over his head, so he can be used in any possible way. But it's also so interesting because the thing that everybody says about JD Vance, because he went to Yale Law School, is, oh, JD, he's so smart. He's so smart. And you're like, really, is he so smart? Well, I mean, obviously, there are different kinds of intelligence. I mean, I think actually JD Vance is a pretty good writer, which is completely rare in these kind of circles. I mean, but I think he's inexperienced. I mean, this is a craft like any other craft, and he doesn't have it. And why should he? I mean, he was in the... I mean, before he became the vice president of the United States, he had a two-year political career. Well, and he's never done anything for more than two years. He's literally never done a job for more than two years. But he's a young man. I mean, just to say, he is a young man, and he doesn't, if he doesn't become the next president of the United States, if he doesn't become the next nominee, he still has a long future. How does Tucker Carlson get on with JD Vance? Yeah, I mean, that's one of those questions. Does anybody in this with these kinds of apps aspirations get along with anybody? JD Vance has certainly been useful to Tucker, and Tucker has been useful to JD Vance. So I think you have to see this on the get-along scale, but on the usefulness scale. Tucker has promoted JD Vance. Tucker gave JD Vance, as he did RFK Jr., really his first national platform. And because JD has largely represented the Tucker view of things. So where does that leave them now? Well, I think more and more as they become competitors, it leaves them as competitors. So we have competition in the podcast space from a member of Trump's cabinet. Would you like to take a guess as to who it is? Because I would have thought this might be one of the least likely people to do a podcast from the Trump cabinet. Well, I know who you're referring to. I was going to try to be surprised by this, but I do know who you're referring to, and it is clearly the voice that everyone is dying to hear in podcast form. Go on. Mr. Crackpipe himself, RFK Jr. Mr. Crackpipe himself, Mr. I snorted coke off a toilet seat. That's why I should be the Minister for Health or the Secretary for Health and Human Services. I mean, fascinating. So he's obviously building a post-Trump media outlet for himself. I think he's probably thinking, hell, where is my next stream of income coming from? And so he's now trying to build himself a podcast. You know, he was once a radio guy. Do you remember the, God, I have to think of this. There was a radio network that was put together to compete. Was it Air America? Exactly. Yes. Air America, and it had Al Franken and Catherine Lampert, and yes. And that MSNBC person who went on to dominate the left-wing airspace, whose name I can't remember. Okay, you're going to have to give me one. No, she's the most famous person on left-wing air. How can I not? Mika Brzezinski? No, she's not a left-winger. She's a... Well, she's on MSNBC slash MS now. Rachel Maddow. Oh, Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow was on it. Yes. Yeah, no, it was sort of interesting. Well, she's only on it once a week, though. Didn't she do some phenomenal deal? She was on Air America every night. She was their main anchor. Right, but she's only on MSNOW once a week, because she managed to do herself a fantastic deal, where she gets, I think, $25 million for appearing on a Monday night. How do people pull off those deals? So, I mean, there are a lot of people who came out of Air America, not actually RFK Jr. I don't really think that was something that... Well, I wonder what he's going to be talking about. His career. I wonder if, like Katie Miller, he's just going to be interviewing members of the cabinet. But there was an interesting thing, because I remember I sort of knew those Air America people, and they would talk about RFK Jr. because he had these enormous... I mean, he had a lot of women problems. Well, that's why I'm thinking that he's looking to a post-cabinet future, realizing perhaps that he's being talked as someone that Trump will let go of before the midterm, because he understands he's not popular. Yeah, no, I'm sure that that's true. And I think that he is looking for... I think he will be a candidate for the Republican nomination. That would be, I mean, literally, why not? And... Right, and he's got further than he ever thought he would do. Why not? Why not? But then a lot of people I know are now saying, well, I think I should run for president, because look at Trump, look at what we have. I don't mean you. No, no, absolutely, I don't mean me. But I'm talking... I feel like I talk to a lot of quite serious people who are now thinking, well, maybe I should run, because the country needs saving, and it's all a shit show, and if he can do it, I can do it. Yeah, a lot. Well, we're at this interesting moment. I mean, in the time, the political timeline, this is when people have those kinds of conversations before the midterms, and then they have those conversations, and those conversations are largely theoretical or fantastic, and then somebody says, are you crazy? This is what you have to do. You have to go out and raise a billion dollars. Could you do that? Do you want to do that? Are you capable of doing that? And that's the point at which everybody goes here. Yeah, I'll do something else. But I think we have to... We should be keeping in mind that timeline, and this goes also to Trump's current position, because this is the war is going to significantly impact on the vote in November. The vote in November is going to be catastrophic for Trump, which will then make him very, almost officially, a lame duck guy with the people in his party suddenly for the first time in 10 years, starting to make... Put a meaningful distance between themselves and Donald Trump. Right, and the Republicans looking for a post-Trump future. So again, I just want to say, and we should direct our focus to this, this is the beginning of the end. This is the beginning of the end. All right, well, you heard it here first. Michael. Joanna. We should remind people, please, to subscribe to this podcast. This is, as we said, our 97th episode of Inside Trump's Head. And when we started, we didn't know that we were going to spend 97 episodes in here, and we're looking forward to celebrating our 100th episode next Thursday. And we're still looking for suggestions for how to note it. We haven't quite figured it out yet. I feel we should do something significant, but I'm not sure what that is. And it'll slightly depend on what Trump's head looks like this time next week. Yeah, no, and it is so volatile at this point. I mean, he doesn't know where he is going. He doesn't know what tomorrow is going to be like. He doesn't. And I think this is an important point, because we discussed this more on psychopath having so much control, but we're at a moment in which he doesn't have control. I mean, events are beyond him. Talking about Tucker, there's an anecdote where it says that Tucker warned Trump about the war, who said it will be okay. And then Tucker says, well, how do you know it's going to be okay? And Trump says, well, because it always is. That's in the times piece, and that's clearly from that's Tucker's report on the conversation, clearly. Yes. But just the idea that Trump reassures him by saying, it's always fine. It's always, it's going to be fine. Yeah, no. I mean, that's the interesting thing about what's inside Trump's head is that he does. Remember, he's a survivor. So whatever happens, he comes out, he sees himself as coming out of this as it's okay. He doesn't ever see himself as being defeated by something. But sort of horrifying that the president goes to war on his instincts, because his instincts at this point, what are his instincts? What have his instincts ever been other than for attention? And it'll all work out because it all always does. And just let me add, because I can't help myself, it is also horrifying that after 10 years, The New York Times does not know, still does not know how to report this. You can't stop yourself. All right, we have some poems. We've got a limerick from Paul Watson, 8809. Don flies by the seat of his pants. When he crashes, he raves and he rants. This verbal assault goes, it's all Biden's fault. And Obama's chime in his sicker fans. I thought that was pretty good. Well done, Paul Watson. And then we have one with Garfried. Garfried's gone completely off limerick rhythm this way. And in the point of a limerick, I think Garfried, you tell me, or the limerick Laureate, is actually to stay within a specific rhythm. But I'm going to read it anyway. With Michael Wolf sparring with Joanna Coles on air, they warned Donald Trump was juggling doom with a dare. Hormuz started shaking, oil markets were quaking, while JD Vance looked primed for the blame chair. So both complicated ideas squeezed into a limerick. Maybe we should put someone in it and every episode. Every episode there should be a blame chair. I wonder if we should actually start. This was suggested by a viewer who wrote into me today, a limerick competition, that at the end, actually, we should have a competition for the best limerick every week, because we get a lot of limericks and poems and we don't have enough time. And actually, because we showed the remarkable monkey shaped plastercraft that arrived called DJ Epstein, and we haven't mentioned Epstein at all today. We've started receiving all sorts of arts and crafts gifts, and I've got a huge democracy mug that someone sent, which is like, well, I'll bring it on to the next episode. But it's very kind of people, and it shows that people are being trying to be super creative in a difficult time. Is that what it shows? I think so. I think that's what it shows. I hope that's what it shows. People have to have some outlet for the madness and outlet for the madness, and this is ours, Michael. This is ours. 97 episodes in. All right. Well, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, I will buy a copy of your book, even if Michael doesn't. Jonathan Swan, who was somewhat helpful to me when I was writing Fire and Fury. I'm modestly helpful, but I was generously thanked him along with a whole list of others. And he went crazy about being thanked because that meant that anyone who was thanked in the acknowledgments of Fire and Fury immediately earned the antipathy of the White House, and Jonathan Swan was busily trying to suck up to them. Well, Jonathan Swan's done just fine, and I'm glad he helps you on Fire and Fury. He's got a very nice accent, actually. He has an Australian accent. Do you find Australian accents nice? I find his voice nice. He has a soothing voice when you listen to him. I don't like all of them. I don't like Rupert Murdoch's, but I like Jonathan Swan's. See, I like Rupert Murdoch's accent. I've mastered it. I can't understand what Rupert Murdoch says he speaks in a mumble. All right. I've told that story before, right? What were you going to his—well, you would visit him once a week, right, when you were writing one of your books about him. And I got on the elevator, and he then lived in a Trump building, the building that Ivanka and Jared lived in. And I was with Murdoch, and we left—we had coffee in the morning at his apartment. We left together, and as the elevator descended, then stopped, and Donald Trump got on. And Rupert Murdoch said some neighborly-ish kind of thing to Trump, and Trump turned to me and said, do you ever understand anything he says? What did you say back? You did your shrug—I bet you did your wolfie and shrug. I didn't want to say, because it was—it is very hard to understand Murdoch. I wonder if that's one of the reasons that Trump was fine with you being in the White House, because he clocked that you'd written a book about Murdoch. I'm sure that's part of it, yes, of course. Okay, well— Not that he read my book about Murdoch, of course. Well, he hasn't read any books, I don't think, has he? He might have listened to it on tape. But you can—no, that was a long ago enough that you could not, but you can now, because I have just read the book. Oh, right. Okay, so that led—that was a very nice segue for you to promote the fact that you've got an audio edition. You can hear me reading the man who owns the news inside the secret world of Rupert Murdoch. Oh, the secret world of Rupert Murdoch. Well, if you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe. We'll be back on Saturday with another episode of Inside Trump's Head, if there's anything left in there for us to poke around. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beasts tier members now. There are too many names to read out, and we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team, Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.