I Know Just How Bad Trump's Decline Is About to Be

U.S. voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabroad.org and click "Request My Ballet." Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote from abroad.org. He obviously, beyond whatever cognitive decline he had and has, and more manifests craziness, if the elections go as one hopes they do. He will be more, you know, more himself and who God knows what forms that will take in terms of anger and depression. I'm a depressed old man in this crazy girl who, you know, will do anything I say is the only one who loves me. You will begin to see on November, I don't know, 4th, 5th, 6th, but certainly as the weeks go on, he will feel in that Natalie Harp says, "Everyone's left me except Natalie." Oscar Founder of Spy Magazine, which he has just launched, again, on Substack, so run and subscribe. What it does is take some of the very early pieces that Spy wrote about Donald Trump. It reproduces them, but it also, of course, updates the foreshadowing of these pieces and really brings that reporting 40 years ago to life in a new way. And, well, it really was incredibly prescient reporting, and hopefully more to come from Spy. So, no more time. Let's get into it. If you haven't got your tickets for Inside Trump's head, we're live at the Telegram Ballroom, October the 20th. Michael Wolfe and I will be doing a live podcast recording. We would love to see you there. And you can go to ticketmaster for your tickets or beast.pub/ithlive, but no time to waste. Let's get into it with cultural soothe Sarah's, I think of him, Kurt Anderson. I always get up thinking I'm going to eat healthy today, but then I look at a sad bowl of salad leaves. 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Shop the best broth on the planet with brodo. Head to brodo.com/beast for 20% of your first subscription order and use code beast for an additional $10 off. Once again, that's brodo.com/beast for 20% off your first subscription order and an additional $10 off if you use the promo code beast. Kurt Anderson is back. One of our favourite contributors to the daily beast podcast. Welcome and congratulations on the launch of Spy Magazine on Substack. Thank you. Always a pleasure to be here. And yeah, you're the last person to try to provide Spy Magazine briefly 10 years ago, Joanna, when you were elsewhere. But yeah, when I was at Hearst, I just want to remind people, yes, I was at Hearst. We had enormous fun. It was 2016. It was the Donald Trump election and it seemed the natural thing to do. So I'm thrilled you're bringing it back to Substack. We did. And I remember, I posted a final thing. I wasn't intending to post when we did that as an Esquire online pop-up about him winning, which of course, none of us expected. We thought he was going to be over then. And now we think he's about to be over now again. So let's hope we're right this time. Yeah, so what we're doing is on marking our 40th anniversary for which we had a lovely party last night. We are publishing every day, starting a few days ago and running for 40 days at a daily bit of Spy's coverage of Donald Trump. And he was in our first issue. We started with that. And so there's a bit of the real thing from the magazine reproduced on the Substack. And then you can link to the online archive of that full piece. And there it is. And so, what's interesting about it is it's one of the things that's interesting about it in addition to showing that we were on him, you know, 40 years ago, is that it's chronological. So the first installment was from the first issue when it goes all the way through the next, you know, what we call the funny years when the last of us left and let the other people publish the magazine. But even with seven years of these things, over 40 days, like, you know, Jesus is 40 days in the desert, I guess. And so it's subcribed. It's free. And we were interviewed about it last night on MSNOW. And last word on Lawrence Adonnell showed, he said, but you're not making any money from this? You're not, there's nobody making it. Now I said, no, we're just doing a service to humanity. So, yes, it's fun. And it's fun to, and it was fun to go back in the archives and see, frankly, how well most of it aged. Well, let's start with the first piece. And I have subscribed, and I can strongly recommend it to everybody else. And you've already got 7,400 subscribers, which is really not bad, given that you launched a couple of days ago. Of course, the first, the first episode had Donald Trump as one of the 10 most embarrassing New Yorkers. And I think it's better to say he's only got more embarrassing. Well, he embarrassing, and with all the other things, like having nuclear codes, i.e. scary, which he was not then, and dangerous, which he only slightly was then. But yes, indeed. The most amazing thing about that entry is our description of him was pretty good about his bridging tunnel's stylelessness and bluster and lying and bullying, and like, though we had his number properly. But also, what we did is spent most of it just quoting him, just the Trumpian quotes. But again, back then, nobody was doing, right? I mean, these quotes would appear here and there, buried, whatever, but to foreground them and spotlight them. It was something nobody else was doing. And the one that foreshadowed his, well, I shouldn't laugh, he did become president, didn't he? foreshadowed but his presidential ambitions, with which he flirted from starting then, he was talking about, he could be president one day. But he said this thing. Of course, it was 1986. There was a Soviet Union. They did have nuclear missiles. There was talk of a, you know, had been, year for years, talk of a nuclear missile treaty that while Reagan was then negotiating, did a pretty good job of doing some of a nuclear control agreement. He said, you know, this thing was missiles. Like, I could do that. I could learn everything I need to know in an hour and a half about missiles. I mean, yeah, just like he could, he was going to, you know, win the war in Iran in a couple of days. So it's just, it's remarkable to see back then when we were trying to kill baby Hitler and its crib. It was already, it was already what it became now as president. I've got that quote in front of me, actually, and it struck me as literally, you're exactly right, exactly what he says now, it would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles. I think I know most of it anyway. I mean, every, he's literally saying the same thing. So, so, I mean, looking back, it's exactly 40 years ago since you started the magazine. Trump is in the first, the very first list of people you home in on. Was there anything about him that you actually missed? I mean, you mocked him. He was a figure of fun. You kept coming back to him. Did you ever imagine he might be president, not once, but twice? Certainly not. And, and, in fact, evidence on the greenery simply thought that was a good, a good part of the joke was two years later we did a special section on politics of 1988, the beginning of 1988, and we commissioned a legit poll by this [BLANK_AUDIO] time, a big polling firm called Penn and Shown. And both Mark Penn and Mark Shown went on to other careers in politics. And we found, and we were at, we asked people in general, and it was like not a condentious thing, does who are you disappointed isn't running for president. And maybe we gave them Donald Trump as a possible choice. Maybe people just came up with themselves. I don't know, but 4%, 4% of Americans in 1988 said they're disappointing that Donald Trump is all right for president because the point is he was already talking about it. So, and that's ridiculous, of course, 4%, and he was like in 10th place. But we took that as a grounds, we pretended to take that as a groundswell of support for him. And look, America's caught asking, America's deeply neat Donald Trump. So you look back at that and go, well, yeah, it was funny then. But, you know, and so it, in any case, one of the changes between 1986 and '88 and now is is what so many things did to the American psyche and psychology, right? I mean, the internet, obviously, reality TV. I can go on, but like, I don't know, in a certain way, America's brain was softened up sufficiently and embracing, you know, falsehoods of various flavors and kinds enough that-- Conspiracy. Conspiracy, there's all that stuff that by 2015, when he said, I'm going to try it, it's a measure, the fact that he and his, you know, idiotic, ignorant, but also brilliant, world historic genius, way, understood like, nah, the time's right. I mean, he couldn't have articulated it to you, to us. I don't think, but, you know, the guy does have practically magical instincts. And the fact that he, you know, after flirting with it, just did a, you know, Donald Trump in a way, I can be president. I don't know if I want to be president. I can be president. You know, which he said, again, again, again, every four years. And like, would pretend to run, would pretend to run in the reform party, which was Jesse Ventura party and never did and never did, because he knew it was, he knew it was ridiculous until it wasn't. Until it wasn't. Well, and you've written about other characters in evil geniuses and fantasy land in America's sort of constant flirting with insane conspiracies. So I feel like you've been chronicling this. I mean, one of the other things that spy did so well was to skewer the rich and skewer America's fascination with them. And, and this sort of obsession that Americans have with assuming that rich people are all wise, that they have an opinion on everything and that they are somehow smarter than the rest of us, which I think is an opinion a lot of rich people would, would also echo. But we're now living with our own oligarchy. We have a series of billionaires who have incredible influence certainly with this current government. What would spy make of them? And if you were launching spy today, who would you put on the cover, do you think? Well, I mean, I think spy a spy thing, a spy like thing, whether it was print or not. And that's the difference. Talk to talk about an age when there was only print. As you know, you lived in that age too. I did. I did. It's so different. When a good piece can I just tell you, Kurt, when spy magazine came out, I was working at the Daily Telegraph. I heard about it. American friends were telling me about it. Everybody was desperate to get a copy and I had friends in America send me copy. I was scouring new stands in London. I finally found one. And I wrote about it and said, you know, I think there was an attack on British people and how terrible it was having British people come and visit you because they would say things like, oh, I've forgotten my toothbrush. Never mind. I'm only here for two weeks. It's not a problem, which was very funny. But you're right. There was such excitement about getting something tangible in your hands. And spy felt like a missive from the American future. Well, there you go. Thank you. No, and you know, I began as a New York magazine within a year because people were wanted in London and Los Angeles and Omaha, wherever they wanted it. We almost went bust after a year because it was so it was too successful. Like we had a print too many copies and we didn't have we were undercapitalized. So we had to raise a bunch more money and did thank goodness. And yes, there was a demand. And again, in one of the couple of beauties of the print age that it embodied. I think it's one, you know, a magazine or even a daily paper, but a magazine especially was the editor's view of a package from a from an individual head, whether an individual editor, a group of editors. Here's a thing I'm going to give you. This carefully constructed artifact of this week or this month. And and and and you know, it had a coherence like a good novel or a good nonfiction book or a good movie. It was a coherent thing. As you know, things there are still magazines. They're still good magazines, but they don't have that same like here. Here's a here's a piece of of our sensibility geared to this month and next month or this week and next week. So that's gone. And and as well as simply as you say the kind of the waiting for it, rather than like the 24/7 that you know, here we are 24/7. Here we are. You know, and and again, I mean, Donald Trump wanted us to think about him every second and here we are thinking about him way too much of the time and and when way back in the pre internet day, you know, yeah, you'd think about him and people loved spies treatment of him, which is why we're focusing not on everything spy did, but for these 40 days, just the Trump coverage. But you know, you didn't have you didn't think about him more than for the couple of hours you're reading spy magazine once a month, you know. Right. And now we're thinking about it all the time, but to go back to the oligarchy, the oligarchy. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious as to know, you know, who are the people that you find most interesting in the oligarchy? And if you were starting spy now, and it were still magazine days, who do you think are the more interesting of those characters? Well, I mean, the people around Trump they, since they're just other freaks and clowns to an extreme degree, it's on, it's too easy, right? I mean, yes, you would do something about Hegseth and Bobby Kennedy and all the others, you know, JD Vance. But I mean, it's just like that's just ready made, you know, auto satire, really, really. So I think the people in Silicon Valley are kind of under, undercover in the way that spy magazine did it and equivalent could do it again, you know, I mean, yes, there are, there's good journalism about AI and good books about, oh, this AI, you know, Sam Altman versus Elon Musk and all that. Fine. But just as there were stories about Donald Trump and rich people four years ago, they didn't, there was, there was no journalistic satirical approach to him, just as there is not enough or maybe even any practically about these guys. And again, the scale of the wealth of Zuckerberg and Musk and the rest of these hundreds of billions trillion in, you know, on Musk's case, dollars. Well, that's a whole other scale thing. And as you say, in by oligarchy or plutocracy where that gives you not only confirms your faith in your genius in all things, but, but the, the, the brazenness with which they seek political power to turn that trillion into two trillion. You know, that, that is new. Whereas, whereas in the 80s, when we, in the late 80s, when we started spy, the money's good. No, money's, America's back and money's being rich is great. Was a new thing. Now, as that run its course, 40 years later, as inequality has gotten so extreme and, and, and the evil geniuses, as I call them, are, are, are so greedy that they may destroy the very source of, of, of their fortunes. We'll see, but, but it, you know, and I don't want to suggest like, oh, we've won our course. But yes, putting Zuckerberg, doing the cover stories about Zuckerberg, Mrs Zuckerberg, you know, Musk, all the various, Mrs Musk's, or at least, you know, mothers of his children. Mama Musk's. Yeah, baby, Mama. I mean, the, the, the kind of, the great, satirically inflected or full-on satirical reporting, that could be done. And just isn't that much today, is something I think is a, is a, it would be a set of ripe targets, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's weird that in the, in this internet day, when everybody can do whatever they want, do substax and do this and start, you know, coverage and pivot to video and all of that about everything. Like, the, the, the smart people with that sensibility about these people, like, they're not, I mean, yeah, everybody says every day on the internet, oh, they're not so smart. They think they're geniuses or this, but it's these little tiny, tiny, Joltz, rather than like, well, let's send somebody out to Texas where Elon and his, you know, whatever, cult, have their businesses in their homes. Or whatever. So if I were starting as my magazine, that would be one of my folk I, as opposed to, you know, because they're not just rich, right? I mean, yeah, rich people are always entertaining, but, you know, and Jeff Bezos, in his way, and speaking of people in spa, I mean, Mrs. Bezos, I mean, would be, I mean, she would be irresistible to put on the cover. But I think there is, there is, there's, it's a weird lapse of media coverage in America, I think, of getting these people in, because fully, fully covered, because the other thing is they would hate it so much. I'm curious to ask you, because I've thought about this a lot, and we have covered them to a certain extent of the Daily Beast, and I certainly would love to cover them more. One of the things that feels different now, as opposed to 40 years ago, and you started spy, is that the protagonists themselves post about themselves, so no one has posted more about Lauren Sanchez Bezos, then Lauren Sanchez Bezos, you know, the pictures of her wedding, the pictures of her corset, the pictures of, on the verpereto, the pictures of the biggest yacht in the world, followed by the next biggest yacht, which is the kind of tugboat to Cora, their biggest yacht, with, of course, the mass dead of Lauren herself. And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, do you remember when the, Mark went through a phase of he was going to visit a state a month, and then he was reading a book a week, and he was telling us about the book, and then there were endless pictures of his dog, which was very, very hairy. He was effectively, by the way, running for president at the time, imagine. Right, right, correct. And then you have Elon Musk, who's just split up with his girlfriend, oh, I guess, baby, most recent baby, Mama, and Shivon took to X his platform to actually write about what had happened, and so he was wondering how one, what, what difference does it make the fact that they are actually writing their own narratives, and a way that 40 years ago, people weren't, they didn't have the ability to, because there was no social media. But also, there was still the idea that if you were rich for the most part, you kept your head below the radar, Donald Trump being the exception. Yeah, no, it's true. He is a model in that very thing. I mean, again, he's not, he's what, you know, he has now, that he's, you know, illegally or improperly made several more billion in the last year and a half to, he's got, he's probably doubled as wealth, right? So, but he's still like, what, 1% less than 1% of Elon Musk's wealth, so he's not that right. But yes, in terms of the, the, the ostentatious blingy, flashy living that most, most rich people, most very rich people, did not do that, and certainly not in New York City, didn't do that. That has gone by the wayside and, and he has been a leader in that, as he hasn't met so many unattractive behaviors that he's, he's legitimized or at least made people able to get away with, you know, and, and someday there will be a turn against that, I think, but we'll see. And the thing about covering that, yes, they all do it themselves, but that doesn't mean, like, for instance, just, you know, ballroom pictures. I mean, you really think of, and maybe I posted it, actually, I did, the, the, the, the, the mansions of the, of the sedoms and the Assad's and the Chao Chescus in Romania before they were brought down. Like, I mean, there are ways to say, hmm, let's think about this building monuments to oneself in one's capital, or hmm, let's think about building a, you know, additions to a mansion that is beyond unnecessary and full of gold. I mean, the, the, so, I mean, partly, of course, in his case, in Trump's case, it's probably a function of, well, there's so much to cover every day. We've got, oh, the, the zone being flooded with new things, people, it makes, it makes all kinds of journalists, including the kinds of journalists we were at spy, unable to, or less willing to focus on one thing and nailing it and getting it right rather than just getting today's thing and saying, oh, look, what Hegseth did today or what, what, how unhappy Marco Rubio looked in this media or whatever. You know, and again, you know, there is the whole attention span issue. That social media and the internet has, has exacerbated, but I still think, I think there is an appetite for getting a, getting a whole, you know, if not a whole meal, at least a whole dish rather than endless nibbles of, of, yeah, endless bonbeauish. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you, you talk about attention. Trump is the master of getting attention. He thrives with attention. He, I don't think he exists if he doesn't have attention. Assuming the midterms go the way that, certainly the polls indicate they will do and that there will be some kind of a blue wave, what do you think the lame duck Trump is like? What is he, you know, once he knows that he's lost and he's got two more years and the people around him, i.e. his cabinet, are all starting to hustle for their place on the platform for 20, 28. What does that do to Trump's psyche? Well, that is the question. And I think we already see evidence that, as you and Michael Wolf have talked about of, of, you know, he, he, he obviously beyond whatever cognitive to client he had and, and, and, has and, and more manifest craziness. I, I think the, the kind of, elderly kind of, as they call it, dementia sundowner is him, where people, who would dementia late, late in the day, like, just get angry that, I mean, which I always take, or, and this may just be a poetic conceit, but as like, you know, in his case, and in old people's case, like a kind of, the, the sun, the sun set itself is a, is, is his a daily foreshadowing of, you're going to die soon. So I think once, once, if the elections go as one hopes they do, um, and we have reason to believe that they will, if not as amazingly as some of the polls say, um, he will be more, you know, more himself and, and God knows what forms that will take in terms of anger and depression. I, I mean, the thing is too about him, in figuring out inside Trump's mind is, he is, for a guy who has gotten everything you ever wanted, most of all, you know, fear respect and, as you say, attention, attention, I want to be the star of every episode of the news every day. Well, I want to be in everybody's heads. Well, I mean, he's got it all. And yet, he is so manifestly miserable. And even when he's talking, how does he couch his whatever love for Natalie Harp? Well, he says to his, the people around him, you know, she'll be with me even after you've all left. I mean, so it's, it's, it's, which is to say, I'm a depressed old man in this crazy girl who, you know, will do anything I say. Uh, it is the only one who loves me. I mean, so it can go anywhere. And, and it's, you know, it's like so much. It's, and it's, and it's dark comedy. It's, it could be awful or it could just be, you know, dark and comedic. But I do think, I mean, especially, you know, he'll, he'll say it's rigged and he'll do all that stuff that we know. And, and thank goodness, you know, we've had some years to build an apparatus, legal apparatus to, it's prepared for that. But, um, uh, he, he will be blamed. And he, and, and, and, you know, we already have Ken Paxton on his hot mics. Say, yeah, Trump's bringing me down here. You know, the most, the most, the most unlikable, unpopular, Republican candidate in America. Say, yeah, this guy, he's so unpopular. He's bringing me down, you know, um, uh, and, and so, you know, that's obviously, you know, and this is, this is Mr. Maga, who's only got one that is running. It has the nomination for a Senate in Texas because of, you know, Trump's petty, petulant, uh, dislike of John Corman, who no doubt would be, you know, sailing to re-election today. Um, so, uh, he, you know, he will, uh, he, you will begin to see on November, I don't know, 4th, 5th, 6th, but certainly as the weeks go on, I think a kind of, uh, it'll be, he'll go step further and I, it just won't be, I, I, I, I don't like Tom Cotton for being against daylight saving time or four daylight savings time, or whichever side of that issue he's on. I don't know. Um, uh, he, he, he will, he will feel in the, in that Natalie Harp sense, everyone's left me except Natalie, you know, everyone's left. me except Natalie. So among his cabinet, if you were to make a short list of the people that you thought would be taken seriously as Republican successors, who do you think will actually end up running in 2028? I mean, we can see that Rubio in Greece this week was laying out his bonafides with the Maga crowd until he was monstered by the press on the behaviour of Kimberley Gilfoil. And I want to ask you about Kimberley Gilfoil. We've got Pete Heggs there who used his state of the fourth speech. JD Vance banished to Alaska to do some last minute electioneering over there, so he's out of the way. But when you look at the cost of characters through your lens of evil geniuses and fantasy land and the understanding that America doesn't always do what's in America's best interests, who do you think will emerge? It's hard to say. I mean, to me, they're all deep forgetting the Republican nomination, let alone being elected president. But getting the Republican nomination will be very, very difficult this time. Once Trump goes and isn't even saying, "Well, maybe I will run," or whatever. I don't think that nonsense is going to happen. But they're all not just flawed candidates with their strengths and weaknesses. What are their strengths, right? JD Vance, his strength is that he's vice president. I mean, that's it, right? And vice president to Donald Trump? Well, exactly. And in competency, as we see again and again, in political analysis of this election, in competency is of dubious value right now, and in America and the world, where incumbents are hated for being incumbents, right? So I don't know if that helps you. And yes, he's set himself up, you know, in for instance, the way he's depicted in the wonderful book regime change, as being I was the one against the war. I was the one against the war. Okay, does that really help you though? You also were the vice president during the war, during this incredibly disastrous war that may go on while you're running for president. So he's obviously running. And just, but I was going to say, in the post-Trump world, it's been kept together in this incredible party discipline way only only because of Donald Trump being this cult figure that they all, you know, their whole behavior as politicians has been about, how do I not get on his wrong side? How do I not get on his wrong side? And then for his cabinet, how do I make him love me? How do I make him not fire me? That's it. So they haven't had 10 years to like figure out what they are and what they should be and what they shouldn't be as the Democrats have, right? The Democrats have gone through a normal 10 years of, oh God, we lost. We lost again. What are we going to do? We should be this. We should be that. We should be maybe this. More of that. So they've had a normal political evolution for a decade. Not like a party. Not like a party. It's just like, okay, okay, we got to put up with this. Okay, we got to say we like this. Okay. That's it. So they're there. So and they are obviously have all these different factions as every party always has and does. But those will just come out there will be the, you know, Tucker Carlson faction of, you know, all the years there will be the, you know, old-fashioned Republican faction that I guess Rubio is going for and being part, you know, by giving a speech in Athens in front of the Parthenon, western civilization, like, yeah, good luck with that one. I thought that was him very clearly signalling to the Mac of base that he was not, you know, he was not all things to all men. Well, that he, you know, the future that this next decade would be about what would happen for the rest of the century and it had to be that western values led. Yeah, but western values, I mean, western values to a Morgan is not about, you know, your rippeties, I mean, or, you know, echelists or something. I mean, you know, it isn't. And like, really, what's that building? Oh, yeah, what's that building in Nashville? I've seen that or I don't know. Who knows? I mean, no, I don't think, I mean, whatever his face, he can say to the Mac of base, I guess. Oh, look, I helped the dictator and El Salvador make a deal with this to get our, you know, illegal aliens in his gulag. Aren't I good? Look, I'm one of you, right? I think he will run as the, you know, normie. And, you know, I, I don't know that that may, maybe there, there's enough Republicans to give such a person the nomination. But, you know, as neither party, but the Republican party, especially has no like, well, it's that she or he or he has it. That's the front. There is no front runner except by default of JD events. But I think he's as bad a candidate, just inherently as say Ron DeSantis was when he ran against Trump for the nomination last time, right? He's unlikable. He, he, he kind of gives the Trump script, but like nobody likes him and it's not convincing. It's not amusing. And it's not exciting. It's not any of those things that Trump made his ugliness and stupidity, right? So, and then, you know, Marco Rubio, I, mean, I mean, so in, in the clown car, he is the adult, right? He is the most like a normal guy who says intelligent things sometimes. But, you know, the, the, the, the excitement for him, I mean, I get it. I can imagine a don't lot. I can imagine raising a lot of money. But I can imagine any event raising a lot of money. So, but excitement among the people, hard for me to imagine. And then Bobby Kennedy, of course. Oh, well, yes, I was just going to say, what about Bobby Kennedy? The man who sold you cocaine when you were at half a water. How is he doing? Do you think? Well, I mean, he, he, I will be surprised if he doesn't run for the nomination. Now, and it's just, it's just crazy enough to work. I mean, I don't know. I, I think, I don't think he'd get it. I don't, there's nobody I would say. It would be, it's hard for me to even give odds. Like, I think he, this or that, I mean, you have to say JD Vance at this point because again, you know, just in these early polls inevitably, just like Kamala Harris is well rated because nobody really knows about politics or cares about it. And they just say, yeah, I've heard, I'll say her to the polls. JD Vance, I mean, it's just, I mean, one could see any of them, but I, I, none of them are, none of them scare me as candidates. Now, Tucker Carlson, if he became a candidate, that would scare me. You know, because he's, you know, he's, he's, he is a skillful communicator, you know, and, and he's, and he's famous, you know, and he would scare you, he would scare you more than Donald Trump. Why, why would he scare me more than JD Vance or Marco Rubio? He was scared me that he would be a power, he would be a, he could be a very strong Republican candidate. Okay. And a strong opponent for the Democrats. Correct. Now, in my novel, he, he, in 2013, he starts a new party in 2013. As, after I finished the novel, he started talking about doing. So that could happen, which would be a, some kind of, I don't know, a party that is, you know, actually pro-working class economically and act, and, and deeply anti-immigrant. And all those things, all the ways that say Steve Vannon wanted Donald Trump to govern in his first term, and he didn't. Anyway, I can imagine that. And I can imagine him as a, yes, as a stronger candidate. So they'll all be running. What about Pete Hexeth? Because Pete Hexeth clearly used his state of the force speech, no beardos, no weirdos, no trainees, no fatties. And then that picture, no wimps. Yeah. Only warriors, only warriors, lethality of the force. He's very much, oh, language, the tea injections for everybody. And then him working out in, in San Diego last week, which Donald Trump said, you know, if it's collateral damage for the Iranians, so be it, small price to pay. I, the state of the force, I was talking to a friend of mine who was in the Navy for a long time, and he's still very close to many of his, and he's still in the national security business. And he's, he's close to one admiral in particular. And a guy who's just, I think, retiring as an admiral. And he's not that old. I was saying, really, he's 54, whatever you are, he's an admiral. Anyway, he said, you won't believe how low Pete Hexeth is in the, in the, in the, I mean, he, and he's, you know, he's, this person, he's, he's quoting, is it flag officer, high, high up guy? And he was at that, that original, Hexeth, state of the force last year. Well, that one where they call all the generals together, and he, he did his first version of this, this speech. And I was always struck by that speech that he comes out onto stage and he's clutching a metal cup. And I've learned that, I mean, obviously, he's got a background struggle with alcohol. And there's something very odd about someone that comes out with what is ostensibly a coffee cup to address an entire room of generals. Why would you do that? That felt very odd to me. I wonder what was in the cup. Interesting. I didn't notice to come. You're observant, Jenna. But so anyway, I mean, again, you're in the middle of losing a war and there's no way out and the losses of which have been understated and the degree to which it has exposed as a fantastic New York Times, David Sanger, Eric Schmidt, peace, just talked about actually America's weakness. All about the trumpet and Hegseth intention. Oh, America is strong. America is so powerful. America is the most powerful military force ever. Well, suddenly, not so much. You know, we're running out of, oh, we're running out of ammo, can't project force. We're battling out of, you know, England to get our B1 bombers away or B2s, whatever they are. And, you know, and moving the aircraft carriers back may be closing down our bases in the Gulf state. You know, I mean, it's the opposite. So yeah, Hegseth is this cartoon G.I. Joe character. But, you know, the guy who led this completely, instantly, unpopular, unsuccessful war effort is going to get the nomination for presidency. I don't think so. Okay. Okay. So, you mentioned your novel. I thought with extraordinary restraint, you didn't give us your title, The Breakup, which came out. Thank you. Yes, The Breakup. The Breakup. And we talked about it. And it's about the breakup of a relationship. It's also about the breakup of America. I know it's, you know, sold out. I think you're in your fourth printing. So many congratulations. People are very excited about it. I was going to ask you what sort of feedback you'd had to the notion of America going through a civil war and literally splitting up. And you started the book three years ago. Do you think post another two years of Donald Trump's second administration? Do you think a breakup actually is more likely now than when you started the book? Well, I think it's definitely, I started at the end of '22 and it seemed kind of far-fetched to me at the time. Not too far-fetched, just, you know, like certain speculative fiction ideas. Like, oh, I can imagine that happening. Probably won't. And I still think, I guess, I probably won't. But my probably won't has gone from like, you know, 5% to 40%. Do you know what I mean? Or let's say. So, yeah, I think it's more plausible as a way it could all go. You know, I mean, people say to me, people say they've said several things in response to my story in the breakup. One is, well, I find it chilling sometimes, but fortunately, it's also funny and along the way. And it's weirdly hopeful. So I said, well, that's exactly not my intention from the beginning, but as I finished, I thought, okay, I think that's right. It's because it, you know, I did enough research and thought through enough to imagine, you know, I sort of researched it as I would a nonfiction book. I would one of these big histories I wrote, right? And then said, okay, I'm not saying this will happen, but what if it did? What if it did? What would it entail? How would you break up the country? How is, so I think rather than just being, you know, the Marjorie Taylor Green or the Rush Lim, the late Rush Limbaugh, or whomever saying, oh, we need a national divorce, we need a national divorce, actually going beyond that sound bite and, you know, thinking out in detail, like how this could happen? And what would that be like? Who would break? Who would go where in which country? I think it, it, you know, for many readers, beyond all the other pleasures that people take, and I've gotten incredibly nice feedback. That sense of, oh, okay, now this is on the table as a scenario. And again, not that this is the way it's going to happen. I'm a prophet, but it could, and it has, I think, for people who read it, they say, oh, if there is a breakup, this could be how it is, which goes beyond, again, we were talking earlier about long-form versus sound bite, you know, journalism or social media posts or whatever. I think by giving a kind of, an architecture kind of, and oh, this is how it would be, you know, people would get used to it and oh, no, it's not that bad, so and then this cut in the state does it. I think the detailed scenario, I don't know that makes it more possible. I don't think that, but for the people who read it have felt like, okay, okay, I can see how this actually would happen. It's not, it's not, you know, it seems less barfetched. I mean, again, nothing is certain, but so I think that's the reaction. And the people who find it not hopeless, and ultimately, you know, I won't say anti-distopian, but not dystopian in the conventional way, the second of the fiction is done, which is like, you know, it's bad now, and it gets worse. I don't think it's that, so that's where we are. Well, I think it's interesting how, when the history of this time is told, your novel may well be one of those documents that a bit like Thackeray's "Fanity Fair" illuminated the time and the ambition in the time, and I was thinking of the character of Becky Sharp, who when you read "Fanity Fair," you're saying, oh, this is just, she's larger than life, this can't possibly, this would never happen. And then, of course, you have someone like Kimberly Gillfoyle, who's gone from being married to Gavin Newsom, to leaving him ostensibly because he wasn't ambitious enough, or that's at least in the swirl of why they broke up, to landing on Don Jr., to being dumped by Don Jr., and then exited from the Washington slash Mar-a-Lago scene by her almost father-in-law, the president, to Greece where she's now taken up residents, that the ambassadors' residents, she is, are, you know, ambassador to their Hellenic Republic. Let's put it like that. All over the news today, because it turns out that she's been accepting, shall we say, lobbying fees for services, which she doesn't appear to have provided, not least, introducing one poor ex lawyer to Kid Rock. He'd written a song, and it was very much hoping she could get the lyrics of his song to Kid Rock. Have you been following her story? Because she feels like a very spy character to me. If she had been around 40 years ago, she would have been on the most embarrassing list, too. A woman who accused others of me doing her when she was at Fox News, and then it turned out she'd actually meet me two people. Correct. No, I couldn't agree anymore. She is she is a perfect spy subject. And again, the fact that she was married to one of the leading Democratic candidates for president next time, Gavin Newsom, is like, again, can't make it up deliciousness, right? And there's a, in particular, there's a famous, or to me, famous, picture of her and Gavin laying down together on the carpet of one of the ghetties, maybe Ann Gettie, a rich person in San Francisco, when they were married. Just in kind of sprawling in this in this posh apartment, it's extraordinary. So no, and her, her version, just physically of, you know, her Lauren Sanchez in kind of remaking it. You know, I know that's an insult to Lauren Sanchez to say Kimberly resembles her, but it's the same scary, you know, remolding and the makeup and the all the surgeries and all that. Anyway, she's extraordinary. And again, the the brazenness of this, oh, can I call her a tart of this tart in the, in the, yeah, pay me $100,000. And pay me $100,000. She said to this guy, put it somehow in my American Express account, like, whoa, the just the, it had an extra free song of brazen corruption in it. And again, you've done her a great favorite by comparing her to a Zachary character, but we probably have, and I want to give a shout out to the Wall Street Journal, because it's done incredible reporting on, on Kimberly. And one of the most astonishing things in the story that it ran, I think, on Thursday about her was that they got the texts between her and Eric Dieters, a struck off lawyer, and a former, someone who tried and failed to get elected to Congress and is a sort of businessman, and he was complaining, he'd spent $300,000 on her services, and she hadn't managed to deliver on any of it. And amazingly, we have her saying, for goodness sake, stop putting this in text. If you want to talk to me, you signal, because she's terrified of it, of its surfacing. And miraculously, it has surfaced in such an interesting look into how certain people operate in the Trumpian world. And again, a perfect spy character. Absolutely. And yes, shout out to the Wall Street Journal, which, you know, I mean, I mean, despite the Murdochian ownership, I still does amazing, great, essential journalism like that. Also that story and other stories like this. You know, however, the political-- assuming the Democrats win the House of Representatives at least, deciding what should we focus on Congress in terms of fixing what needs fixing, preventing the further destruction of what needs prevented. Like say, if God willing, the Democrats take the Senate, the ability to say, OK, judiciary, no more-- you know, we're not going to-- first of all, we will stop the trumpification, the magnification of the federal judiciary. That will be huge if that's possible if they win the Senate. But deciding what will be explored, the media, the press, the Wall Street Journal, and everyone will have such a-- I believe once he's done, once he's out, once people are out and willing to tell stories and the reporting will be easier, in a sense. I mean, to fight while look at this thing we didn't know about and look at this thing, I think one of my reactions to the Kimberly Guilfoyle revelations, as you say, are amazing texts, is like, oh, man, there is so much stuff just there barely below the surface that will wonderfully, necessarily, you know, burst open through the hard work of journalists, of course. But people will want to talk. And also, in the election, people will want to say, well, look, no, I wasn't part of that. And I don't know what, say, JD Vance will give up to show that he didn't have anything to do with the war. There will be so many new incentives in the '28 election, as well as just people who no longer have to be scared of Donald Trump to leak, leak, leak, and give, and give, to journalists. Well, the Daily Beast will be covering all of it very much, looking forward to it. It's wonderful to have you back on the podcast. Many congrats, as I said before, on the breakup. And please come back and talk to us soon. And for those who haven't yet subscribed to Spy, run to Substack, and subscribe not only to the Daily Beast on Substack, and you can subscribe to me on Substack. But now you can subscribe to Spy and get the original Spy reporting on Donald Trump. And I hope, perhaps, this will stir you to do more, to stay. To stay, to stay where, joy? To stay on Substack, to stay on Substack. Well, no, I mean, again, it's tempting. Social media is tempting. But if I want to keep writing books and plays and maybe movies and things-- Yeah, books, plays. There's always so much time in the day. But yeah, no, I mean, again, and kind of feeling the spy love out there, and having younger people discover it and go, what? What this was there before I was born? It's very, very, very gratifying. All right, we will see you soon, Kurt. Thank you, my dear. I always love talking to Kurt. I think he brings in so many different themes and wraps them up and thinks about things in a completely different way to anybody else. And I really do remember roaring around trying to find that first issue of Spy, because it landed like a little bomb among British news publications when it came out in '86. And again, it was so difficult to get a copy. People were fighting over copies and lending each other copies. That was the joy of a magazine. And of course, again, that sense of it coming out once a month and one building the anticipation to what was going to be in it. Who was going to say what? It felt so, well, just completely different to anything else that was out there. Anyway, if you have been, thank you for joining us right and let us know in the comments what your favorite part of the conversation was. Was it his observations about Donald Trump, about the oligarchy, about Pete Hegsett, about Marco Rubio, about JD Vamps? I would love to know. And as you know, we read all our comments or at least as many of them as we can. I reply to as many of them as I can. And I know that Kurt looks at them too. And a big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Caser, Heather Pizarro, and Neil Rosenhaus. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support.