I Know What Trump Will Do After Crushing Defeat

The imperative for him is to seize as much attention as he can. So the Democrats, if they win, will be trying to impress upon the world that it is a new day. Donald Trump, for his part, will be trying to impress upon the world that he still controls the stage. So we can pick the day. What's the day he invades Cuba? There will be a series of these kinds of Trump-ian things. Rather than anything, actually, I think we've imagined he will not be humbled. The idea of humility does not exist in Donald Trump's soul. Therefore, he will do the opposite, not retreat, but attack. Michael. Joanna. Welcome to Inside Trump's head for anybody new joining us. We go inside the president's head because, well, explain why, Michael, explain briefly why we do this. Because, effectively, nothing else in American politics matters, except what Trump is thinking at any given moment. It's a caprice. It's a fleeting thought. It's a, well, it's certainly uninformed and unschooled. So, whereas in most, in every presidency, is a function of enormous numbers of people contributing information and analysis and thoughts. And of a whole political operation that concentrates on cause and effect, if we do this, then that happens. None of that is really operative in Trump's White House, the last White House or this White House. Everybody around him is relegated. They're there waiting for what he says, but they really aren't contributing anything, certainly not very much. So, it's all about what sudden flashes of inspiration or resentment or payback or desire for a sudden new way to make a buck that comes into his head. That's the, that's the rule under which we now live. So, we go inside his head three times a week. You've written four books about Donald Trump. And I'm fascinated by him as a character because, as he said to you, when you went to interview him in 2016 as the race was really hotting up, why did he want to do this? And he said, because I want to be the most famous man in the world. And miraculously, he has achieved that. He's inside everybody else's head. And then some, so I thought today, Michael, well, A, we should ask people to subscribe to this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a slightly different podcast to the other political podcasts out there. It's we have independent owners. And that's why we can bring you this independent conversation. And so please feel free to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. And we appreciate your support. We thought today we would do a single topic issue, which is, let's imagine we are waking up on November the fourth. What do we think we can expect? So this is the day after the day after the midterms. Yes, the election has taken place. And now we face a potentially very new reality. We should also discuss, discuss whether that's challenged that. Maybe it won't be a new reality. Maybe it's more of the same. But let's see. And maybe we won't know also, I mean, it's possible that it will be so tight, especially with the Senate that there'll be endless recap. Of course. And a very real possibility is chaos, chaos for days or even weeks. But let's just begin with assuming it's actually clean. I mean, all of the numbers, the indications and the, I don't know, the hope among Democrats is that it will be a clean sweep. It will be a blue wave. And God knows there's certainly a rationale for that, the unpopularity of the war, ever rising prices, the masked men in the streets, Elon Musk all over the place. I can hardly think of a positive, a positive recommendation going into this election. And clearly the Republicans are terrified. And they are planning for their own defeat. So let's assume that we wake up the next, the next day, he's certainly lost the house and, and with a strong likelihood that he loses the Senate. So what's in his head? How does he react to that? And I want to, something that I, I mean, I've been doing this now for a very long time, 10 years of, of, of Donald Trump. One of the things that is clear and confounding about him, especially as a politician. And let's just understand politics is not just about winning. It's also about losing. And that's the nature of democracy. If you can't lose, then there's no, no democracy. All politicians live with this central fact. It's actually the central fact is that all or close to all are going to lose at some point, losing is part of the job, the business. Trump truly doesn't, it's not just that he doesn't acknowledge loss, doesn't accept loss. I don't think he, I don't think he understands loss. I don't think he sees, he, I don't think he lives in a world in which he can ever lose. So even when he does clearly lose bankruptcies, lost deals, wives, wives, whatever, it is never a loss. He has the ability, not just to misrepresent it as victory, but actually he has the ability to create, to create a, a, a world, a rationale in which he wins. Not just the draw, not just his coming to terms with it, in which he is the winner. And obviously, obviously in 2020, that's the, the most glaring example of this. I mean, he loses, we know he loses, everybody knows, knows he loses. The numbers are very clear that he has lost. And yet, continuing on for four years until 2024 and continuing into the second administration, there is no acknowledgement. And I believe no understanding on his part that he has lost. Interesting. You don't think that he knows at some basic level. I mean, I always think his triumph after 2020 was persuading as many people as he did. No sensible people that, that they had to say out loud. Of course, you won, you won, the election was stolen. Well, the first thing I, I don't think he did persuade any sensible people. He maybe persuaded a bunch of nutcases who came to be his closest coterie after, after 2020. And there were a lot of people who understood that they had to accept this. This was just the table stakes. If you wanted to be in a Republican of any kind of standing, you just had to say, yeah, okay. Well, you know, maybe Joe Biden didn't win, but nobody believes that, except Donald Trump. And the reason that he could cast this, this kind of spell, this kind of gas in the air, is that he actually believed that you are with him. And I have been with him. And in which he then propounds all of the reasons why he has won. It's always this crazy math. The numbers are, you're going, what? What is he talking about? But you see this in his eyes, this absolute conviction, absolute enough that you realize you cannot challenge it. If you challenge it, he's going to, you will no longer be part of his reality. Right. Well, I suppose he was certainly auditioning for the job. But I was actually thinking of someone like Jay Clayton, who ran the Southern District of New York, you know, a famously independent jurisdiction. And who went up for his confirmation hearing as the director of national intelligence was so brilliantly cornered by John Ossoff, the senator from Georgia, who said, isn't it humiliating that you can't do that? say that Donald Trump lost in 2020, aren't you humiliated by that? And you would think Jay Clayton would be a person who would have figured out an answer for that. There is no answer. There is no answer. There is only you cannot in any way hedge on this issue. Donald Trump, if your audience is Donald Trump, and of course he is always an audience of one, but just let me go back to 2020 and following the election, there's a couple of days in which everybody is going. And I was very close to this, very much on the scene. And a couple of days and people saying, well, maybe I don't know, let's see. And that was, I mean, a couple of days, this was Tuesday, the election is held. By Friday, it is absolutely incontrovertibly clear. The people within the Trump circle go to him, sit in the office with him and say Mr. President, you know, there's no, we can't recover from this deficit, these numbers. It's just even if every cheek that you're mentioning is true, we still don't recover. We have, we have lost the election. And two things happened then. Trump refused to accept that, refused to acknowledge it, refused to understand it. And all of these people started to, started to leave the White House. I mean, you know, if, if, if they didn't resign, they just stop showing up. Hope Hicks, perhaps the person, one of the people closest to him in that first, first term, just stop showing up because they knew everybody knew. And then this other group started led by Rudy Giuliani, started to coalesce around him. But even those people, and maybe there are some of them that were, were absolutely crazy, the my pillow guy. But, but also their opportunists, this is it. We, the, the, the, the, the key to Trump's success is just saying, just agreeing with him. But the, the thing, the thing is that I have never, ever, and everyone I know around him has never seen him break ranks in this thinking. He's never stepped out out of the role. He is always absolutely convinced. So he's really the greatest actor of all time, which he may also be, which he wanted to be at well pointed. Yes. Or he's just, just deluded and, you know, self-deluded. And I would think that that is it. So let's go. November 4th. He loses the election. He loses both houses. Let's just posit that. But he's unable to to acknowledge the loss, acknowledge his loss. So what happens? Okay. But, but why is he unable to acknowledge it? Is it because it's a giant humiliation? Is it because, as you say, he's sort of sociopath. They can't see it. He just, yes. I think you're under, you're, you're, you're misunderstanding. There is no world. There is no loss. Donald Trump loses. Right. If Donald, we're Donald Trump to lose, he would not be Donald Trump. Therefore, he cannot lose. Therefore, you know, and therefore, at some, at some fundamental level, he kind of gets or has learned that when you claim victory, it is victory. Or I'll even go a step further and somewhat even more psychologically complicate this. In his world, it is a world of attention. The most famous person is the winner. So yes, elections, numbers, whatever. But all of those, those, those people are concerned with little people things. He's concerned with the, with something much larger. The attention that is focused on him, the fame that he has received, that he has earned. And nobody can compete with that in his mind in Trump. And that is sort of true. I mean, there is nobody who's famous. I mean, one of the Democrats issues is they don't have anybody that can even meet him a quarter of the way there in terms of celebrity fame in position of character of his own character on the rest of us. Yes. And so before it, and let's, let's come back to this. But, but with a, with a aggression at this point to say that, that this kind of Donald Trump's character, his own makeup, this whole way of seeing the world means that actually, he has, he has won quite a few times, actually won. So although we're going into this, I mean, we're positing that he, that, that he's going to lose. And, and many, many people, and I think perhaps most Democrats believe actually at this point that he is, is going to lose. But he might not. Or he might come very, very close, so close to victory that, that it will seem like, like winning. And how does he do that? I mean, just never, ever. And the people around Donald Trump will tell you on a, on a really constant basis. Never, never, never. And they're all skeptical, by the way. Never, never discount Donald Trump. And they will say, and they will kind of shrug. And this is why they are with him, by the way. And they will shrug and say, well, I don't know. He has some magic. So, even though the, the first, nearly two years of this second term have been by any measure disastrous, alienating of voters across the spectrum, yielding some of the worst approval ratings of any modern sitting president. Could he yet pull something out of the bag here? You know, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's, I mean, we've seen this before. How many times do we have to see it? This is a man who should never have been, who shouldn't be in the presidency. It's just crazy. It's just inconceivable that actually he was elected and elected twice. So, so let's just keep that in mind that as that know that that the day after might always, I believe that the day after will be a, we will reset everything that we will be in a, you know, in a world in which, in which, which will be very problematic for Donald Trump. But on the other hand, it could be that the reset could, could be that we, we non-Trump people are, are again, once more smacked in the face by, by this Trump reality that we, that we can't comprehend. Right. And there is this Trump shame as an element of people sort of either refusal to tell the truth that they want to vote for Donald Trump when they're talking to pollsters. And also just a sense of because he's so bullying and difficult as a character. So many people say, well, I really don't like the guy, but I do like his policies. And amazingly, people say things like, I don't care that the gas prices are up. We must remain safe as a nation. Iran must not have a nuclear weapon. I mean, I do think he's managed to sell the water some people. I, I actually at this point have zero sense whatsoever of what's going to happen. I feel like the last three elections have completely called wrong. I've, I've no sense. I can't tell how liberal the bubble is that I live in. I mean, it's pretty liberal, but I'm trying to, you know, all my social media is set to allow lots of right wing things so I can try and get a balance. But I find it really difficult to know at this point. Well, and think of this. I think it's a good thing. You know, you're applying logic to this. Donald Trump has convinced people of certain things, even if we feel these are reprehensible things. Nevertheless, he might have convinced them or the war being an example. But I, I, I'd argue that it is actually something beyond that he's really not convincing anyone. What he is doing is imposing himself on people. And this is part of the attention thing of creating a world in which people can't, there are kind of resigned to Donald Trump can't imagine a world without Donald Trump come to accept Donald Trump just because he is the most famous man in the world. If somehow he sees snatches victory from defeat on November 3rd. I'd argue that that would be the reason. Donald Trump is just has created a vacuum in which no one else exists. Right. It's almost an inevitability. So if it's bad, what does he do? I think the thing that I mean, many people are concerned about is okay. He doesn't accept defeat as he didn't in 2020 and then proceeds to try to do something about it. So, you know, and clearly that's one of the things that can happen in after November 3rd. You know, and there's a, you know, a lot of scenarios going on here. You know, this, this scenario of, of, of getting Mike Johnson hapless, hopeless, sad, sad to see Mike Johnson not to certify the, the winners in the House of Representatives. Right. Not to give them their congressional seats. I think on the, at the beginning of January, there's Mike Johnson. The protocol is that he welcomes in or his clerk welcomes in and gives each new congressional member their seat. Yeah, it's actually technically the clerk that does this. So Mike Johnson and the clerk whose name now escapes me, but who is up, seems to be a, a diligent bureaucratic kind of person would probably have to be replaced. So Mike Johnson would have to find a lackey to do his bidding. I mean, that's a, that's a scenario that some people have offered. And I think what's wrong with the scenario is that it would mean, I think this would be the 120th Congress. So there would not be a 120th Congress. So all of the Republicans who actually, actually would, would have to vote for to sustain Mike Johnson would not have jobs. So one, one of, I mean, they are all, yes, devoted to, to Donald Trump, but more than that, even they're devoted to their own jobs. I mean, what would they do? They don't get a salary. They don't get, they don't get office space. That, that would be, so that seems far fetched to me. But, right. Not one point, this protocol was suggested to Nancy Pelosi, and she turned it down. When she was Speaker of the House, it was suggested she didn't welcoming new Republican Congress people, but she nicks that idea. Right. Well, it's not the first time that it's been thought about is Mike. Right. Yeah. I mean, Nancy Pelosi seems a far cry from Mike Johnson. For sure. But just in terms of it being a channel that someone could use to stop a new Congress forming that sort of thing. Right. But, and the other thing that he does is, is, is, it's just chaos. Chaos is Donald Trump's friend. And, and that's really chaos comes, will be a question of how close this is. I think the race is going to be so determinative, that is to say, the, the, the, the democratic vote is going to be so great that, that there's not going to be a lot of room for K. I mean, it's just going to be by near black and white. But if it isn't, and remember, there's all this money, the Republicans have, have, have, have Marshall, they're going, they're now doing their, you know, they're turning on the culture war stuff. So, who knows, in the, in the end, and remember, we're in a polarized nation. It comes down. It is everything, but it is always, at least in these last last decades, very close. So if it is close, that's the area in which chaos gets to grow. Who will be with Trump when he's absorbing the results? Paint the scene for me. Is he lying in bed strewn with greasy hamburger wrappers? Does he have his empty ice cream cartons, you know, crushed at the bottom of the bed? Is Natalie Hart flitting around giving him lovely, mega love notes? Is he sitting there in, in the oval? Where does he watch this stuff? And it is Susie Wiles. There is Stephen Miller there. What, what do you think will actually, what paint me a scene of how this information is going down? I mean, I like the scene of him with the greasy hamburgers, but it is, it is actually will be relatively professional. I mean, he may be, he'll be upstairs in the residence for some of this, but, and then people will be coming back and forth, giving him, giving him updates. And he might come down, that's not, I mean, I would imagine that he will come down ones to a pass through, have a couple of conversations. Then he will go back up and, and he will be with several people in, in the residence and they will be, they will be waiting upon information. And, but there may be, there'll be a couple of hamburger trays there. Yes. And will the family be around? I mean, we doubt that Melania will be there. I mean, she made it very clear in her documentary, was she wasn't there for the 2024 results? She was like, I'll watch it on the news, I'll watch it on news. No, no, there wouldn't be any, any, any family there. No. Right. Just, it's just him. They'll be, you know, I would imagine Susie Wiles will, will be there. You know, there might be some congressional people there. I mean, Mike Johnson, it's not, not impossible that, that he would, they're there or he would show up at some point. And then there are a set of political people who are probably, well, actually, they're probably downstairs getting the monitoring all of the election feeds. And it's JD Vance there. What will JDB hovering around? Probably not, but there will be someone there. I will guarantee. So he's got some flunk he's around him. Natalie Hart will be there leaving him little kind of notes. He's not acknowledging that he's lost because he doesn't even conceive of losing. It's how does he use this moment to get more attention? Right. And it's also one of the ways he doesn't lose is that when, when a loss occurs, it's someone else's loss. So, so he's going to, if the, if the losses is, is big and of the losses clear, then he will begin to blame us. Who is at fault? And in fact, Susie Wilde's seeing with him in the residence as this information comes in is herself clearly in the hot seat. Mike, Mike Johnson in the hot seat. John Thune in the Senate, if they lose the Senate in John, John Thune, he hates anyway. So clearly, John Thune. But largely, this will be the Republicans who have undermined him. The Republicans who are less mega than they should be have undermined him that this election was lost because, because, because he wasn't on the ballot, because he wasn't on the ballot. So therefore, he hasn't lost at all. He hasn't lost at all because it wasn't really about him. Will he also, I'm sure he will, I guess, call out those Republicans who purposefully distanced themselves from him, took his name off their websites, didn't want him to come to their states, got caught on hot mics like Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate that Trump put in to Texas saying, oh my goodness, that Trump had to lose the midterm RNC was a disaster for us. Our numbers have gone down. I'm not allowed to do anything around my campaign. It's all run out of the White House. He will blame all those people. He will, but on the other hand, if Ken Paxton actually wins and that is still very powerful. It's a very, very tight race. It's a very tight race. Then that will be a victory for Trump. Then he will claim that as a victory. You see the people who win or the people I pick, it sees other people who are, you know, who are terrible candidates and who don't represent me and, and who have to be purged from the party. The party has to be purged and it has to be everyone in it. It has to be replaced with with with a Ken Paxton person. I can't even begin it. I mean, I'm not sure there are many Ken Paxton people are there. I mean, Ken Paxton is a bit like Trump is one of a kind. Yeah. I think the the point would be everybody in the party has to be absolutely [BLANK_AUDIO] abject, subservient, and on their belly in front of Donald Trump, no matter their incompetence and corruption. So, I guess the worst thing that could happen for everybody is if the results are close, everything starts being challenged in court, there are endless recounts, the confusion that Donald Trump has managed to sow over the American election process will take root even more, and we could be in a state of chaos for several months. I'm probably less than several months, but certainly for, you know, good, you know, 60 days, yeah, so several months, yeah, a couple of months, yeah, a couple of months. Right. And yeah, no, I mean, a close election is going to be a disaster. So, we don't often talk about the Democrats on the podcast, because we're so fixed around what's going on with Donald Trump and his acolytes and the chaos that is often accompanying them. But if you are a Democrat looking to lead the party in 2028, how do you play this? I think it's really a question of the day after is a new reality, and if it's a loss, God knows. If it's a close election, that's also a different sort of variable. And if it's a sweep yet another kind of reality. And so who adapts to that best, I mean, we just don't, we just have no idea yet. But each of those things will be, will suggest a different trajectory to 2028. So in 2020, it was sufficiently close that it took several days for Joe Biden's eventual victory to be announced. There was then the slow build up to January the 6th, when, of course, there was the storming of the capital, then, of course, there was the whole investigation into it. People were jailed for it, then, of course, Trump miraculously, you know, in an incredible, as he's always saying, no one's ever seen anything like it, and he's right. Comes back in 2024, the J6 rioters are pardoned. Do you think Trump will have learned from that process to try and maneuver things faster? I mean, is there a world in which there is, you know, some of the more, magnets, or indeed, the same J6 rioters react much more quickly to the results of the midterms? I mean, what I guess what I'm asking is, do you see the possibility of real violence again? I don't, I mean, but that's, that's, that's because you live in the Hampton, because temperamentally, I'm still believe this, this stuff gets worked out somehow in an orderly way, you know, and in fact, you know, having been on the, you know, on hand for, for 2020, all of this stuff happened. All of the attacks on the, on the, on the Capitol, all January 6th, all of the, the Rudy Giuliani led lawsuits, none of this and, and it's a, it's a kind of, it's a kind of misinterpretation of history that the Democrats are, a favor, none of this at any point ever had a, a scintilla of a chance of changing the outcome of the election. This was side show stuff, this was Donald Trump's stuff. This is Donald Trump as, you know, just his, his just bid for more attention. Keep me in the news, which ultimately got him elected president again, so, so yes, it did have, have an effect, but it doesn't have an effect on the actual, on the actual process. And I don't think it will have that effect either. And in fact, you know, it wasn't that, it wasn't particularly confusing. So by Tuesday night, yes, it was still close. It was going into the, going into the morning, but by, by, in fact, Thursday, it was absolutely clear. There was no question. That was the election was, was, was clear by then. It was one by, by Joe Biden, no doubt, and then Trump started his acting out. So that's the question. Does he, does he do that again? And the answer is yes. I mean, the answer he will understand that what he has to do on the day after his, the imperative for him is to seize as much attention as he can. So the Democrats, if they win, will be obviously celebrating, obvious, obviously trying to impress upon the world that it is a new day. Donald Trump, for his part, will be trying to impress upon the world that he still controls the stage that it doesn't make any difference. They may say they won and they may act like they've, they've won and maybe they've technically have won, but the reality is it is still Donald Trump's world and he will do everything possible to make that case and he will do everything possible to make that case the day after and then the day after that. So we can pick the day, what's the day he invades Cuba? What's the day? It will be a series of these kinds of Trumpian things greater than, you know, greater than anything we've seen greater than anything actually. I think we've imagined Donald Trump will not, will not go willingly. He will not be humbled and I think that's, that goes back to this idea that he never loses. The idea of humility does not exist in Donald Trump's soul therefore, therefore he, he, he will do the opposite, not retreat, but attack. So instead of going into a lame duck period, even if he loses the house and even if he loses the Senate, you think he will charge on regardless. So Cuba, what else do you think he might do? And the other thing, remember if, if he, then the Democrats, whoever controls Congress becomes his enemy. So what the, where does Donald Trump flourish best when he has an enemy conflict? What is the nature of attention conflict? So this kind of feeds it up in the Democrats, of course. And I imagine that, that, that fairly soon, we will start to see this and we will have to start to talk about, about this, that the Democrats, well, at least if they win, they will try to pursue Donald Trump. And, and I say now, as I will say, then, and how well has that worked out for them in the past? Mm-hmm. Well, and as you say, he thrives on conflict. He wants enemies. He provokes enemies. He creates enemies and everybody hates him, his own people around him hate him. I mean, the people that work with him, although, you know, part of the macabase still loves him. Yeah. Well, people who don't know him love him, anyone who doesn't, does know him hates him. So, I mean, it's not possible to be in the company of this man and not develop a real, real, you know, just a visceral fury when it comes to Donald Trump. Well, Michael, we've got exactly two weeks until the midterms. It's 14 days away. Tonight, we're actually performing on stage live at the Telegram Ballroom in LA. No tickets left. And we are not really here. We are really there. We're here and there. We're everywhere. We're like Donald Trump. We're everywhere tonight, Michael. And in two weeks, obviously, we'll be live in our studio as the results come in. We don't know whether or not there'll be chaos. We don't know who will win. Nobody knows. I mean, that's the excitement of an election. It's the excitement of democracy. And it's actually one of the things that Donald Trump has brought to democracy is a new sense of high stakes. So we will take you through an election night live. As we know it, you'll know it. And we won't be, you can go to CNN for the numbers, but come to us. Or what's in Donald Trump's head, as it unfolds. We'll be live on YouTube. We should make it clear. We're not live on every platform that we're on, but we'll be live on YouTube. And yeah, we'll be giving you the psychological insight into what's happening at the moment. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue amid the hamburger wrappers and the Twix papers and everything else that he likes to eat. And Natalie Harp by his side. And Natalie Harp by his side and his wife, Melania, well, unlikely not by his side, unless she's looking for content for her TV show, and she might not want content of ours been losing. Because she knows he's a loser. Or she might want it. That's true. She might. She might want content of her husband losing. It's clear to everybody that this is an election like few others. So our live stream will be the day of the election. We're going to start at nine o'clock. We are going to have cocktails. We are. We're going to need cocktails. And we're not going to be doing the numbers stuff. We're not CNN. We're going to be live on YouTube. And you're going to be rattling around inside Trump's head, telling us what you can see in there. Night of clock, geez. Not on election night. It's not. Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passe, Heather Pissaro, and Neil Rosenhouse. 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.