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The people I'm talking to feel that the direction
of where things are heading is that. Stephen Miller is out.
Mark Wayne Mullen is out.
James Blair is out.
Pete Hegseth is out.
Susie Wiles, they say, will try to hang on.
Everybody's fighting for their lives.
Trump is going to have to try to mollify members of his party.
And Trump is not a mollifier, but Susie Wiles is a mollifier.
So she will be there.
She will try to hold on to her job by. Essentially sacrificing other people.
Michael.
It never stops, Joanna.
It never, it never stops.
But it's good that it never stops
because what do we do three times a week?
Well, we go inside Trump's head and, you know,
it's an interesting. I guess this is an incredibly interesting moment
to be inside.
Trump's head because things are happening to him
that he has no control of, which is unusual for Trump.
And everything is sort of in Trump world is predicated
on him having control of everything.
So, and I've been asking people, I've been on the phone
with people saying literally what's in Trump's head.
As a matter of fact, when I called them, they said,
I guess you want to know what's in Trump's head.
But don't we have to give some promotions?
Don't we have something coming up?
Don't we have. I know normally we call us at this point and say,
oh, we're going to be live or oh, we've got. And in fact, again, just a big thank you
to everybody who joined us on election night.
It was so much fun.
Neither of us had any idea what was going to happen
when we sat down at 8 o'clock other than we were in the room,
and we were in some surprises.
But I think everybody was surprised by the surprises that came.
Darlene Graham getting knocked out, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Well, perhaps he wasn't. Everybody getting knocked out.
Mississippi, Texas.
I mean, the enormity of this wipeout is. Well, I think this is going to require months and months,
years and years, history itself to kind of comprehend
and comprehend.
Well, I think when the history books are written,
hopefully they will include the occasional reference
to inside Trump's head,
because I know how many people you talk to in the Trump circle still.
And also I do. Much as there has been fantastic reporting,
especially in this second Trump administration,
I do think we try and offer,
and we say this for anybody new joining this podcast today,
we try and offer a different perspective.
There has, up until this moment, been a government of one.
Donald Trump's obsessed by attention.
And he's got the world's attention.
I mean, he is the most famous person.
He's the most important person in the world.
Or is he?
Has the American voter stepped up?
Anyway, please support this podcast.
We are independent media.
And we love your support.
We rely on your support.
So please like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
So, Michael. Well, I just noticed, let's give ourselves one more plug,
because I think it's kind of amazing
that our election night and election morning coverage
is now up to 850,000 people have seen us.
So that's amazing.
Rather daunting, actually.
It's rather daunting.
And yet I think it shows how people want coverage
that explains the psychology of this man,
because nobody can quite believe how he's managed to do what he does
and how he's managed to be so incompetent
and surround himself with a cabinet of goons,
as we constantly refer to them at The Daily Beast.
It's incomprehensible.
Yeah, I mean, we're going to have to look at a shift in our narrative,
and everybody will have to look in a shift in the Trump narrative,
because he seemed. It's incomprehensible that he could do these things.
And it turns out that he can't.
So it's a different story for us going forward, apres Trump,
and it is a different story for him going forward, actually.
I mean, he has to figure out this is for Trump an existential moment,
which is a kind of. above his pay grade.
Existentialism does not come naturally to Donald Trump.
That is to say, any level of self-awareness.
But how could he not, at this point, face these kinds of questions?
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And of course, we're going to get into it today.
I always forget to lay out a menu
of what we're planning to talk about.
Obviously, we're going to be discussing the sort of
what you're hearing from people around Trump,
his reaction to what happened on Tuesday.
But also, J.D. Vance immediately beginning to spread blame
about the war and distance himself.
The mishigas going on in the cabinet, the blame, whatever Melania's. Well, everybody in the West Wing now afraid for their job.
Everybody. Okay, so let's get into it.
This is going to be a discussion this morning of how he's reacting
and how everybody else is reacting
because I'm sure it's sort of rats leaving a sinking ship.
But as you have predicted, there was a downfall.
It happened on Tuesday and it was fast and it was definitive.
There is no messing with election shenanigans.
The country very clearly spoke.
So what is going on inside his head, Michael?
Well, that's what. So literally,
I've been calling around people close to him
and saying that question, what's in his head?
And the answers I've been getting are first,
a kind of level of incomprehension on his part
and him repeating, "I didn't lose. Other people lost. I didn't lose."
And as though he's holding on to that slim read.
But then there's also a kind of philosophical, believe it or not,
edge to to what he's what he's saying and feeling, which is
to say, he repeats, well, the incumbent party always suffers as though this is built in. And
again, as though this is not on him. So that's going to be the important theme. It's not on him.
There are outside circumstances. This is not his fault. I am the last person to blame here. This
is absolutely not about me. That's certainly where he is at now. And then he is blaming it
on the war, which is interesting, because obviously the war, this war of choice, was
his choice. But he's distanced himself. It's now the war. The war is over there. The war is,
the war is, again, a fact of life. And then even that, he says, yes, the war, but then adds,
but I wouldn't have done it differently. So again, it's almost a kind of moment of
righteousness. He's as though he did the right thing and is willing to suffer the consequences
of doing the right thing. So does he see himself as genuinely having somehow saved the US from a
nuclear attack by Iran? Well, yeah. I mean, this is Trump. He's not that granular. It's just that
he decided in his mind the war is the right thing because of, because of, because of the nuclear
threat, because of who, what, for whatever reasons. And that, and there really are no reasons. If there
were reasons, well thought out reasons, we would never have gone to war in the first place. So it's
just the war is the right thing to have done. And, and there's a, there's a kind of, a kind of jujitsu
here. The war,
the election results were as bad as they were because of the war. It's a war he started. So
therefore, if you follow the logic, he's to blame for the election results, but the war is the right
thing to do. So therefore he's justified and the loss is not on him.
When literally he, he said he, he wasn't on the ballot, but he was going to put himself on the
single candidate that he shoehorned into the race lost dramatically. Ken Paxton lost. Darlene Graham
lost too, that he was particularly passionate about. And I mean, obviously in Lindsey Graham's
case, Lindsey Graham died unexpectedly at the age of 71. But Ralph Norman was a congressman
being repeatedly elected, probably would have secured the seat with zero drama.
Just a little pushback on this, because it is not just that he selected horrible candidates
and they lost. All Republicans lost. So the interesting thing, actually, is that it might
have been, even if he had, I don't want to let Donald Trump off the hook on this, because
Ken Paxton was not only a bad candidate, but he was also a bad candidate. And so I think
he was not only a bad candidate, but the worst candidate in history. But it is also possible
if you look at the numbers and the trends, if John Cornyn, you know, a safe Republican
senator in Texas, if he had actually, and a sitting Republican senator, if he had been
nominated, he might well have lost too. Everybody lost. Florida, I mean, only Florida,
it seems to have preserved its Republicans.
Right. Which, of course, Ron DeSantis, the governor, is busy out bragging about laying
his groundwork for 2028. But it was interesting that Susan Collins, too, who didn't give a
concession speech up in Maine, she just sent a congratulatory. Apparently, she gave a
congratulatory call to Troy Jackson, the Democratic candidate, fifth generation logger, as we've
referred to many times. But she complained, she was bitter that she'd gotten caught up in the
drama around Donald Trump. She was like, you know, I voted for his impeachment the second time
around. What more could I have done? But she was furious that she'd got caught up in the
Sturman drang around Donald Trump. I think that that's kind of true. She couldn't have done
anything else, except, I suppose, she could have become a Democrat. Well, she could have voted
against Trump. She could have voted against Trump. She
could have voted against Brett Kavanaugh. I mean, her decisive vote and Brett Kavanaugh would have. Yeah, I'm not sure that would have done it either. I mean, this, the enormity, the pure enormity of
the wipeout here means that if you were a member of Trump's political party, you were going down.
That's it. So the other interesting thing that I heard from two people, and they found it interesting
and a little frightening, was that the day after he seemed markedly older.
Markedly older. Meaning what? Did they give you specific symptoms?
Just that he, the way he carried himself, the sense, I mean, I mean, so here is, I think,
while he will never admit his own defeat, he looked like, he looked like defeat. I mean, he was,
yes, he was quieter. I mean, which is, which is a really kind of weird Trump symptoms. Trump going
quiet is Trump dying, really. And I mean, the only, the only thing that they compared this to
is actually after the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, when suddenly, you know, Trump was
listening to people instead of, instead of talking. So realizing his own vulnerability,
Yeah. I, I think almost a, a, um, um, a kind of, a kind of shock. Yeah.
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Yeah. You could hear it even when he was talking obsessively about the ballroom,
which of course he came out and talked about, uh, instead of addressing the defeat. Uh,
but you could hear it when he called into Fox news, you could definitely sense a shift in his
confidence. And, uh, and maybe there is a sort of self-realization that they don't love me anymore,
that this old vaudeville entertainer who, you know, relies on his old jokes to get him through
and says he can talk about anything and the people love it and he can do anything and people will
still turn up and he can make as much money as he wants. And people don't care has discovered the
end of the road. I mean, you've, you've talked for the last six months that we are witnessing
the beginning of the downfall.
Tuesday night delivered that downfall and he definitely seems to be expressing vulnerability.
Yeah. And let's set the stage again for that. Um, he came into office in 2025 believing he had,
because he's innumerate, um, and, and truly does not understand the numbers that are presented to
him and turns them into words.
What he wants to believe them to be in 2020, that was, it was stolen from him, even though the numbers
certainly did not add up to it being stolen from him. And in 2024, what he, he construed the numbers
to be a landslide and a mandate for him. And the truth, the truth is that it was, it was another
close election. But so he went into the, into the,
the first year of the second term, believing he could do anything. He had a mandate and he then
proceeded to do anything. Um, and you know, a whole string of executive actions, um, tariffs,
I, uh, a, a list of a list of policy decisions that were draconian and without, without
equivocation. In other words, they,
he acted like he had the country in the palm of his hand. He could do anything. And,
The reality is that he did not and that immediately that started to become apparent in the second year and that each one of these of these key policies from from shutting down the border.
OK, he shut down the border and that might well have been popular, except then he he put an army of masked men in the streets and that was immediately unpopular.
So it was suddenly I'm going to fix the economy, but I'm going to do this with tariffs which are going to raise prices pretty much across the board.
Then I am going to war. I said I would not go to war. I'm an anti-war candidate. I'm against forever wars, but I'm going to war and it's going because it's going to be a short war.
Well, the short war turned out to be a long war and it to raise prices, raise the key.
The key price in America, which is the price of gasoline.
So that mandate immediately that that so-called mandate began to began to dissolve.
And what we saw on Tuesday night was that it was that it never existed, that he was there as men.
And, you know, it's it's a kind of.
Profound reminder that he was there at the sufferance of the American people and they decided to suffer no more.
Yeah, it's extraordinary to think that Ted Cruz is the sole Republican lawmaker left in in Texas.
It's just remarkable. So, Michael, I'm sure that is massive.
What we know there is massive recrimination going on among cabinet members and in the White House advisers.
Let's check in. We've got.
Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, a deputy chief of staff in Stephen Miller, the architect of the disastrous immigration policy.
And we've got James Blair, who most recently was off hustling money in some far flung republic with Chrysler Savitra, a former campaign manager.
Right. And just some just to be technical.
Stephen Miller is not her deputy chief of staff.
In other words, it doesn't work. The hierarchy doesn't work that way.
It's essentially means it means Stephen Miller reports to the president, not really to Susie Wiles.
He is the president's person.
But so this is what I. So, again, in calling around, in trying to get find out what what the president is thinking and what people around him are thinking.
And so this is not by any. This is.
Let's see, how would one characterize this?
No, nobody knows.
What's happening now?
I mean, everything, everything is up in the air.
The people I'm talking to feel, feel that that the direction of of where things are heading is that Stephen Miller is out.
James Blair is out.
Pete Hegseth is out.
So.
That seems equivocal.
And again, these other certainties and they seem certainty certain about this.
But no one can be certain at this point.
OK, OK.
What this means is everybody's fighting for their lives.
OK, right.
That's what.
So did you.
So that was a lot of names.
So Pete Hegseth out.
Let's focus on Pete Hegseth for a moment.
Pete Hegseth out because Trump can conveniently blame the war on him.
Yes, and also he's going to be there are so the dynamic is going to be a lot of Republicans also casting blame.
So he Trump is going to is going to have to try to mollify, mollify members of his party.
She will try to hold on to her.
She will try to hold on to her job by essentially sacrificing other people.
OK, so Hegseth gone.
Stephen Miller, you said gone.
Stephen Miller.
Obviously, the the Stephen Miller is the architect of the draconian immigration policies, not only the architect of the somewhat successful, you might say, policy of closing down the border, but the architect of sending a paramilitary force.
into American cities dressed in black and with masks representing Donald Trump.
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What does this mean for Katie Miller, his wife's podcast?
I wonder. I mean, she has managed to interview, I think, almost every cabinet minister at this point.
So does it what is it closing down?
Do we think I'm being sarcastic?
Yes. I don't think the Miller family is depending on Katie Miller's podcast.
At this point, she made it so she might have to go out and get a genuine legitimate job somewhere.
Not that podcasting is not a legitimate job.
I was just going to say, please don't say we have to monetize every word that we say out loud, Michael.
But all right.
We monetize that through the through the actually hundreds of thousands of people who watch us.
Hundreds of thousands of people do not watch Katie Miller.
Well, not yet. They don't.
So. Stephen Miller.
Stephen Miller and then the the the other person who is in the part of part of the immigration crackdown.
And actually, in some fairness, he came in after the crackdown had begun.
But he is now the the the homeland director, Mark Wayne Mullen.
He seems vulnerable at this point.
And as you said, whoever heard the name Mark Wayne.
Before, I mean, he was a fighter, right?
He I mean, none of these people have got the background to do these jobs.
I mean, the miracle is that they lasted until the midterms, frankly.
Although I guess, as you point out, Mark Wayne Mullen came in to to replace Kristi Noem,
who was too busy flying around in the Homeland Security jet with her alleged lover, Corey Lewandowski,
who's now under investigation by the Trump DOJ.
So.
He's been targeted.
And then James Blair.
Let's I mean, James Blair, who who would have been the the architect of the of the midterm campaign,
the architect of the of the of the of Trump's push to gerrymander in so many so many theoretically red states
and then the architect of the trying to promote low propensity voters to come out, which they mostly
did not.
No, they resoundedly did not.
So J.D.
Vance now commences his run for twenty twenty eight frantically out there, as you saw from his long post, blaming the war, blaming the war thoughts.
Well, I mean, so J.D.
Vance has always been always positioned himself as the person in the administration who was most skeptical.
He's always been skeptical of of the invasion of Iran and the war, the war in Iran.
So he's kind of pulling rank at this point.
So this is an and I told you so moment.
And it's and it's a moment when I mean, he has been he has he has two years, not even two years.
Basically, he has he has a year to begin to distinguish himself from Donald Trump now in.
In any administration, a vice president would have to take those steps unless it's a hugely popular president.
But presidents in in the modern age have not been hugely popular.
So so he has taken that that initial step in the war is I mean, I think I think you could you could argue and Donald Trump is arguing in many, many Republicans have are now arguing.
That it was the war.
Why did they lose this election?
It was the war.
Now, in partly they they they do that.
It's a kind of a surgical, you know, identifying the cancer and then we remove the cancer and then everything is OK.
That is obviously or I would argue that that's not true at all, that the war is part and parcel of of a whole range of problematic and discredited policies.
And it's and.
it even more so, all of that
is a reflection on who Donald Trump is and the way he governs.
J.D. Vance is going to try to argue this other thing, though,
that it is just this singular issue.
The president felt it was the right thing to do,
and he was passionate about this.
It turned out to be the wrong thing.
J.D. will now distance himself from that,
and that will show that he's not Donald Trump,
although he has in every other way embraced Donald Trump.
In fact, converted from his early contempt for Donald Trump
into a love for Donald Trump,
and now he has to convert this into something else,
which is going to take some magic.
And what about Marco Rubio?
Also setting out his stall for 2028.
Has Marco Rubio responded to the election?
If so, I have not heard his response.
But he, too, has a similar problem.
And he, too, unlike J.D. Vance,
cannot so easily distance himself from the war.
The big question now is we know the Democrats have the Senate.
I think at this point,
what are we at, 57 Senate seats?
No, no.
I think we're at 54 confirmed Mississippi and Alaska
still hanging out there,
trending in the Democratic direction,
although I think we're in a countable number of votes
in the Democratic direction,
so it's unclear where they will end up.
But if they,
if they do end up in the Democratic column,
then it would be 56 seats.
Okay, so I'm going to work in my head with 56 seats
that Dems have in the Senate.
We know that they've got an enormous majority in the House.
What does Donald Trump do in the next two months?
He's still got a working majority in the next two months.
Mike Johnson said he's not going to run for anything now.
He's going back to Louisiana.
Does Trump make the most of the time he's got?
Is he going to make the most of the time he has left?
I guess he will try to.
I think that that's,
his working majority now becomes,
and it has been an absolutely loyal working majority,
now it becomes a highly equivocal working majority.
I mean we have a whole set of people who have lost their jobs
because of Donald Trump.
Well, we can assume that they're not going to be so eager to,
to express their undying loyalty at this, this point.
But does, but does this mean Cuba?
I mean, does this mean Cuba?
Does this mean more, more crazy policy from Donald Trump?
Or when you say he's quieter, he's looking older,
he sounds as if potentially he's even being reflective.
Does this mean he's, he's not looking for as much attention?
No, well, well, let's look.
And going forward and it's not just the next two months,
it's the next two years.
What does, what does he do?
And let's look at what he can't do.
He can't deal.
He's just not capable of, I mean,
although he's the great deal maker
or theoretically the great deal maker,
he can't really deal because he can't really compromise.
And then he can't moderate because he's just,
he exists in a, in a world of, of polar opinions, of, of extremes,
of uncertainty, of, of his own, his own emphatic this.
So, so he's in that he, he, he can't do the things that,
that a, an adept politician, a Bill Clinton kind of politician
and, and, and, and something in the first term similar happened to Bill Clinton.
And then he, he, he threw it up in the air and kind of reinvented himself.
And became a kind of a half Republican.
Donald Trump is not, is not going to do that.
He can't do that.
He's not interested in doing that.
He doesn't have the skills to do that.
Doesn't have the skills.
Doesn't have the temperament.
Doesn't have the will.
And I'm sure doesn't really have, have the interest.
It doesn't work for what Donald Trump is and how he succeeds.
So the only thing that he can do,
and it's really the only thing that he has ever done is to seek,
to seek attention.
And that's his, that is his political philosophy.
And it's his political tactic.
If I get the attention, attention is zero sum.
If I get it, nobody else does.
So, and he has succeeded.
He has largely succeeded on that at least until, until, until Tuesday.
Until he started to get, you know, and that's an interesting thing.
That he kind of confused.
His power grab became part and parcel with his effort to get attention.
Therefore he got associated instead of, instead of, and this was true.
This is true when Donald Trump is successful.
He gets attention for just being Donald Trump.
For, for, you know, saying crazy things, which he then doesn't,
doesn't follow through on.
But it just,
in the moment he gets that attention.
But suddenly his attention was men and, you know,
masked men in the streets and a war in Iran and tariffs,
which, which he set, then he reversed, then he backtracked on.
And that was what people voted against on Tuesday.
What does he do now?
How does he get attention when all of his policies are discredited?
What is he going to do?
Is he going to bomb Iran for more attention?
Certainly not a good look.
Put more men in the streets?
No, he's not going to do that.
More tariffs?
Not going to do that.
His revenge campaign?
Well, I think that that probably comes to an end at this point.
So it is, is, I'm back to the Donald Trump workshop.
And the interesting question then is, is,
who might he turn to?
You know, he's always said, I don't turn to anybody.
Who's here?
He's been asked this question again and again.
Who do you, when you need advice, who do you look to?
And then he looks at you blankly and says, myself.
I turn to myself.
Possibly at this point,
he'll have decided that turning to himself is not a very good solution.
So he's also turning to the ballroom, isn't he?
I mean,
what I find amazing, and we've got some clips here,
are that he's retreated into the helipad and the ballroom.
The ceilings are over 50 feet high.
That's like a five-story building.
And I don't think there's any ballroom.
I doubt there's a ballroom in the country with a 50-foot ceiling.
And you'll be able to have dinners for as many people as you want.
We had King Charles here and we could, we were very restricted.
He said, could we have about 350 of our people?
He said, we don't hold 350.
We hold about 98.
So having 350 is a little tough.
I mean, just sort of nonsense.
Nonsense.
Well, yeah, nonsense.
I mean, it really sounds ridiculous.
I mean, against the enormity of history,
he's talking about the ceiling height of the ballroom.
And also slightly blaming King Charles.
King Charles wanted 350 people and we can only do 90.
Well, he's trying to accommodate Prince Charles.
We need a bigger ballroom so Prince Charles can have his 350 people.
But the other thing is that he will do,
and there's not much more that he can do with some sympathy here,
as to act like a normalcy continues.
This is his job.
Nothing changes.
I mean, which is what he's going to try to,
he's going to try to project that sense.
I'm here.
Nothing changes.
Everything goes on.
I'm still the president.
And I'm the ballroom president.
The ballroom president.
We should call him that now, the ballroom president.
That's a great name for him.
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So I guess my question is, well, we can come on to Natalie Harp in a minute,
because she's apparently been. She's now answering his phone for him.
We discovered this on election night that she picks up and says it's the president's phone.
phone and then she decides whether or not he speaks to whoever's calling. And in one incident,
it sounded like she was actually deflecting the call. And of course, it was a reporter and Donald
Trump immediately lunged for the phone because he wanted the attention. But there are some really
serious issues at stake here, not least America's relationship with Putin and what happens with
Ukraine and of course, what happens in Iran. And all the reports have it that Iran is bracing itself
for another round of bombings. Do you think that's a likelihood right now?
Well, I think there's two things that he has to accomplish here. He has to save face. Going to war
in Iran was the right thing to do. And he has to get out of Iran. He has to get some kind of
peace deal. So I think what that will involve is that there will be some kind of
bombing to say, you know, my policies, this is the correct thing to do. I am not in any way
admitting that this was a mistake. But then he will do anything, peace at any cost.
So I think he will wrap that up.
What does that mean, wrap it up?
Because we know he can't get a deal done. And the Iranians have his numbers,
so they can string this out and make it very difficult.
Well, I think he will do. I think he will. He'll do a deal. It'll be a very bad deal. It will be
any deal that he can possibly get. But I think he knows that he has to get out of there. So
January 3rd, when the nuke or January 4th, the day after the new Congress is sworn in,
they will begin to defund the war. He won't have any alternative there.
That will be over with. So he is going to try to end this on his own volition. You see,
I ended the war. And I would expect that to happen before January 3rd, January 4th.
Once again, he sets fire. He is the arsonist. And then he is the fireman riding to the rescue with,
as you say, likely to make a terrible deal, having made an enormous amount of hay,
out of having ripped up the Obama-Iranian deal.
Right. And I think, you know, the Ukrainian situation is the same. I'm not sure how he can
affect a real, you know, any real game change there. But I think that he is looking at the
new Congress supplying funding for,
for the Ukrainians. And he can, remember, he can veto that. It's not a, it's not a veto-proof
Congress, although it's getting pretty close to it. But, but I think he will want to say
he's going to look, look for, to use the next two months in a way that he can claim credit
for having done something before he is forced to do it.
Okay. So the other question is, how,
how does the Republican Party, many of whom, probably most of whom, as you've repeatedly
pointed out, hate him? They hate him. They've been humiliated by him. They've had to kneel
before him. And they've watched their constituents, those of them who are still
left, look in horror at what has happened to America over the last two years.
Is this the moment that the party, what's left of the Republican Party,
raises up against Donald Trump?
Well, I think it's even worse than that, because it is the traditional Republican Party,
the rhino Republican Party, I think that, that may be redundant, but, who have always been,
you know, gotten on the Trump bandwagon with gritted teeth. I think all of those, those,
that wing of the party is now,
suddenly, if not liberated, they're certainly trying to, they're, they're going to be, they're going to feel that they have more room to maneuver now than they have ever had. So, but then there's the other wing of the Republican Party, the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, which is, is at war, at least with itself, and to some degree at war also with Donald Trump. So it's the, it's the, the Tucker Carlson,
the, the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, they have been kind of proved correct. I mean, they have been, their, their break with Trump has been pointedly about the war and, and the war is pointedly the key issue in the campaign that the Republicans just lost.
So does this provide a way through for Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson to, to inherit the future?
Does this provide a way through for Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson to, to inherit the future of the MAGA wing, do you think?
I, I think it, I, well, they, they, they will certainly make an, we'll try to make that a reality. Yeah, that's, that's, that is where they're heading. I, I think I've always thought that Tucker is, is in active consideration to run for the Republican nomination.
And he's going to need a vice president. He, he could well sign up with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Yeah.
Yeah. I, I don't, I don't immediately see that one, but.
But there are all these fantasy pairings going on. Last night I saw John Ossoff with AOC as, as his vice.
Okay. Well, this is just bullshit. This is just to fill, to fill, fill the air.
But it's interesting thinking about it.
Nobody knows.
But it's given people a new piece of mind.
I think I would say it's not interesting to think about. It's not real. It's just.
I mean, all, all of these things, things will happen in a, in, in actual time when, and there'll be a zillion other variables and considerations and the chances that one of these things would come true is just a random chance.
It, it, everything changes.
But I disagree in that.
I think Tuesday has given people the ability to hope again that America can.
And course correct after a very dramatic, noisy, disruptive last two years.
Yeah. I mean, course correcting is, I think, I think it has course corrected. It will course correct.
But, but how this is going to play out in individual careers and politics is no, you know, is no, no, there's too many factors.
I know, but it's like, it's like people play fantasy football.
Yeah.
Michael, you don't, you know.
That's a fan. That's a fantasy. That's a fantasy. This is reality.
Oh my goodness. It's two days after the election. It's fun to think about what are the possibilities that could lead America into the future.
It's useless to think like that.
You know, if you would like.
Well, I do like, I think it's fun.
I tell you who did seem silent or we didn't really hear from on Tuesday and you suddenly could feel.
Feel the power vacuum. And that was Gavin Newsom that, that there was no real noise from him because obviously he's giving up his governorship.
He's term limited. And obviously he's planning to run for 2028.
To my point, he realizes you can't, you know, the one thing at this point, you, you, you don't want to start putting your marker down at this point because you don't know how things are going to shake out.
Not how they're going to take out this week or next week.
I mean, he's not on the ballot.
He's not there.
He's just, he's just reading the room and he's also not trying to hog airtime, which is interesting for Gavin Newsom, but a moment of, of maturity from people who deserve the airtime.
They were just elected.
We're also hearing from the White House and I don't know if you have any insider info here that.
Melania has apparently been trying to intervene with Donald Trump and say that the immigration policies have gone too far, that she's had friends caught up in ISIS sweep.
Are you hearing anything about this?
No, you know, I mean, I think Melania, like everybody else, is going to use this opportunity to look for distance from the president.
As if she could have any more distance.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, Melania has always in the first.
Term, you know, the children remember the children being snatched from their, their, their mothers.
There was an intervention at that point from Melania, which got the, got her husband to back off or insist that, that, that Homeland Security back off from that.
So, yeah, I think, I mean, she is an immigrant.
I mean, she probably does have some.
Some greater sympathy than her husband here, but it, you know, Melania, she's, she's not a part of this.
That's exactly right. You can sense, you can see, you can feel that she's not a part of it.
Yeah. I mean, one of her people, I'm sure, said, oh, yeah, we can get a little good press for
ourselves here. Right. As she did when she said that she'd broken the peace deal between the
Russians and the Ukrainians with Ileshky, thereby nearing or at least having the brass ring of the
Nobel Peace Prize in reach, as opposed to her husband, if only that could come true.
You know, I'm sure that she's trying to figure out now, how does this impact on her
growing business? Right. And on her show, the upcoming show.
Yes. Her millions and millions of dollars, her grift. And then everybody else, their grift. I
mean, this is, there's going to be, there is a complete refueling.
There has to be a rethinking going on now. There has to be a rethinking among everybody in the
Trump circle. What is, what is Jared thinking now? I mean, and I think actually Jared will be an
important player. He is. Trump doesn't turn to anyone for advice, but the exception there would
be to Jared. And Jared, because of his special standing,
has the, has the ability, and he's so good at actually working his father-in-law, that he has
the ability to step in and, and first thing, he has influence himself. So he can bigfoot anybody.
He's always been able to do that. And then his, his father-in-law actually sort of listens to him.
And you said he's the only person.
Around the president that actually calls him Donald. Everybody else calls him Mr. President,
but Jared calls him Donald. Yeah. That's an interesting thing. I feel it's, um,
it's such a good status call, isn't it? That you're the one that gets to call the president
by his name. I can't, what do you call him? When you were with him, did you call him Mr. President?
I can't imagine you calling him Mr. President. Of course. Of course. Um, as a matter of fact,
you do it. First thing, it's such a, it's such a, uh, you, you know,
an interesting experience to call anyone Mr. President. Um, um, and you think in your life,
you'll never have that opportunity to call someone Mr. President. And, um, and then also because
it's, it's, he's the president of the United States. I mean, you do it, even if it's Donald
Trump, he is the president of the United States. And, um, and he's Mr. President.
I would like the opportunity to call someone Mrs. President, or would you call them Madam
President? I suppose that's what they do in the shows, right? Madam President.
Madam President. Yes. Well, uh, I, um, I, I'm just, I was going to say you may have
that opportunity, but you may not have that opportunity also. Yeah, let's hope, let's
hope. I have a few years left in me, Michael. Um, and America may yet, may yet shift. All
right. Well, we'll be back on Tuesday. No, we'll be back on Saturday. What day is it?
I'm still completely, um, befuddled after our,
uh, marathon four and a half hour live dissection of the election. What day is it? What's happening?
Who has been elected? Which races haven't yet been called? Um, but what a, what an incredible
week in America and in American politics and indeed in the life of inside Trump's head.
You're hosting a big luncheon today.
I am. I'm hosting a big lunch. All, all our events are happening in the same week. Uh,
I'm hosting a big luncheon.
I am. I'm hosting a big luncheon.
It's for a hundred power women in New York. It's something I've been doing for 15 years.
Um, maybe one of them will be president.
Maybe one of them will be president. One of them may be president. And I think we may
have someone in the room who ran for president. So, so there you go. Um, anyway, I will be
back with you on Saturday to go inside Trump's head again. And it's just fascinating that,
that he's, he's feeling older.
Oh, he's looking older. He's sounding quieter. He's retreated to his subjects at the ballroom
and the helipad. Uh, I wonder if the ballroom even gets finished. What does Congress do
with the ballroom?
Um, everything, nobody knows. And if anyone claims they know, they don't know what's going
to happen. Now, the Democrats don't know what's going to happen. The Trumpers don't know.
Donald Trump doesn't know. Everybody is, um, is effectively.
In the Gavin Newsom position, um, waiting to see what's, what's, um, um, how the, what's
the metaphor here? Is this the tea leaves metaphor or the something metaphor, how it's
going to shake out?
Well, and I wonder if there is any moment, I mean, a lot of people have predicted, uh,
possibly wrongly, and you will have a better insight into this, but is it possible that
Donald Trump would actually just.
Just say, you know what? This isn't worth it. I just want to make more money. I'm going
to let GAD have a run at it. I don't want to be president anymore.
No.
Would he resign?
No, no.
He's going to stay in there until late.
You don't, you don't have to understand. The answer is no.
He's not giving up attention voluntarily.
Has anyone ever?
All right. We'll be back on Saturday. If you have been, thank you for joining
us and big thanks to our production team. Uh, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Benji Wilson.
We have a new addition because Benji handles all our lives and our socials, Rachel Passer,
Heather Passaro and Neil Rosenhouse.
Yeah. I, and I just want to say it's just been incredible what, what, um, what the
whole team has done this week. Um, because I I've barely held up and they've worked harder
than we've worked.
They have.
They have. And they, it's a very small team. It was just John and Ryan in the studio with
us on Tuesday. Uh, although of course we had Sarah Ewell-Weiss from DC and Hugh Doherty,
our executive editor, uh, giving us up to date reports.
Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro
and Neil Rosenhouse.
So the good news is we have so many B-Beast tier members now. There are too many names
to read out and we really appreciate it.
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