Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
The last music reminded me of wandering through a supermarket
in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah, well, I keep hearing it, think what is why?
Why why am I listening to this? How do I
fast forward through this?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
This is? This is terrible, ghastly. Yeah, yeah, no, I
prefer what we have to this.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Now you're teasing us.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You could exit though with this music. James is wrinkling
his nose at that better better, better, much better.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
It sounds like the first the first Cure album. Yeah, yeah,
I think that works.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
It's a focus problem. But you could call it a breakdown.
I think he's in terrible shape. He can't believe he's
lost his opponent, Joe Biden. I've spent one hundred million
dollars defeating Joe Biden. I want that money back. But
Donald Trump having a breakdown is not necessarily politically disadvantageous
(01:32):
to him. Welcome to Fire and Fury the Podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I'm Michael Wolf and I'm James Truman. Good morning, Michael.
We had a week of Democrat love. How does it
make you feel.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
We need four days of this? Why are these conventions
for four days? I know why they're four days from
the past, because there used to be a lot of
stuff that had to be accomplished. At a convention, you
had roll calls galore for many candidates, speeches, seconding speeches.
I mean, it was actually rather exciting. Something was happening. Okay,
(02:15):
nothing is happening now. The premise is every party gets
four days of uninterrupted media time, even though there is
no purpose in no news being made. So it's like
a kind of little media conspiracy. We're going to pretend
that this is news. Having said that, thank you for
(02:36):
letting me say that. I think that the weird issue
is that in the Democrats' view, clearly and in the
media view of the Democrats, Donald Trump has been disposed of.
He's old history in Harris and Walls are the new
story and the inevitable story and the inevitable victors. That's
(02:58):
completely not true, I think, perilously not true. What we
have is a did heat race. I couldn't predict the
outcome at this point. No one can predict the outcome
at this point. The truth is that her numbers plateaued
about two and a half weeks ago, so this idea
of her surge is not true. Her numbers among African Americans,
(03:21):
particularly African American men, are better than Biden's but not great.
Are her numbers among Hispanics? Not great? Her numbers are
good among young people who famously don't show up to vote.
I don't know what's going to happen here, and I
can't imagine that this sense of the Democrat's self satisfaction
(03:43):
is going to help matters.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Did I ever tell you I covered the nineteen eighty
four Democratic Convention?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
You never did, but I was there too.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Get out of here.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I've been at I think every Democratic convention could be.
I must have missed some. And I was not at
this weeks convention either, because because now I just go
to Republican events.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
But I remember that convention well. I I was just
off the boat from England. I didn't really know anything
about American politics, but a magazine sent me there, and
I mean, I found the whole thing astonishing. Just to
refresh anyone's memory, was when Walter Mondale tried to stop
Ronald Reagan being re elected for a second term. And
it was the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and I'd
(04:28):
never seen something like it in England. If you go
to a political convention, or you're gonna have a glass
of sherry in the Grand Hotel in Blackpool with a
few sort of drunken low level party operatives. And then
suddenly the whole of San Francisco was taken over by
this party, and Jesse Jackson was at the height of
his oratory CaAl powers. Mario Cuomo made the Two Cities speech,
(04:48):
which was still the best political speech I've ever heard.
Mondale had just picked Geraldine Ferraro the first woman VP.
I was hanging out with some people from the Village Voice.
They're the only ones who would talk to me, and
coming from New y York, you despised Ronald Reagan, and
not least for completely ignoring AIDS, among other things. And
they explained to me the polling on Reagan was not great,
(05:09):
and they explained there was this wellspring of disgust towards
Reagan and how Mondale had a real shot. So I
wrote a piece about that, about the coming of Walter Mondale.
And then a few months later there was the election
in which he lost every single state except his own,
which he won by I think zero point eight percent.
So in that moment of seeing the sort of giddiness
(05:29):
of the Democratic Convention. I thought, she's not going to
lose every state. But are we kidding ourselves here? Have
we worked ourselves up into a sort of delusional optimism?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Very possibly, I think more accurately, nobody knows. And certainly
the idea that we are on the great train to
victory and to liberal reign is potentially delusional. And the
delusion or the expectation I think dangerous. I mean, it's
dangerous for the Democrats. Having said that, the Republicans are
(06:04):
not exactly in good shape at this point. So this
whole idea within the Trump circles. What has been happening
recently is what they call his lack of focus, and
they keep saying, you've got to focus, but also his
refusal to follow the script that everybody is laid out
(06:25):
for him. And the script is a straightforward one. The
economy and the border. The economy and the border, The
economy and the border. That's what everyone around him is
telling him. If he simply stays on script, he has
a very good chance yet of winning this There was
that speech at Bedminster, Oh yeah, the food, Yes, to
(06:46):
talk about inflation. And one of the interesting things about Bedminster,
which is a really weird place. It's a Trump golf club,
essentially the country club. It's like mar A Lago. I mean,
he's the guy who just lives at country clubs. But
the other thing about Bedminster is that there are a
lot of flies. I don't know if it's about that
(07:09):
part of New Jersey, but there are flies all over
the place. And when he gave that speech, which was
all supposed to be about the economy, that were the
Bedminster flies. But there were even more flies because there
was all this food out there baking in the sun.
And if you watch that, and nobody comments on this,
but he keeps swatting this so and that became the distraction,
(07:31):
part of the distraction that moves them off of talking
about the economy and onto talking about her again. It's
holy ad hominem. She's incompetent, she's stupid. It has nothing
to do with policy, it has nothing to do with
where she stands politically. It's just about his antipathy to
(07:51):
her and resentment. So everybody goes crazy about this, and
they've been sending in all kinds of party heavyweights to say,
you really have got to focus. And what he says
is no you're wrong, he defends himself. Actually, in that speech,
he defended I have the right to personal attacks. I
(08:12):
don't think anyone in politics has ever said that even
when they do have personal attacks, they're not personal attacks.
This is, of course, I would never attack someone personally. No,
I have the right to personal attacks, which occurs to me.
That certainly an indication that he's out of control and
that no one has any control over him. But the
other point is that his personal attacks actually work. The
(08:36):
demented genius that is Donald Trump may know what he's doing, well,
he doesn't know what he's doing, but instinctively he may
be onto something. And of course Donald Trump is a
one trick pony. This is the thing that he's always done.
But it has often worked very well in some manner.
This worked on Joe Biden, who's been saying for the
(08:58):
better part of two years that Biden couldn't do this,
that Biden was walking into walls, or as Trump would say,
he's a retarded individual. And of course we arrived, particular
Danumont on that issue, everybody's underestimation of Donald Trump, and
now the New York Times pointing out on a daily
(09:19):
basis that something is going on here, and they call
it a breakdown, but essentially that's what they're implying. But
Trump having a breakdown is not necessarily politically disadvantageous to him.
We'll be back right after the break.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
One thing that occurred to me this week is that
given the late changing candidate, Trump has the incumbents advantage.
We talked last week about people's nostalgia for how things
have been, and at least just until COVID came, this
continuity of his act. In a sense, it has that
advantage of being something that people have known and people
(10:09):
who like him are very comfortable with. It's not disruptive,
as we might say it is. It's part of who
he's always been, So why would he change that?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
And that's the sort of counterintuitive point, which is that
just a new face is going to have such an
incredible advantage over Donald Trump over the old face. But
I think you're right that very well may not be true.
People tend not to like new faces, and they tend
to be very comfortable with what they know, and they
know a lot more about him than they do about her.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, and you have to say he kept the whole
president act going when he wasn't even in office. The
nomenclature of President Trump that how he had to be
addressed by everyone around him.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I'm not sure he ever noticed he was not in
office anymore, which is another thing that people when he
was in the White House would say that it wasn't
clear that he noticed he was no longer in Trump Tower. Yeah,
life really, other than the location, it really didn't change
very much. And certainly his life in mar A Lango
was a kind of a wonderful life. It's golf and
(11:13):
people sucking up to him.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
More does the person want what more? Who would want
to lead the free worlds? When you have that? What
do you make of Cary Lewandowski coming back.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
At this point in the summer. Trump's campaigns usually break down.
In twenty sixteen, this happened when in the middle of
August Steve Bannon, Kelly and Conway took over. July twenty twenty,
there was a shift and Brad Parscal was pushed out.
I think the background on Corey is interesting. Corey was
(11:42):
really the first professional political operative brought into the Trump circle.
He was never a very senior operative, and that's why
he was working for Donald Trump. Because who thought Donald
Trump had a chance of anything. But for Corey it
was a paycheck and he really was around, if not
the cause of beginning to get this campaign a huge
(12:04):
amount of traction and surprising amount of attraction. But Corey
was a difficult guy, constantly fighting with everybody. So what
is he doing there now? And this was preceded there
was a set of leaks. Kelly and Conway and Lara
Trump went into se Trump at Bedminster, I think this
(12:25):
was two weeks ago, and said, you have to clear house.
You have to get rid of Susie Wiles, you have
to get rid of Chris Lassoviti, you have to get
rid of Tony Fabrizio, everybody. This is not working. Look
at this. You have to retool.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Now.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Trump doesn't exactly function like that. He doesn't a He
hates people telling him what to do, and he's actually
kind of conflict averse also, so you're fired, he doesn't
really do so then the question is bringing Corey in
a way to fire people without firing them. So the
(12:59):
announcement was made that Corey was going to come back
in and then suddenly Corey is calling people in the
press and saying he's becoming the chairman of the campaign,
so he would be over Susie Wiles and Chris los Avita.
Now this is also, on the face of it, seems ludicris.
I mean, Corey is has been, never was not a
(13:19):
senior person. You wouldn't do this, So that had to
be rejigged in terms of what was Okay, he's not
the chairman. But then Trump started to say he's my
special envoy, which kind of sounds chairman issues. Yes, so
nobody really knows exactly what this means except that Corey
doesn't particularly have a job. But so, I mean, I
(13:42):
think the probably right now the thing to look for
is whether Kelly and Conway comes back in as a special.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Envoy and she and Cary got to work together.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
No, I would say not, and I would say it's
that would be Trump's way of saying, you all fight
it out together. He neutralizes everyone and may the best
or worst man win.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
One thing I'm curious about when you say bringing in Lewandowski,
where did these people come from?
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I imagine that a big part of Quarry's soliciting this
and everybody is soliciting, is he probably needs the paycheck. Yeah,
and where does the paycheck come. That's another question. Does
it come from the RNC or does it come from
the campaign? These are in some sense interchangeable pockets.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
But yes, let's talk about men in the selection. It's
very interested in watching the Democrats that they put forward
this certain kind of guy, you know, Kamala's husband, Doug Mhoff,
Barack Obama obviously, and then above all Tim Woltz. The
kind of guys that.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I mean, girly men.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Well, I think when I was in the media business,
I had some impact on the adoption of the idea
of metrosexual men, which in time got replaced by a
more popular concept of toxic men. And looking at the Republicans,
you would say they were emblematic of toxic men. Jd Vance,
Dana White, Hulk Hogan.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Toxick men, depending upon if you're a Democrat, right, you're
a girly man.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Let's call the metrosexual sensitive men. It seems such a
unifying idea. Here were good men, which is not the
most popular idea in the culture, and you had to
think that was being posited somewhat deliberately. But do you
think that plays for Democrats or does it just make
them seem lame?
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I think the bigger question is does it play for Republicans,
And I think it clearly does. At the root of
a lot of this maga stuff is a pretty old
conventional idea of masculinity and also an argument that we've
lost that masculinity, that somehow men have been seriously devalued.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah, so maybe Democrats are mounting a defense against that.
I don't know. I'm still not quite sure what it means.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, let's consider this. Democrats certainly don't have a lot
of doubts about their own virtues. This is correct, And
I think one of their virtues is the men that
they elevate then become part of this virtuous circle. So
I think that's another form of their identity politics.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
And I suppose what all these three men had in
common at the convention was a deference to their wives.
Of Stintimols's case, a deference to his boss, Kamala Harris.
That's something you could never imagine hearing at a Republican convention.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
And certainly part of the subtext there is not about
men but about women.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
The Democrats win if they managed to be disproportionately successful
with women. So now are those men a calculated message
or are they a default message? These are the men
we have.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yes, but Trump has pointed out recently that women love him.
Have you heard him? Oh, yeah, that's his stumb speech.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
No, of course, certainly he believes that in the rat
pack sense, in the political sense. Is clearly not true.
But just because it's not true doesn't mean that he
doesn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, you've been with him in mar Lago and with
these kind of strange Republican cheerleader factions. Are they groupes?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah? The women at mar A Lago love him. I
mean I often think that mar A Lago bubble is
the reality that Trump lives in.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I had this conversation with one of the Trump people
once and I referred to mar A Lago as his camelot,
and this Trump person said, maybe more jonestown. Here are
these country club women. They all look like country club women.
There are the women you would cast as country club women.
And Trump is loving all this. He sits actually in
(17:51):
the middle. He conducts his meetings in the middle of
this grand, weird, grand hall, and then these country club people,
all the Marilago members come past, and he's like the greeter. Also,
I've heard, this doesn't change his lines. So he sees
a mar A Lago, an older mar Alago woman with
(18:12):
her daughter, and then it's always your sisters.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Oh no, And what do you think these mar A
Lago country club women make of Democratic women? That sense
there's not much sisterhood being felt.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Obviously, this is the great divide. I'm sure that they
look at the Democratic women. They often see them as
black women who would not be allowed into their country club.
And Jews they're not allowed in the country club either.
The country club, remember, is the ultimate homogenous grouping. We
don't let you in if you're not one of us,
I mean, which is very much part of the Trump thing.
(18:48):
The only interesting thing about that is that all of
these people would be billionaires, whereas most of the MAGA
crowd appear to be unemployed.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yes, and we kind of know what the Democrat men
think of the Republican men, the enlightened men think of
the toxic men, but it seems to have no effect
on the population.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, I don't know. And remember the other thing about
Trump's men is that they're sports guys. They're athletes of
a certain kind. But I often thought, what would Trump
have been if he were not a real estate developer
and not a reality star and not a president, he
would probably be a sports promoter. So that last night
(19:32):
of the Republican Convention with the UFC guy, Yeah, yeah,
that's the kind of man that Trump likes. That's the
kind of personality that Trump likes. And these people are
hugely popular in the country. I had never heard of
UFC until the Trump people say, well, we're going to
do this UFC. I'm thinking UFC. Googli UFC in the UFC,
(19:57):
by the way, it turns out then to be owned
by the me and Harry Emmanuel.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Who's oh, of course your friend.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yes, yes, brother is Ram Emmanuel, an extremely high ranking Democrat.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Go figure, go figure that Tim Wolves is an Avid Hunter.
I'm kind of entertained by how that court traction.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Do you think he is an avid hunter or just
now pretending to be an Avid Hunter? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
I'm afraid school teacher might weaken avid hunter a little bit.
There's a hyphen the teacher might take over.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I think we can safely say that Josh Shapiro in
Pennsylvania is not an Avid Hunter.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So let's talk about September possible convention bounce, then first
of the debates, then Trump sentencing.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, I mean there will be a convention bounce. There's
always a convention bounce. I would say what to look
for and we'll probably start to see snappoles on Sunday.
Is whether it's a two or three point bounce or
a five or six point bounce. So I don't know,
but I think whatever it is, the likelihood is that
this well then from that point on tighten up, and
(21:03):
it will tighten up within the margin of error by
the time of the election. So again to start planning
your job in the White House on either side precipitous
at this point. Then the debate is on the tenth.
That's the ABC debate. And you'll recall that the ABC
debate was agreed to by Joe Biden or was a
(21:26):
CNN debate and then an ABC debate, and then Trump
pulled out of the ABC debate and then rejoined the
ABC debate. At least half a dozen people who in
the past week he's called and said, should I do
this debate? How can I get out of this debate?
And I think there's the Fox debate. I think it's
on the fourth, and I think that's still going forward,
(21:49):
even though Harris has said she won't participate, so that
may be an empty chair debate. And then theoretically, on
the eighteenth of September is his sentencing in the New
York felony conviction. We should know next week whether the
judge is going to delay that beyond the election or
whether that happens. I think that will be significant if
(22:11):
it does go forward, it will be significant, probably in
both directions. I think that there's a very good chance,
and I think the Trump people believe this that he
will get a jail sentence, and then that would be
stayed after the election. But just a jail sentence will
first be a phenomenal money raising exercise on the Trump side,
(22:33):
will probably be a phenomenal money raising exercise on the
Democrat side. So it'd be one of those things that
clarified the absolute divide in the nation. And then we'll
head into October. And one of the most sagacious things
I have ever heard in recent politics is when Steve
Bannon said to me, in these tight races, really nothing
(22:57):
matters until what happens in the last two weeks, unless
somehow there's a breakout here and Harris moves five six
seven points ahead. So the last two weeks and that'll yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
We've talked from two different perspectives today. One is that
Trump is having a breakdown and doesn't know what to
do next. The other is that doing what he's doing
has worked and might continue to work. Which side do
lean to.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
What he does works? The question is does it work enough?
It certainly works on his forty seven, forty eight, forty
nine percent. I wonder if, though it's an aspect of
repetition and time, he just says it again and again
and again. Now, I think there's a different effect when
you say it again and again over eighteen months than
(23:43):
there is saying it again and again over three months,
and that may be her advantage. On the other hand,
repetition is extraordinarily powerful, and most people are not shameless
enough to keep repeating the same thing over and over again.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
That's such a good point. Our tendency as media people,
as magazine people is to say Donald Trump is last
year's man, Donald Trump is over not sure that's gonna
do it.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I think now this whole idea on the Democrat side
and on the media side, Hello New York Times, that
he's a goner. He's been dealt with. Goodbye. Clearly it
is wishful. Yes, we'll meet here again to see if
it's accurate. But this is Donald Trump. We are in
the ninth year of.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
This astonishing think of how I feel. Thank God for
term limits. Thank you, Michael. Let's pick this up again
this time next week.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Great, thank you. That's all the time we have for today.
We'll be back next week.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Fire and Fury. The podcast is hosted and executive produced
by Michael Wolfe and James Truman. The producers are Adam
Waller and Emily Marinoff. Executive producers for Kaleidoscope are Mangesh
had to get A and Os Valascian, executive producers for
iHeart On, Nikki Etour and Katrina Novel.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
You know who I used to make music for podcasts.
My dentist. That was his hobby.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I did he have any hits