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September 26, 2024 19 mins

In this week’s episode, Michael and James confront a pivotal moment in the Trump campaign as the final days before the election loom large. With Trump publicly hinting at not running again if defeated, they explore whether this signals a rare moment of vulnerability—or simply another calculated move. Can politics ever return to normal without Trump in the spotlight? And what might a post-Trump political landscape look like? Plus, we’ll be answering listener questions—email us at fireandfurypod@gmail.com.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
An interesting question, which, to be honest, I have not
really considered what if he loses? My fear is always
what if he wins? And will I be committed for
another seventeen books on the subject. But I think it's meaningful.
I think it's kind of existential. Is this the beginning
of the post Trump conversation? I had that moment when

(00:26):
I heard him say this, which was shocking to me
because it was almost an acknowledgment of vulnerability and an
acknowledgment that maybe he has thought about something long term,
which since he's incapable of thinking of something long term,
that must not be the case. But there was some
instinctive thing there, and I think it's probably an understanding

(00:49):
that at some level for him, this is unsustainable. Welcome
to Fire and Fury the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm Michael Wolf and I'm James Truman. Good morning, Michael, James.
How are you very good? How do we feel about
Donald announcing that he will not run again if defeated.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
I mean, this has gone on now We're in the
tenth year of Donald Trump. To think about him now
almost eighty to stay in character, in Donald Trump character
for another four years, it seems unimaginable to me. Of course,
it seems unimaginable to me that he could have gone
ten years like this. So maybe the other question to

(01:39):
ask is does he mean it? Or was this just
a highly uncharacteristic moment of modesty.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
You had speculated a month or so ago on the
first assassination attempt that you thought it had thrown him
into some unusual mode of self reflection, And now we've
had the second one, which was even more personal. It
occurred in his holy of holies, a golf course, some
guy waiting in the bushes to offer him I mean
that novel.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
I mean, for anyone else, for you, for me, for
literally anyone else in the world. This would be a
moment of pause. I think we would all say, okay, listen,
let's get out of here. And I think on some
level that must be present in his mind. M hm.
I'm interested that at some level defeat must be present
in his mind.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Well, that's the other thing that seems to reveal that
you never hear him open the door to the possibility
that he might lose.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Right, that might augur for a change in the tenor
of disruption that everyone seems to be anticipating if it
is a down to the wire election which he appears
to lose.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
What does the tenor of disruption mean?

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I think that everyone expects that this will be like
twenty twenty and will go through that again. The clear
difference is he's not the president of the United States.
So it's a lot more difficult to orchestrate a denial
of the evidence and results of an election when you're
just a losing candidate than when you are the losing
candidate who is in the White House. But I think

(03:08):
it's worth pushing this because if he doesn't run again,
if he gives up being Donald Trump, if he goes
into some kind of retirement, can politics go back to normal?
But I think it's important to look at what changes
have been wrought here, what structural changes. You know, the

(03:29):
black Nazi guy is I think interesting Robinson in North Carolina.
Here is someone who, prior to Donald Trump, there is
no circumstance, no context in which he would have been
taken remotely seriously, and it's highly unlikely that he is
going to win. But nevertheless he is suddenly a Trumpian

(03:52):
national figure. So Trump has unleashed the unspeakable to enormous
advantage for people saying the unsayable. You know Laura Lumer obviously,
and that's an interesting example because effectively she must get
up every morning and say, Okay, I have pushed this
to the edge of the envelope of outrage and preposterousness.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
What a rational person would think.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
And so how can I push this more? Because that's
where profit lies for me. And then we have RFK Junior.
He clearly now is a Trumpian figure, but I think
even before he aligned with Donald Trump was more in
the Trumpian mode than in a Kennedy mode.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Are we seeing the absolute logic of the new cycle
that whoever wins the new cycle wins the day, wins
the match.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Well, that's clearly the Trump method here. Early in this race,
one of the Trump people said to me that really
the only measure that they looked at is headlines is attention.
The more tension he got, and it didn't matter if
it was good attention or bad attention, negative or positive.

(05:05):
Just the more attention, the higher his numbers win. And
there was a corollary to that which I think is important,
which is the news cycle is zero sum. If he
commands the news cycle nobody else does. Therefore nobody else can.
By being not part of the news cycle, you can't
win the news cycle. And if he dominates the news cycle,

(05:28):
he therefore obviously wins the news cycle.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
So we would say over the last week he's clearly
won the new cycle. Well, I think every day totally.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
I have a dim awareness of what she's been doing
this past week likewise, I mean, obviously she's been out there,
obviously giving her canned speech, canned ideas, canned everything. And
the debate in the Trump camp how can we get
him to focus the economy, immigration. All he should be
talking about is the economy, immigration. And then the other

(06:00):
side of the Trump camp is no, let Trump be Trump.
And that's what grabs the headlines. That's what grabs people's attention.
I mean, he gets out there and he says this,
you know whatever, and that holds a news cycle. Now,
some in the Trump camp are saying, yes, but that's
why we're not clearly winning. And that is true. You know,
that's the rate limiting factor, but that is also the

(06:22):
factor that gets him too pretty close to break even.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, Well, to give Trump credit, his speeches were sounding
very very canned. I think he must have been responsive
to Kamala saying the same lentire playbook. I mean, I
felt his improvisations this week went to a new level
of surreal and Pennsylvania where he became the protector of
women folk.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
I think the Pennsylvania speech was riveting. And you go
back to that question, is anyone capable of listening to
the usual political speech without having their mind wander or
falling asleep or leaving the room? I mean, who listens
to that stuff other than the people who are paid
to listen to you. I'm sure their mind wanders too.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
This, however, this ninety minutes of Trump, I could not
stop listening.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
I was trying to think what it reminded me of,
because it was certainly nothing in politics, And I came
up with the idea that it made me think of
talking dirty during sex. But what said is exaggerated, It's
probably insincere, but it somehow creates an intimacy that gets
the job done. Certainly nothing you want to read again

(07:31):
or hear again the next morning.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
I think we want to hear this, James go on, What.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Was so odd was you saw and you felt with
the audience that he was talking this horseshit, but it
created this deeper bond. So that's what made me think.
This is what pillow talk does. He's very good at it.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
It's also we know it. This is trump stick, and
trump shtick is kind of amazing. So you want to
hear it and hear it again, and you're at the
edge of your seat about whether or not he can
sustain this.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, but the idea that he was the protector of women,
that he was going to save them from thinking about abortion,
that might be actually a good birth control thinking about Trump.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
I mean, just think about where does that come from?

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Where does it come from? It's just remarkable.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
I mean abortion, this is the issue that if he
is defeated, will be certainly one of the things that
clearly defeats him. And so his messages don't think about it.
I mean, I have no answer. When I talk about it,
I sound like I have no idea what's going on.
Don't ask me to explain IVF, or don't ask me

(08:40):
to even refer to IVF because I'll refer to it wrong.
So let's just wave it away. And in fact, amid
that ninety minutes of just data is exactly there is
his issue which is has effectively been his only issue
since twenty fifteen, which is immigration. Immigration. For all of

(09:01):
us in the media business, I think that's a very
confusing issue because it doesn't resonate on any level. And
obviously this is the issue that all people except the
people we know. Yes, it does something. It's the signals
that are being sent here, the strings that are being pulled.

(09:22):
You know. Again, I can't get in touch with those feelings,
but he is in touch with those feelings.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, and it's enabled him to put Joe Biden in
a corner of incompetence and villainy that he never occupied before.
I mean, in the last two or three months, it's
astonishing how I find my own mind being changed. I
thought Biden was a pretty good president. By find my
own mind being hemmed in by this onslaught. I don't

(09:50):
know how they've done it, but they're just done a
marvelous job of painting him as the worst thing that
happened to American politics.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
So that's an interesting thing. We've just described, you know,
a ninety minute Trumpian speech as Dota esque in all
over the place and lacking some fundamental intellectual logic. Yeah,
which it clearly does. And yet he is on message,
on message, on message, you just have those kinds of

(10:17):
lines in your head, and whatever you say, you're always
at some point coming back to Hannibal Lecter. We'll be
back right after the break. So two questions. If he
goes away, does this go away? And does he, in

(10:40):
retirement take all of this new rhetorical style in American politics?
Does that go with him? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Do you remember four years ago we were talking about
whether in his defeat, whether Trump went away Trump himself,
and neither he went away, nor did Marga go away.
I'm not sure there's any reason why they'd go away
this time.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well, if he does go away, I mean, so he
didn't go away, so everything then stayed in place. The
universe around him stayed in place.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
You do I think the universe floated him.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
No, he certainly knows how to work this universe. But
I think he brings this universe to life. And I
don't see anybody else who's capable of doing that with
that kind of just extraordinary originality. He is not remotely
a politician, doesn't really care about being a politician, has

(11:32):
no real interest in the culture of being a politician.
I mean, I think this goes to Vance.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
I mean, he's not a politician really, but.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
He's well, I think he's been trying to.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
He's trying to be a politician.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, he made that clear career shift. That was the
interesting thing about Trump that he never made the career shift.
He always just stayed what he was, but also became
the president of United That's right. So Vance became the
vice presidential nominee, and everybody thought he was a complete,
you know, wash and a joker, and that this really
hadn't worked out. But I think that that's changed, especially

(12:08):
in the last number of weeks. I think what he
does turns out to be very effective. He carries Trump's
water without breaking.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Character, without breaking his own character.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Without breaking the I carry Trump's water cart, the eating
the dog's thing. He essentially has said, yes, this is
not true, right, but I'm not going to reject that.
I'm going to continue its it might not be true,
I'm going to continue to embrace this.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Is that why we find Vance more odious than Trump,
because it's deliberate.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
I think that's an RFK junior and advanced thing that
these guys are both clearly at some obvious level intelligent people.
So therefore they're asking us to take this seriously. Correct.
Trump is not asking us to take this seriously. It's
kind of half serious. It's kind of not serious. It's

(13:03):
kind of you don't have to you can just enjoy
it for what it is. So I think that's a
different response to Vance and RFK Junior. I mean, they're
drawing a line in the sand here. You got to
accept this.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, by those definitions, there are hustlers in a way
that Trump isn't.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah, this is getting into a level of or at
a serious metal level in which the ultimate hustler is
not really a hustler because he's so clearly a hustler. Yes,
I'm going to back away from this one. So next
week we have the VP debate coming up, and I

(13:41):
think that's going to be interesting because this contrast is
rather profound.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
It sure is one hundred percent sincerity versus one hundred
percent something else.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, I mean, you know, the Walls thing is going
to be the fundamental good guy political message. Let's all
get along. I can't we get along. That's what politics
is supposed to be about. To create a situation in
which the majority of us get along. With each other,
and the advanced thing will be This is his almost

(14:14):
explicit position, let's not get along. Yeah, we don't get along,
so let's not get along, and maybe at some level
then the stronger will win and then the weaker is screwed.
Or let's just split apart.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah. Yeah, that suggests to me I was going to
ask you, I mean, these remaining five weeks, it seems
to be on the Republican side. It's to their advantage
to amplify the awfulness of the positions they take, of
what they say. Does that sound right to you?

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Absolutely? Again, We're back to this control the news cycle.
What's going to control the news cycle not let's get
all get along. Yeah, what's going to get a headline
is let's not get along. We don't get along. Everything
is screwed, everything is breaking up, you know, it's the apocalypse.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah. In the small, old fashioned voice, my head says, well,
are they not going to be limits where people don't
want to be offended daily by this?

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yes? And there are clearly limits, and that's where the
election is going to come down to. We're right in
the middle. I mean, half of the country doesn't want this,
and half of the country responds to this.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, so this is probably not really about undecided voters anymore.
It's about motivating people to come out to vote. That
seems to be what the awfulness is in play for.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
I mean, nobody knows the answer to this, of course,
and that's why we're reaching this position less than forty
days out from the election, and nobody has any idea
of how this is going to come out. Nobody.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
I think that this is an important and elemental thing
that Democrats don't quite get because I actually I think
that they do that why they don't know what's going
to happen. There's a general faith that this is going
to turn out okay, if only because how could it not.
I mean, she's a basically okay Canada. The Demos have

(16:00):
hustled and put a good foot forward, and so it
should turn out. And I think as likely it doesn't
turn out. Yeah, I mean, so we go back to
that if he's defeated, he won't run again. And one
of the other reasons it now occurs to me that
he would have said that is because of an absolute
faith that he is not going to be defeated.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
True, Yeah, what does he have to do? In the
next forty days to seal the deal.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
I mean, it's easier to say, actually, the things that
he has to avoid doing. Remember, he's enormously gifted at
shooting himself in the feet, both feet simultaneously, and I
think that there's a reasonable likelihood that he will do that. Yeah,
and then he'll lose by a hair I mean, and

(16:48):
bring this back to the last two weeks. What's the
final impression, I mean, that thing that most stays in
your head, the last impression that you've gotten. Yes, I
mean one of the this happened. They've just ruled in
this January sixth case that the prosecution can basically present
its new case, and apparently they're going to do this

(17:10):
in enormous detail. So then that becomes and this is
what the Trump people certainly have been arguing. This kind
of becomes like you know, Komy and Hillary that this
will come out in the days before November fifth, and
no doubt it will be devastating, But I would say
it probably in bringing it back to real terms, comes

(17:33):
down in Pennsylvania. And again, if he loses, we're going
to say, why didn't she pick Yeah, yeah, there was
a Trump person I was speaking to the other day,
and he said, well, you know, I mean, Shapiro is
not going to want her really to win Pennsylvania because
then she wins the.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Election his future prospective, he said.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
But on the other hand, you know, camp and Georgia
is not going to want to win there either.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Right.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, that's it, that's what I got.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
That's all the time we have for today, and we'll
be back next week. Would you like us to try
to answer your questions? I frankly have reservations about that, but.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
They might be good questions.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
They might be good questions. But you can email us
at Fire and Fury Pod at gmail dot com. Fire
and Fury Pod at gmail dot com and we might
even try to actually answer those questions. What do you.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Think I think we should And perhaps we can share
the enormous amount of money that we get paid to
do this and send them a dollar a.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
Dollar that would be a big part of.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
That's maybe too large a percentage, yes.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
But actually that would be interesting.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
I'd love to hear from likewise, Yeah, yeah, great.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Fire and Fury the podcast is hosted and executive produced
by Michael Wolfe and James Truman. The producers are Adam
Waller and Emily Maronov. Executive producers for Kaleidoscope are Mangesh
had to get A and Os Valascian, Executive producers for
iHeart On, Nikki Ito and Katrina Novelle.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
I got a strong feeling this week that he's gonna win.
I just felt that he's gonna win.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
Did you pick that up? Are you picking that up?
Put include that and done that.
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