October 17, 2024 • 20 mins
In this episode, Michael and James assess the volatile dynamics of the Trump campaign as the 2024 race narrows. They delve into the shifting momentum, Trump’s erratic behavior during his Pennsylvania rally, and Kamala Harris’ disciplined yet cautious approach. Jared Kushner’s calculated influence behind the scenes also comes under scrutiny, as Michael and James explore how these contrasting strategies may shape the final stretch of the election.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm speaking to Trump people and I said to one
of them, I said, oh, God, forget the fate of
the country. I just can't imagine having to write another
book about Donald Trump. And in this person said, oh,
You're going to have to do at least.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Two more, Jesus.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So anyway, that was the mood last week, and I
think that it is possible we will come out on
this at the end of this week pretty much deadlocked again.
If advantage was theirs last week, advantage will be hers
possibly this week. And there we are welcome to Fire
(00:49):
and Fury the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm Michael Both and I'm James Truman.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Good morning, Michael, Good morning James.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So I think since we lost Bok we could go.
It looks like Trump has regain momentum. Is that your
opinion of.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Well, you know, I know that from inside the Trump
camp last week they regard as their pivot week, I
mean markedly changed. Yeah, and they were really looking at
a set of events beginning with Kamala's trip to the border,
which one of the people in Trump World put it
to me that would be like Trump going to an
(01:26):
abortion clinic. Jesus, why would she call attention to her
fundamental weakness, and then the VP debate, which was one
of the few instances where the VP candidate has helped
the top of the ticket. Then her media tour and
that moment when she was unable to distinguish herself from Biden,
(01:47):
just kind of frozen in the headlights, and then the
hurricane response with Biden at the beach her in San Francisco.
So by the end of last week, the internal Trump numbers,
I mean, they were really looking at themselves ahead in
every swing state. So for the Democrats it should have
(02:08):
been panic button time. And I think for the Trump people,
they're planning their return. I mean, this is potentially bad
again at a panic level. If the polls are as
off as they were in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty,
then he has the potential to win in a landslide.
(02:30):
So this is attention attention. I mean, for eighteen months now,
I've been saying Democrats should panic, and it certainly has
taken them a long time. It was one interesting indication
This past week. The New York Times had a major
story about this woman, Brooke Rollins, who largely no one
(02:51):
has ever heard of, and the Times postulated that she
was a likely chief of staff, and she is not
alike Chief of Staff Brook Rollins, who has run this
America First policy institute. I think it is gooled, which
is one of the outside MAGA leaning Trump supporting, you know,
(03:12):
kind of welfare department for out of work Trumper's. But
she's also Jared Kushner's person, Soared's that would be a
Jared move. And one of the things that the Trump
campaign has always said, and this is not with any
fondness for Jared, but they've always said that Jared is
(03:33):
their ultimate barometer of success because he clearly wants nothing
to do with them. Who Donald Trump? Do I know
Donald Trump? If Trump is going to lose, but if
he is going to win, then he certainly wants back
in and he will probably, depending upon their margin in
(03:57):
the Senate, want to be and might like be the
Secretary of State.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Good Lord.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So again, the barometer their success can be measured in
Jared's interests. It also turns out that he's pretty savvy
in Trump world. He may be the savvyest. Certainly he's
one of the few people who survived four years in
the Trump White House, and then he went on to
raise billions of dollars against that experience. So in the end,
(04:26):
I think whatever we can say about this Trump era,
one of the things may well be the person who
comes out on top is Jared Kushner.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Wow. So if the Trump campaign feels it's got it
locked up or felt that a week ago, obviously the
Kamala campaign was feeling that as well. I mean, we've
seen her suddenly doing all the media she hadn't done
for a month. David Plouf's sort of cautioning in New
York magazine it ain't over yet, it's we always knew
(04:54):
it was going to be close. Then there's always the
sacrisanct mention of our internal numbers, the difference in value
between their internal numbers and the polls.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Well, I mean, I think there is a difference between
internal numbers and external numbers, and it can go both ways.
By the way, internal numbers can be an instance of
self delusion, while outside numbers might be accurate, or outside
numbers can reflect some fundamental bias and commercial instincts. So
(05:29):
and then internal numbers might be well, you know, we
need these numbers to be absolutely accurate. Without that accuracy,
we can't really run a campaign. So it can go
both ways. I mean there was another time story which
was obviously planted by the horror side, which essentially outlined
their two approaches, both the Trump side and the horroricide
(05:51):
to Pennsylvania. And the horrside was very systematic, very discipline,
very structure, knock on doors, flood the zone with volunteers,
spend an enormous amount of money in the state, versus
the Trump side, which is really all focused. This has
(06:13):
sort of been the new thesis for the Trump campaign
for the past year, which is to activate this hidden group,
find the Trump leaning people who customarily might not vote.
If we can focus there and bring those people out,
then that's our margin.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
So there are literally two sides and they are almost
diametrically opposed. I heard from somebody in the Trump camp
who said, well, one side is going to be right
and one is going to be wrong.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah. Yeah, Plus we have Elon Musk, who's now moved
to Pennsylvania until the election, paying people to find other
people who will come out to votes right.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Right. Again, that's either Elon in his you know, best
management pose, which is often brilliant. You know, we can
fire ninety percent of Twitter and it will still work
and it turns out it still does work, or we
can buy Twitter for forty four million dollars in alien
(07:20):
eight half of its audience. So which which elon? Are
we getting?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
An obvious thing to me that for Kamala House to
do at this point would be to start as the
Trump campaigner doing leaking names, trying out names for the
major positions in her cabinet. And I don't understand why
she hasn't done that, Why names haven't been dropped for
the guys who are going to seal the border.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I think it's just this caution, yeah, you know. I mean,
she had an interview yesterday the day before and she
was asked about this, and she called it discipline.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I was sticking to talking points.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Mean, and I guess there's obviously a fine line caution discipline. Again,
I can't help feeling that that comes out of they
thought that they were on top of the world. You know,
they had this brilliant August and they went in to
preserve that lead mode, and instead it's eroded. We'll be
(08:17):
back right after the break. We've also seen this week
extraordinarily odd behavior from Trump.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yes, I wanted to get onto that.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I can't begin to think what actually is going through
his mind. The music thing, you know, Trump the DJ.
I mean, you know I have seen him do this,
and I mean this is a man who does not
have one genuine piece of rhythm in his body, no
(08:58):
less his DNA, and he looks like a fucking dufis. Yes,
and I also know that he's been raging all week.
Uh huh, So it's really been internally Trump off the rails.
And that usually happens when he senses something going wrong,
He senses the forces against him, an indication that he
(09:23):
feels the pendulum swinging. It's an interesting thing about Trump,
a kind of point of sensitivity for a guy who
one might think has no sensitivity at all in his
own mind. The pendulum is constantly swinging, which almost sometimes
seems like a manic, depressive thing, you know, the mania.
(09:44):
And then he crashes.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think it was yesterday he went saying that he's
going to raise taris on importa goes by two thousand percent,
So that means your hundred thousand dollars Mercedes is going
to cost two million dollars. Why do you make an
announcement like that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Part of it is that I think that he discounts
that anything that he says will discourage anybody who is
in the Trump camp. They're in, you can't lose them.
But at the same time that gets him a headline,
and he has this other belief. It's very basic. If
you win the news cycle, you win good or bad.
(10:22):
It doesn't matter what you do, just the fact that
you command that moment, which gives nobody else attention.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I also had a thought. I mean, do you think
it's a first installment payoff to Elon Musk? You know,
he's going to essentially outlaw luxury cars. Everyone has to
buy a Tesla.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I think that whatever this Musk relationship is, there will
be two sides to it. There will be a payoff
to Musk and then anyway, it will end in tears.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yes, and we know whose tears will be shed.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, it's extraordinary that Elon Musk would not realize.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
This, none of them do. What's our FK Junior doing today,
probably shedding those tears that Musk were one day shed,
you know, suddenly irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
He's on the cover of the Post because of this
relationship with this New York magazine reporter.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Oh, that's that's fresh. Again today, I can't see that.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yes, if you had to find the novelistic episode of
this campaign, that would certainly be a contender.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Did you know her? Did you overlap with her at
New York Magazine Olivia.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Nuzzy, Yes, I've had a brief run in with her,
which I can't describe it in any ways. That would
be did your biblests perhaps.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Did your story share narrative elements of our FK Junior's story?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Well? No, I mean I mean I found her and
this was especially after Fire and Fury came out, when
she was constantly calling me, and I just found it
a kind of a creepy experience. And that may be
just because she is dogged in a way that reporters
are supposed to be and quite frankly never are. And
maybe that's her virtue, yes, but it also just to
(12:09):
me at that point felt creepy.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah. Well we should probe no further than that one.
So is there a concern in Trump's camp that he
is losing it? I mean dementia, I mean, not losing
the election.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Nobody has ever voiced that to me, And I think
that's difficult to say about Trump because there isn't a
normal baseline. Another word, you're usually measuring somebody's signs of dementia,
any older persons against they're doing something out of the ordinary.
Why are they doing that? That's a change? I mean
(12:45):
there is no change with Trump. This behavior. It goes
up and down, it's semi normal, then shocking, it goes
along and suddenly it's inexplicable again. I mean, this is
not now, so you would just have to say, well,
it's more of that.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
But in this moment the behavior seems both more pronounced
and just astonishingly careless. In this final furlong of the race,
like the Coachella rally that he none of the attendees
didn't get picked up because the Trump campaign refused to
pay the bus companies come and pick them up. I mean,
why did you do that in the final weeks of
a campaign.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
On the one hand, there's Harris. Her explanation was discipline.
On the other hand, him as the contrast gainer, he
has no discipline. Right, So you have these two extremes,
decide between them. A person who is way too disciplined,
locked down, inaccessible, unknowable, and then you have this other
(13:43):
person who has no discipline at all. What you see
is what you get, completely transparent everything that he's thinking
at a given moment. He expresses, Yes, Okay, you decide
which do you take.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Well with Trump, you've just described the personality of a
way would for year old child, So that would help
me make my decision.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yes. But on the other hand, the description of her
would be a fundamentally dishonest Personamala, someone who is so
disciplined that they won't let you know what they are thinking,
what they stand for, what they believe, what they feel.
Then you can only, I think reasonably conclude that they're
hiding something interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Okay. And in her case, she's hiding her incompetence, her
inability to step up, or does she just lacking you.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Know, I think that she's probably hiding her rank and
ferile ambition. The Democrats, you know, we are the most
ambitious people on earth. We would really do anything to
have power, to get ahead, to claim status. But also
when we do get that power, we're going to do
something good with it. Right That kind of forgives us, Yes,
(14:55):
and it may, I mean, it's certainly better than the
Trump side, which is I'll do anything for power, and
when I get it, I'm not going to do anything
good with it. The only difference there is I'm not
hiding this. I mean, I'm proud of my ambition. Actually,
my whole reason for existing is that I am craven
and feral.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right. But I mean, it's an absurd situation to think
that someone running for presidency is hiding their ambition. I mean,
no one but the most ambitious kind of personality, rightly, So.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Why is she doing that? And I think that begins
to prompt the question, well, she's not honest. I mean,
one of the many Trump breakthroughs is that he got
rid of the whole sanctimony of running for office, the
whole idea that you had to wrap yourself in flag
and morality and goodness, that you had to be a
(15:48):
servant of the people out of great civic responsibility and
determination to serve your fellow man. Nobody believed that anyway,
and he got rid of it, and so people said, oh, yeah,
that's kind of a relief. At least he's not lying
to us on that level, you know, that whole common thing.
I'm a member of the middle class. If I hear
(16:08):
her say middle class one more time, she has not
been a member of the middle class for years and years, reasonably,
her entire life has been about escaping being a member
of the middle class. Trump certainly has never made a
pretense of being of the middle class, having any interest
in the middle class, or.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Having any interest in the population at large. Basically, yes, yeah,
So Michael, we have a listener question. This is from
Ed Palpunt. Couldn't a Trump victory be better for the
Democrats in the long run since Trump would alienate voters
again and the midterms would shift to more Democratic power
in Congress.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I mean, I think that the proposition is, why don't
we destroy everything and start again? Yes, I'm a middle
of the road, cautious kind of guy, so that seems
a little extreme to me.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
A question for you. This is something you wrote, I
think probably about ten years ago, and I just came
upon it in some notes. How have evidently unstable people
come to have such access in institutional politics otherwise defined
by cautious tedium and procedural requirements. How has the mean
and nasty achieved such heights and a system that has
valued insisted on likability and conventionality. Do you have any
(17:23):
response to that today?
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I remember writing that I remember thinking I don't know
the answer to this.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, but I do.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Think that there's been this odd thing that has happened.
We used to exclude crazy people, I mean clearly crazy people. Yeah, extremest, unbalanced,
disturbed the people from public life. But somehow we united
that set of traits with opportunism. That became this powerful combination.
(17:55):
I'm crazy, but I'm an opportunist. And that seemed to
give people this advantage. And this may be a media thing,
it gave them this advantage because the premium is always
how do you break through the clutter, And to be
crazy and to want something seems to be a great
calling card. Yeah, should we reflect for a moment? James
(18:19):
on our interview with Barry Diller the other day, which
I thought was remarkable.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, I me too. He sounds like such a young guy,
such a fresh perspective on things. I mean, the thing
that I carried away from it was he's been a
lifelong Democrat, but his desire primarily was to have a
decisive result, even if it meant that Trump wins the election.
He saw the value in let's have it out, Let's
(18:45):
see that this is who we've become, because this is
who we just elected, and let's truthfully acknowledge why we
wanted that, why the majority wanted that.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, let's not pussy foot around anymore. Let's stare ourselves
in the face.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yes, I thought that was remarkable.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
And I have had the same feeling I've had for
years that I've had lunch with Barry, and those lunches
always last exactly fifty minutes, and then he gets up
and leaves. And at each of these lunches, I'm always
aware that they are going to come to an end,
and I'm always looking for ways to keep them going.
And I felt that way.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I know we could have gone for another hour. Yeah,
And I mean he obviously had a lot of respect
for Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And I think he nailed it. I mean that description
of Elon's mind as capacious but often adult, you have to.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Say, it's brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, that's all the time we have for today. We'll
be back next week. Fire and Fury.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
The podcast is hosted and executive produced by Michael Wolfe
and James Truman. The producers are Adam Waller and Emily
maronof Executive producers for Kaleidoscope are Mangesh Had Tigeta and
Os Valashian executive producers for iHeart On, Nikki Etour and
Katrina novel
I'm speaking to Trump people and I said to one
of them, I said, oh, God, forget the fate of
the country. I just can't imagine having to write another
book about Donald Trump. And in this person said, oh,
You're going to have to do at least.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Two more, Jesus.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So anyway, that was the mood last week, and I
think that it is possible we will come out on
this at the end of this week pretty much deadlocked again.
If advantage was theirs last week, advantage will be hers
possibly this week. And there we are welcome to Fire
(00:49):
and Fury the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm Michael Both and I'm James Truman.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Good morning, Michael, Good morning James.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So I think since we lost Bok we could go.
It looks like Trump has regain momentum. Is that your
opinion of.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Well, you know, I know that from inside the Trump
camp last week they regard as their pivot week, I
mean markedly changed. Yeah, and they were really looking at
a set of events beginning with Kamala's trip to the border,
which one of the people in Trump World put it
to me that would be like Trump going to an
(01:26):
abortion clinic. Jesus, why would she call attention to her
fundamental weakness, and then the VP debate, which was one
of the few instances where the VP candidate has helped
the top of the ticket. Then her media tour and
that moment when she was unable to distinguish herself from Biden,
(01:47):
just kind of frozen in the headlights, and then the
hurricane response with Biden at the beach her in San Francisco.
So by the end of last week, the internal Trump numbers,
I mean, they were really looking at themselves ahead in
every swing state. So for the Democrats it should have
(02:08):
been panic button time. And I think for the Trump people,
they're planning their return. I mean, this is potentially bad
again at a panic level. If the polls are as
off as they were in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty,
then he has the potential to win in a landslide.
(02:30):
So this is attention attention. I mean, for eighteen months now,
I've been saying Democrats should panic, and it certainly has
taken them a long time. It was one interesting indication
This past week. The New York Times had a major
story about this woman, Brooke Rollins, who largely no one
(02:51):
has ever heard of, and the Times postulated that she
was a likely chief of staff, and she is not
alike Chief of Staff Brook Rollins, who has run this
America First policy institute. I think it is gooled, which
is one of the outside MAGA leaning Trump supporting, you know,
(03:12):
kind of welfare department for out of work Trumper's. But
she's also Jared Kushner's person, Soared's that would be a
Jared move. And one of the things that the Trump
campaign has always said, and this is not with any
fondness for Jared, but they've always said that Jared is
(03:33):
their ultimate barometer of success because he clearly wants nothing
to do with them. Who Donald Trump? Do I know
Donald Trump? If Trump is going to lose, but if
he is going to win, then he certainly wants back
in and he will probably, depending upon their margin in
(03:57):
the Senate, want to be and might like be the
Secretary of State.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Good Lord.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So again, the barometer their success can be measured in
Jared's interests. It also turns out that he's pretty savvy
in Trump world. He may be the savvyest. Certainly he's
one of the few people who survived four years in
the Trump White House, and then he went on to
raise billions of dollars against that experience. So in the end,
(04:26):
I think whatever we can say about this Trump era,
one of the things may well be the person who
comes out on top is Jared Kushner.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Wow. So if the Trump campaign feels it's got it
locked up or felt that a week ago, obviously the
Kamala campaign was feeling that as well. I mean, we've
seen her suddenly doing all the media she hadn't done
for a month. David Plouf's sort of cautioning in New
York magazine it ain't over yet, it's we always knew
(04:54):
it was going to be close. Then there's always the
sacrisanct mention of our internal numbers, the difference in value
between their internal numbers and the polls.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Well, I mean, I think there is a difference between
internal numbers and external numbers, and it can go both ways.
By the way, internal numbers can be an instance of
self delusion, while outside numbers might be accurate, or outside
numbers can reflect some fundamental bias and commercial instincts. So
(05:29):
and then internal numbers might be well, you know, we
need these numbers to be absolutely accurate. Without that accuracy,
we can't really run a campaign. So it can go
both ways. I mean there was another time story which
was obviously planted by the horror side, which essentially outlined
their two approaches, both the Trump side and the horroricide
(05:51):
to Pennsylvania. And the horrside was very systematic, very discipline,
very structure, knock on doors, flood the zone with volunteers,
spend an enormous amount of money in the state, versus
the Trump side, which is really all focused. This has
(06:13):
sort of been the new thesis for the Trump campaign
for the past year, which is to activate this hidden group,
find the Trump leaning people who customarily might not vote.
If we can focus there and bring those people out,
then that's our margin.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
So there are literally two sides and they are almost
diametrically opposed. I heard from somebody in the Trump camp
who said, well, one side is going to be right
and one is going to be wrong.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah. Yeah, Plus we have Elon Musk, who's now moved
to Pennsylvania until the election, paying people to find other
people who will come out to votes right.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Right. Again, that's either Elon in his you know, best
management pose, which is often brilliant. You know, we can
fire ninety percent of Twitter and it will still work
and it turns out it still does work, or we
can buy Twitter for forty four million dollars in alien
(07:20):
eight half of its audience. So which which elon? Are
we getting?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
An obvious thing to me that for Kamala House to
do at this point would be to start as the
Trump campaigner doing leaking names, trying out names for the
major positions in her cabinet. And I don't understand why
she hasn't done that, Why names haven't been dropped for
the guys who are going to seal the border.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I think it's just this caution, yeah, you know. I mean,
she had an interview yesterday the day before and she
was asked about this, and she called it discipline.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I was sticking to talking points.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Mean, and I guess there's obviously a fine line caution discipline. Again,
I can't help feeling that that comes out of they
thought that they were on top of the world. You know,
they had this brilliant August and they went in to
preserve that lead mode, and instead it's eroded. We'll be
(08:17):
back right after the break. We've also seen this week
extraordinarily odd behavior from Trump.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yes, I wanted to get onto that.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I can't begin to think what actually is going through
his mind. The music thing, you know, Trump the DJ.
I mean, you know I have seen him do this,
and I mean this is a man who does not
have one genuine piece of rhythm in his body, no
(08:58):
less his DNA, and he looks like a fucking dufis. Yes,
and I also know that he's been raging all week.
Uh huh, So it's really been internally Trump off the rails.
And that usually happens when he senses something going wrong,
He senses the forces against him, an indication that he
(09:23):
feels the pendulum swinging. It's an interesting thing about Trump,
a kind of point of sensitivity for a guy who
one might think has no sensitivity at all in his
own mind. The pendulum is constantly swinging, which almost sometimes
seems like a manic, depressive thing, you know, the mania.
(09:44):
And then he crashes.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think it was yesterday he went saying that he's
going to raise taris on importa goes by two thousand percent,
So that means your hundred thousand dollars Mercedes is going
to cost two million dollars. Why do you make an
announcement like that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Part of it is that I think that he discounts
that anything that he says will discourage anybody who is
in the Trump camp. They're in, you can't lose them.
But at the same time that gets him a headline,
and he has this other belief. It's very basic. If
you win the news cycle, you win good or bad.
(10:22):
It doesn't matter what you do, just the fact that
you command that moment, which gives nobody else attention.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I also had a thought. I mean, do you think
it's a first installment payoff to Elon Musk? You know,
he's going to essentially outlaw luxury cars. Everyone has to
buy a Tesla.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I think that whatever this Musk relationship is, there will
be two sides to it. There will be a payoff
to Musk and then anyway, it will end in tears.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yes, and we know whose tears will be shed.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, it's extraordinary that Elon Musk would not realize.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
This, none of them do. What's our FK Junior doing today,
probably shedding those tears that Musk were one day shed,
you know, suddenly irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
He's on the cover of the Post because of this
relationship with this New York magazine reporter.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Oh, that's that's fresh. Again today, I can't see that.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yes, if you had to find the novelistic episode of
this campaign, that would certainly be a contender.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Did you know her? Did you overlap with her at
New York Magazine Olivia.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Nuzzy, Yes, I've had a brief run in with her,
which I can't describe it in any ways. That would
be did your biblests perhaps.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Did your story share narrative elements of our FK Junior's story?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Well? No, I mean I mean I found her and
this was especially after Fire and Fury came out, when
she was constantly calling me, and I just found it
a kind of a creepy experience. And that may be
just because she is dogged in a way that reporters
are supposed to be and quite frankly never are. And
maybe that's her virtue, yes, but it also just to
(12:09):
me at that point felt creepy.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah. Well we should probe no further than that one.
So is there a concern in Trump's camp that he
is losing it? I mean dementia, I mean, not losing
the election.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Nobody has ever voiced that to me, And I think
that's difficult to say about Trump because there isn't a
normal baseline. Another word, you're usually measuring somebody's signs of dementia,
any older persons against they're doing something out of the ordinary.
Why are they doing that? That's a change? I mean
(12:45):
there is no change with Trump. This behavior. It goes
up and down, it's semi normal, then shocking, it goes
along and suddenly it's inexplicable again. I mean, this is
not now, so you would just have to say, well,
it's more of that.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
But in this moment the behavior seems both more pronounced
and just astonishingly careless. In this final furlong of the race,
like the Coachella rally that he none of the attendees
didn't get picked up because the Trump campaign refused to
pay the bus companies come and pick them up. I mean,
why did you do that in the final weeks of
a campaign.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
On the one hand, there's Harris. Her explanation was discipline.
On the other hand, him as the contrast gainer, he
has no discipline. Right, So you have these two extremes,
decide between them. A person who is way too disciplined,
locked down, inaccessible, unknowable, and then you have this other
(13:43):
person who has no discipline at all. What you see
is what you get, completely transparent everything that he's thinking
at a given moment. He expresses, Yes, Okay, you decide
which do you take.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Well with Trump, you've just described the personality of a
way would for year old child, So that would help
me make my decision.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yes. But on the other hand, the description of her
would be a fundamentally dishonest Personamala, someone who is so
disciplined that they won't let you know what they are thinking,
what they stand for, what they believe, what they feel.
Then you can only, I think reasonably conclude that they're
hiding something interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Okay. And in her case, she's hiding her incompetence, her
inability to step up, or does she just lacking you.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Know, I think that she's probably hiding her rank and
ferile ambition. The Democrats, you know, we are the most
ambitious people on earth. We would really do anything to
have power, to get ahead, to claim status. But also
when we do get that power, we're going to do
something good with it. Right That kind of forgives us, Yes,
(14:55):
and it may, I mean, it's certainly better than the
Trump side, which is I'll do anything for power, and
when I get it, I'm not going to do anything
good with it. The only difference there is I'm not
hiding this. I mean, I'm proud of my ambition. Actually,
my whole reason for existing is that I am craven
and feral.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right. But I mean, it's an absurd situation to think
that someone running for presidency is hiding their ambition. I mean,
no one but the most ambitious kind of personality, rightly, So.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Why is she doing that? And I think that begins
to prompt the question, well, she's not honest. I mean,
one of the many Trump breakthroughs is that he got
rid of the whole sanctimony of running for office, the
whole idea that you had to wrap yourself in flag
and morality and goodness, that you had to be a
(15:48):
servant of the people out of great civic responsibility and
determination to serve your fellow man. Nobody believed that anyway,
and he got rid of it, and so people said, oh, yeah,
that's kind of a relief. At least he's not lying
to us on that level, you know, that whole common thing.
I'm a member of the middle class. If I hear
(16:08):
her say middle class one more time, she has not
been a member of the middle class for years and years, reasonably,
her entire life has been about escaping being a member
of the middle class. Trump certainly has never made a
pretense of being of the middle class, having any interest
in the middle class, or.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Having any interest in the population at large. Basically, yes, yeah,
So Michael, we have a listener question. This is from
Ed Palpunt. Couldn't a Trump victory be better for the
Democrats in the long run since Trump would alienate voters
again and the midterms would shift to more Democratic power
in Congress.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I mean, I think that the proposition is, why don't
we destroy everything and start again? Yes, I'm a middle
of the road, cautious kind of guy, so that seems
a little extreme to me.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
A question for you. This is something you wrote, I
think probably about ten years ago, and I just came
upon it in some notes. How have evidently unstable people
come to have such access in institutional politics otherwise defined
by cautious tedium and procedural requirements. How has the mean
and nasty achieved such heights and a system that has
valued insisted on likability and conventionality. Do you have any
(17:23):
response to that today?
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I remember writing that I remember thinking I don't know
the answer to this.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, but I do.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Think that there's been this odd thing that has happened.
We used to exclude crazy people, I mean clearly crazy people. Yeah, extremest, unbalanced,
disturbed the people from public life. But somehow we united
that set of traits with opportunism. That became this powerful combination.
(17:55):
I'm crazy, but I'm an opportunist. And that seemed to
give people this advantage. And this may be a media thing,
it gave them this advantage because the premium is always
how do you break through the clutter, And to be
crazy and to want something seems to be a great
calling card. Yeah, should we reflect for a moment? James
(18:19):
on our interview with Barry Diller the other day, which
I thought was remarkable.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, I me too. He sounds like such a young guy,
such a fresh perspective on things. I mean, the thing
that I carried away from it was he's been a
lifelong Democrat, but his desire primarily was to have a
decisive result, even if it meant that Trump wins the election.
He saw the value in let's have it out, Let's
(18:45):
see that this is who we've become, because this is
who we just elected, and let's truthfully acknowledge why we
wanted that, why the majority wanted that.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, let's not pussy foot around anymore. Let's stare ourselves
in the face.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yes, I thought that was remarkable.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
And I have had the same feeling I've had for
years that I've had lunch with Barry, and those lunches
always last exactly fifty minutes, and then he gets up
and leaves. And at each of these lunches, I'm always
aware that they are going to come to an end,
and I'm always looking for ways to keep them going.
And I felt that way.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I know we could have gone for another hour. Yeah,
And I mean he obviously had a lot of respect
for Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And I think he nailed it. I mean that description
of Elon's mind as capacious but often adult, you have to.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Say, it's brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, that's all the time we have for today. We'll
be back next week. Fire and Fury.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
The podcast is hosted and executive produced by Michael Wolfe
and James Truman. The producers are Adam Waller and Emily
maronof Executive producers for Kaleidoscope are Mangesh Had Tigeta and
Os Valashian executive producers for iHeart On, Nikki Etour and
Katrina novel
Hosts And Creators
James Truman
Michael Wolff
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