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Olivia Nuzzi: Has Trump Become Norma Desmond?

January 10, 2023
Notes
Transcript

Trump rarely leaves his ‘weird’ smelling, moldy mansion, he seems bored and tired, and D-List MAGA are his main loyalists now. Plus, Olivia and Charlie go all in on the parallels to the film, Sunset Boulevard. Olivia Nuzzi joins Charlie Sykes today.

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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:08

    Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. This is probably one of the most talked about articles written about Donald Trump in the last year. That’s saying a lot because the zone has been absolutely flooded. But Olivia Newton’s piece in New York Magazine, the final campaign has just I I think it’s hitting a nerve because if you have not seen it, the magazine’s cover photo of our article features Trump sitting alone at Mar a Lago.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:35

    It’s kind of a pathetic shrunken figure. She writes that one of his advisors told her his world is so so small and he does appear to be this lonely figure. The headline is the final campaign. Like, is it even a real campaign? What’s really going on?
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:53

    So by the way, thanks for coming back on the podcast, Olivia. Of
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:56

    course, thank you for having me.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:57

    And and happy birthday again. Yes. And I mentioned it. Your birthday is easy to remember because it’s January sixth, which means that you’ve had a you’ve had kind of a notable series of birthdays that haven’t you?
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:10

    I guess I have. Yeah. I maybe I should move
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:14

    it. No. No. No. No.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:16

    No. It just it just you kind of know something big is gonna happen on your birthday. Well, I wanna talk about this article and walk through, you know, where Donald Trump is, what his state of mind is, what you saw, but I have to tell you the image that it was just chef’s kiss was the fact that he’s obsessed with the movie Sunset Boulevard, you know, starring Gloria Swanson as the washed up lonely silent picture star Norman Desmond, who sidelined by the talkies and driven to madness, incomplete denial over her fated celebrity. And this is one of the great scenes in American cinematic history.
  • Speaker 3
    0:01:56

    You see, this is my life. It always will be. Nothing else. Just that. The cameras and those wonderful people out there in the dark.
  • Speaker 3
    0:02:11

    Alright, mister Demile. I’m ready for my cross
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:13

    head. Oh my. So you you can’t see that and read your article and not think Donald Trump is not fat elvis, he’s normal designate.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:34

    Even the architecture of of Mar a Lago, oh, or the architecture of Palm Beach, but, you know, it’s it’s this mansion from a similar era of Norman Jasmine’s decaying mansion in Hollywood, you know, on the opposite coast. And the more that I realized that and read about his and he’s mentioned since the Boulevard a few times publicly. And sort of one off statements decrying, you know, the state of the movie business or whatever. And then I realized that
  • Speaker 3
    0:03:05

    it
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:06

    kinda kept coming up. Like Stephanie Grisham, one of his press secretaries, wrote in her memoir from the White House here. It’s about how how he made her watch it. I camp David, and he was very, very excited to be he should never seen it before. And he was very excited that he got to be the one to show it to her.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:24

    And she wrote about how when he watched a movie, it was the only time that she ever saw him just sit completely still that he was not texting or tweeting or or giving someone orders. He was just sitting there the whole time watching. And I thought that was so megificent. And I just was thinking, this is a guy who wanted to be in show business. And told Marie Brunner for New York magazine in nineteen eighty that when he decided to go into the family business real estate instead he realized well, I’ll just turn real estate into show business.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:56

    I’m paraphrasing, but the quote was something you see the effect of real estate has to be show business. And the more that I was thinking about it, it just I the parallels are kind of undeniable. And I I watched that film a lot when I was trying to write this piece. To the point where I think my fiance started to, like, go insane. Our living room is just normal judgment all the time for, like, several days.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:19

    As I was trying to complete this draft. But it is it’s pretty incredible. I I don’t think Grisham actually wrote this in her book, but she she said something to be effective. I don’t think that he realized the parallels or how much he resembled normalized. Really?
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:34

    Yeah. Okay. So he showed this to Tim O’Brien who wrote the who
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:38

    wrote the
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:38

    Trump nation. And and in that scene where Norman Desmond’s crying, have they forgotten what a star looks like? I’ll show them. I’ll be up there again so help me. And Trump links over to O’Brien and listeners — Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:49

    — this is an incredible scene or what. Just incredible It’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:53

    funny. He he sent something to me in our interview where the reason I got thinking about Roman Jasmine, obviously, I’m not the first person by any stretch to compare them. I think Catherine Miller in The New York Times a few weeks prior to my article made a comparison herself for a very good piece about how you can both be totally irrelevant and and stating and very influential at the same time, which is a kind of a theme I kept returning to. But he was talking to me and I mentioned that he seemed disengaged and he was sort of isolated alone. And he wasn’t very relevant anymore.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:27

    And I was sort of, you know, tweaking him on purpose, enabling him to put in the conversation, and he said, well, I think I’ve always been relevant. I’ve I’ve been relevant from a very young age actually. I I think I’ve been in the mix. And I thought that was such a funny quote and I kept initially, I was opening the piece with that quote because it was my favorite thing that he said during our interview. And then I realized, oh, wait a second.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:50

    Norma Desmond said this. And when I went back and then started looking into it, I realized that he actually had pointed to that scene specifically when he was watching it with Tim O’Brien, which I just thought was amazing.
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:01

    That it seems to be such a key to understanding Donald Trump that his great fear besides losing is to be irrelevant. And he’s haunted by the thought that he might be ignored. I
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:12

    think so. I don’t think that this is a conscious thing. Right? Like, this is my hunch. I’m not his shrink.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:18

    He definitely does not have a shrink. But I think that this is something that’s, like, purely instinct for him. I I don’t think that he has much of an interior life. And I I I always come back to the this memory I have of I was at the Jelly Beast during the twenty sixteen election. And Michael Daly, a colleague of mine there who’s this legendary New York tabloid writer who used to work for New York magazine.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:41

    He came back from jury duty. And he said, you’ll never believe who was there and he was serving with Trump. He was running for president. And he said he just sat there and when we had to, you know, quiet and just sit. He said he he kind of just shut off and slumped over.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:58

    I’ll never forget this. He said he’s like a bag of cement. There’s no light on inside. And I I’ve never really forgotten that because it’s he does not seem to have an interior life. So I’m still
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:07

    obsessed with the Norman Desmond thing here. So you have this line. A washed up star, locked away in a mansion from the nineteen twenties, afraid of the world outside, afraid it will remind him that time has passed. So did you ever ask Trump directly if he saw himself in Norman Desmond? Did you ask about that?
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:24

    You know, I didn’t I I didn’t occur to me that I’d be making this comparison until
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:29

    after. Okay.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:30

    But I did ask then the campaign if they could ask him when he did not want to do follow-up interviews. He did not want to sit for a new portrait with us. And I asked them the interview was quite contentious. And I think once they realized that it was quite contentious, they just thought, well, fuck it. You know, we’re not gonna we’re not gonna cooperate anymore after this for her.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:52

    But in our fact checking process, I asked a campaign if they could ask him when the last time he watched the movie was, and they were totally perplexed by that question. They were like, we don’t know what? What does this mean? And I never did get an answer for me on that. So that’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:07

    interesting. You said that the interview was was contentious and didn’t wanna do it again. Okay. So you’re not exactly an obscure figure or a shy wallflower. What did they I think he’s not exactly a reader, Charlie.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:21

    What was he back thing. Did he just expect that he’s got this magnetic charm that he would somehow seduce you with his brilliance or something? What was he expecting this to be, like, why why did he sit down for this interview with you? I’m always fascinated about it. I
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:34

    mean, this is not my first interview with him.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:36

    Right? I know it’s not
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:38

    him a lot. I think he meets a lot of people and he talks to a lot of people and he remembers some things and he doesn’t remember other things. And I mean, same. I’m not even not a knock on his age or anything. I’m you know, how many times I’d be I see someone at, like, a party or something.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:53

    I have no recollection of having talked to them for, you know, half an hour at a different party. I think it’s probably like that on steroids for him. Yeah. So I think part of it is that he just kind of remembers selectively. Like, every time I talk to him, he brings up an interview that we had, you know, I think five years ago at this point, which is we’ve had, like, four interviews subsequently.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:13

    You know, I’ve interviewed him before that, and he just doesn’t you know, he remembers the one that, like, he remembers and that’s it. So I think part of it is he’s just not and he’s not exactly sitting around reading long form journalism or reading anything. You
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:26

    kind of met in a very interesting moment in his career. He’s announced he’s running for president in the United States again. He announced with great fanfare. And then pretty much nothing happened. I mean, you need him to say the real What’s the great answer?
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:38

    What’s the Well, in his mind, he thought it was a favorite. And then but then it was a damn squib. And as you point out, he doesn’t really go anywhere. Right? I mean, he stays in Mar a Lago.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:50

    Well, I Honestly, I was wondering if there was some legal reason why he was staying there because once I realized, oh, he has not set foot outside of Florida in weeks and weeks. I think perhaps since the midterm since his last midterm rally in Ohio. And once I realized that and I started asking campaign, you know, where exactly has he been? And they send me this list of eleven events that he’s allegedly done. But, like, five of them were videos.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:16

    Mister He was not actually at these events. Like, four of them were at Marlago.
  • Speaker 3
    0:10:20

    Like, they
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:20

    were all in Florida. And I just was I could see on house arrest, unbeknownst to me or something. I was very confused by and thought perhaps there was some explanation. You know, he doesn’t really have cause to be traveling very much, and there is not really a campaign to speak of at this point. And
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:38

    then he’s very defensive about this. You know, he he told you I’m done in Miami. Go to Miami all timing in Europe. Sure. You know, goes to Miami where he meets regularly with an impressive ideological diverse range of policy wonks, diplomats and political theories for conversations about the global economy and military conflicts and constitutional law just kidding.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:57

    Because basically, he just goes plays golf comes back and fucks off. He’s retreated to the golf course into Mar a Lago. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:04

    I mean, I I kind of thought, well, I was very confused because first he said, well, I don’t even stay at Marlago. And I you know, the way he said it, I don’t stay there. It sounded like I don’t sleep there? Like, I stay somewhere else. So I was like, what do you mean?
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:16

    You don’t stay there? Like, is he has, like, an apartment in in curbside or something that I don’t know about? And when I pressed further about it and I talked to the campaign some more, they were like, ah, you know, I think what he means by Miami is actually Doral. Which is his golf course down there. But, yeah, I mean, he really doesn’t leave and granted Mar a Lago is it’s an enormous property, not that he you know, travels the distance of the property.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:42

    It seems most days he just goes to his office, which is not that far from from the residence. And I I don’t think he’s spending his time at the beach or or, you know, on a boat or something. But it’s a beautiful place. If I lived there, I probably wouldn’t leave very much either. I barely leave my apartment I don’t have to now.
  • Speaker 3
    0:11:58

    But I’m
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:58

    not running for president. Well,
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:00

    that’s right. And, you know, it’s it’s a big country. So why is he running again? I mean, you know, you you’ll remind us that back in twenty sixteen, his original plan was just do well enough in the polls to say he could have won, and then he go back to the apprentice. Right?
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:12

    Mhmm. And then NBC cancelled contract and all of that stuff after the whole goal ofescalator races speech. But what is this new campaign about? I mean, you talked to so many people who are basically saying, you know, this is the what c list, d list people he’s surrounding. It’s very, very low energy.
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:30

    Is it just a revenge tour? Is it because he has to be in the spotlight? It’s not
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:35

    much of a tour. It’s more like a revenge residency.
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:37

    A revenge residency. Something like that. I mean, you you quoted one ex Trump loyalist who says it seems like a joke. So now he’s got a reasonably plausible comeback and he said they said the same thing about me in twenty sixteen and I proved them wrong. Mhmm.
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:51

    And he could again. Right? I mean I totally
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:54

    think he could. I mean, I I’m always wrong. I should reference this by saying, I thought that he was not going to actually announce this time. I mean, up until I was physically at Marlago, and I standing there, watching him come out on stage. And I still if you had, like, put a gun to my head, which honestly someone might there and asked me whether or not he was going to say, I’m running for president, I would have said, I still don’t think so because it just didn’t feel real.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:19

    Besides there not being any real logical reason to do it, besides just wanting to generate more attention. It just didn’t feel real and it still doesn’t feel real and it’s barely real. That’s probably why it doesn’t feel very real. But, I mean, his explanation is that he wanted to put his cards on the table and, you know, he’s very defensive obviously about the idea that he’s trying to clear the field or that he’s, you know, trying to intimidate someone like Ron DeSantis. You know, the the major explanations from the people around him and then people who know him as well as, you know, because he could know him, are that he’s just trying to remain relevant and generate attention or that this is part of a legal strategy and his lawyers have advised him that if he is you know, cocoons inside of a presidential campaign that that might help insulate him from a threat of prosecution.
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:10

    Yeah. Very defensive about all of these things, but he’s defensive about everything. So it’s hard to it’s hard to really assign value to to his specific defensive reactions. So let’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:20

    go back to that announcement, which which I, you know, used the word fanfare, and obviously, it was an underwhelming affair. And you were there. And I loved the stuff, you know, people in the audience checked their watches. They tried to leave the secret service agents, Yuan. You know, it was it was really a a cringeworthy moment.
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:36

    And then you well, you had this you had this one famous paragraph, and you know the famous paragraph I’m gonna read. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:43

    I don’t. I don’t.
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:44

    The air was heavy. With Olyander and Snipped greenery and sea mist colliding with mold and wood polish and hotel soap and the metallic vapor of diet coke in the alcoholic ferment of generations of cougars in Chanel number five.
  • Speaker 3
    0:14:59

    No.
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:59

    I love that. I love
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:01

    that. I’m surprised if that made it through. It was really a tribute to Marie Brenner who I who I mentioned earlier, she had these twin profiles of Trump won in nineteen eighty for New York Magazine. Which is one of, like, the first major long form pieces about him and one in nineteen ninety for Wendy Fair when he is in the midst of this economic and personal calamity. And he’s getting a divorce from Ivanka Trump, and he’s in the red, and everyone’s counting him out.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:29

    And he’s cocooned in Trump Tower, like eating french fries. And there’s obviously I saw someone who started covering him eight years ago. And I’ve covered him and I’ve interviewed him and the people around him during that whole stretch of time. I related a lot to Marie going back and kind of thinking through her decade of experiences in his orbit. And so I was using that as a guide, and she had this description of Mar a Lago, which really does smell weird.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:01

    As as smelling like something about, you know, old old yander at something else. And so it was really a a tribute to brewery for for people who are magazine nerds like myself, but it does smell weird there. You know, it’s just it’s an old place. On the beach. And so it’s very hot and humid.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:20

    And there are a lot of people coming in and out of there. So I I guess that’s why it smells all no weird. But it was a very weird night. It’s like what’s a weird night by Trump’s standards. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:29

    I’ve been to a lot of Trump rallies. I’ve been to a lot of weird events. In my eight years covering him. And it just it felt almost like, like being at someone else’s family’s function or something, it was like, this invite only thing where, you know, there wasn’t a ton of traditional mainstream press there. There really isn’t anymore in general compared to, like, twenty sixteen Trump rallies, let’s say.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:55

    And I don’t know. It’s just got this very strange, sad, hollow quality to it, and he seems so bored. I mean, I talked to him about this, and obviously he was like, I’m not bored. But it’s he really just seemed so checked out and, like,
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:11

    there, I
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:12

    went back and I was watching the twenty fifteen announcement speech a lot. And, obviously, Please no one yelled at me for saying this. It’s not like it was a good speech by, like, any traditional standard. However, he was articulating a very very clear worldview, and he was articulating it well. He wasn’t articulating it intelligently with energy.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:34

    Yeah. It wasn’t intelligence or anything. It wasn’t but but it was a coherent worldview. It
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:40

    was weird
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:41

    and scatterbrained and deeply offensive to, you know, most factions of the population is in some way or another, but it was a clear worldview. And it was like the first album problem maybe, like, you prepare your whole life for the first one and the second one, it’s like I was shit went down and starting over. But it was, you know, I am an insider and therefore I am the only one who knows how it works on the inside, and I’m the only one who can help fix it, like, every cop needs a criminal. That was basically what the gist of it was. And It worked.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:14

    And when you go back and you watch those twenty fifteen primary debates, I mean, obviously, it’s easy to say this in retrospect. I certainly wasn’t saying at the time, and then neither were most people. But there’s no one else on that stage. You know, the idea that, like, a fucking Jeb Bush god bless him, or a Rand Paul, or a Chris Christie, who’s going to be able to take him out when you watch them. They don’t even exist on that statement.
  • Speaker 3
    0:18:40

    But
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:40

    you just can’t even, like, you cannot focus on anyone else but him. He has this you know, he’s, like, this radioactive waste human form just drawing you to him. And it’s incredible to watch it now because like, wow, we were all really in denial. Those of us who who were refusing to admit what this was. So I do think he could pull it off again sure.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:04

    I mean, but, you know, he could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Well, he’s not gonna hit my bus. He doesn’t go anywhere. But if he started going somewhere tomorrow, he could get by bus. Anything
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:13

    So the the the contrast that that I took away from your article was that this Trump is not just bored. But tired and old. I mean, was that your impression? Totally. And I Because he doesn’t feel it and it feels very low energy.
  • Speaker 3
    0:19:27

    That
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:28

    and and no one would have ever said low energy about Trump five years ago. No. Your portrayals is the guy who’s isolated? And that and that seems to explain a lot of what’s happening. Right?
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:37

    I mean, he needs
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:38

    a an enemy. He needs to be focused on an enemy. And he was not one thing I think I forgot to put this in the piece because I just, you know, was struggling to finish this piece for for a long time. But I meant to include this, which is that some of his advisors kept talking to me about the fact that we’re we’re really trying to get him focused on Joe Biden. We’re trying to get him focused on Joe Biden.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:59

    And I kept laughing and thinking and saying, well, that was the problem. You couldn’t get him focused on Joe Biden last time. And in fact, you could not get anyone focused on Joe Biden last time. And the fact that he doesn’t give a shit about Joe Biden seems like it’s a huge impediment right now. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:16

    Because he wants to talk about basically anything else. He would rather talk about the media. He’d rather talk about, you know, layoffs in the media. And, you know, he’d rather talk about real housewives probably than talk about Joe Biden.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:28

    Mitch McConnell would get him going. Coco Chow? Yeah. A little bit.
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:31

    I mean, a little bit, but he’s just not animated by people who are his actual enemies right now. And I think that that’s been a problem and it’s, you know, they’re trying to focus instead on Hunter Biden. And it turns out that that was not a very smart strategy. He’s always best when he has his, like, backup against the wall. But I guess when the walls are closing in and everyone is against you because you have made everyone your enemy, maybe it’s a bit harder to be, you know, fighting.
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:59

    I don’t know. He seems very bored and very tired, and he does seem old, like, suddenly Suddenly old. And I used to think Suddenly old. I don’t I use he’s he’s old. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:08

    But I used to think, like, I think, I wrote this at one point when I in a story about Joe Biden, but, like, Biden seems very old and he seemed very old for the last several years and I’ve been covering him a bit. But Trump never seemed old. He just seemed crazy. Mhmm. And now Trump seems old.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:25

    He just seems like checked out and old. And if you replaced politics would like betting on horses or something, he would probably maintain, like, the same level of interest.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:39

    Well, you have some great quote. You have this unnamed adviser who said, in this business, you can have it and have it so hot and it can go overnight. And it’s gone. And you can’t get it back. I think we’re just seeing it’s gone.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:51

    The magic is gone. And then you look around, you know, who showed up at his announcement, you know, when Seb Gorka and Reim Kasam and Kash Patel and Devin Nunes are your stars, That’s the delist. It was delist Maga when Brickman the Frank Brickman what is he we wear suits that are in shape of a you know, Brick’s for the walls.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:13

    Right? It’s it’s very complicated. Yeah. Yeah. When when Brickman
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:15

    is in the VIP seat, we’ve got a problem. I just
  • Speaker 3
    0:22:20

    Yeah. In
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:21

    some ways, in fairness. In fairness, in twenty sixteen, it was a it was a total, like, Island of misfit toys? Yeah. Brickman. Just, like, an intern and Roger Stone and Sam number at Hope Hicks.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:36

    You know, there was like nobody on that campaign, nobody with traditional experience. It’s not as if he had, you know, long time veteran people working for him. And in this case, the campaign to the extent that it’s being run at all is being run by Susie Wiles who has a legitimate resume and has worked for some some real people going back to, you know, Reagan. And I think she worked on for Dan Quayle. And Jack Kemp.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:02

    But, like, it is pretty remarkable, at least for now, the extent to which a lot of the kind of mega regulars of people who you have seen defending him on television for the last, you know, five, six, seven years. All of these people are kind of gone, and it’s really like there’s some kind of creepy Disney, like, animatronic yeah. I can say that word, animatronic character, quality, to the people who are left, like — Mhmm. — it’s very strange. There’s there’s a lot that’s very vagus about it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:31

    It’s kind of weird that it’s not in vagus. So
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:34

    what about the family? That that was another word of the sub themes. I mean, as you point out, only three days before the announcement, Mar a Lago’s crawling with Trump’s, but at the announcement, it was just Eric and Lara Jared, but not Ivanka, and Kimberly Gilfoyle. So Don Don Junior was off somewhere. Avantka issues a statement that night that she’s kinda out of politics.
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:54

    Mhmm. Melania was missing her distinct polish and looked very unhappy. Bonnie always looks unhappy, I’m sorry. But I mean, so what’s going on there? Because it’s a very very small world, a very small circle.
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:06

    And it seems to be shrinking even within that very tiny family. It’s strange.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:11

    I mean, in twenty fifteen, you’ll recall if Ivanka Trump was not only there, but she was the opening act for her father. And she gave a speech in the atrium of Trump Tower about my father. She calls him and and welcomed him to the stage and her and Melania were dressed up in these cocktail dresses in the middle of the day. And they looked very happy to be there, and the whole family was there standing by side. And I kind of when I realized that Tiffany Trump’s wedding was the weekend before the announcement, The reason why I kind of booked a flight down there, I think was because I thought, well, they are all there.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:47

    It probably is going to happen because that makes sense. That, you know, all of the Trump’s are in one place. He’s gonna do the announcement on Tuesday, his weddings on Saturday, then, you know, half of them work on. It kind of paints to portray him as being very, very lonely. And I was talking to can’t remember if this made it into the piece, but one of the former advisers I was talking to told me that their understanding was that he did not wanna stand on stage with half of the family.
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:16

    And so he made the decision to stand on stage alone, and then he only, you know, exited and entered the room with Melania by his side. But otherwise, he was alone. And he is still alone. Yeah. He’d
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:27

    be better off if he spent more time alone. How did the Kanye West Nick twenties dinner come. I mean, here’s a guy that doesn’t go anywhere and yet comes down from the the residents to have dinner with a neo Nazi and a guy who was probably the most toxic anti semite in the country. I mean, how did that happen? I mean, in
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:46

    Trump’s telling, it happened because Kanye called him and was in need of some advice and he’s just too generous and decided to give it to him. And he had no idea. He was conflating his views on Israel with him being just outright antisemitic
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:01

    and
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:02

    praising Hitler. But he’s very defensive about it, obviously, and he said something to the executive I’m not familiar with Kanye’s work. I thought it was a really hilarious and bizarre defense of himself in that context. He claimed to have never heard of Nick Fuentes before, which in fairness, that might be the case. But, you know, I brought this up to him.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:20

    I said, well, even if that’s true, isn’t it the job of your staff? Any staff surrounding a former president is there to, in some way, gatekeep and prevent you from meeting with people like this, preventing you from having these objects disasters. And if you had better staff around you, wouldn’t you have not met with them. And him and Wiles it was excuse me. Wiles who was on the call were kind of, like, shouting over each other at me.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:47

    And saying no, you know, everyone’s great, and they have a great team around them. But it just seems like he’s got these idiots around him or no one around him at all, and there’s really no I mean, look margery Taylor Green on her iPhone with DT on the call passing the phone over. Right? People have a direct line to him now that every chief of staff in that White House tried their hardest to prevent. That’s being the case.
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:09

    Right? I mean, everyone was trying to kind of create a barrier between all of the crazy people trying to get in touch with Trump and Trump and all those people who might serve as that barrier are now gone. I mean, Jared and Ivanka in the White House say what you will about them seem to be pretty devoted to keeping people out of the Oval Office who were trying to influence Donald Trump for, you know, their crazy ends. And there’s no one who who seems to give much of a fuck about that anymore who’s willing to be around him anymore. And he’s got these young assistants, people who don’t really know anything who don’t have political experience around him, and they’re just facilitating what he wants.
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:51

    What’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:52

    the great segue to this week because you had this something of a paradox where Donald Trump announced he was ready for his close-up and now endorsing Kevin McCarthy as the leader of the Republican Party. And at least for the first few days, no one switched the vote. He did not flip a single vote. And people like Lauren Beaufort actually called him out on the floor, pushed back on him, Matt Gates said it was sad and said he was never very good at HR. And then Gates in order to suck up a little bit, nominates him, votes for him on the floor, And Donald j Trump, on the second anniversary of January sixth, right around there, gets one vote.
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:31

    One vote. And people laugh Now in the end, he was making the calls, and and that scene that you’re describing, where Margaret Taylor Green’s holding up the phone from Donald Trump, She’s trying to show it to the the the congresswoman from Montana, and he he brushes her away that he doesn’t wanna talk to her. But in the end, you know, McCarthy’s elected and one of the first things that Kevin McCarthy says is I wanna thank president Donald Trump, you know, that we should not question his influence. So what are you making that? Because, of course, Trump now is obsessively doing a victory lap saying, see, it was me.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:04

    I did it. I am still relevant. They did not ignore me.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:07

    Okay. I think it’s exactly what it looks like. It’s exactly like the campaign has been this entire time so far. I was thinking back to the twenty fifteen primary again and a lot of Trump’s pitch was, okay, these guys in the Republican establishment don’t like me. Fuck them.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:26

    I don’t like them either. And they don’t like you, the American people, and they don’t work for you. And so we’re gonna screw with them and make the party more better reflect my days. And I think there’s a chance that it’ll change going forward, and he’ll he’ll kind of get his Mochopath and figure out a way to intimidate the Republican Party with a threat of his base turning on them again like he did rather effectively for a number of years. But I think for the moment, I mean, how frightening is he stuck in his house in Florida playing golf, not holding rallies.
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:03

    Yeah. Nobody seemed
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:04

    to forget it. Yeah. Not
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:05

    not in touch with his face. I mean, I think a part of it is, like, he’s this very he’s one of those weird characters who not totally dissimilar from a lot of politicians and fairness who really just feeds off of energy from other people. And I think more than most really requires the energy of
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:23

    other
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:23

    people in order to have energy himself, whereas there’s people, like myself, I’m completely drained from interactions with other people. Right? Like, I go to a party and I need to, like, type it out for several days and not just for a storm myself. But he’s the opposite. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:38

    Like, he needs a crowd and and that is what what feeds his soul to the extent he has one. And I think that part of him being just cocoons there in his molded mansion, part of it is just it’s kind of depriving him of that of, like, a connection to the zeitgeist and and a connection to other people and, like, the vibes that he requires to be powerful. And so he’s not right now. But that’s why
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:06

    it’s also was important to engage in a little bit of ego service that even though he played no significant role in the outcome of that, Kevin McCarthy felt the need to at least not say that he was that he was, you know, powerful and and influential. And that seemed like more like an act of ego bomb than than a recognition of the act true political reality. Oh, yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:26

    You know, when you
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:27

    don’t switch a single vote of your loyal, loyalist until the very, very last moment after they get everything they possibly want, But Kevin McCarthy, you know, felt, you know, we gotta make sure that grandpa’s feelings aren’t hurt. Grandpa’s very, very sensitive about this. We gotta throw him something. Look.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:43

    Kevin McCarthy is, like, a cocktail shrimp of a man. Like, they’re obviously obviously all of his lately have been completely mortifying and anyone else would have, like, just killed themselves from embarrassment. But, yeah, I think it was totally just to appease him. And but we’ve seen this forever. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:01

    Where people publicly talk about Donald Trump just to talk to Donald Trump and they say things that have no connection whatsoever to reality just to appease him and fodder him and be able to, you know, send it to an aid and tell them to print it out put it on his desk or something so that they see it. I I don’t think it’s anything new for any member of the Republican Party to be kind of debasing themselves publicly and saying something that is not true just to flatter him.
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:28

    How worried do you think he actually is about the legal threats against him? About the lawsuits against his company about the possibility he’s gonna be indicted in Georgia, the possibility he’d be indicted by the feds. To get a sense he’s worried about it, is he hoping that everybody will rally around him as the murder victim. You know, how does this play into this weird, tired, isolated, old figure that you described. Is it wearing one of them?
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:54

    Or do you just don’t wanna give a shit? What do you think? I
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:56

    believe I don’t know. It’s hard to get a sense of how he really feels about anything. Right? It’s not like he’s gonna tell me he claims that he is not and that it doesn’t factor into it, and he’s not worried. And, you know, he repeatedly, I think, like, nine times and thirty minutes.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:13

    Told me I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. But then, you know, there’s some people I talked to around him who said that he spends a considerable portion of his day. Being briefed on on whatever updates there are from his legal team and staying in the loop on all that stuff and dealing with all of it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:31

    And I I imagine that more of his day is taken up by all of that than by the business that’s kind of vaguely running for president at this point. So after this
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:40

    piece comes out, Trump obviously did not like the piece. He did not appreciate the comparison with numbers. I
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:46

    don’t think he read it. I don’t think he read it, but I don’t think he likes what he saw. We
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:50

    called you a whack job and dumbers a rock. And and then they suspended your account on true social. Taking
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:56

    an attractive Well, what do you make
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:58

    it that except that Donald Trump sees everything through that lens? Right? You’re you’re either a tracker or not a tracker. So we get it through that info. Right?
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:05

    I mean, isn’t that the way his mind is programmed? Yeah. I mean,
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:08

    I think he thinks that that has to be the most hurtful thing to say to a woman because he thinks that the only thing that a woman could value is being not just attractive, but attractive in his eyes. I thought it was very funny. And I
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:23

    thought
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:24

    the dumbest rocks in particular was very funny. But I it was interesting how little pickup it got you know, like, it was covered by the tabloids. It was covered by the New York Post and the Daily Mail and, like, the the sun — Yeah. — usually. Right.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:39

    The the yeah. The usual suspects. But it was nowhere near what it would have been just a couple of years ago. You know, he’s kind of shouting into the void on that social network that he has. So I figured he wasn’t going to be happy with it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:54

    I mean, if he saw it, I figured he wouldn’t be happy with the cover, and he wouldn’t be happy with the headline, and I think I predicted on CNN that he would call it fake news
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:01

    and and
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:02

    not read it beyond that. It was definitely it was interesting to see how minor a blip the reaction to that was compared to the way that, you know, just a few years ago, if he sent anything or he tweeted at you or something. It would certainly ruin your week, but it was time very well for me. I was boarding a plane to the Bahamas and I shut my screen off I shut my
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:26

    phone
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:27

    off and didn’t look at it for eight days and and then it flew over. Well, that was a that was
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:33

    a great life So I I anticipate that I might get some blowback because we’re laughing about this and treating him as if he’s not serious. But, you know, the reality is is that he still is a threat. He still is out there and you you quote a former White House official telling you, I think if he’s even our nominee, we may lose our country. Even if I don’t believe he can win a general again, I think he could burn down the country. I think it’s that dangerous.
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:56

    I’m terrified.
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:58

    And this comes from
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:58

    somebody that worked with Trump in the White House. Mhmm. So, I mean, that’s the real irony. And somebody senior,
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:04

    by the way, it was it was someone senior in the White House who who said that to me and someone who does that say that type of thing lightly. I mean, of course, yeah, if he we’ve seen what his supporters are willing to do to try to contort reality to match what he claims it is. So I don’t think that it is smart or it hooves anybody to count him out. And I I don’t think it makes sense to count him out at this juncture. When we’re so far removed from no one else’s in the race yet.
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:37

    Right? Except I think Aframan announced, but not their public in race. But he certainly shouldn’t be dismissed. But I also think I mean, it’s this tough thing, right, where nobody wants to dismiss him and be wrong. Nobody really wants to pay too much attention to him and, you know, create him by giving him free media.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:01

    And I don’t think anyone any of us really knows how to handle him at this point right now. I’m in
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:07

    this strange twilight zone.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:08

    It’s kind of a
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:09

    limbo limbo campaign, the Fony campaign. Olivia Newton’s latest piece is the final campaign about Trump’s low energy reelection bid, it is the cover story in the January second issue of the magazine. It is an absolute must read. Olivia’s Washington correspondent for New York Magazine. Olivia, thank you so much for coming back on the Bulwark podcast.
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:29

    Thank
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:29

    you very much for having me. Thank
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:31

    you all for listening to today’s podcast. I’m Shirley Sykes. We will be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again.
  • Speaker 3
    0:37:44

    Former Navy
  • Speaker 4
    0:37:45

    SEAL Sean Ryan shares real stories from real people, from all walks of life. On the Sean Ryan show, wealth strategist, Rob Loon If
  • Speaker 5
    0:37:55

    you could solve a problem in this world, better than anyone else, you’re gonna make a lot of money. And that’s really where the business is ultimate goal is whether it’s your business or a manufacturing business it’s about solving a problem and making a bigger impact in people’s lives than anyone else on scale. I mean, I’ve been trying to scale my business, but I can’t find somebody that conduct these interviews. Yeah. A
  • Speaker 4
    0:38:15

    Sean Ryan show on YouTube or wherever you
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:18

    listen.
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