Proof Trump, 79, Has Lost Grip on Reality: Wolff

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

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4.6 • 8.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to dissect the now tangible proof that Trump has lost touch with political reality. Beginning with a marathon State of the Union that was less a governing document than a 1-hour-and-47-minute exercise in self-mythology, aimed at his fan base, where reality was declared perfect even as polls told a different story. That disconnect between performance and public mood becomes sharper in Minneapolis, where a legitimate COVID-era fraud case that led to dozens of convictions was transformed by the ICE killings, tragedies so unpopular that it could cost Trump an easy political win. Now, JD Vance is dispatched to sell the punishment and absorb the blowback. Abroad, the stakes escalate: brinkmanship with Iran risks blowback Trump once vowed to avoid, while the grinding war in Ukraine—which he promised to end in a day—remains unresolved and increasingly perilous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the State of the Union, I thought was especially addressed to his fan base.
0:05.5	That was his hour and 47 minutes presentation.
0:09.9	Look at me. Look at me.
0:11.5	Constantly reminding people that this is his reality, insisting on his own fabulousness.
0:19.6	The country is, the country is not in good shape.
0:23.5	So it's as though there's an acknowledgement
0:25.3	that the movie is a stinker,
0:27.2	but you're going to go see it anyway
0:29.3	because Donald Trump is the star.
0:35.6	Michael.
0:38.3	Joanna.
0:39.3	I forgot your name for a second.
0:42.3	I literally forgot your name.
0:43.3	Literally.
0:44.3	That is not a great way to start the podcast.
0:49.3	I was going to start with a word cloud and we can choose word out of the out of the cloud
0:54.6	Iran Epstein Bill Gates the Clintons state of the Union J.D. Vance
1:02.7	Minneapolis Medicare I could go on. I like the idea and I would like to get to the word
1:10.2	shame and ashamed which I know something
1:14.3	about where that word has now slipped into Trump's rather frequent usage. So let's go to that
1:24.0	word at some point. Okay, well, we could start with that word because it's not a word traditionally associated
1:29.6	with Trump because people around him and in fact we see it as his audience or fan base.
	...

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