This Is Why Trump Revels In Incompetence

Inside Trump's Head

The Daily Beast

News, Society & Culture

4.3 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2026

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles unpack the spiraling fallout from the Epstein files, Ghislaine Maxwell’s calculated silence, and the widening circle of elites caught in the “Epstein class,” before turning to something even more alarming: the Trump administration’s brazen willingness to lie in plain sight. From the El Paso airspace shutdown and the balloon-versus-drone fiasco to Fox News alumni now running Cabinet departments at odds with one another, they examine whether the chaos is incompetence—or a deliberate governing strategy built on fear, loyalty tests, and all-or-nothing stakes. As prosecutions stall, investigations fizzle, and reality itself seems negotiable, Wolff argues that the disorder may be the point—and that the risks are existential. Is this simply dysfunction, or is there a dangerous method behind the madness that we’re only just beginning to see? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The larger question is, does the incompetence have a purpose?
0:04.6	This is the thematic point of this administration over and over and over again.
0:11.8	I am going to do it, and I am willing to risk everything to do it, to break the establishment or be broken by it.
0:18.5	And that is still the thing, the stakes that are going on here and going on now into this election year, he creates this existential structure, that he understands that in order for him to succeed, everybody else must be defeated. Everybody else must die.
0:38.7	We are in this all or nothing radical, dangerous, mortal condition.
0:48.1	Michael.
0:50.0	Joanna.
0:51.2	Joanna.
0:52.4	I mean, what did I miss?
0:53.8	And from your sick bed?
0:55.0	From my sick bed.
0:57.0	A glorious robe.
0:58.0	Do you want to stand up and go off?
1:01.0	No, I don't want to stand up.
1:03.0	But of course not.
1:04.0	But of course not.
1:05.0	Yes.
1:06.0	Yes.
1:07.0	For infrequent visitors to this podcast, where we try and figure out what an earth is going on inside Trump's head, I've been off this week because I had my second hip.
1:20.5	I was going to say transplant, but it's actually replacement.
1:23.9	So actually I can't stand up right now.
1:26.9	And I've had very little sleep, so I may not make a ton of sense.
	...

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