Trump Lets Slip What's Got Under His Skin: Wolff

Inside Trump's Head

The Daily Beast

News, Society & Culture

4.3 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

INCOGNI Deal: To get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan, go to https://incogni.com/beast Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to examine why Donald Trump’s very public irritation may reveal more than any document dump. As the Epstein files unleash a rolling wave of headlines, Wolff argues the real story is not what’s newly uncovered but how the sprawling release has diffused attention away from Trump and onto a widening cast of peripheral figures—a dynamic he says Trump has repeatedly relied on to survive past crises. Drawing on Wolff’s firsthand encounters with Jeffrey Epstein and his introduction of Steve Bannon into Epstein’s orbit after Bannon’s White House exit, the conversation traces how resentment, rivalry, and obsession with Trump bound those men together, even as Trump now casts himself as the victim of a conspiracy involving journalists and old adversaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:27.7	perfect find today. We had supper last night and you came in and as we were eating, the president
0:36.2	was raging against you on Air Force One.
0:39.6	Me and the president.
0:41.0	His line now about the Epstein files appears to be he's exonerated and you...
0:46.6	Are the cause of all of his problems.
0:49.2	You sleast-back journalist Michael Wolfe and Jeffrey Epstein were conspiring to bring him down.
0:53.8	That's what he takes from the Epstein files. That's what he takes from the Epstein file.
1:00.0	Michael.
1:00.8	Joanna.
1:01.7	We are back in the studio.
1:03.4	Thank goodness.
1:04.4	And I have my little walker tucked in the corner.
1:07.6	Thank you, everybody who's told me about your hip replacements.
1:11.4	Let's not display the walker. It's not displayed. It's tucked away. And by the, by this time next
1:16.2	week, I will be done with the walker. Although we will soon all be with walkers. So I, we should
1:21.2	maybe practice. Well, the only reason I've got a walker is because soon I'll be up to run
	...

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