Trump's Staff Are Questioning His Mental Stability

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

News & Politics

4.6 • 7.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to break down the Vanity Fair profile that may have pushed Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles into dangerous territory, and the newly surfaced Epstein diaries that reveal fixation more than revelation. But the episode turns darker with Trump’s grotesque response to the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife—a moment that shocked even his own insiders. Wolff argues this wasn’t calculation or cruelty, but something giving way. And it leaves an unavoidable question hanging in the air: how long can a presidency survive when self-destruction is no longer strategic, but instinctive?

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0:00.0	The Reiner's were killed, as we know, in the overwhelming likelihood, is that they were killed by their son.
0:06.2	It had nothing to do with Donald Trump, who, again, in this instance, has to insert himself into the situation.
0:15.0	So he becomes the star of this.
0:17.3	It is not just that this is objectionable, but the fact that someone would say this is an
0:23.4	indication of their own alarming personal situation. Trump is off as fucking rock.
0:34.1	Michael.
0:36.2	Joanna. Oh, my goodness.
0:38.1	We got so much wrong in our last episode.
0:40.6	I want to do two quick corrections.
0:43.0	Did so much we?
0:44.6	Was it we?
0:45.5	No, it was me.
0:46.4	It was me.
0:47.5	It was me.
0:48.2	I'm putting my hand up.
0:49.2	I'll take, I'm willing to take blame for anything.
0:52.8	I love reading the comments because some of them are just, you know, duh, stupid woman. Of course you couldn't read a map. Sort of true. Anyway, of course it wasn't the I-95. I know this, actually. I didn't get stuck on the I-95 going the wrong way. It was the I, I think it was the I-45 or possibly the I-55, the road that runs through
1:12.8	Indiana. I don't remember any eyes. Where were you? Did we have a discussion about the roads,
1:17.3	about highways? Yes. In America? Yes. When I, for regular listeners, you might know that I went
1:26.7	into a long story about how I went the wrong way up.
1:30.5	How I remembered it was the I-95, because I've also gone the wrong way up the I-95 too in
1:36.9	Indiana, but actually, as various of you pointed out, the I-95 is on the east coast. This was going
	...

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