Why Megalomaniac Trump Is Wrecking Kennedy Center

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

News

4.6 • 8.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles as Trump aids declare the White House an “Epstein-free zone” where his name cannot be spoken. Wolff reveals how Trump’s go-to tactic of personal attacks and distraction still works just enough to avoid answering the one question he can’t touch, why the Epstein revelations are quietly reshuffling internal crises, and how figures from Deepak Chopra to Peter Mandelson to Silicon Valley’s self-styled gurus keep orbiting the same corrupt universe. Then comes Trump’s most compulsive, self-destructive obsession yet: his push to rebrand the Kennedy Center, justified by his own near-assassination fantasy and driven by a need to overwrite history with his name—even as artists flee, audiences vanish, and the politics make no sense. 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	His first idea was not to call this the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
0:09.0	His first idea was to call this the Trump Center.
0:13.0	He said, why does this have to be?
0:15.0	You know, Kennedy, that was such a long time ago.
0:18.0	And I was almost assassinated. Oh my goodness. That's why he said it.
0:24.1	So instead, they said, well, why don't we call it the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center.
0:34.4	So it's a perfect Trump setup. He goes for the absurd and he settles for
0:41.6	the outlandish.
0:46.8	Michael.
0:51.3	Joanna.
0:52.7	I literally think I have been hallucinating a truth social that I swore that I read about Trump saying he was nothing to do with Epstein and this Epstein stuff must end.
1:07.7	And I made our news editor look for it.
1:10.4	I was convinced I'd seen it. So it's so bad I am now
1:13.7	hallucinating truth socials about Epstein. But I know... Well, he has certainly said that. I mean,
1:20.6	innumerable times. I know, but the one I was looking for I couldn't find. Now I feel like
1:25.2	it's infecting me. It's infecting me like
1:27.6	RFK Junior's brainworm. But tell me something. And there are so many truth socials that
1:34.7	that I'm sure that that is in the way of monkeys typing a truth social that exists somewhere.
1:45.0	Yeah, it might be.
1:46.0	I can see it.
1:47.0	It was in all caps.
1:49.0	Well, of course it was in all caps.
	...

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