Well, it's the one and only
time in my life I ever bought cocaine.
00:00
I was I was a boy from Nebraska.
00:04
There was Bobby Kennedy,
the celebrity in our class.
00:07
He was early in his drug,
using and dealing career, relatively.
00:10
We got back to our dorm, and,
I don't know,
00:14
maybe we did our own lines then,
00:16
and, and, so I get a call on the phone,
the, of course, on the landlines
00:19
at the time and phone in my dorm room rang
and he said, yeah, it's Bobby.
00:24
He said, you took my straw man.
00:30
I'm Joanna Coles,
this is the Daily Beast podcast,
00:35
and we have a wonderful conversation
for you today with our guest,
00:37
the writer, the humorist,
the former media soothsayer Kurt Anderson.
00:41
And as Donald Trump was surfing
the wave of fame that would land him
00:47
astride the world stage, Kurt
has been chronicling him
00:51
and the functioning of America,
as he calls it, in multi color detail.
00:55
I urge you to stay
for the entirety of this conversation
01:00
because we start with the very compelling
scene of him purchasing cocaine
01:04
from Robert F Kennedy
Jr when they were both at Harvard
01:08
together, and I demand every detail
of that transaction.
01:12
We have a total recovered memory session,
and that somehow feels like the
01:15
perfect Prolog to the America that Kurt
has been writing about ever since.
01:20
Now, before we get into it,
just some background on Kurt, who is,
01:25
of course, the co-founding editor
of spy magazine, the brilliantly
01:28
satirical magazine
that first labeled Donald
01:33
Trump a short fingered vulgarian.
01:36
And Kurtz, the creator
and the longtime host of the now defunct
01:39
but brilliant show for 20 years,
studio 360.
01:43
He's written by selling novels, cultural
autopsies and political takedowns,
01:47
including
You Can't Spell America Without Me,
01:51
which is a delicious collaboration
with Alec Baldwin as Trump's ghostwriter.
01:56
And long before President Obama mocked
Donald Trump at the white House
02:00
Correspondents
Dinner, Kurtz had already diagnosed him
02:04
as the patient zero
of our national derangement.
02:08
So let's get into it.
02:12
that Donald Trump is going on
a congratulatory
02:16
tour of the Middle East this weekend, but
I think he's going to feel a little hung
02:20
over, over one disappointment.
02:24
And that would be not winning the Nobel
Peace Prize.
02:27
Oh, he didn't win it.
02:31
And come on, he solved seven wars.
02:32
Some with countries
that weren't even at war with each other.
02:35
And I only started or tried to start 1
02:39
or 2 in the United States by sending
in the National Guard to various cities.
02:42
Now, you know, you're being cynical,
Kurt Anderson. No,
02:45
no. The thing about
and as he goes through, Israel,
02:49
which he's already doing as people
watch this, I suppose you can bet
02:53
he will be saying, you know, you know,
he will mention the Nobel Prize.
02:58
I guarantee you he will find ways without,
03:02
you know,
I directly explicitly dissing the heroic,
03:06
Maria Maria Corina machado in Venezuela,
03:12
who who has supported who has made
at least lip service support of his
03:15
thanks to him and thanks to him
03:20
for putting a $50 million bounty
on, Maduro.
03:22
How is it possible that no one's
come forward with that?
03:27
By the way,
50 million bounty on the head of Nicolas.
03:29
Well, it's not killing him.
03:32
You have to.
You have to get him. You have to.
03:34
We have to bring him to the state.
03:36
To the DEA, and they have to convict him.
03:38
So not just some Joe in. Nevertheless.
03:40
$50 million is quite an incentive.
03:43
For just one of his minions.
03:46
I guess, to to snitch or something.
03:48
Life changing. It's life changing.
03:50
Well, and maybe Trump will repeat that.
03:52
But anyway, he will, he will,
03:54
he will
find it difficult and he will find it.
03:57
Okay, come back and tell me I'm wrong.
04:00
But I bet he will more than once
repeat something about the Nobel Peace
04:03
Prize and and why he should win
if not this time the next time.
04:07
Right. And that she's a nice lady?
04:12
Yes, a nice lady,
but he's actually stopped seven wars.
04:14
I wonder if, because Marco Rubio
has been a big fan of hers
04:18
and I think wrote in support of her
getting the Nobel Peace Prize,
04:21
that actually he will face some backlash
from Donald Trump.
04:25
You wonder about Marco Rubio,
who was until,
04:29
you know, the day before yesterday,
04:31
in terms of his foreign policy opinions,
everything Trump is not, you know,
04:35
I mean, he was a conventional conservative
interventionist, right?
04:40
So, yeah, we'll see.
04:44
I mean, he, you know. Yes.
04:45
Did you work to prevent me from getting it
while Netanyahu is doing his best
04:47
And and also, of course, Netanyahu
put out an AI version of an enormous
04:51
Nobel Peace Prize medal
hanging around Donald Trump's neck.
04:56
It's is you know, Trump is a cartoon.
05:01
And people like Netanyahu
know that the cartoon larger than life.
05:03
Forms of flattery is what he likes.
05:11
It's like when Trump himself,
when that AI video came out of Gaza
05:14
as a resort
that Trump and Netanyahu are running.
05:18
Right. He shared that.
05:23
I mean, you know, again,
as I've argued and written
05:24
a book about the blurred line
between fantasy and reality
05:27
in fantasy land, of which Donald Trump is
the Lord and master is
05:31
is is harder and harder to
to suss out what's real and what's not.
05:37
I'm sure there will be people who see this
Netanyahu distributed,
05:41
picture of Trump with the,
you know, foot wide,
05:45
Nobel Prize
hanging from his, his, his neck as Israel.
05:50
So you mentioned that Donald
Trump is a cartoon president.
05:54
We have obviously a cartoon
head of health and Human services,
05:58
a man that I referenced
in your, introduction today
06:04
because you bought cocaine off him
at Harvard.
06:08
I want a blow by blow account
of that transaction.
06:11
Please spare no detail.
I need to understand it.
06:16
It was in a dorm room.
06:19
Was it outside of campus?
06:20
What was his hair like?
What was your hair like?
06:23
Blow by blow. Well,
that was that was just.
06:26
A rejoicing natural, affinities.
06:29
No. Well, I that's the one and only time
in my life I ever bought cocaine.
06:32
I was I was a boy from Nebraska.
06:37
There was Bobby Kennedy,
the celebrity in our class.
06:41
Was he the celebrity in your class?
06:44
And as handsome as could be, I mean,
you know, I felt he made me feel gay.
06:46
I mean, he was so handsome.
06:50
He was. And he was cool.
06:53
And, you know, Bobby Kennedy and,
you know, the Kennedys in 1972, 73,
06:54
my freshman year, were still, you know,
the dynasty that they are now, whatever.
07:00
And also a tragic figure
07:05
because his father and his uncle
had been killed in cold blood within.
07:06
The field while he was,
07:10
you know, not many years ago,
his father four years earlier.
07:11
So, anyway, he was also,
I said my, my, my roommate.
07:14
And I said, oh, we should try cocaine.
07:18
And, where did you get it?
07:21
And, well, Bobby Kennedy was the answer.
07:22
And so, and I knew.
07:24
And why was he the answer?
07:26
Was he a notorious drug dealer?
07:27
Well, whoever I asked said, yeah,
go to Bobby.
07:30
And, you know, and we had, I guess,
a mutual friend or two already and, and so
07:34
I, the connection was, the phone call
was made and he said, yeah, come over.
07:39
And his laconic, preppy Bobby Kennedy way
when his voice was still not
07:44
whatever destroyed by years of cocaine use
07:49
or the illness that he says he has
that has done his voice anyway.
07:51
And my roommate and I went over there,
you know, a four minute walk
07:55
from our dormitory with our $40,
which was a lot of money in 1973.
07:59
Right.
And you went over to to Bobby's room.
08:04
To Bobby, Bobby Kennedy, RFK, the future
Health and Human Services secretary.
08:07
His room, in in Hurlbut the dorm.
08:13
I to say welcome to this, but,
you know, so come on in
08:21
and and, offered us,
08:24
his brother Joe, future congressman,
from Massachusetts, was also in the room.
08:27
So, you know, if I'd snitched, I,
you know, I could have whatever,
08:32
taken them both the family down.
08:36
And so there they were,
and we were talking, and he, as one did,
08:39
or as he did
anyway, offered us some weed, and,
08:44
a Beckham in case, which was so perfect
08:51
in this preppy Ivy League thing
that people did is play backgammon.
08:53
Of course, back
then at least, and was full.
08:58
Of course, which. Is full of of marijuana.
09:01
It was just like, I don't know, like
probably a pound of marijuana in there.
09:03
And, I said,
I don't have as much as you one.
09:07
I'm going to go get my stash or whatever.
09:09
He said he left the room.
09:11
He and Joe both left the room. So Mark,
09:12
my friend, and I were both there, and,
09:16
and we started looking around, you know,
he was gone for like five minutes.
09:20
And, for instance,
we looked in his address book.
09:23
I didn't put this in the Atlantic
Magazine article.
09:25
I wrote about it because it was irrelevant
to the serious case I was making it
09:28
because Bobby Kennedy last year
in my piece, but in his, address book.
09:31
Oh, there's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,
there's oh, look at these phone numbers.
09:36
And there was,
I swear, Pope Paul the Sixth,
09:40
it said Pope Paul
the sixth and had a number in Rome.
09:44
we thought and we wrote it down,
09:49
you know, we wrote all these numbers down
in the minute we had before he returned.
09:50
So that was that was a bit of color.
09:54
You wanted color.
You want to blow by blow.
09:56
That is a great detail.
09:58
You got the Pope's number
and you go, yeah, yeah.
09:59
I'm glad your early journalistic chops
served you well.
10:04
Well, I don't know about journalistic,
just nosy little brats, but.
10:08
Well, in how strange
he would leave it out there.
10:12
I've since actually seen his sex diary.
10:15
Someone at the
Daily Beast has a copy of it.
10:18
Which is so it's interesting
that he leaves his things around.
10:23
Yeah, well, he certainly did.
Well, he's a reckless character.
10:26
I mean, the thing about him, I.
10:28
Well, I don't want to interrupt the
the transaction.
10:29
So you're busy scribbling down the number.
10:33
Three, scribble down one of the scribbled
down the numbers, and he came back and,
10:35
you know, and he put out
10:40
a, you know, a line of coke and,
we tried it with his little.
10:42
He handed us a little piece of,
you know, one each straw, that one he'd
10:47
gotten from the freshman dorm
next to or the freshman,
10:50
eating place next to his dorm.
10:54
Okay, what do we know? Sure.
10:57
you know, he said bye.
11:03
And and did he give it to you
in a little packet?
11:05
Did you measure it on a scale?
11:07
You know, I'm an unreliable witness,
I don't remember, yeah.
11:10
So you get a little packet.
11:13
just a little tin foil packet
rather than, like, a full on drug dealer.
11:14
A little tiny one inch baggie
probably didn't exist 53 years ago.
11:18
That professionalized sense? Yes, exactly.
11:23
And he was early in his drug,
using dealing career relatively.
11:25
So anyway, so he took it
and, that was that. And,
11:29
about
we got back to our dorm and, I don't know,
11:34
maybe we did our own lines then and, and,
11:36
so I get a call on the phone, the,
of course, all my landlines at the time
11:42
and the phone in my dorm room rang
and he said, yeah, it's Bobby.
11:45
He said, you took my straw man.
11:51
I said, what is it? You took the straw.
11:54
And apparently I had pocketed
not wanting to steal Robert
11:57
F Kennedy Junior's Coke
special cocaine, straw.
12:01
But it turned out it was his special
cocaine straw because he believed,
12:04
as he explained to me,
it had crystals growing.
12:09
It has crystals in it, man.
12:12
Meaning somehow the.
12:14
What? The repeated use, repeated.
12:16
Use of mucus and cocaine buildup
12:17
made it something
that it was very precious to him.
12:20
And therefore now he's the head of,
health,
12:24
the health system of the United States.
12:26
So there you go. It's a line drawn.
12:28
So anyway, so I said, okay,
he said, bring it back.
12:30
I said, okay, and I did,
and he took it and like,
12:33
almost virtually
slammed the door of his dorm room.
12:36
So that was the end of my, my relationship
12:39
with my drug
dealing relationship with Bobby Kennedy.
12:42
But I saw him around.
12:45
We were
we were in concentric circles of people,
12:46
many of his friends and roommates,
and things were mine.
12:49
And so I saw him and heard stories of him.
12:52
And he was
he was a reckless, entitled guy.
12:55
And and they all, even though they were,
you know, he had the celebrity
12:57
radiance of and, you know,
there was nobody well, actually,
13:02
Meher Bhutto, this son of the then
13:06
dictator, president of Pakistan
and a pal of Bobby's, naturally.
13:09
But anyway, he was a reckless character.
13:15
And one of my friends
tells me the story of driving with Bobby.
13:17
Because he had a car.
13:23
None of the rest of us did, driving
through this tunnel in Cambridge, mass.
13:24
In Harvard Square at night,
turning the lights of the of the car.
13:27
So he so it was like, what are we doing?
13:31
What are you doing?
13:33
And it was that kind of thing.
13:34
There are many stories like that of him
just behaving recklessly
13:35
and heedlessly because, well,
he was young.
13:39
When you're young,
you don't think you can die.
13:42
But you know, this entitled,
13:44
you know, Rich Kennedy brat.
13:47
So anyway, that's my experience of of,
Robert Kennedy Jr.
13:50
Okay. Well, we'll come back to that.
13:54
And why
you think Trump chose him in a bit,
13:55
but you've also had a ton of interaction
with Donald Trump.
13:58
I mean, he's been around in the media
for 40 years.
14:01
So of you, you're you're younger,
but you've had a lot of interaction.
14:04
And very early on
when you were at SPI magazine,
14:08
you recognized that he was a character
that certainly needed lampooning.
14:11
was, yes, he I am younger,
I'm much younger.
14:18
I'm I'm in fact younger than Trump.
14:21
Than you are of than me.
14:24
Just fair, fair, fair comparison.
14:26
Yeah. When my. Two years.
14:31
We started, we started spy magazine,
this satirical magazine,
14:33
influenced by all kinds of magazines,
including Private Eye, which is.
14:38
The British magazine,
which is still going, which is.
14:42
Still growing and different
than we were doing spy.
14:44
We're doing more journalism in less kind
of in sheer humor than Private Eye does.
14:46
But anyway, so we started this thing.
14:49
It was based in New York,
was about New Yorkers
14:51
for its first year or two
before we kind of went national.
14:54
It was successful and influential,
and it was the pre-Internet age.
14:56
So you could actually
start a magazine and be
15:00
central to the conversation as you can.
15:04
Well, and as one person said,
you were the zeitgeist
15:06
when spy came along,
you changed the conversation.
15:09
Well, it was it was.
15:12
We were lucky in many, many ways. And we
I think we did what we did.
15:14
Well, anyway, right away,
15:16
because my partner and co-founder,
Graydon Carter
15:19
had, done
a profile of Donald Trump in GQ magazine,
15:22
as we were plotting and scheming
and trying to start spy.
15:27
And he came back and to me and said,
you know, he's he's he's,
15:31
you know, said, well, I, I'm not sure
I'd even heard of him at that point.
15:36
He was not that well known.
15:39
In 1984 or 5 as we were, you know.
15:41
Anyway,
he said he's, you know, he's a bully.
15:43
He didn't say bully at that time,
but he's a liar.
15:47
Prior to Bridges and Tunnels,
you know, want to want to,
15:50
you know,
make it in the big Manhattan world guy.
15:55
And and he said and he just, you know,
made fun of his cufflinks and things.
15:58
But he said, you know, for a guy,
I don't know, six, 1 or 2, whatever he is,
16:02
he has the smallest fingers
I've ever seen.
16:08
He has just weirdly small fingers.
16:11
So then cut forward a couple, three years
and we're thinking of the epithet
16:13
we would attach to him,
as we did all recurring figures,
16:18
whether you're Henry Kissinger,
whom we called every time we mentioned him
16:22
in the magazine,
socialite, war criminal Henry Kissinger.
16:25
And so we we came up with various, well,
a couple of different ones
16:29
for Donald Trump,
which we decided didn't stick.
16:31
And then we came up with short
fingered vulgarian Donald Trump.
16:35
And that called him that again and again
and again.
16:38
And, and people still say it today
and still know it today.
16:39
Marco Rubio,
who, stole the Nobel Prize from, Donald.
16:43
Trump for his friend Machado when.
16:48
He was running for president
and whenever that was, 2016, I guess.
16:50
Yes, he he brought up on stage
16:55
short fingered vulgarian
and as we had honestly never done,
16:58
never intended, never thought of related
to the size of his penis.
17:02
So, I mean, like he.
17:06
Became at the time,
a new low level of campaigning, right?
17:08
There was so much outrage that Marco Rubio
had somehow alluded to that.
17:12
Well, he alluded to it.
17:16
And again, I mean, I was watching on TV
17:18
and thought, I mean, people talk about,
oh, it's like an acid flashback.
17:21
Suddenly this little silly thing
that we'd done, you know,
17:26
30 years earlier is like on a debate stage
for the Republican
17:29
presidential nomination
was incredibly credible.
17:33
Of course, Donald Trump being Donald
Trump, went right into it and said, no,
17:36
I'll tell you, my mom in that department,
17:40
meaning his manhood,
and I got no problem on the stage.
17:43
So it was it was the cartoon had begun.
17:47
Yeah. The the cartoon had begun.
17:51
Well, and also, didn't he,
17:52
at one time
send you a note saying how good you were
17:55
when you when you left spy magazine,
you went to edit new magazine.
17:59
Didn't he send you a note
saying that you were very good?
18:03
And he sent
he said he'd sent Graydon and me
18:06
notes and letters threatening lawsuits
while we were doing spy.
18:10
You know that, you know,
he said we were trying to extort him
18:13
to get, spy carried on his short lived,
unprofitable failed air shuttle.
18:16
He he he had his lawyers and his letters.
18:22
Yeah. One that lasted
two and a half years and lost money.
18:28
One of his many unsuccessful business.
18:30
Like Trump University, Trump steaks,
Trump warship.
18:32
Well, this actually had airplanes
and it was flying.
18:34
You know, it was it was the eastern
air shuttle until it became,
18:36
the Trump air shuttle, I
18:40
mean, and he bankrupted it once again.
18:41
But he and he, he had heard
18:45
he knew that we were doing
a working on a big story cover story,
18:48
as it turned out, about his wife
at the time, his first wife
18:51
and his lawyer sent a letter threatening
suit over that. So.
18:54
And he never sued us?
18:58
Or not, of course, of course.
19:00
Because, like, why he was sensible then?
19:02
Because why waste money on a lawsuit?
19:05
You know you're going to lose it anyway.
19:07
So anyway,
I yes, we had interactions with him
19:09
and then so I leaves by become
editor of New York magazine.
19:12
Shortly thereafter and
19:17
there's in a trade magazine
about the media.
19:19
There was a big story
about me and my new editorship and,
19:23
here's what I was doing and blah, blah.
19:27
And they quoted Donald Trump at length
19:28
about how great I was doing, how exciting
I'd made the magazine and all this.
19:31
And there's a big pull quote,
you know, these large quotes,
19:36
from him about that
and how exciting Curt was that?
19:39
He tears out that page
19:43
of that magazine with his
19:46
presidential pre presidential famous
19:49
Donald Trump Sharpie writes, circles
the whole quote and says
19:52
so true about his the quote of him
and then signs.
19:56
Of his own quote unquote you.
20:00
And then signs at Donald Trump
in that familiar, you know, EKG.
20:03
Sort of pubic hair type of.
20:07
Yeah. From, birthday.
20:09
I said. Yes, and send it to me.
20:11
And, and I forgot about it, and I found it
when I was moving
20:13
a couple of years ago and
20:17
was happy that I about to discover it.
20:19
There was that then when,
20:23
we did, I did a story, New York magazine,
where the great writer Lisa Birnbaum
20:26
went down to the new Mar-A-Lago to spend
a weekend there and just talked to him and
20:30
and just and wrote this piece
that was hilarious and wonderful.
20:34
That was almost entirely him
talking verbatim.
20:37
And she did it as a, you know,
weekend was at Donald's in three acts
20:40
as screenplay writing, you know, dialog.
20:45
it's as though he wrote
maybe he dictated it, but it was like
20:51
as if he wrote it and typed it
and and, it was it was not bullying.
20:54
It was not angry because I was in this
position as editor of New York, that he
21:00
feared in some way or wanted my band.
21:04
It didn't want to alienate me. Right.
21:08
Because he was just a real estate guy.
21:09
I mean, whatever he wasn't,
he had no power.
21:11
And so he wrote me this.
21:14
I say he was just complaining.
He was sorry.
21:15
He was sad. It made him unhappy.
It wasn't good.
21:17
And I wrote him back
and and I have all this correspondence.
21:20
I wrote him back and I said,
Donald, you know, it was all verbatim.
21:23
She didn't really say who
it was, just you and you and,
21:26
you know, Ivana and stuff and people
21:30
talking said, yeah,
I know, but it was still so unfair.
21:32
Which is which again, I mean, it's
all these aspects of Donald Trump
21:36
that we see
now, like, no, they're just mean to me.
21:40
They're making me look bad,
even though it's just my words
21:43
you were saying you use my words
to make me look stupid.
21:47
So anyway, so now I had many, many,
and then when,
21:52
when I lost to New York magazine,
when I was fired from New York magazine,
21:55
I immediately went to the New York Post
to say what a bum I'd been
21:57
and how shitty I'd been as an editor
and how awful.
22:01
Anyway, so that's that's, you know, again,
22:04
the Donald Trump pattern
35 years ago was clear.
22:07
And so, I mean, you've written about this
22:10
and you came up with another
great phrase, the fucking king of America.
22:14
How did we get here?
22:19
Because people knew from the beginning
that he was a bragger,
22:21
that he was probably showing off,
that he'd lurched from,
22:25
you know, he was constantly teetering
on the edge of bankruptcy.
22:28
How do we get from there to here?
22:33
Yeah, well, you know, he had
he had talked about
22:36
and flirted with running for president
22:41
since I was around 1988,
I think was the first time.
22:45
Which I think it's important to say,
because people often,
22:49
situated back at the 2011
white House correspondents.
22:52
But it was very clear
he had bigger dreams.
22:55
Well, he had bigger dreams.
22:57
And they were like all of his dream,
like winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
22:59
I mean, they're like,
preposterous at the time, right?
23:02
And so we,
we like we actually commissioned polls
23:05
to say who once Donald Trump be president,
we found that 4% of Americans did.
23:08
We made a big thing of that.
23:12
Look, you got a 4% groundswell.
23:13
So he and he did it again
and again and again every four years.
23:17
He would do it because I'm Donald Trump,
I'm a great businessman.
23:20
And of course, as, for instance, the Trump
air shuttle and the and his football
23:22
and his professional football league
at all these businesses, large and small,
23:27
which all fail,
show he's not a good businessman.
23:31
He at all what he was was a good guy
playing a businessman on The Apprentice.
23:35
Which right, made him a bunch of money
and made him famous and got him elected
23:41
president, got him like the president,
as I've also written over the years,
23:45
because, you know, starting with John
F Kennedy in television
23:49
and certainly through Ronald Reagan,
an actual movie star turned president.
23:53
You know, politics,
especially presidential politics,
23:59
became this kind of subset
of show business and performance.
24:03
I mean, you know, yes,
FDR was on the radio and stuff, but
24:06
like with TV and then and all that came
with with my Reagan through Bill Clinton
24:09
being on talk shows and then Donald Trump
taking it to the next level.
24:16
That's how that's partly
how we got here, that celebrity and,
24:20
and this kind of show business
performance ability, got us here.
24:24
as a really successful television writer
friend of mine
24:32
said to me in early 2016
before, when he was still like, really?
24:35
You know, you're not going to be nominated
or like and said, no, he is.
24:39
He's going nominate is going to be elected
because people hate politicians
24:42
and he doesn't come off
as a normal politician.
24:46
And I and I have never forgotten that.
24:49
My friend Paul Simms said that to me
because it's exactly right.
24:51
So how do the Democrats
sort of countermand that?
24:55
Because arguably Joe Biden was
was almost pre television as a candidate.
24:59
They took over from him.
25:04
And arguably if it hadn't been for Covid,
he might not have done.
25:06
But he squeezed through
25:09
and he very much felt
like the last of a line of politicians.
25:11
How does the Democratic Party or the
25:15
or any opposition to Donald Trump surface
at this point?
25:18
Well, I mean, Joe Biden,
as I said when he was running, I mean,
25:23
because I was 20, I mean, you know,
the pollsters often run generic
25:27
Democrat, not not a specific person, but
a generic Democrat against an incumbent.
25:30
I thought, well, don't,
Joe Biden is the embodiment
25:34
of generic Democrats of a certain age and,
and and still won
25:37
because the generic Democrat beat
this freak who was President Donald Trump.
25:42
Right. The first time.
25:47
So how do we do it?
25:48
Well,
you know, just as the media are stumbling,
25:49
have stumbled around for a decade, like,
how do we cover this guy
25:53
like and still stumbling around
like because it's hard.
25:56
It's a new thing.
We are in a new period for now.
25:59
I won't say, for better or worse,
for worse and horrible, you know,
26:02
in every way,
including this, it's it's and,
26:06
you know, at Huffington Post,
26:09
I think covered it
his his first campaign as a.
26:12
Yeah, we're just gonna put this
in the entertainment section. Hahaha.
26:15
Well, no, you know, so
nobody's know how to cover him.
26:18
I mean, tried and,
you know, in the first term
26:26
behaved as just normal Democrats
as though this is a momentary blip away.
26:31
And it will return to normal.
26:37
We haven't, entered a new era.
26:39
Well, we had and we have, in so many ways.
26:41
you have to look at what he did
and what he's done and what he does,
26:48
which is to say, understand
26:53
a presidency in addition
to one hopes, substantive legislative
26:56
accomplishments and stuff, which, yes,
the Biden administration had as a show
27:00
as Zelensky did in Ukraine
in a very different way.
27:05
I mean, Zelensky, you know, actor played
president, became president.
27:08
And has been in a heroic, amazing
president of a country
27:12
at war against a much bigger aggressor,
a neighbor.
27:16
So Donald Trump in his in his way
27:20
and he, as a young man,
as a 20 year old said,
27:24
yeah,
I thought about a career in show business,
27:26
but I want to be in real estate, but
I'm going to turn it into show business.
27:28
He said that, and so that's that.
27:31
He does that and, you know,
27:34
he's he's an idiot about many
things, is stupid about many things.
27:38
performative show
business instincts are are incredible.
27:44
And and how to keep the attention
27:48
every day as much as he can.
27:52
And again,
one of the things that struck me
27:54
when we were doing spy,
you know, 35, 40 years ago,
27:55
was I'd never seen anybody
so craving, yearning
27:59
for any kind of attention possible would,
you know, call up,
28:03
talk to reporters on the television
pretending to be his PR guy, John Barron?
28:08
And and just craved it.
28:15
And like, you know, the old phrase no,
28:17
no publicity,
all publicity is good publicity.
28:20
I mean, that Donald Trump
28:24
premise unlike anybody I'd ever seen.
28:28
Like, like an addict is addicted to drugs.
28:30
To me, his need and desire
for attention of any kind.
28:32
Now, preferably,
you know, the kind of attention
28:36
that the New York Post
gave him with a front page
28:39
headline saying, best sex I ever had, said
Marla maples about, you know, or.
28:41
His or she was surprised
to read that headline when she saw it,
28:45
because he'd obviously just found it
in you. Literally.
28:48
And there's that was recurrent.
28:51
He was telling them this and, and
but she was somewhere in the background,
28:54
said Marla. That's true, isn't it?
28:59
So. And she said, yes.
29:00
but no any I mean, he so
breaking norms and, and
29:06
and being the ultimate publicity
whore of our time was his, his M.O.
29:11
And also what I think is interesting
29:18
is your analysis of him
as a television star.
29:21
Clearly 14 seasons of The Apprentice
and then obsessive
29:24
chronicling of who was taking over
from him.
29:28
Arnold Schwarzenegger did a,
29:31
Martha Stewart did a season.
29:35
They both got fewer ratings than he did,
and he was beside himself with.
29:36
Free Love, talking about how he then
social media existed, which again.
29:40
Well, that's what I was going to ask you
about the segue to social media.
29:44
Obviously, he's got his own now.
29:47
After he was booted off Twitter,
he created truth, Social
29:48
Justice, sheer skill in managing
29:52
to stay on top of whatever
the dominant media is at the time.
29:55
What is that about?
30:00
What is that,
as you say, addiction to attention about?
30:01
Because most people would just be
30:04
in the fetal position
with a 100th of the attention.
30:06
No, it's entirely true.
30:11
Well, because, you know, we
30:12
I mean spy treated him as effectively
a cartoon character from the beginning.
30:15
And he kind of treats himself
as a cartoon character.
30:18
And, and and again, one of the probably
the great profound problems
30:21
to my way of thinking about social media
is that it
30:26
and the internet is it makes all of us
treat our adversaries,
30:29
the people we don't like,
whatever, as not real humans
30:34
that we talk about dehumanization,
that's a real thing and it could lead
30:37
to has lead to violence
will lead to more violence, no doubt.
30:40
But the thing of like, well, this is
this is not a real person
30:43
that I'm, that I'm saying these savage,
horrible things about online.
30:46
They're just somebody online.
30:50
They're just like, in a game or cartoon.
30:51
sociopath, the psychopath of Donald Trump,
which is,
30:56
you know, all about
no human empathy for anybody.
31:01
I mean, social media. Great.
31:05
I'm just I'm just just viewing my lies
and fantasies
31:07
and and insults
and there's no accountability.
31:13
It doesn't matter.
They're not real people.
31:16
So. So it was a it was a natural sort of
31:19
infrastructure
for his pathologies, really.
31:24
That's an interesting way of thinking
31:27
about an infrastructure
for his pathologies.
31:28
And what does it I mean, you've met
and you've known over the years,
31:30
lots of moderate Republicans,
lots of people.
31:34
Who are child of moderate.
31:37
Well,
I'm tired of conservative Republicans,
31:38
but who would now be the worst
kind of rhinos on earth?
31:40
So what do you think
about the people around him
31:46
that initially understood he was a cartoon
and thought, this isn't serious,
31:49
and then watch their party co-opted by him
and then
31:53
all, all his ministers around him,
all his cabinet secretaries around him
31:57
fawning over him
even when they know this is nonsense.
32:01
Yeah. I mean, they didn't do that
the first term.
32:06
The the difference between the first term
and the second term is so striking in
32:08
It's not just that
he is now actually exercising power
32:12
rather than just,
you know, using his bully pulpit to
32:15
failing to really do much,
32:20
he surrounded himself
the first term with the people.
32:25
You're supposed to you consider Mitt
Romney to be secretary of state, you know,
32:27
almost like General Milley.
32:31
We're just kind of normal, you know.
32:33
Remember Rex Tillerson on the.
32:36
Toilet, you know, and and,
32:39
you know, and he was
he was still playing by the rules.
32:42
Breaking the norms, but nothing like
32:47
the like the truly terrifying,
32:50
and and historic horrors
that he's, he's doing now.
32:53
So he was still, you know,
32:57
you know, he was still
33:01
even though he had been elected,
not as a normal Republican.
33:02
He'd been elected as well and lied
and was brilliantly a brilliant liar
33:05
about, like basically running
as Bernie Sanders economically.
33:10
I will give you better Medicare.
33:14
Either Wall Street is picking your pocket.
33:16
They're destroying your towns.
33:18
So he was truly look at the last two
minute ad he did in his first campaign.
33:20
It could be Bernie Sanders and
and so well, okay.
33:25
This guy is different
than other Republicans.
33:29
You know, he's he's he's he's he's
33:32
he's a tough Republican
who hates the same people we do, you know.
33:34
The the swamp of Washington, he's
going to drain.
33:39
Well that and he doesn't like black people
and he doesn't like immigrants
33:42
and he doesn't like gay people.
33:45
You know,
the cultural thing that had been the,
33:46
you know,
the part of the Republican strategy
33:49
for since Richard Nixon, really
33:53
the Southern strategy was called back
when he, first did it.
33:56
But he was he was he was still a
he was playing, pretending
34:00
to be a different kind of Republican
in that he was he wasn't for Wall Street.
34:04
He was for Social Security
and for Medicare.
34:09
Well, you know, it was it was a perfect
pitch to the white working class.
34:12
So that that was that was I mean,
and Steve Bannon was around who really,
34:17
you know, to my mind had it.
34:24
If he if if Donald Trump had governed
like Steve Bannon wanted him to,
34:26
he he would have been
he would have been reelected.
34:30
Because if you had really if he had really
said, I'm not a regular Republican
34:34
and I think Medicare is great
and I think we should expand it.
34:38
And Bernie had a good idea,
and let's have mass deportations and let's
34:41
stop by those two together, which is that
basically the Steve Bannon platform.
34:47
Would have been, would have like
34:52
worked wonders, but it didn't because,
because the Republican Party
34:55
except for Donald Trump and now is
34:59
you know, various MAGA
35:02
people surrounding him in
Congress are still, you know, are not
35:06
you know, they are not a working
class party economically.
35:10
So that contradiction still exists.
35:13
And he's giving it up.
He doesn't even lie about it anymore.
35:15
He just he doesn't
he doesn't really even pretend that he's,
35:17
you know, against Wall Street
or against big business. So,
35:21
you know,
and that's, that's how we got here and,
35:27
and the ability to because it's
now all about
35:29
paying attention to me.
35:33
I'm, I'm, I'm a man of action.
35:34
I'm a president of action.
35:36
And he is in a certain way, right?
35:37
I mean, whether it's, you know, I'm, I'm,
I'm having a summit with Putin in Alaska
35:40
that does nothing. I'm I'm going to Israel
because of peace.
35:46
Well,
not peace. It's a ceasefire and good.
35:48
But like we'll see, right?
35:51
I mean, I'm calling all the generals
together with my head of the war depart.
35:52
To tell them they shouldn't be fat
and, and and and and and now I'm
35:56
sending in the National Guard to Portland
because it's a hellhole.
36:00
I mean, and again, I, you know,
36:04
I, I, I, I it's a hobby horse mine.
36:07
But this, this not just blurring
a fiction reality, but like, but,
36:10
we have a media sphere that allows him to
36:15
if people don't look beyond
36:19
him or beyond Fox News to to think, well,
I guess Portland is burning.
36:21
I guess we should send the National Guard
there.
36:25
Just this, this, this basic
36:27
falsehood fabrication
that is the basis of of this
36:31
probably unconstitutional deployment
of, military forces.
36:36
It's it's it's well enough.
36:40
And now we've got your old college
36:43
buddy, RFK junior and Health and Human.
36:46
Services, my dealer, not my. But.
36:49
Well, you just your dealer, right?
36:52
I love that just your dealer.
36:53
Now, telling people that not only does
Tylenol in pregnancy
36:55
cause autism,
but I've circumcision causes autism.
36:59
He also appears to be an addict
for attention.
37:02
He was certainly a drug addict
for a long time.
37:05
Why do you think that Donald Trump found
him so compelling?
37:10
Donald Trump, born in 1946,
37:23
14 years old
when Jack Kennedy was elected president.
37:26
I mean, he is he is
he is is in that first boomer year
37:29
and the boomers are the people,
you know, who were young people
37:33
during the Kennedy Camelot magic.
37:38
I mean,
and actually the older generation as well.
37:40
But that's why because he's a Kennedy
and a good and a good looking one.
37:42
They're not all good looking.
37:46
He's pretty he's pretty good looking.
37:49
And, you know, for a.
37:50
Married to an actress, married
to a Hollywood actress, major.
37:52
Hollywood actress and,
you know, and and buff and built
37:54
and looks great for 71,
37:58
you know, so that's why
38:02
and and and I don't know how
38:04
shrewd or clever
he was about this kind of California
38:07
new agey, now called Maha
part of of the coalition of people
38:11
who don't want vaccines and think,
you know, additives of food are bad.
38:16
All the things that but many of us which.
38:20
Agree
and that people are too obese and out of
38:22
food industrial complex.
38:26
You know, 20% of Bobby Kennedy's
38:28
prescriptions for the health system go.
38:31
so he but but it was it was the celebrity.
38:37
It was the it was a he's
a big, handsome guy who's already famous.
38:39
You know, central casting, I mean, Pete
Hegseth or or Kristi Noem or, you know,
38:44
they are like people in some third rank
38:49
television show,
but they're they're pretty in their ways.
38:52
They're good looking.
38:55
They're they're they're, you know, like
characters in a video game or something.
38:56
But but Bobby Kennedy,
I mean, this is Bobby Kennedy.
39:02
He has his own,
you know, comes in pre marketed with fame
39:05
and had been we I say
39:09
because I once ran a very adoring cover
story on him in New York magazine.
39:13
And you know, he was doing good work
as a lawyer, as an environmental lawyer
39:18
Cleaning up the rivers and things. Yes.
39:22
You know, but and then, you know,
at the turn of the century,
39:25
as the internet came and, you know,
you could, you know, you could
39:27
have all kinds of falsehoods
and conspiracy theories like vaccines.
39:33
And he took advantage of that
39:38
and became the poster boy for that,
as I wrote about in my book Fantasyland.
39:39
Anyway, so he, he, he was he was a Kennedy
39:43
and he obviously had
a, had a flexible view of, you know,
39:47
of empirical reality,
you know, which which, you know,
39:53
the whole MAGA thing is, is like,
39:57
you know, island of broken toys of all
40:00
kinds of different conspiracy theories
that come together,
40:03
you know, whether it's Jeffrey Epstein,
plausible
40:07
conspiracy theories about his pedophilia
or Bobby Kennedy and about, you know,
40:11
the vaccine industry working with Fauci
40:17
and the pharmaceutical industry
to cause the pendant, all all that.
40:20
So, so, I mean, believe what you want.
40:25
You know, it's your plot,
your own adventure.
40:27
So when when Donald Trump gets up there
and does his Tylenol spiel,
40:30
which has no science behind it whatsoever.
40:35
And consists of just simply saying
it's bad, it's bad.
40:38
News, it it out of it.
40:41
I longed to ask Melania, did she tough it
out when she was pregnant with Barron?
40:42
Yeah, I don't know. She sure.
40:48
what do
you think he's thinking in that moment?
40:53
Is he thinking anything?
Why is he doing that?
40:57
It's just the attention. Drug, I believe.
40:59
I believe it's just the attention.
41:02
And, you know, Bobby, Bobby says this,
so I don't know anything, so I'll just.
41:04
I'll just repeat it.
41:09
you know, and, you know, he's taken
and all of his children have taken it and,
41:12
and his wife lives have no doubt
41:16
Well, and also the weird thing
is that the one thing that worked from
41:22
his first administration was Operation
Warp Speed, which suddenly,
41:25
in the moment now he's hanging out with
Bobby Kennedy, doesn't work so well.
41:29
So he immediately walks back from it,
which also seems crazy.
41:32
I mean, you know,
he had a couple of things
41:37
that he could take credit for that being
the biggest one, being not getting the way
41:39
and proper letting the government properly
fund this incredible new technology
41:43
that got us a incredibly effective vaccine
in, in a matter of months, in a year.
41:47
Right.
And was the envy of the world. Correct.
41:52
And so but, oh, this is these
41:54
anti-vax nuts,
that are part of my coalition.
41:59
Don't like that. Okay.
42:03
I gotta, you know, play both sides of it
as he does on so many things, right?
42:04
I mean, he's he's
because he's Donald Trump who's, who's
42:08
one of whose political superpowers
is, you know, contradicting himself
42:13
within 24 hours
or within an hour or within five.
42:18
Minutes. And like, it doesn't matter.
42:20
And, and in a certain way,
because and in this one of his
42:22
overwhelming successful things in
42:28
this administration
is doing so many different things
42:29
A new thing, a new thing
and some new atrocious, horrific
42:35
violation
of the Constitution or norms or whatever.
42:40
So there's this too much.
42:42
It's what Steve Bannon said years ago
that we're going to, you know, the whole
42:44
strategy is to flood the zone with shit,
you know, and my God, he's done that.
42:48
And so the media,
the news media and Democrats like how,
42:52
how do we how do we focus?
42:57
What do we focus on.
42:58
So the one thing that does seem
to stick to him and unnerves
42:59
him and unnerves the people around him
is Jeffrey Epstein in the story
43:03
of Jeffrey Epstein
and their friendship for 15 years.
43:06
Did you ever come across Jeffrey Epstein?
43:10
I didn't have that privilege of coming
across Jeffrey Epstein, although,
43:13
you know, people I knew did and,
43:17
you're a contributor, Michael Wolff, sir,
43:21
and my friend at the time and still,
certainly did.
43:23
And people were aware of him as this
43:26
interesting, highly interesting,
43:30
unusual rich guy character.
43:32
But no, I never did.
43:35
But they they obviously were, you know,
they had much in common as as bridge
43:37
and tunnel boys who made money
in their variously shady, sketchy ways
43:41
and, and and came from Brooklyn and Queens
43:47
and moved to Manhattan and, you know,
43:50
as Donald Trump said of Jeffrey Epstein,
43:54
likes likes of girls really young.
43:56
So no, but I never. Laughing at that.
43:59
I don't know why I'm laughing about that.
44:02
Every time I do, people write in and say,
this is about yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
44:03
don't make it funny,
but but it's hard not to because it's
44:07
because it's such a peculiar situation.
44:11
Final question then,
do you think that Jeffrey Epstein.
44:13
Well,
how do you think Jeffrey Epstein died?
44:18
Well, I, I if I had to bet money,
44:20
I haven't studied it carefully, but
44:30
but I've read fairly carefully
about the circumstances, and I,
44:33
disbelieve extraordinary
conspiracy theories
44:39
until I'm, I can be persuaded
that they're real and and this one seems
44:43
conspiracy theory that somehow,
44:51
just as, you know,
the speaker of the House is now
44:54
keeping Congress the House out of session
in order to prevent Epstein's
44:57
the Epstein Files from being released
that somebody thought like,
45:01
I've seen better die
or you're in trouble, Mr.
45:06
President, you know, I don't know.
45:09
I don't know that that's true.
45:11
But as far as allegations or suspicions
45:12
go along with so much of the
45:15
the unusual connections
and coincidences around
45:19
Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes
go, it's it's plausible.
45:23
But if I had to bet $10,000, I'd bet.
45:27
Yeah, he killed himself.
45:30
But, Anderson,
such a treat to talk to you.
45:32
I love hearing your sort of vision
of the world and your observations
45:34
and also your strange interactions
along the way
45:38
with the people who I mean, Donald Trump
really stands astride the world.
45:41
Nobel Peace Prize or not.
45:46
He's the most talked about man
in the world, which is all he ever wanted.
45:48
Is exactly right. And yet.
45:52
Yet I think he's the
45:53
the hole in his soul and his inability
45:56
to be satisfied or happy
or content with life
45:59
to me, is still manifest and apparent. So,
46:03
I mean, that's at least I,
46:07
I take some consolation in that belief.
46:09
When you come back
and and talk to us again, I'm.
46:12
I found that
a wonderfully stimulating conversation
46:21
with Kurt,
and I really want him to come back,
46:24
because it's so helpful
to think about the rise of Donald Trump
46:26
on the world stage
as not just politics as normal,
46:30
but as a cultural phenomenon
that we have all been privy to.
46:33
And of course, we've watched
it happen through television
46:39
and through social media.
46:41
And it's just it
sort of says so much about all of us.
46:43
Anyway, if you have been
thank you for joining us.
46:47
Don't
forget to join the Daily Beast community,
46:50
and please subscribe to this podcast
wherever you get your podcasts.
46:53
If you're on YouTube, you can press
the button to join the community below.
46:57
Don't forget to be a beast.
47:01
As our first lady would have us say,
I want to thank our special
47:03
beast membership tier Karen White,
Heidi Riley, Connie Rutherford,
47:07
Sharon Shipley, Andrea Hodel, and free DC.
47:11
Whoever free DC is, it's a great,
nom de plume.
47:15
And just to remind you, will be back
on Monday with David Rothkopf.
47:20
And Tuesday,
we'll be going back inside Trump's
47:23
head with Trump chronicler Michael Wolff.
47:27
Thank you to our production team,
47:30
Devin Roger Reno,
and of us and our editor, Jesse Millwood.
47:31