The Daily Beast Podcast

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles with a story Trump World would rather bury: his legal pursuit of Melania Trump after she threatened a $1 billion libel suit over his reporting on her ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Wolff details the surreal effort to serve the First Lady—lawyers refusing papers, process servers turned away, Trump Tower staff claiming she lives there while she avoids being found—and explains why he sued first under New York’s anti-intimidation law. The legal farce opens onto something larger: a family operating in secrecy and fear, a president trying to “serve” his wife even as control slips, and a White House where avoidance has become strategy. As Trump’s foreign policy grows more erratic and Europe edges toward war, the question lingers: is Melania’s disappearance just legal gamesmanship—or another sign of a presidency retreating from accountability?

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?

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to reveal stories behind newly released Epstein photos. Together they sift through the blacked-out faces, the Mar-a-Lago-style party shots, and a younger Steve Bannon seated in Epstein’s ornate study—the man he once admitted was the only figure in 2016 who truly scared him. Wolff explains why these images are surfacing now, how both parties are weaponizing them, and why they revive long-buried questions about Trump’s ties to Epstein. Coles ends on the unavoidable question: Are there more Epstein and Trump revelations still waiting to be discovered?

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to unpack Kristi Noem’s “Ice Barbie” theatrics at Homeland Security to Pam Bondi’s loyal remaking of the Justice Department. They explore how, for the people in Trump’s political orbit, loyalty and spectacle outweigh competence. Wolff and Coles dive into Corey Lewandowski’s influence, Alina Haber’s rocky rise, Jared Kushner’s allies, and the fractures forming among Trump’s women acolytes. Behind the headlines, they reveal a presidency driven by personal power, loyalty tests, and showmanship—where the inner workings are as unpredictable as the public drama.

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to dissect a president increasingly disengaged, dozing through televised cabinet meetings while aides scramble to manage both optics and reality. They probe the murky Hegseth video controversy, Trump’s self-awarded FIFA Peace Prize, and his meddling in Hollywood mergers, showing how delay, spectacle, and loyalty dominate decision-making. Wolff charts the frustration, chaos, and quiet panic inside Trumpworld. The two ask: What happens when no one can keep up with—or contain—Trump’s mercurial whims?

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to dissect a president who never asks the hard questions, leaving aides scrambling to explain what he refuses to understand. They dig into the Venezuela-bombed boats debacle and Pete Hegseth’s role, tracing how the story spiraled into Hegseth’s emerging SignalGate scandal. Wolff charts the frustration, chaos, and quiet panic inside Trumpworld, while Joanna presses on the larger pattern: a leader whose curiosity stops at the surface, imperiling both policy and loyalty. The two ask: What happens when those closest to Trump can’t keep up with—or contain—his blind spots?

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to discuss a president oscillating between boredom and sudden, theatrical fury; a man who now demands ever-greater flattery from aides who are running out of new ways to praise him. Joanna presses into the Hegseth Venezuela debacle that Trump is suddenly trying to disown, the strange Kushner–Witkoff Moscow overture supposed to “solve” Ukraine, and the inner-circle panic over Trump’s fixation with who is—and isn’t—sufficiently servile. Along the way, they track the “moronocracy” shaping U.S. policy and ask: if flattery no longer works, what happens next?

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to unpack the widening sense inside Trumpworld that the operation is slipping into pure incompetence. From Pete Hegseth’s troubling battlefield lore to Keystone Kash Patel’s chaos, Wolff charts a mood shift that even Murdoch-world can’t quite hide. Wolff outlines how Jeffrey Epstein once warned that Trump would misuse his pardon power, as evinced by Trump’s pardon of Honduran ex-president and cocaine trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández. Joanna presses the central question of the hour: Is this the moment when Trump’s own allies decide the circus has finally become a liability?

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to probe Donald Trump’s newest — and perhaps most perilous — level of weakness. From a fraying inner circle to the small, telling humiliations Trump tries to hide, Wolff traces how the former president’s aura of dominance is thinning just as legal threats, foreign crises, and a faltering presidency converge. Wolff walks through how Trump’s allies are suddenly keeping their distance and how MAGA power brokers are beginning to hedge. It all leads to the question that hangs over this episode: has Trump finally reached the point where weakness, not strength, defines his movement?