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? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stacey Williams joins Joanna Coles as the anticipated release of the Epstein files throws fresh scrutiny on Donald Trump’s long-denied proximity to Jeffrey Epstein. Williams recounts how a dinner invitation led to a relationship with Epstein—and, she says, to being deliberately walked into Trump Tower where Trump groped her while Epstein stood by, a moment she now believes was staged. Does her account expose how power, silence, and sexual coercion were normalized at the highest levels—and why Trump remains untouched as others in Epstein’s orbit fall? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Whipple joins Joanna Coles as his explosive Susie Wiles profile sends shockwaves through Trump’s White House. After 11 months of on-the-record access, for Vanity Fair, to Susie Wiles, Whipple explains why the facts can’t be denied—and why her description of Trump’s “alcoholic personality” has triggered cabinet-wide panic and presidential pushback. Does this unprecedented candor reveal how Trump 2.0 actually functions, or mark the moment the West Wing turns on its most powerful gatekeeper? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Rothkopf joins Joanna Coles to unpack a presidency stripped of empathy after Trump’s disturbing Truth Social post responding to the murder of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife. Rothkopf, the founder of Deep State Radio and former editor of Foreign Policy magazine, argues that this moment exposes Trump’s defining pathology: an inability to respond to tragedy without cruelty, self-obsession, and grievance. From mass shootings to corruption, donors, and a cabinet quietly hedging its bets, they trace how Trump’s personal brokenness has become national policy—and ask the defining question: How long can a political system function when it’s built around one man’s pathology? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.