Trump Is In Full Meltdown Over His Beautiful Ballroom

We are reaching the first anniversary of the Inside Trump’s Head podcast that I host with Joanna Coles three times a week. The premise of the pod is that traditional political reporting has consistently failed to understand Trump, because he’s not moved by the things that move politicians. Nothing about him translates into rational political behavior. In his government of one, his is the politics of his own immediate needs, desires, appetites, and furies.

I’ve been offering, as part of a Substack subscription to HOWL: TALES OF OUR TIME, a written summary of our discussions. But I’ve increasingly become interested in the spoken world as something that can be read—there’s a different sort of immediacy to seeing rather than listening to the words, and, as prose, a heightened quality because it’s less composed.

So we’ll now be offering, along with a brief summary, transcripts of our podcast episodes. This is thinking out loud, but on the page. There are few subjects as important as trying to make sense of a man who makes no sense—and who commands such power in our lives. So come and listen to us whenever you can, but, for a different experience, and a different sense of what we have to say, you can read us now too.

In the latest episode, Joanna and I get inside Donald Trump’s obsession with the White House ballroom, and why a court ruling blocking it may only make him more determined to build it. We look at the tensions around Mark Wayne Mullen, Trump’s fury when his own people stray from the message, and the strange transformation of Anthony Fauci into a MAGA villain despite Trump’s own history with him. We also get into Trump’s refusal to let go of birthright citizenship, the political theater surrounding Todd Blanche, and Melania’s increasingly separate life from Trump.

Wolff: Trump is adding on these things as justifications for the ballroom. Trump really wants the ballroom. He likes big events. He likes big audiences. The bigger the better. The more opportunities for Donald Trump to appear before an audience. So this is not about national security; this is about Donald Trump.

Coles: What is Trump’s reaction to this court ruling that the ballroom is going to be stopped?

Wolff: They’ve given him the stay of 14 days, so he’s on the phone with the contractors yelling faster, faster, faster. Get this done. We’ve got a deadline. Build, build.

Coles: Michael.

Wolff: Joanna.

Coles: Another Saturday. Where are we going?

Wolff: Silence. I’m pausing on that because I’m not sure I ever leave. So the idea of going in is an uncertain place. I am in Trump’s head. I have been in Trump’s head for more than 10 years now, which is extraordinary. And I suppose the entire world has been inside Trump’s head in their own fashion. So the idea that we enter now is not true. It’s that we are acknowledging that that is the perspective that we all have. And the difference that we bring actually is the journalistic perspective that we are looking in… that Trump is in the White House, we’re outside the White House, and that is how we report on him is inaccurate. First thing, you’re not going to get the story if that’s your point of view. And it’s also not true. We all have, and Trump is not incorrect about this, a Trump derangement syndrome. We have done. He has pulled us into this syndrome, and that is his actual political strength. You can’t escape this guy.

Coles: Okay. So for anyone new joining us, Michael hasn’t left Trump’s brain for the last 10 years where he’s been writing about Donald Trump. I have started tiptoeing more recently into Trump’s head, with Michael as my guide. And well, we just have so much to get through today. Before we get to it, I just want to ask you to like and subscribe and please share this podcast with your friends. We’re independent media, so we appreciate your support. We love your comments. We pore over your comments. And if you want to write a limerick, you can.

Wolff: Joanna pores over your comments.

Coles: I do pore over the comments actually. Michael goes in and out of the comments, and sometimes I send him comments.

Wolff: I skim.

Coles: You skim. But you read books and you accuse me of skimming books. Anyway, anyway, we don’t need to get into our endless ongoing feuds, but we do need to tell people that we’re going to be talking about Anthony Fauci and Trump’s and MAGA’s sort of obsession with him. Why are they so hysterical? The Trojan ballroom, which has really got layers and layers of other things going on in it, and of course has just been stopped by the courts. Todd Blanche finally, finally got what he wanted, but at what cost? But I really want to start, Michael, with the fact that we should have an inside Trump’s head workout. I think both you and I spend too much time at the computer and we should, what is it called? License a workout for our listeners and viewers that they can do alongside us as we discuss.

Wolff: Well, I actually think it should more rightly be a mental workout. How do you get Trump out of your head?

Coles: Okay, we can do that.

Wolff: I know the workout that you are actually trying to get to, so let’s rush to the punch.

Coles: Let’s get to it.

Coles: She didn’t come to lose. That is Laura Trump who’s twice tried to get her father-in-law’s endorsement for a Senate seat. First in North Carolina, where she’s from, then secondly in Florida. And in fact, then she was given a show, My View with Laura Trump on Fox. And she was doing an interview with Markwayne Mullen while she was doing a workout with him because she’s a crazy athlete.

Wolff: And actually this is her second show on Fox. Her first show got canceled. One of the interesting things about Lara Trump is she has tried to make a career off of the Trump presidency, off of her father-in-law, and (has) not succeeded. I mean, sort of over and over again, either to run for office or then she was, for a period, the head of the RNC. Again, she had a show on Fox canceled. Then now she apparently has another show on Fox. She’s in there pitching, but I’m not sure. This is again, that kind of thing. Family members. He doesn’t want family members to succeed. I mean, he doesn’t want family members to compete with him is the point.