Judges Destroy Trump in Utter Ballroom Humiliation | The Daily Beast Podcast

a really sensational turn this morning.This is genuine breaking news.Appeal judges have told Donald Trump he has to stop building his ballroom.They have absolutely torn apart all his case for building the ballroom.We're all familiar with the notorious teardown that he has executed on the East Wing.

House scathing.

Just house scathing.Well, house scathing.I think this will go down as one of the, I believe they call them bench slappings in the law.They wrote jointly, Yay! constitutionally assigned authority over the property.If you want to build your ballroom, Donald Trump, you have to get Congress to vote for it.

The simple humility of the White House, which is literally the opposite of what Donald Trump is doing with it.I'm Joanna Coles.This is, where else is it?It's the Daily Beast podcast.And we have breaking news about the ballroom.Well, it's breaking right now.

And I think you're going to like this news.We're also hearing about Todd Blanche.Is he?Isn't he?It's like pulling the petals off a daisy.And the screaming match at Camp David.

We have to talk about the squirrel on his head.And of course, fantastic news.Mitch McConnell is out of rehab.No, not that kind of rehab, you know, physical rehab.He's back.He's back.

And Tom Tillis, it turns out, has been living in his basement.Who knew?Okay.Hugh Docherty is here, the executive editor, and he's gonna ask you, well, no, he's not.Well, you could do, ask people to smash the subscription button and like the podcast and share it with your friends.

Oh, Joanna, thank you for having me.If you have not already subscribed, hit that button.We are well over 700 ,000.We're heading for a million, thanks to Joanna's brilliance.Oh, my brilliance, my brilliance.And if you are, you can also become a member and you can follow us at thedailybeast .

com, where we are updating things around the clock.But Joanna.

Come on, let's get into it, the ballroom.What the hell is happening with the ballroom?

We have amazing, a really sensational turn this morning.This is genuine breaking news that Appeal judges have told Donald Trump he has to stop building his ballroom.They have absolutely torn apart all his case for building the ballroom.We're all familiar with the notorious teardown that he has executed on the East Wing.

And never forget, he demolished half of it in the middle of the night when people didn't know what was due.And then they woke up and do you remember people were taking pictures of it because they couldn't quite believe it?And then they erected a fence so people couldn't take pictures, you couldn't see anything.

Please continue.Well, so this morning, this is a case, as people will remember, There has been a lot of litigation around this and various groups went to court.And the one that has led the way is the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States.They got in front of a George W. Bush appointed judge in D .C., Judge Richard Leon, and he ruled that the ballroom should stop.

But he didn't do it.He stayed his order because he said it would be appealed.So it was sort of temporarily suspended.Well, in theory, it was temporarily suspended, but It was he said, if if the White House wants to appeal, they can.And that would then go to an appeal circuit in Washington, D .It

It has.In the meantime, Trump has kept going with the building works.But this morning, we now have a ruling from these appeal judges in Washington, D .C., and it is scathing.OK.

And it is going to be this is an explosion for Trump.

OK, give me the scathing.

How scathing?How scathing?Well, how scathing?I think this will go down as one of the I believe they call them bench slappings in the law.Bench slappings.

I love that term.

I've never heard it before.The two judges.So this was a 2 -1 ruling.Two judges.Strength in numbers.The one who didn't rule, the one who was in Trump's favour, not surprisingly, was appointed by Donald J. Trump.

But the other two are appointees from Obama and Biden.And they, Judge Millett and Judge Garcia, they wrote jointly, the White House is the people's house.Congress exercises plenary control over the building and its surrounding land.Donald Trump, this is not your building.This could not be a clearer, clearer judgment They also tore apart each president as a temporary tenant, not the owner of the White House and its executive residence.The president has no, and claims no, constitutionally assigned authority over the property.

Does this mean that it can then go to Congress for a vote?Yes.So what they say is if you want to build your ballroom, Donald Trump, you have to get Congress to vote for it.

Right.Because he notoriously doesn't take any notice of Congress, goes round them or over them or ignores them entirely, which is what he did with this demolition, right?

Yes.And these these judges, as I said, are Democratic, were appointed by Democratic presidents.And we know what's going to happen next.I don't want to spoil the ending here.because we could save that for the end of the show.But let's skip to the ending.

This is going to the Supreme Court.And these judges have Supreme Court -proofed it.We all know that the Supreme Court is in the grip of a 6 -3 conservative majority, and the conservative majority are originalists.They want to know what happened at the foundation of the republic.What did the founders and the people immediately after understand was the case about what happened at the time?And those rulings have been hugely controversial.

Dobbs, which tore up abortion rights, was in their telling based on what the understanding of people in the 1770s, 1780s was about whether you could expect a right to an abortion.Similarly, gun rights.These judges have said, have gone back in history and said, this is the oldest public building in the District of Columbia, that the District of Columbia was designed by Pierre Longfong.We've all heard of him, the French born military genius and then architect who laid out Washington DC.And they say that it was Longfong, which I'm struggling to say, my French is not great, But your Scottish is very good, Hughie.Scottish is perfection.

Do you know what?I'm very discreet about being Scottish, Joanna.I don't know how you knew that that was the case.But they say that he deliberately designed it so that the city was focused on the capital, which they call the gleaming palace of the people.to contrast it with the simple humility of the White House.

The simple humility of the White House, which is literally the opposite of what Donald Trump is doing with it.The nine, what is it, 90 ,000 foot ballroom, which is double the size of the rest of the White House.

There is no such thing as simple humility in the Trump plan, in Trump.And they are absolutely, they then go through histo say what happened between the White House and Congress.They point out that when the British – sorry guys, our people – attempted to burn down the White House, I should say, in 1812, it was Congress that appropriated the money for the repairs.That's the biggest bit of building work, clearly.Rebuilding work that we've seen.

They then point out that Congress appropriated the money to build the East Wing and the West Wing.So it's pretty crystal clear.What was the original understanding of people?What are originalists going to say?That Congress decides.So put that in front of a conservative majority in the Supreme Court who believe in originalism, this is a really difficult one for Clarence Thomas and company to get out of.

And also, I suspect that they also, although I'm not quite sure why I'm saying this, but I think they probably also are appalled by what's happening, the Trumpification of the White House, which I think has shocked Republicans as well as Democrats.But is there, before it goes to the Supreme Court, is there a way of Trump funnelling this to Congress before he loses the House of Representatives, assuming he does in the midterms?

Well, these judges have kind of given him an escape hatch if he can make it work.But he has a slight flaw.First of all, he would have to get some legislation drawn up very, very quick.rushed through Congress, which is fueled up and gone for its vacation.The Senate wants to be out today.We're going to talk about that later.

Can't he call people back?

He could ask them to come back and say it's an emergency.Is it an emergency?That's a bit of a problem.Do you want a campaign ad?if you're a vulnerable Republican, saying he wouldn't vote for inflation -busting measures?He wouldn't vote for this or that.

But do you know what?He votes to give Trump a ballroom.So I don't think he's going to get support.But even if he does, he then has to get it through the Senate.That might be something that could be filibustered.Depends how he draws up this legislation.

The appropriation of funds could just be a budget measure.There's a whole can of worms here that's been opened.

And he's running out of time.

And he's running out of time.He is running against the clock.He has got until January, the start of January, to get his control of Congress to get this through.But after November, it's a lame duck session.And many of them may, and I say may, have experienced the blue wave.and not really be much, you know, wanting to do Trump any favours.

Well, it's also possible that he could get the legislation, et cetera, through by January if he really sort of focuses.But then it can be undone if the Democrats win Congress.Also possible.Or win the House.

If the Democrats win the House, they could maybe do something to win the Senate.And, you know, he's cooked in that situation.This is a fascinating nightmare because It's clear these judges have written an absolutely scathing judgment.They also deal with the strange fact that Donald Trump has repeatedly said that we're not paying for the ballroom.He's got donors.And I was just looking through the list of donors.

I mean, talk about...I was going to say gold -plated, but that's what the ballroom will be.But these donors are gold -plated.Apple, Google, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, Jeff Bezos.Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, Caterpillar, who's a huge manufacturer of defense material, among other things, and even a European-based Indian billionaire who produces foreign steel is giving the steal.

All of that, these judges say, well, it doesn't really matter.We are aware of no instance in American history in which a president unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for.He can't just say, wow, I've got the money, I don't need it.

So what's going to happen to that money, do we think?

Well, who knows?I mean, these judges make this point that they've never seen anything like this before.If a president gathers money for the White House and they say, well, you can't use that money, where's that money going?we don't know.Well, I think we do know.

Well, you may have suspicions, Joanna.I think it might be going to the library, the Trump library, where the Qatari grift force one, your phrase, is going to...Or is it?Or is it?Yeah, we don't know whether or not that's going to happen.

A big tower in Miami is going to need some steel, so maybe Lakshmi Mittal, the steel tycoon, could give that.I don't know, it probably needs some computers.

This is an astonishing turn up for books, because also, The White House is currently a construction site.And we've already seen that the helipad that they were putting down Donald Trump suddenly pulled it up again and said it was sloping and he wants the seal relayed.So the entire place is in disarray.It must be hell on earth to work there and live there because it must be very noisy, possibly not in the middle of the night, but incredibly noisy to work there with jackhammers going at all times.work will cease on the project.

The judges have given 14 days to the White House and said you have 14 days.to either stop the work or get this judgment overturned.White House.14 days to go to the Supreme Court.14 days to go to the Supreme Court.

I mean, the Supreme Court takes longer holidays than almost anybody else.It's a little bit like academics.They just disappear for three months.I was shocked at how long their holidays were, actually.So aren't they already on vacation?

Well, they're on vacation.

I mean, Clarence Thomas, someone must have paid for his vacation.

He's in his RV.He's in his RV.If you've seen him, you know, if you've seen him out there, let us know and we can help get those papers.

So is it possible that they'll just say, well, we're not working through I think they're back at the beginning of October.

and it will go...Is this the shadow docket?On the shadow docket.And they will have to decide, are they dealing with it?

Can you imagine the phone calls they must have?I mean, John Roberts, be careful what you wish for, probably dreamed as a small child of being the Chief Justice and now he has to deal with it.

He was dressed in his robes age four.

You know it, you know it.He was parading around in his father's bathrobe saying, I'm the Chief Justice.What do you want to be when you grow up?

Chief Justice.Here's my gavel.

" You know that he was doing that from an early age.Now he has to deal with his absolute nightmare.He must be calling them, must be calling the other Justin Brett Kavanaugh.Oh my God, you can't believe what's happened.

Poor Brett.I mean, he was just like planning a kegger.I don't know.

Right, planning a kegger with his friends.Clarence Thomas was off in his RV.Yeah, exactly.Comey Barrett was probably writing another book or fostering or adopting another child.

Samuel Alito was putting up a flag the wrong way around and his wife is saying, put up with your flag Samuel, they're busy.

And they're probably out making speeches.They're getting paid for their speeches.

They're allowed to freelance.The summers are often a time that these Supreme Court justices are off talking about their work, talking about what they do.

I think it's called off supplementing.their income.What do they get paid?Nearly half a million dollars and they're off supplementing their income.

Who would not, Joanna, if you could set your own vacation?I don't know.Can we speak about this afterwards?

We cannot speak about it afterwards, Hugh.What are we doing in the studio when the Supreme Court have disappeared?

We could be in RVs too.And the Senate have disappeared.They will have to decide immediately.Because obviously they have options.The Supreme Court has options.When they get this application, they could say, oh, we'll extend this stay that will allow Donald Trump to keep demolishing and keep building.

Because they probably want to take on board the practical nature of this too, right?Because surely it's more vulnerable, the White House, when half of it's not there.

I mean, yeah, it seems crazy.And the argument that Trump is putting forward is this is all about national security.Again, we have said things that are so hard to credit.It's national security.

Hughie, you're being unfair.You're being unfair.It's national security to be able to have a big party.It is.That's true.You want to have big parties in bulletproof rooms.

The president loves entertaining.He loves his Mar -a -Lago style events.He's created this huge ballroom to have big state dinners.You know, that's national security.

I knew I could rely on you, Joanna, to get a party into national security.Hell yeah.

Hell yeah.

He's also going to put on top a drone port.A drone port.

And also in the bunker is a military -grade hospital for him.Yes.

Which means he won't need to go anywhere else for hospital.

Well, he could have had Mitch there.He could have offered Mitch health care on the premises of the White House so that they could ensure he was going to get better just in time to vote for Todd Blanch.Yes.Well, OK, so let's just let's finish off with SCOTUS.So SCOTUS is going to get emergency calls from John Roberts saying, oh, you'll never guess what the president's done now.We all have to get together.

They'll be going through their list and go, no, it's number five on that list.The other four things you were thinking he's going to do that are really bad.He hasn't done those yet, but it's the ballroom.So they have to decide, are they going to allow ballroom building to keep going?And when you allow the building to keep going, well, that's kind of a judgment, isn't it?You're kind of giving Trump a win.

Are they going to say, we will let what they could do, the most sort of cowardly, I guess, way of doing this would be to say, just do nothing.And if they don't take the case...

Which is what happened with his previous...What was that?I mean, they've made so many judgments, but what was the one where they refused to take it?The E. Jean Carroll case.

Yes, by refusing to take the E. Jean Carroll, then they ruled against him, but without doing it in public, which is the opportunity they have here.So they could refuse to take this case.Or they could say, you have to pause the building, and we will consider it in full.Nobody, nobody who has any knowledge of the Constitution, all that sort of thing, are looking at this this morning.And I'm not claiming personal knowledge of the Constitution here.Everybody who's looking at this ruling is saying, this is a pretty strong ruling.

It's strong constitutional grounds that these judges have cited.And it's a big problematic area for whoever is Donald Trump's attorney general.to get this through.

He doesn't have an attorney yet.We'll come on to that in a minute.But can you also imagine being the first architect who in theory was fired by Donald Trump from it, but I think probably resigned from the job, who must just be like, I mean, he must have given the biggest exhale.Thank God I walked away from this project.And poor Shalom Barones, who we have encouraged people to write to, yes, who tried, I think, very hard to actually backout of the project once he realized what a nightmare the whole thing was, was then rolled out by the White House, sort of pushed out there to talk about it endlessly, to sort of reinforce the fact that he now had to take on this project.

I cannot imagine being a contractor on it.I can't imagine being the architect on it.And I can't imagine working in the White House amid all the jackhammering.Yeah.

And the other thing worth saying about this is, These judges, again cleverly, have pointed out that where the White House is, it is in a national park.And this is a national park, of course, that Donald Trump has been tearing up.Not just the White House.He's rebuilding Lafayette Park.We have seen what he has done elsewhere, the UFC on the South Lawn.

He destroyed the grass of the South Lawn, which was then being put back together, I think, free of charge by, was it Miracle Grow?

Scott's Miracle Grow, yes.

Well, I like Miracle Grow, so I think it will grow very fast, is all I'm saying.

But the guy in the ads isn't Scottish, by the way.Oh, does he pretend to be Scottish?He's actually Norwegian.But anyway, he's appropriating my accent.And if you need a Miracle Grow, Scott, I'm here.Don't have any grass at home, but you know.

They are pointing out where it is, and they're saying, you can't tear any of this up.That's a whole load of his projects.They're saying he has to have Congress to get any of his projects done.That's the arch as well, folks.It's the South Lawn helipad.It's putting a fair on the National Mall.

It's regrassing all the national parks in Washington, DC.This is a really far -reaching ruling.the thing that Trump is obsessed about.

What about the reflecting pool?Is that included in this?

Yes, it is actually.Go on.It's a national park.So it's in this national park.And if you want, you can't justspend money on it.

Right.

And we know that that was the result of the reason it didn't work was it was the result of shoddy contractors.

Yes.

Because Jeanine Pirro, his own U .S.attorney in D .C., made that very clear when she tugged her bag to the White House to show him the fake evidence she'd been presented by the Department of the Interior.

The other person, by the way, in this, we should say is the National Parks are under the Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum.He has been a Trump side through all of this.And if you're Doug Burgum today, it's not what you want on your, you know, the first line of your New York Times obituary is, is shaping up here as the man who ruined Washington, D .

C.Doug Burgum, the man who ruined Washington, D .C.I once sat behind Doug Burgum at a conference and Howard Lutnick came on the screen.He was joining us remotely and Doug Burgum was frantically taking pictures of Howard Lutnick and sending it to someone.I don't know, I just thought, interior ministers, they're just like the rest of us.

Interior secretaries.Interior secretaries.I always call them ministers instead of secretaries.

It's one Britishism I can't lose.But you have lost, we have both lost our Britishisms of burning the White House.

So, You are safe.We have.

We care about the White House.

I don't want it to be Trumpified.I mean, my issue with it is just aesthetically, it's so weird to lump on an enormous, as King Charles would say, carbuncle.

A monstrous carbuncle.

I bet you can impersonate him as well.I think I can actually.I think you said it was a monstrous carbuncle.This was when he was talking about an extension that was going to be put onto the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.full view of Nelson and Nelson's column.And in fact, he won King Charles.

He was Prince Charles at the time, a fan of classical architecture.And he got that project kicked off.there was a whole to do among architects in the UK about it.But he would see this, and I think rightly so, as a monstrous carbuncle on the side of the White House, which completely knocks off any symmetry.And Washington, as we know, as you've talked about, is a city built on symmetry.

And, you know, the amazing name dropping that these judges have done of Pierre Longfong, Well, they've obviously known that Donald Trump was going to go to town on them personally.

I'm sure they're already being doxxed by him.

Well, they have also, I will say, they have made a very knowing reference.They have quoted a book about the history of Pierre Longfong.And the quote from the book that they have used on the very first page of their judgment, so you can't miss it, is all about The Sun King, Louis XVI, where the King's bedroom was placed on the central axis of Versailles, enshrining the rule of divine right transferred via primogeniture.Here in Hong Kong's plan, the home of Congress took centre stage.Who liked Versailles?Right.

Of course.Of course.Yes.How interesting.Well, good for them.Yeah.

I think these guys know how to set it historically.

Yes.Okay.Well, Todd Blanche.

We are living through history and now we're at Todd Blanche.Straight from the Sun King.

Well, Todd Blanche is going to be the person that eventually figures out how they manoeuvre around this.

This just went to...Who is he?I think he is Joanna again.We have a news, we have a morning at the Daily Beast of breaking news.These are the top two stories on our site right now.And the news is that Todd Blanche looks like he's going to get confirmed.

courtesy of Senator Bill Cassidy.

voted for him.And then RFK Jr. did what he wanted to do with vaccines anyway, which was to restrict people's access to them, which is why we now have, and I like to say this every opportunity I can, more cases of measles in the US in the first six months of this year than we've had in the first 24 years of this millennium.That is RFK Jr.'s legacy.

And Bill Cassidy's legacy.

primaries and he's also leaving like John Cornyn.So, these men are like sort of paper tigers.They pretend to rule against Todd Blanche and bluster and say, well, I need to be convinced that the slush fund is not going ahead.I need it on paper.And guess who's actually voted against them?It's the women.

Now, admittedly, one of them is Susan Collins.She's trying to save her own skin up there in Maine, but also Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, who's not up for re -election this time around, and is like, no, Todd Blanche is not a good guy.I don't want any further politicization of the Justice Department.Yes.

She was very robust about weaponization and saying, this is weaponization and you can't trust Todd Blanche.Bill Cassidy, that meant that when both the female senators said no, Bill Cassidy was the one vote that nobody knew what he was going to do.Well, there's two votes, in fact.One was Mitch McConnell, but Bill Cassidy was, you know, around and findable, and people wanted to know how he would vote.And he has said this morning, he has given his justification just before we started this broadcast, or this podcast, I should say.And it's incredible.

He says, Mr. Blanche is not perfect.I think we've established that.I think Mr. Blanche would admit that.But this choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche.It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting Attorney General,may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche.

So he basically said, oh, well, if it's not Todd Blanche, Trump could come up with somebody even worse.So I've got to vote for Todd Blanche.So this is better the devil you know.Better the devil you know.Wow.It's an extraordinary piece of manoeuvring, ballet dancing, tap dancing, obfuscation.

It will, however, give John Thune, the leader of the Senate Majority Leader, the ability to confirm Todd Blanche.And I should say, this is going to be something that a lot of people are very concerned about.And the particular group of people that are are affected by this, of course, are the Epstein survivors.They had asked to meet with Cassidy.They'd asked to meet with Cassidy's staff because they say that Todd Blanche is not a fit and proper person to be the Attorney General.

Well, and of course, his releasing of the Epstein files and that of Pam Bondi is one of the reasons that people feel so Well, just anxious about him getting the job because it was just in a very weird piecemeal way.There's three million files still to drop, which have not yet been released.

And I think we're almost certain to hear from the Epstein survivors about their disappointment.And they were very public.They wanted to meet with Bill Cassidy and he didn't listen to them and instead came up with this a Friday morning justification.Right.

You say disappointment.I think fury.I think they are furious.And when they did eventually get to meet Todd Blanche, because you'll remember during the confirmation hearings, there was a whole group of them in the room and people asked in particular, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island asked if he would meet the victim.Eventually, he agreed after the hearings were over.Apparently, one of the first things he said to them when they were in his office was, well, get on with this.

I mean, so rude.You know, Todd Blanche is not trying to win a public relations war here, quite clearly.It's an audience of one.It's an audience of one.He could not afford to give away any sense of weakness to Donald Trump, his former client.Let's just remember his former client.

Well, as he said when he was in the chair and when John Kennedy, the Republican senator from Louisiana, said to him, are you a friend of Mr. Trump?He said, I am Mr. Trump's lawyer.

Yes.

I am the president's lawyer.

Here we are.He's going to be the Attorney General.He's got a packed inbox.What are you going to do about making my ballroom work?Congratulations, DJT.Probably the first email he's getting this morning.

Again, be careful what you wish for.You know, there's Todd Blanche.He's stuck in a kind of you know, middling position as a perfectly acceptable lawyer in a white shoe law firm in New York.He's reaching for the brass ring and he doesn't know that it's going to cost his soul.

It's it's a high price that people pay to reach the reach the very top, isn't it, Joanna?Well, who knows?Can somebody help us out?

What's the price?We don't know.Well, we do know.I think Donald Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is the perfect predecessor for Todd Blanche to look at here.Donald Trump only saves himself, right?Jeff Sessions, who's a senator in Alabama, agrees to be his attorney general, probably absolutely thrilled.

He's reached for his brass ring, very quickly has to recuse himself because of the Russia investigation, because it turned out that during thecampaign, he'd met the Russian ambassador and not told anybody.Odd, but still.And also, why would the Russian ambassador want to meet Jeff Sessions, the senator from, well, I guess he's a US senator, but the senator from Alabama recuses himself.Trump never forgives him, gets rid of him after about 18 months.And when Jeff Sessions tries to go back and re -engage and get elected again as the senator from Alabama, Trump endorses his opponent.

I mean, Trump trashes Jeff Sessions, who's barely recovered.Who's barely recovered.Yeah.

And interestingly, Bill Cassidy said that he consulted with the final attorney general under Trump's second term, Bill Barr.And this was basically Bill Barr's advice that you probably should do this because the alternative's worse.Bill Barr, you know, he refused to go along with the election lies and Trump trashed him in public.So I don't know what advice he might have for Todd Blanche, but his advice for Bill Cassidy seems to not have mentioned, oh, by the way, Bill, Trump's going to trash you anyway.We know what's going to happen now.He's not going to express any gratitude for this.

Well, the other thing that's interesting, too, is Todd Blanche going to be asked to deny lots of the election results in November as we hit the midterms.I mean, we saw this morning that Trump himself in an interview with Punchbowl News basically said that he knew that the Republicans were going to lose the House.

Yes.And in fact, we have that clip and it is very telling.

And they're asking this question and I've had some great polls recently, real polls, but they're great polls.If I don't run, will those people go out and vote?And that's the one thing I can't, I'm going to ask him to.But I'm just watching guys like you and you're very talented people.The question is, will they vote?Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you.

Why is that?I don't know.I mean, they're angry at Republicans.But they're not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans.And there are some...

Why would they be angry at Republicans and not angry at him, especially now he's got us stuck in this quagmire of a war in Iran?

It's funny that you asked that, Joanna, because I've, you know, searched for that answer this morning as we were discussing it with our colleagues, with Dave Gardner, our brilliant DC correspondent.We can't think of any rational reason that would support that except that Trump cannot be blamed for anything.Right.

And he lives in his own world.I mean, if you're Donald Trump and you're provided with good news all the time by Natalie Hart, the young blonde woman who sticks to his side.And as Michael Wolff pointed out in All or Nothing, the Secret Service were anxious about her being a security risk because she had so much proximity to the president.She's supplying him with a never -ending torrent of good news and comments that he's getting on Truth Social from some of his more delusional posts.

Well, we just did a hint of that in this clip when he says real polls.The real polls are really bad.The real polls are scraping further down.When he says real polls, he obviously means the bogus um affection from the outer fringes that you just hinted at.

I think he means maples, those things that people dance around in the UK to celebrate the spring solstice.

Although I think if Trump was talking about pools that people dance around,

Oh, it would be stripper poles.

That's a good segue, Hugh, good segue.Just to go back to this sense of he knows, you heard it, that there's a blue wave coming and it is inescapable.We have had this morning, again, this has been a big day of breaking news.One of the other big breaking news stories this morning was about jobs.And the president is basically in these elections is basically a referendum on the economy.Is the economy working for you?

Well, this morning, the economy lost 23 ,000 jobs in the last month.The expectations from analysts were that it was going to be above, going to be 85 ,000 new jobs were going to be created.Instead, we lost 23 ,000 and the Bureau of Labor Statistics had to revise down the number of jobs they said had been created in May and June.The economy isn't working.That's what people we know vote on.You were speaking to James Carville this week.

It's the economy.It's the economy, stupid.

And prices are going up.

Prices are going up.And mortgage rates are the highest they've been.People cannot move and cannot buy.

People cannot move and cannot buy.And that's reinforced every day.People are in their houses when they're too small, when they long to move to a different school area, and they're stuck.And I think people feel stuck.People feel stuck when they're filling their car and they think, oh, I can't afford to take my family out to dinner on Friday night now because this is just too much.All the small treats people are beginning to cut from their lives just to cover the basics.

And that has an impact on the quality of life.Yeah.

And you just heard Trump talk about these people that the people that voted for him might not vote for the Republicans.That's a pretty good reason in all you've just all you've just said there, Joanna, why they might not vote for the Republicans, because they don't feelbetter off.The Republicans themselves, the weird MAGA fringes, were falling out this week about $20 burritos.And $20, that's a lot of money for a burrito.

Well, that's two hours work.Yeah.You know, if you're on minimum wage, that's two hours work.

It depends what state you're on.Yeah, of course.You're in many states, yeah, that might even be above two hours minimum wage work in some states.This economy, we heard boasts this week from Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary, that the economy was really roaring.People were feeling the Trump bump that we don't have.

Well, his friends are Scott Besant and his billionaire friends are feeling that, I think.I mean, from that point of view, I don't think Scott Besant's out there testing the people.I think he's calling his friends who run big private equity companies or the people that he was hanging out before Donald Trump chose him to be Treasury Secretary, and I don't think he's talking to, as we used to say in Britain, the common man.

His friends are roaring because the markets are roaring.And the markets went up again a bit this morning, kind of level pegging on the Dow, but they didn't go down.You would think 100 ,000 fewer jobs than you were expecting.That's bad news.That's really bad news for people who need jobs.That's really bad news for people who are negotiating their wages.

That's really bad news everywhere, except on Wall Street, because The analysts believe that interest rates are going to get cut, and that puts the markets up.So that's the reality in Donald Trump's mind and the people he speaks to, in Scott Besant's mind, the people he speaks to.And the polls, the real polls, not the Trump real polls, but the actual real polls, say exactly the opposite, which brings us to the blue wave that Trump is predicting for himself.

Well, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, who I have no particular truck with, but you know, Her daughters came to her and said, we cannot afford it.Our subsidies have been taken away by the big, beautiful bill.We've then gone into Iran in a war that we can't seem to get rid of.Billions of dollars spent in a completely unnecessary war that Trump was warned against doing because the Iranians would have the opportunity to take over the Strait of Hormuz, something they had fantasized about doing.Americans had never given them the opportunity to do it because every previous president had said, oh, no, we're not opening that can of worms.And Donald Trump, high from Venezuela, thinks he can go into a completely different situation and figure it out.

And the other thing that this this actually ties straight back to the ballroom, because there are, as we have discussed quite a few times, the White House is leaking.The White House isn't this unified, we're all winning group of people that we had at the start of this administration.There are leaks coming out everywhere.People are whispering about Trump, about being delusional, about the failings.They're whispering to anybody that will listen.Who would not listen to that?

It's possible that Donald Trump himself is leaking.No one calls more journalists than himself.

I discussed with Michael Wolff on Inside Trump's Head on Thursday, the fact that there was this piece suggesting that Pete Hegseth had convinced Trump that going into Iran would be easy.So the White House pushing, as we know Donald Trump has done, pushed Pete Hegseth to be the face of the war, giving him someone to blame if it were to go wrong.And of course, it has gone wrong.The Iranians know it's gone wrong.The Iranians know we have an election coming and they are going to make it as uncomfortable for Donald Trump as they possibly can.

We learned again from these leaks this week about this furious confrontation at Camp David.between Trump and Exeth.Now, I should say everybody involved has denied it.It's only fair to include their denials.But then Trump undercut the denial by saying this was a treasonous leak.It's not a treasonous leak if it's not true.

It's not true, exactly right.

And again, I hate to say it because I discussed this with Michael on Inside Trump's Head also, but this is exactly what the royal family do.I mean, this is straight out of Princess Diana's playbook, and it's one of my sort of favorite stories about her.And of course, we all remember the Andrew Morton book where she gave him tape after tape of her talking about the nightmare of being married to then Prince Charles, now King Charles.And people say, when the book came out, saying, this is absolutely nonsense.This is outrageous.Andrew Morton should be arrested.

Diana was the source of the book.and this is what happens.I think if you're outside the media, you don't always understand that people leak stories ostensibly against themselves.They then come out, as Diana would do.She would come out and say, I'm going to sue.This is outrageous.

You've destroyed my life.She was the source.Unless you're in the media fielding the different sources coming at you with their version of the story, it's sometimes mind blowing to believe that people do this.Well, that's what politics is at its finest.And what you see is the people who are the arch manipulators.We've all had calls from people and they're calling to put their side of the story out because they know someone else is briefing against them.

Lindsey Graham, the late Lindsey Graham, was possibly one of the best people at doing this.He was busy sucking up to Trump on the one hand and then frantically giving anti -Trump stories to journalists on the other.

Well, there's...motivation for everybody to leak now.Because it's failing?Because it's failing.I mean, the latest leak this morning is about the ballroom and about the creation of a new reality in DC that's covered in gold.And it's from a Trump insider who describes this as he concentrates on the hobbies of that distract from the terrible polling numbers.

And calling these things hobbies is deliberately belittling.It'll get back to Trump.He'll be annoyed.But these people want that out there so that they are not blamed by the other Republicans for all these problems.

Well, and also half the cabinet are thinking about their own future.Are they going to run?If Pete Hexler is blamed for the war, how does he run?When does he separate himself?J .D.

Vance already separated himself.The one message that comes out of regime change, the best selling book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan is that J .D.Vance did not support the war.He was the real one that did not support the war.And he wants to be able to separate himself.

So when he runs, He's got a differentiation.And we all remember that terrible moment for Kamala Harris when she's on The View and people say, what would you have done differently to Joe Biden?And she doesn't differentiate herself.She can't separate from him because she's too close to him.And she's not, frankly, she wasn't quick enough on her feet to come up with something that would have given her some, would have separated her.

Yes.And it's obvious that J .D.Vance's lizard brain has kicked in here.And he knows when he goes on The View to answer that question, that he has an answer.He's going to say, I was very public about my views on the war.

I had to go along with it.But it wasn't me.It was Pete.It was Marco.It was anybody else who's runningAnd it certainly wasn't me.

And then he does the thing about, I have to be loyal to the president.So it's my job to try and execute it as best I can.I have to go and try and negotiate a ceasefire in Iran.

I was first to try for a ceasefire.

Right.But in fact, it wasn't it wasn't something that I actually agreed.

And it was Pete who pushed it.It was Marco who pushed it.Right.It was the deep state who pushed it.He'll find people.But this is really where we're in a crystal ball situation here that we can see from these leaks what's going to be talked about in two years time, round this time, two years time.

It'll start sooner than that.I think it's already begun.It's already begun.

The lame duckery is completely evident.And actually, James Carville, who we interviewed on the Daily Beast podcast this week, was very thoughtful about this when he said that Trump will not know what's hit him when he loses Congress, assuming he does.Assuming he loses the House of Representatives, it's just power evaporates and everybody moves to who is the new central power.

We do actually have a bit of a clue about what Trump is thinking from this interview with Punchbowl this morning.OK.And we are going to play that clip because I think you're going to be interested in it, Joanna.

OK, let's hear it.Let's hear it.

Do you want Thune to serve another term as leader?Do you think, would you support him?

Well, I don't want to get into that necessarily, but...Why?

A lot of people are thinking about it.

This is a big issue.I get along with him.It's unfortunate that he doesn't have the vote.

He should be president, not me, except he's not.

Doesn't have the votes, we just heard.Doesn't have the votes.Intriguingly, well, we know, we now know from that that Trump has some insight into what will happen when he, ifloses both the House and the Senate.He knows that there's going to be a lot of things going against him.Also in that interview, he completely reversed himself on Hakeem Jeffries.

Right.Hakeem Jeffries, who he said he couldn't remember, he didn't know who he was.

Didn't know who he was, called him low IQ and called him a thug, which is clearly racially coded.

And also posted on Truth Social a picture of him with a sombrero.Yes.

and then a series of memes of him and Chuck Schumer as a mariachi band to try to claim that they were flooding the country with immigrants.We all get the idea, but suddenly, oh, no, no, no.He's a nice guy.Great guy.Great guy.Could do business with him.

And of course, this is Trump back in his New York ways.He'll do business with anybody, but that's not how this is going to work.This is a democratic party that is battered, it's troubled, but If Hakeem Jeffries is the man in the Speaker's chair, all that sense of this party being in crisis is going to be much, much less obvious.And Donald Trump's going to have to do business with him.Hakeem Jeffries gets to set the terms.Nice guy or not, we will wait and see.

But here we have some insight from Trump about what he thinks is going to happen.Now, the reason I highlight John Thune is because he obviously wants rid of John Thune.He hates him.You know, there's no love lost.

Right.They hate each other.You couldn't get more different.Right.And also, John Thune has been the blocker to Trump, desperately trying to get his Save America Bill passed.Exactly.

And John Thune says, we're not going to blow up the filibuster.We don't have the votes to blow up the filibuster.He is putting himself in the way for his caucus behind him.There are more people in that group that don't want to blow up the filibuster than admit to it.

And there are people that don't want to give in to the Save America Act, too.And they don't want Donald Trump

to have his own way and they are holding out now, I think, until the Democrats win, of course, because they're terrified of being primaried.But the primary is the intriguing thing, because you won't believe this, Joanna, but John Thune might face a primary.You might have to go and register in South Dakota to help prop it up.

Oh, I would do that.I like John Thune.I don't know why I like him.I like him because he's just more presidential.I don't like his policies, but I like this kind of look.

It is an absolutely jaw -dropping development as to who might primary John Thune.It is Corey Lewandowski.

Corey Lewandowski, the alleged lover of Kristi Noem.Yes.

Christy Noem is the former governor of South Dakota.She still has a house there.She is divorcing Brian Noem, her husband.

Who got caught in an unfortunate bimbofication.We all remember the bimbofication.We do.In fact, I bought some pink balloons into the studio to tell Michael about it because he'd never heard of bimbofication.

I don't know about you, Joanna, but it was all news to me when I read about it.

Actually, even at Cosmo, I don't think we'd come across men sticking balloons up their sweaters and pretending they were big breasted bimbos.That was a strange one, but who knows?There's a place for everybody.

Christie Nome is divorcing Brian Nome and she and Corey Lewandowski...Who must miss. the plane.

Do you remember they were flying around on the Department of Homeland Security's plane?And that must have been fun.They had their own room.Apparently, it was very swish.We did a lot of reporting on that.

We in fact have photographs on screen right now for those who are watching on YouTube.This is the flying boudoir.

And of course, he was actually spotted by a Daily Beast.reporter taking out the trash from her apartment one Sunday evening in DC, I think.He was.Which may have been the first thing that triggered people to the fact that they were more than advising each other.

Yes.And he continues to deny that.He is married.He's a father of four.He's a family in New Hampshire.

But he has a troubled history with women.

He has a troubled history with women.He had a public fight with his former lover, Hope Hicks, in front of the Trump Tower back in 2016, which, I mean, that's an eon ago.

There have been other stories about how - A reporter complained against him because he'd sort of grabbed her at one point.

Yes, there was an allegation of sexual harassment at a fundraiser back at the end of the first Trump administration.There's been allegations.The reason I mentioned that he's denied this affair is that he is now threatening to primary John Thune in South Dakota, where he does not live.What else would bring him to South Dakota?An intriguing question.Corey, if you want to get in touch, I know we've asked for comment from you at the Daily Beast, but please let us know.

Well, Kristi Noem has a farm there where she once famously shot her dog Cricket, a puppy in fact.She's staying in South Dakota because she has to look after the farm, which I'm assuming in the divorce she gets most of, because I think it was in her family when they got married.So, Corey's looking for a reason to spend more time in South Dakota, and John Thune's seat might be it.And I'm assuming he might get Trump's endorsement over John Thune.

I think that's very much what he's thinking here, that this endorsement is available.I mean, we just heard from the president himself, that's not somebody who's going to endorse John Thune if he can avoid it.

So just to be clear, he would be primaried in 2026?

Yes, John Thune, sorry, no, in 2028.

So what this is, is it's a threat.

It's a threat.

It's a hanging dagger.If you do not do what I want, you will be primaried, possibly by Corey or maybe other people.Maybe others.Would Christy Noem herself?

Well, it's actually not, it's way within the realms of possibility.Christy Noem had ambitions to be vice president.You will remember that she pretty much admitted that in her book.She thinks that she is up for higher office.At the moment, all she is is Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas, which we follow closely at the Daily Beast.But why not?

Everybody gets up and thinks, good morning, Madam President.

Right.She did spend quarter of a billion dollars on an ad campaign, in theory, to warn off would be illegal immigrants from coming here because they would be caught, thrown in jail and shipped back to where they came from.But in fact, I think, as once again, John Kennedy from Louisiana pointed out, did the president know you'd spent this money?No, of course not, even though she said that he did, because really this was an ad campaign for Christina.Yeah.And she's also, I think, looking to 2028 and thinking it's time for a woman president.

I've got great hair extensions.I spend a lot of time getting my teeth done.I could be central casting for the first female president.Why don't I take a run at it?

I think that is actually a very serious possibility.I'll just say this is a sort of vibe measure which is possible to make.Our readership at the Daily Beast are fascinated by Christy Noem.They continue to be engaged in stories on her.Now, I don't think our readers are anything other than fair -minded observers of the political scene.On social media, Christy Noem remains a popular figure in the MAGA right.

The engagement on Christy Noemposts and Christy Noem tweets and all that sort of thing is way higher than anyone else.J .D.Vance, Marco Rubio, forget it.Christy Noem gets engagement.

And that's where Donald Trump kind of rose from.So the sense in which this is somebody that has some of the things that would be helpful to run for president as a Republican, oh, absolutely.I think mark your calendar.And we could see Senator Lewandowski and President Noam.That's a bold prediction.What a way to go into the weekend.

Well, you've missed one thing, though.They were talking about the Senate.The Senate's makeup, of course, will change in the new year.But the Senate's makeup has been changing pretty rapidly just in the last few weeks because...I know what you're going to say.Mitch McConnell.

Mitch McConnell is out of rehab.

Yes.Yes, yes, yes.

Well, that's very good news for the senator and his wife.I'm glad they're out of rehab because that's a horrid place to spend 53 days.Despite the fact you didn't really tell us what was going on, did you?And even the governor of Kentucky, the mild -mannered Andy Beshear rose to his full power to demand to know what was going on and even actually other senators.We're saying Republican senators are saying what's happening with Mitch McConnell.And we know there's no love lost between Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, but Mitch McConnell doesn't appear well enough, as far as we know, to actually be counted as a vote for Todd Blanchett.

Well, interestingly, there's a big sigh of relief being breathed everywhere in the Republican Party and Capitol and in the White House, because if Bill Cassidy had gone the other direction, then There was an available vote that would have got you to 50 -50 and then a tie -break by J .D.Vance, and that available vote was Mitch McConnell.And, well, is he capable of voting?We don't know.We still don't know.

Well, we still haven't had video proof.No, absolutely no video proof at all.That he is fine.All we've had is a statement.His security detail is outside his house.It was outside the hospital, now it's outside the house.

That we have to take in good faith as proof that he is in fact there.We also have the word of his tenant.The word of his tenant.A very bizarre list.Also outgoing, retiring senator.Yes.

Tom Tillis.

You say Tom.

I don't know why he's got the H in there, although I rather like the H in there.Fom Fillith.There's a lot of Hs in my name.

It's a borrowed one from me.

North Carolina, right?North Carolina.Very conservative senator who's just had enough, is retiring.Former management consultant.Yes.I think he's going off to make more money because he's only 66.

Yes.And he's writing a book.Of course he's writing a book.This is supposed to be a tell -all memoir.Tom's tell -all.Right.

And really about how obsequious and ineffective several members of the cabinet have been.

He has been a really public enemy of these cabinet members.He doesn't blame Trump, he blames the cabinet.Now, of course, others might say, who created the cabinet, Donald Trump.But Tom Taylor gives Donald Trump a pass often and says, oh, it's all the cabinet members.

Well, and he says that he's writing the book because he really wants the Republicans to win the House of Representatives.So this book is supportive of the fact that Republicans are still great, but just the current cabinet is not doing enough.

Yes.

I'm actually kind of going to read that book.

Oh, I think however it's written, it's going to be fascinating because it's fascinating either for what it says or what it doesn't say.Right.And insider accounts are always interesting.What we really want from him is an insider account of being Mitch McConnell's tenant.

He's in a carriage house round the back.

What did the tenant see?

Right.For which he pays $50 ,000 a year.

Possibly.We know that in the previous year it was rented out, it made $50 ,000 for Mitch.McConnell because he has to declare these sources of income.So we would assume that it's the same.I don't know if he's giving discounts for friends, which is possible.But it's a very strange tale.

I mean, perhaps they have sort of potlucks together where Tom scampers up the stairs to Mitch, or at least when Mitch was in residence there and healthy and says, hey, what should we have tonight?And they sit and discuss things.

But you know, in this image, they're both wearing pajamas and like sort of having a slumber party, Republican senatorial slumber party, I think.And they're like, oh, who should be invited over?John Thune?No, don't invite John Thune.

No, no.I think they would be inviting John Thune, because John Thune, I mean, don't forget Mitch McConnell mentored John Thune.

That's true.I think you're right.They would have John Thune over.

How can we trip Trump up?How can we cost Trump?Ted Cruz?No, I don't think anybody likes Ted Cruz, do they?I believe that is known, yes.He's not a party guy.

He's not a slumber party guy.I can't see him at a slumber party.No.Interesting.interesting question.We can see him.

The Daily Beast, of course, found him on vacation in Athens when Texas was being flooded.So, you know, he might not be a slumber party guy, but he's definitely - He's a guy that likes holidays.

Remember, didn't he go to Mexico before?Yeah, he's a guy that likes - He's a global traveler.Exactly.He's a global traveler.Have bag, will travel, largely out of my state of test.Always ready, Ted.

Always ready, Ted.

And I just say, just to finish our discussion about Mitch, at the Daily Beast, we have our brilliant graphics supremo, that was with Brockway, calculated what does 53 days mean in other units?We all know the Scaramucci, the unit of time.Right, 11 days, right?He was missing for five days.Scaramuccis.We will remember Liz Truss, who was the British Prime Minister, who couldn't outlast a lettuce.

Right, that's right.The Star newspaper had a lettuce, a head of lettuce, which they just ran a live video on and just said, which will last longer, Liz Truss as Prime Minister or this head of lettuce?It was lettuce.

It was iceberg lettuce.

It was before Cyclospora.

It was, that's true.

I hope nobody risked it.

1 .08 Liz Trusses.And among the other metrics...

I thought this was bad taste, but I did take the point.The search for the Titan submersible.

Well, we all remember how long that search seemed.

And how desperate it seemed.Desperately hoping they would find people in there.

And I'll just point out that there was a search and there has been a search for Mitch McConnell.And I don't think it's actually over, this search, Joanna.I'll just say, stay tuned to The Daily Beast.We are still reporting.on what's the truth of Mitch McConnell, because we don't have any video proof.

We still don't know.We know people have talked to him, which is what people say.I've spoken to Mitch McConnell.We don't know if Mitch McConnell spoke back.We don't know if Mitch McConnell spoke back.We do know that something very odd, and we have reported on this extensively, was going on on top of Donald Trump's head.

Now, What was it?I don't know.I thought it looked like a squirrel.Other people have said, no, no, it was a fox.A few people have said hamster, which I also thought initially at the beginning, it was a different color to his normal hair.So, that was on Wednesday.

By Thursday, it was back to normal, which is a sort of translucent color.Often with a kind of slight layer of purple, which I recognize because occasionally if I wash my hair with a purple shampoo, I get that translucent purple.

A warning for us all.

A blue plate special, I think, or a blue rinse.I think it's called the blue rinse, hence the blue plate special.

Yes, it was quite a remarkable, remarkable hair week.And I know you discussed this with Michael Wolfe and he gave a brilliantly insightful guide into what's going on up there.

Each hair is placed with enormous care.My concern is it just needs fire retardant.That thing looks like it would go up within a hundred years.yards of a match being struck.It's just like, oh my goodness.

Which makes it even crazier that there's building works going on around the corner from the Oval Office.There's always open sparks, flames, welding.Don't go near it.Don't go near it.Those judges are doing him a favor.

Well, they need to build the hospital as fast as possible in case it gets scalp burned.

Oh yes.Is that a procedure that's going to be at this military hospital?Who knows?

Scalp supplements.

If we find out, Joanna, we will be back to report.

And I do remember that Jeffrey Epstein told Michael Wolff that Donald Trump had a scalp reduction.Once he understood that he was going bald, he had a scalp reduction, which I'm assuming makes the hair transplant or whatever the weave is going on, more effective, less space to cover.

Well, he's got so much space to cover now.He's got an east wing.

He's got an east wing.He's got an entire east wing.Good luck to the architect.I'm so excited to share with you now the conversation I had with Jeffrey Sonnenfeld.He is the Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies at the Yale School of Management.And this is the final installment of our America 250 series produced in partnership with PMI U .

S., U .S.Businesses of Philip Morris International, as part of its yearlong initiative to celebrate and accelerate American innovation and reinvention.We're looking ahead to the next.250 years of America, reacting directly to your comments.

And Geoffrey and I had a fascinating conversation about the future of education.Let's dive right in.Geoffrey, one of the questions I bet you get a lot, and I know friends of mine ask all the time is, is there any point still sending kids to college in the age of AI.What is the future of AI in education?

No, absolutely.The universities do not have a monopoly on repositories of knowledge in AI.This is a bit of a of a mystique right now where every university to recruit students thinks they have to brand them as AI certified somehow and they come out of the factory and that we don't have, you know, departments that are departments of AI, electrical engineering, the computer science, applied math.These are not AI degrees.They're foundational.It's like having to know how a bubble memory worked 50 years ago to use a telephone.

You don't need to know that level of technical details.But there's new programming, new software coming out all the time.And that's where the AI advantage is.And schools right now are trying to act like they somehow have some intellectual departments that are the AI branded departments.It's just not the case.But we do teach you how to think, which is very important, how to ask questions.

And it's something which I know is very important to you as somebody who's been a big champion of the humanities as well, is asking the right questions.And that's really where the university makes a difference.

So this is very interesting because Dick Costolo came on this very interview series two weeks ago and said he thought that AI spelled the end of thinking, and that the problem was it was so much easierto use AI than it was actually to think your way through a complex problem.Why would anybody bother to try?Do you think a college education is going to remain as valid as it has been?

The old cliche about taking a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.Yes, the AI brings you data, but it doesn't make you think as opposed to make you drink.There's a something just came out today in Business Insider, if it's okay to mention them, is a very interesting study of executive recruiters saying, oh, we can replace much of what we do with AI.And they found out they can't get people to accept the position because it's the relationship that matters, matching the person with the culture and the company and the character and the personality, the backgrounds.And so that electronic matching doesn't really make the chemistry happen.And, you know, a dating app, It doesn't make the couple work, it sort of brings parties together.

So no, I think it's tremendous value added.The real concern right now is 70 % of college presidents have told us just recently that they are worried that they don't know how to prepare students for AI.And an equal number tell us that they're most worried not about them getting pink slips later in their career, but just getting that first job.Ironically, some of the hardest students to place right now are computer science students, even harder than humanity students.Software jobs, coders are disappearing.So a lot of the advice that we were often giving people to somehow chase this golden fleece of technology to be your solution for a great life, great career, that's not quite it.

But learning how to think is the role of the university, and that's where there still is a great value added.Universities are, to this nation, are one of the few sectors where we have a positive trade balance.You name all the major developments, whether or not it's in life sciences and MRNA or anything having to do with cryptocurrency,the cloud or of course AI itself.It comes from the university at the root.That's where it makes the big difference.

If you want to be on that frontier, that's great, but there are an awful lot of people that will be needed in skilled trade positions.AI will not be changing the way a plumber or electrician or many auto mechanics that have their job enhanced with AI tools.They're still fundamentally there to have to actually put their hands on the equipment and make a difference.And if you're not oriented towards wanting to get into that of a, you know, a knowledge -based field, then you don't need to go off.And not everybody needs to go to college, no.But those who do, we still see there's a giant advantage and, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of a difference of wealth over a period of time.

But it's also what a college brings you.in terms of quality of life for perspective and cultural views and things like that, that there's a certain enrichment in how you look at the life you lead.

Do you think the humanities are going to reassert themselves as value add in college?Because to your point, it feels like everybody's been driven towards computer studies and tech degrees and, you know, simply the pleasure of reading and the power of reading has been overlooked.and the classics.I mean, are the classics going to come back?

I think there's a real surge of it.We see that a lot of studies that have been taking a look at the value of liberal arts education, we've seen a surge of interest.

What is the surge?Is that actually people applying to do the courses?

People wanting to take the courses and realizing that perspective matters and makes a difference and it isn't simple technical formulas that are going to lead to the ideal career and the ideal life.There are vocational schools, and that's quite valuable, but most universities aren't set up as a vocational school.school.They are set up to teach people how to think, and we've seen that just in the last five years, 64 colleges and universities shut down.64 shut down.64, 16 just in New England, and that has led to questions about the endowments, how the money is spent and what's available there, and the pressure on them.

But it is something having to do with the, as they call it, the demographic cliff.So we've seen a 15 % drop in kids that are 18 years old that are college age.And just in the Northeast, we've had a 7 % drop in people applying to schools.But at the same time, with all that doom and gloom, we've seen that the great schools, the really top schools, we've seen a 20 % surge in applications there.So there are people moving towards Ivy Leagues, people moving towards liberal arts, people moving towards places that are not necessarily looking at a higher education as a vocational school.The vocational schools are great, we need more of them, and it's a fork in the road as people make a choice.

But the people who are electing to go into higher education are moving towards fields where it's something to do with perspective as opposed to tool -driven.

Are you expecting a new series of vocational colleges to come into being then?Where do people get this vocational training?I know in You know, in Europe, you're much more likely to get this kind of training on the job.Plumbers have apprentices, electricians have apprentices.It's a very different sort of system there.And here, because universities are such profitable places for the most part, obviously not the 16 that just closed down in New England, but for the most part, they are profit centers.

Do you think that our colleges, our universities are more likely to offer shorter vocational training courses?

No, I don't believe so.I believe it's going to be a second category that will see a growth of vocational schools and schools that will be in a different path that people take.So if you're going into higher education, there had been such a premium in the 1960s and into 70s pushing a lot of people towards higher education that maybe shouldn't have gone there.So in addition to the baby boom leading to expansion of a number of campuses, we also saw there is a societal pressure, a cultural pressure for somehow getting a college degree.Well, that wasn't necessary for all, and it's led to some of the blowback we've seen, that we have seen that a people who had a great deal of respect for high education we've seen it fall from numbers in the 60s to now numbers in the high 30s that it has fallen in part because too many people were pushed in that direction where it didn't make sense for them.We also have had an anti -intellectual tradition as you know since Richard Hofstadter the historian reminded us of this since the late 40s and 1950s there always has been about 20 percent of the United States that has an intellectual sense, a populist sense of wanting to attack institutions, and not to politicize our discussion, but we do see that the MAGA movement has been attacking, as populists will, any institution, from religion to the justice system, to the military, and education has been another victim of MAGA attacks on institution life.

So that's why some have worried a little bit about it, but there's a little bit of a, you know, a blaming of the victim there when we've seen some fall off in trust and higher education due to political attacks that seem to be.education as a threat.

So one of the first things Donald Trump did when he came into office in his second administration was to go after Harvard.And one of his most effective tools was having Harvard alum go after their old college.Has there been an impact on the Ivy League with the MAGA attack on it?And in particular, Donald Trump, who seemed so proud to have gone to Wharton.I mean, he went to Fordham first, but then he transferred to Wharton and he talks constantly about having gone to the Ivy League himself.His kids also went there.

What has been the impact?

Well, there certainly are some questions raised that are fair questions to ask about some of the governance practices of universities.There were some issues having to do with what the research focus is in some universities.When it comes to Wharton in particular, I was just on a panel yesterday with their dean who is excellent, Erica James, the Dean at Wharton.We couldn't offer her enough to leak whatever Donald Trump's transcript was.

Oh, I'm longing to read his transcript.

Yeah, I know, but we probably could guess that it was not going to be Rhodes Scholar material.However, there were governance practices at his old alma mater, at University of Pennsylvania, there were governance practices at Harvard before under Claudine Gay, issues about the integrity of her research.but also just about the way student tolerance was on campus and the orientation of some of the faculty.They're fair questions to ask.However, to try to, because there's questions of anti -Islamic or anti -Semitic sentiments, does that mean there isn't a way to address it?Without shutting down your research and shutting down your cancer research or Alzheimer's studies and things.

It was the old proverbial sledgehammer to kill a net.And as it turns out, those.universities, Penn, Columbia, especially Harvard, did a fantastic job of changing their governance, made it much more transparent.They changed out the leadership of those schools.They brought in people that did a much, much better job, but they're still being punished for it.We saw that Donald Trump has attacked 64 universities in the spring of last year.

But, and they came out, unfortunately, as we saw many professions from the clergy to CEOs that have become cowardly to speak out in this notion of institutional neutrality, which is a cover for cowardice.It's something that was created.You'll hear this first.It's not been discussed anywhere in any media.It was a political ruse at the University of Chicago is the Berkeley Free Speech Movement was in 1964 to 1965.which was speaking out on civil rights and speaking out against the war in Vietnam, University of California, Berkeley stopped all that discussion on campus, that we can't have political demonstrations on campus, which led to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement challenging it.

The president, the chancellor of Berkeley, became the president of University of California, Clark Kerr, championed that.They came out with something called the Muscatine Report, English professor Charles Muscatine.As soon as that report came out, Ronald Reagan was elected.governor in California.The first thing he did as governor in January of 1967 was to fire Clark Kerr, who said, I leave here much the way I came.Fired with enthusiasm.

He was a great leader.But then what Chicago did was, very nervous Chicago president, Charles Beadle, who is a geneticist and just didn't want to get involved in this, put this law professor, Harry Calvin, in charge of a commission that did a rushed study that said, oh, we don't want to get involved in politics at all.It was a complete political response.And say, oh, universities shouldn't take positions.In fact, that's how it was interpreted.But even the Kelvin report says in the middle of it, unless the values of the university are at risk, so they should speak out.

So we use that despite these trustees two years ago telling their, a year and a half ago now, telling their presidents not to speak out because universities should not have particular positions.They should be a home for all positions, which is nonsense.We got 700 college and university presidents to defy their trustees and fire back angry joint letters at the White House.And you know what happened with that kind of collective action?It stopped.All these edicts out of the Oval Office against higher education stopped.

Much that we saw when Mark Carney, to make a huge inferential leap here, Mark Carney is the Prime Minister of Canada, and we saw the EU and the UK over this Greenland nonsense, finally get courage and bark back, Trump moved on, is that they need collective action, and the voice of the universities is very important.They need to defend themselves on research fronts.There's some crazy stuff that happens.You can see, I was just at a conference for the Academy of Management, in terms of what we focus on in my own field, what we focus on maybe in higher education in general, you could see that almost every study in all these different fields from history to political science to English, literature, DEI, have to admit, it's like most of the papers presented in this summer's conferences are on DEI.Well, what other things could they do?Well, just looking at a management school...

Well, why would DEI dominate the academic conference agenda?Is that as a result of...Is that a reaction to MAGA or is it just...

It had been going down that trend.For example, if we take a look at my own field of management, 26 ,000 management professors getting together for a conference, we could have looked at...

What is that called?There must be a funny collective noun for 26 ,000… Talking at each other.

We talk at each other.It's called the Academy of Management.Global scholars.If you put together, everybody's studying corporate governance, turnaround management, corporate culture.change management, recruiting, hiring, things you think you'd study at a business school, it still doesn't equal what has been the papers that are in DEI.Sometimes the balance just, and demography is very important, but other things need to be studied too.

So universities need to wrestle with how do you get the right balance in what's studied, what's researched, but right now the Secretary of Education - That's crazy that DEI comes out as 28 % and global competitiveness and geoeconomic comes out as 6%.

This is for business scholars.Now, you're the first person to see this data.We just ran it for you today and it's going through, what, 10 ,000 papers.that just came out this weekend and look at the focus.So we need to maybe address the balance.That doesn't mean that we kill it with a sledgehammer.

We don't need the federal government to tell us what to study or who should be admitted to school by using holistic criteria.We need diverse cultural components to be on a college campus to learn from each other as long as they meet merit criteria.But right now, the Secretary of Education just yesterday came out with a statement saying, We need, if universities are going to get funded by the federal government, they have to buy into these criteria about what's studied, who's hired, who's admitted to be students in the school.And that's just wrong.There are problems to address, just like there were with anti -Semitism or anti -Islamophobia or whatever.These things have to be addressed, or plagiarism in school.

You can address them by good governance practices.You don't need the federal government to have some tyrant telling us what's permissible and what's not.So universities have become a convenient target.So your opening question, should parents send their kids into cauldrons of ideological battlegrounds?Yes, still keep sending them if they're interested in learning about ideas.If they're interested in learning about vocational trades and tools, then go down that path.

Everybody doesn't have to go off, you know, to become an AI engineer or whatever.

We've got questions from viewers.One person here is saying the entire university system stopped being about education 20 years ago.It's now a hedge fund attached to luxury real estate.

You know, people love to say that.Everybody from Groucho Marx in, I think it was Horse Feathers was his movie, right through Rodney Dangerfield doing Back to School is the pomposity of higher education is a very seductive target.People love to go after it.Just like we have seen, though, the military or the Justice Department or the clergy or any institution under attack these days, universities get attacked very quickly.But that's really nonsense.We saw also this week a spate of lawsuits that went up, that were against university trustees who were tapping into that supposed hedge fund to try to keep their schools alive to use that money for operating funds.

But that money was specified for particular causes, for particular types of research.So they don't have the flexibility and the freedom legally to divert that into anything.But if you're concerned about the cost of higher education, What the schools who have those endowments that has those hedge funds, they're making education either almost free or certainly without, there isn't anybody that goes to an elite school, that goes to an Ivy League school or a liberal arts school, that should be leaving with any debt now.That's a huge change.That's because of these endowments.the tuition down.

If you look at the sticker price on schools, it looks like, wow, that's a lot of money for tuition.McKinsey just finished a study on this.You're the first to hear about this too.It's so timely.It's brand new.McKinsey just showed that, in fact, it's kept pace with the cost of living.

that has not gone higher than inflation has gone, the cost of higher education.But on top of that, that's just the sticker price.What actually people pay is less than inflation and also in student debt.It's lower than it's been in 15 years, the magnitude of student debt, but that's not the popular reality.People get caught on these things because it is a sort of a glib, catchy way to attack a university is to call it a hedge fund because who likes hedge funds these days?

Well, that's true.Although I will say as a parent who's put two sons through college, it is very expensive and it's much more expensive here than it is in Europe.In Germany, you can go to university free.In England, it's a third of the price that it is here.

Well, we do have administrative bloat that's become an issue.Many studies seem to suggest that at grade schools, we seem to increase the student body incrementally, and we increase the faculty size arithmetically, and staff grows up great geometrically.Anybody who's hired to be A doer one day, a week later, two weeks later, becomes a manager of three other doers.Nothing gets sunsetted in universities.In terms of the role of AI, we have challenges for what we do in the classroom and challenges for how we calibrate what's original work.It's not stolen, distilled, as we say.

We don't say plagiarism anymore.We say distilled.Well, that's what the techies use it now, when they steal from each other's platforms.And we're worried about AI's consequence for jobs, for early career.We also need to think what AI means for the backroom of bringing efficiency into university.It should be freeing up more time.

So, I have to admit, that's a very good point and a very good question.The cost still could be lower when we take a look at what happens in Europe.And yet, this is the sector where the productivity here towers, the scientific output in terms of Nobel Prizes, the flow of students here is not from here to Europe for the most part or Asia, but it's to the United States, is that this is a huge...And by the way, the people who tend to achieve don't have to go on to Ivy League schools.81 % of the 300 largest tech founders, 81 % didn't go to Ivy or Ivy Plus schools.is that what we see is that people who just graduated college, whatever kind of college, it made a difference.

But then there are plenty of people like Michael Dell.or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates that didn't graduate college at all.They started college, got the ideas and then just left to launch their businesses.

Right.Although they all went to Ivy League colleges.I mean, the ultimate trophy is to go to an Ivy League college and then leave it and not get the degree, right?

Well, for those guys, they did.Yeah.

All right.So let me take you on to another point, which I love this comment.We need to make media literacy mandatory in every single grade.Today's kids get their news from TikTok influencers and deep fakes.If we don't teach them how to spot misinformation, democracy is completely doomed.

Thoughts?Oh, thoughts.I love that question so much.This microphone warning here, I'd reach over and hug you.But maybe I'll do it anyway.Because that kind of

an early question you had, we talked about flight to quality in terms of institutions.This has to do with flight to quality in terms of information more broadly, is why does the Daily Beast, and I don't mean to be pandering, do so well?As people have come to trust what it represents, as opposed to things that just seem to be coming and going on people's blogs out there.is that it is branded content that you can trust.And what we're seeing with the confluence of so much information is how do you break through it?Well, this is one of the reasons that Donald Trump is the sultan of insult, that, as we've talked about earlier, he does that to break through the kaleidoscope of information out there.

He gets attention by insulting people.How do you get through in a more reasonable way with information you can trust, that it's not just offending people to get attention, is to have branded sources.And that's where you need media that's not just sort of... people inventing something on TikTok, putting it out there, and getting caught up in an echo chamber of referencing.Branded media really matters.It's going to become only more and more important.I think, you know, Steve Brill's work, of course, with NewsGuard is very important for helping to brand sources, because what it says is what is from Daily Beast, what's from the New York Times, what's from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, that could be trusted.

And then some, we all make mistakes, but they correct it too.

Okay, good.Well, I like that answer.All right.That's the only answer you liked?No, I liked other ones too.All right.

We've been talking for an hour and a half.Two and a half hours, Jeffrey, two and a half hours.All of the essays and homework kids submit now are just written by chat GPT.They aren't learning how to think critically or write anymore.How do we even fix this?And then another question, I think AI in the classroom can actually be helpful if we use it to take away the busy work and let teachers actually teach students

in a one -on -one ratio.

I have an editor for another magazine that I write for, if I knew you better, and we were just talking off the record, I'd tell you it was Fortune magazine, who uses AI a lot to edit material And he's admitted to me, he's the business editor for Fortune, which you would think, what else is there in Fortune?But there is apparently other things.He said it's that my work defies AI editing.And I'm very, very proud of that.Is that if you're putting together with a truly different approach, which what universities should do is to help you not just source information, but to find unusual patterns with lateral thinking.Yeah, there's a lot of good analytic vertical thinking.

But then there is lateral thinking, which is finding relationships between seemingly unrelated things that a really good paper should come up with.I tell my students at final exams, you could use whatever you want, open book, computer, AI, whatever you want, and I'm not concerned, I just know that I'm gonna give them questions, it would just be impossible for a sane person to think of those questions, for a rational thinking system to be able to put those pieces together.It's going to be often not to give it away for next year's exams, but sometimes there'll be a strong personal component to answering a question, comparing it to panels we've had in class and readings we've had, and it was the right kind of, and breaking news events.It's impossible to have so many different types of inputs that could be integrated in a way that was created that moment for that student to do, that any AI model could be trained to give that back to you.Yeah, if you are going in for a radiology exam, radiologists perhaps are in trouble because there's a certain repetitive pattern of looking for what the broken is.is or what the organ is that's malfunctioning, if it's a CT scan or something like that.

I can see that there are areas, but if it's something that's truly novel, the human body is not that novel.We have perhaps some new dread diseases and viruses that come along, but for the most part, finding systemic problems is not gonna be novel.But if we create novel information, those papers should not be a problem.

So let me ask you something then.Final question.Do you think your students are better educated now than they were 15 years ago?

Well, you know, we've had a problem in higher education for a long time.If you go back 80 years and to the Baltimore Sun, somebody in your line of work, H .L.Mencken said, great old universities like my own tend to teach living languages as if they were dead.and dead languages as if they're alive.We have had this problem for a long time.

And it's not an AI issue.It's not technological disruption.It's not the disparagement of higher education.It is to not think of education as a religion.Religions have a stable static quality to them.Education needs to keep learning and growing.

But like any profession, we can get lazy and just put it on cruise control.So I think that's such a poignant close.Thank you.

Thank you again to Geoffrey Sonnenfeld from the Yale School of Management for joining me.And thank you, if you have been, for watching.Don't forget, you can subscribe to The Daily Beast, smash the subscription button wherever you get your podcasts.And a big thank you to our production team, John Romero, Brian Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, and Neil Rosenhaus.

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