The Impact of Trump's Emptiness

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Taxes and fees extra, feeful terms at mint mobile. com He is in this White House this totally alone figure with any kind of basic warmth. He functions essentially like an old time monarch who has married someone for political reasons as was done and there was really no pretense of of a domestic life. He's generally regarded among his staff as postsexual. Here is a guy in the White House who has nowhere to turn , who has no comfort , who has no warmth, who is alone Joanna. Michael . Did you just reverse how we introduce ourselves? I did because I got was getting silence from you. I thought perhaps perhaps you had forgotten. I had not forgotten that we're doing a podcast. I had not forgotten Michael. How could I forget because we're going to focus today ? We have a favorite topic. We do have a favorite topic. Trump and the women , Trump and the women . Or and I think even in a broader sense, Trump in his and his personal life because that, you know, I mean we s,ort of take it for granted that presidents have personal lives and they certainly put their personal lives to a great extent on display and seem proud of their personal lives , but Trump doesn't. I mean, he doesn't seem to have a personal life. He really doesn't put it on display or when it is on display, it's on uncomfortable display and he really is a man who, by all appearance is alone in the White House . I mean, and that's that kind of weird thing . And I think this has sort of been a theme of his life to eschew a personal life , that he is entirely a public man . He has he doesn't need to have anyone to tend to him , to comfort him, to love him . And it is all about being a singular public person. Well, we're well and one of the benefits of having a spouse or having a wife, given that it's only been men that have so far occupied the White House , is surely that in the middle of the night, when you are lying there, hopefully weighing up affairs of state if you can't sleep , you have someone to talk to. But Donald Trump does not, as far as we know, have anybody to talk to, apart from his endless friends on his speed dial, but he doesn't have, as far as we know, anyone intimate to talk to. So what does he do? He takes to truth social . And we've spent some time at the Daily Bees chronicling how little he sleeps by the time between his true social posts. We know the average last month was twenty seven a day , most of which are sent out in the middle of the night . And we understand from previous conversations you've had with people in the White House that he's assumed to be post sex . So instead of having sex in the middle of the night, which you assume other presidents have done, he is tr ue socially . Well, even more importantly, so is in the middle of the night he remains a public person . Right, which is a great observation, great observation. Lying in bed, he is he is the public man . So I mean, there are two questions. You know, what's the impact of being so alone? It does have meaning . And how has he, and remember, he's elected with the support of the family values political constituency gotten away with what surely seems to be a wholly cynical regard for his wives and family. So as you say, he's still a public person in the middle of the night . We know this because he's on true social, talking to us, talking to his audience, talking to the world . But there's no Melania there very clearly . Yeah, no, I mean, there's, I mean, clearly we know that . I mean , she just made a whole movie about , basically not being there . I mean, she is that vacancy and central question mark in this White House . And you know, I mean, you can't you can't miss this question mark. She isn't there . She isn't by his side . You know, we went through the twenty twenty four campaign and she was never there , not until actually the final week did she make one appearance . Even at the convention , she refused to be at his side . So this was , you know, I think we can safely say this was hostility . Well, and there was also the moment when she appears by his side in the convention, he looks incredulous that she's turned up. He looks like he's surprised to see her there. And even then, she's only on the stage with other people . And so prior to this and this was , you know, a big issue within the campaign , she would not sit in the VIP box next to him. She would only come in to the VIP box when he had left to give his speech. Right, Paul User Vance had to sit next to him in the VIP box and she looked so awkward . And you just thought, what could they have to talk about except JD Vance? And of course, I'm sure Donald Trump doesn't want to talk about JD Vance at all . So he has this kind of kind of , you know, I mean he is in this White House this totally alone figure without any kind of , you know, basic basic warmth , um, basic , you know, even the people who are the familiar faces are familiar only on a professional basis. I mean, in the first administration, he had Hope Hicks who really tended to him. And now he has this woman, Natalie Harp . But he functions essentially like this like an like an old time monarch , you know, who has gotten who has married someone for political reasons as they as was done and there was really no pretense of of domestic life . And then he's tended to by fact oms. And he has no , as far as we know, sort of real intimates , you know, other than the golfing buddies . I mean, and then there's this, I mean, Natalie Harp , you know, has become as Hope was this kind of curious person in his life. We don't really understand that relationship. She appears to be hopelessly in love with him and we've seen a series of letters that she have that she has, you know, cringe worthy letters that she has written him . But , you know, as you say, I think that he's generally regarded among his staff as postsexual. I mean nobody certainly there's there is at least nobody who is who is whisper rushing to say, nor whispering that he has a relationship, a sexual relationship with anyone Start up your new business now with Shopify . Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world . And ten percent of all e commerce in the US from household names like Alo Yoga and Skims to brands just getting started Get started with your own design studio . 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As Melania and as we have said on this podcast before, as Melania makes clear in her movie when which is about the twenty days in the run up to the inauguration, when you get to the inauguration, the one evening you think that a newly inaugurated president might want to have sex with his wife , she makes it very clear that they're going in completely separate directions at the end of the evening. And let's just be clear, even in the first administration they didn't share a bedroom. A matter of fact, and they were the first couple since John and Jacqueline Kennedy not to share a bedroom. Right . And he doesn't have siblings either around him, right? He has one living sibling, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Trump Grow, who worked in banking and has really stayed out of the limelight. You don't see her on the campaign trail, you don't see her on the stage in the White House when he's parading his sort of camelot style family . So he seems essentially very alone. All his other siblings have died. I mean, he obviously has children, but that seems also these to be equivocal relationships of people who work for him . And of course, the child that he was theoretically the closest to who was in the White House , who was subbing in for in the first lady role, really, was Ivanka who has now very much distanced herself. Right. And I physically distance herself if she ever gets her island retreat in Suzanne in Albania, which we've mentioned before , and which she bravely swam to from a friend's yacht and then climbed to the top of a sand dune, barefoot, Michael, barefoot. These are intrepid people at trumps anyway Well let's go let's trace how I mean tracing this strange personal life here or strange lack of a personal life . So let's go back to to Ivana Trump, which at one point in New York history, they were they were a kind of a, you know, seminal couple. They were a seminal couple and of his three wives, she appears to be the most interesting. She grew up in communist Czechoslovakia . And she actually wrote a rather interesting book called Raising Trump , which I was rifling through the other day to look for quotes. And I found one . She when she moved to New York and she was married before Trump, she actually married an Austrian for an Austrian passport, which once she'd finished college in Czechoslovakia, she actually was that a phony marriage? Yeah, it was a totally phony marriage. That was a green a green card. Yeah, the equivalent of a green card marriage, but it was to an Austrian, so it was to get an Austrian passport. She had so her background was growing up in really communist Czechoslovakia, they really had very little access to the Western world, but her escape , as many people's escape, was sport, ironically, thinking about UFC and our conversation about Donald Trump being interested in sport , and she was a good swimmer and she was a good skier and she was given the opportunity to start doing both at a higher level when she was at school. She ended up choosing skiing and she basically became part of the junior Olympic team, which gave her the opportunity to travel abroad. And she discusses in the book what it's like going away and just, you know, eye opening to go from the sort of black and white of communist Czechoslovakia to the colors of Western Europe where she was competing and then she would come back and she would always be debriefed by the police who wanted to know who she talked to. And was she in fact going to be a defection threat? Would she embarrass them by defecting? And she soon realized that the way to get them on site and to make the police interviews much shorter was just to bring them either fruit or pantyhose for their girlfriends or cigarettes. So she learned very quickly how to do that. But there's a telling anecdote. And she's she's not saying this in this book, as I recall , that she actually was an enthusiastic informer. No, she was just saying this is this was part of doing business and the way to cut the interviews short. I'm saying that she was likely an enthusiastic. Oh, you are, you are. I actually came away from the book feeling a bit more sympathetic to her than . Well, that's why people write these books. Fair, totally fair, Michael. And of course you, as you recently , when we were discussing Graham Platner, you should be skeptical of everybody, which is a good one. You shouldn't just believe women. You should be happy. I think, you know, in this kind of situation and where she came from, you really had to be an enthusiastic informer or you got in trouble. Right. And and it's just and just to see this as a background against the curious thing about Trump getting involved Eastern European women, women who have had this complicated immigration history who have who have come out of , you know, cultures that were not free. Well, cultures that weren't free and also cultures that were deprived. So both Melania and Ivana, I'm sure, felt very grateful to Donald Trump for the opportunity, right? To have access to everything that he had access to, but there's annex So Ivana eventually leaves Czechoslovakia. She has a fake marriage, gets an Austrian passport, but she also has what she describes as the sort of love affair of her life with a man who then gets killed in a car accident. And it's unclear quite what happens with the accident. They're supposed to be meeting on a Friday night for a weekend and he never shows. And then she learns he's being killed in a car accident. Anyway, she then eventually moves to Vienna and gets out from Vienna to Canada where she has relatives and then on a modeling trip is sent to New York . But there's an interesting so she's a model also, which is another Trump theme obviously. Yes, she when she goes, she's modeled in Czechoslovakia and when she's in Canada, she claims she gets scouted as a model when she's at a shopping centre . But there was just one quote that I found interesting and to your point , it goes to this sense of two of his wives having grown up in a culture where they were used to being watched . And she's offered the opportunity to model in a fashion show for Dennis Baso, who's a famous fur designer in New York. So she's asked if she's not afraid of being attacked by peta. She's asked if she's not afraid of what the press will say if she's seen wearing a lavish sable coat, which is what Dennis Basso wants her to wear. And she says, No, I'm not afraid of the press, I said. I was raised in communist Czechoslovakia. The secret police watched us constantly. We were told what to eat, where to work, how to think. I came to America to experience freedom and opportunity. I'm going to wear what I want to wear and nobody is going to tell me otherwise. So that gives you a slight sense of who she wants us to think she was. And she was kind of she was certainly profile in New York and we're talking so they got married in nineteen seventy seven , I believe, but this is kind of an eighties New York story . And she was a portrait and I think this was a cultivated portrait of naked ambition. So she matched him I mean, I don't he was clearly nakedly ambitious Was she not? I mean, she raised children, so she was, in fact, spent a great deal of time at home where he did not . But that was the persona that she was she was side by side with him in many of their many of his projects, the Plaza Hotel notably . Well, she has a description of what she does and there is a sort of notable description of her giving the children their breakfast in the morning and then she would take a helicopter and fly to Atlantic City to oversee some of the casinos there. But she says During my fourteen year marriage to Donald, I designed the interiors of the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Tower, was president and CEO of Trump Castle, the only woman in the top position at any casino in the world that I know of, and president and CEO of the plaza hotel, winning the prestigious Hotelier of the Year Award in nineteen ninety. I wrote three international bestsellers, made tens of millions selling house of Ivana clothes, fragrances and jewelry on HSN Tampa, QVC London and TSC Canada. No matter how busy I was, I had breakfast with my children every day. I sat with them at dinner every night and I helped them with their homework bracket. I love algebra before going out in a Versace gown to a rubber chicken charity event. So she's every bit as ambitious as him. And mostly going out without her husband . And so, you know, this begins the other the this other theme of Donald Trump is never at home. He's never with his family. He is out all of the time . And this is back to that eighties, that eighties moment. I mean, and I used literally every time I went out, there would be Donald Trump certainly not with not with his wife and certainly on the lookout for other women. I mean, that's it was like , I mean a weird thing to see him that the way he looked up and down everybody just as a shark on the on the hunt . Ever wonder where Tropicana got its name ? The tropics. And every time you enjoy a glass, you're not just drinking juice. You're taking a trip. Stepping into sunshine and embarking on a flavorful journey into the tropics where ripe fruit is crafted into wildly delicious juice. And the best part, no passport required. Tropicana, give life some juice . I can't imagine you ever being at a social event that Donald Trump would be at? Because I can't imagine you were hanging out at studio fifty four, but perhaps I'm wrong, were you? Where did you come across in what sort of rooms? He would have been at, I mean these, were not such glamorous events . He would have been at every promotional event in New York . So whatever the opening was for, whatever, and I'm sure he did many many a night . So it wasn't as though he's living an exclusive life. He's just living a life in public. See me, see me, see me, see me. So wherever there is press, wherever there is page six , where there ever , again all of promotional occasions in which the press was called. That's why the press is there because it's been arranged. That's why Donald Trump is there because he's been alerted that the press was there. So just this sense of ubiquity that wherever you turned there was Donald Trump, which of course is him beginning to build his brand, which as we know happens, how the story ends. Yeah. And then this is also , you know, the nineteen eighties. So Jeffrey Epstein begins to enter that picture at this at this point. And Jeffrey Epstein becomes part and parcel of Donald Trump's lack of a personal and domestic life. I mean, in a sense, Epstein represents the inverse of that . And there was a lot of , you know, Epstein would talk about Trump's marriage, actually all of Trump's Trump's marriages with incredible disdain and haughtiness that and I think the affect was Epstein was certainly not going to get married because he was honest his desires and interests. And Trump was a ph ony about it, but at the same time maintained the same desires and interests as Epstein . And there was a moment I remember Epstein said that Trump complained that Ivana was past her sell by date, but still wanted to have sex . And that's why he had to stay out of the house . Lovely God. Oh goodness . Well, they get divorced after fourteen years, right? Which is a major story in New York. They have a big fight over their prenup it's a huge one of the one of the first big divorce battles I remember in my time in New York. You couldn't you couldn't avoid it . And at one point, she accuses him of rape , which she later withdraws that claim . Right. I mean, it seems like a I mean it, was it was a horrible breakup. I mean, we saw it and it played out and you know, I can't help think that it played out because he wanted it to play out this way on the front of the New York Tabloid. Well was it, what in it for him that it played out that way? Fame fame just attention attention. You know, at that point, remember, remember, he was not certainly was not running for president . He was running to be the most famous playboy in New York . And of course, they get divorced because he's now with Marla Maples and he's been with Marla, I mean, I think he's been with countless people, but Marla is the designated bit on the side , which begins in the nineteen eighties. And Marla Maples is another model model actress she's the American of the three . Right, exactly. And then and then I think I think the dates , the dates are, I think the marriage with to Ivana, starts it to break in the, you know, late eighties and the divorce happens in nineteen ninety two, I believe . But already Marla is in position in Marla seems to be a kind of , you know, also, you know, a woman, a girl who's out on the town, a party girl. That was almost the kind of kind of you know, a category in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. Right. And against the background of this, we have he owns modeling agency. He owns Miss Universe , as do many of his friends, Paulo Zampoli , Jean Luc Brunel, who will later die of suicide in a jail cell accused of the same things that Geoffrey Epstein was accused of. So this is the sort of somewhat seedy while very seedy background. The model, this stuff, I think, happens a little after this. I mean, it really , you know, he the bankruptcy, his financial troubles happen in the early nineties . And then he looks for other things, you know, that aren't so expensive, like the model business. But yeah, I mean very much the model business, he's marrying models , going out with models, and then into the model business . And again, you can look at this. This is this complete lack of domesticity and intimacy. It's just everything even it's all a public act . Right. And then a public business. So it's a photo it's a photo opportunity to have children and a wife . And then he has as you describe her, his bit on the side . And then Marla Maples gets pregnant. So the divorce is in nineteen ninety two. He divorces Ivana and is thrilled to be free, right? To patrol the streets of New York . But then immediately , Marla Map gets pregnant or tells him that she is pregnant . And so and Jeffrey Epstein comes back in at this point to say he doesn't believe her and makes a bet with Trump. I'll give you a truckload of baby food, I think the bet was if she is pregnant . And she's just trying to trap you, etc , et cetera. But anyway , it actually turns out that she is that she is actually pregnant, which is then becomes a whole different crisis. What it indicates is that that's where these guys live. They certainly don't live in the in the world of women. They live in the world men . And I don't think that I can imagine that Trump was not happy to suddenly have to get married again. And he's just gotten gotten out of this marriage and , you know , something it was not easy for him to get out of. And now suddenly he finds himself he finds himself in a new marriage. Now the interesting thing is, I mean, Marla Maples may be pregnant, but he didn't have to marry her . But he does because it's another thing about Trump that he's very much in a fifties and sixties cultural mindset. Still is . And you know, he has to do it. I have to get married. Although I think he says at one point the reason he decided to get married, not mentioning that Marla was pregnant was because of the Long Island Railroad. Do you remember there was a mass shooting and he said it made him realize how life was short soened he wanted to get remarried . Didn't we recently, in JD Vance's book, he said he was going to have a fourth child because of Charlie Kirk because of Charlie Kirk's assassin ation. Yes, you're absolutely right . Yeah, so this is this must just be maybe this is the kind of thing that AI produces . Or maybe it's the sort of thing that people think after they've been close to a shooting and realized how horrible and violent it is and that life is worth living and pursuing and love is at the center of life. Not these guys. Not Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump . Yeah . So yeah, I mean, Donald Trump gets married because he has to. He is one of the that generation . I have I got why did you get married I had to . And then he has the baby called Tiffany because he's got the rights to build above the Tiffany Store on Fifth Avenue, right? He's got the air rights, I think, to build above Tiffany with Trump tower and so he calls the baby Tiffany Jesus, that's a real sentimental heart. Yeah, Tiffany must be thrilled but then understand so he has this I mean this domestic life is a it's I mean I'm sure it's actually is a sham, but certainly what it is is just a corner of his life. His life is a public life. His life is beauty pageants, his life is dating models . During this period, for instance, as he marries Marla Maples, he's sharing a girlfriend with Jeffrey Epstein He does there is no room in his world for domesticity . He doesn't want it. There's no room for for intimacy as in , you know , you know, being deeply connected to another person. Right. All self reflection with another person . And I've certainly read that Marla Maples, and I've certainly talked to people who said Marla Maples had no idea what she was in for when she married him and the sort of the Trump family. And Ivana Trump hated Marla Maples because of the infidelity and never forgave her, whereas she forgave Donald, she says. And then Marl a Maples has an affair . You know, and I don't know if she if she admits to this, but he finds her his bodyguard who he then fires and then he divorces Marla. And within the Trump circle, this is a kind of this is one of the things that they actually continue to , one of the few things that they secretly chartle about that Marla had an affair with one of Donald Trump's bodyguards. Was this at Marlago You know, good, good question. And I think he found them under as I recall the story, under a lifeguard chair. So maybe it was maybe it was in Florida, but maybe it was somewhere else. I think this was in nineteen ninety six. This marriage did not last very long. The marriage doesn't last long and then he's back he's back on the market . This then becomes in the late nineties in the second half of the nineties the peak model era of in Trump's life and he leaves a quite a quite a record of his anti domestic playboy totally kind of despicable life . And he does this actually most often on the Howard Stern Show . So these clips which are available for anybody. I mean, he is the narrator of his own debauched life. I've been so lucky right in terms of that whole world because we've never gotten a social disease. It is a dangerous world out there. It is scary. It's like Vietnam sort of like, you know, it is your personal Vietnam. You've said that many times like a great and very brave soldier. By the way, your daughter she's beautiful. Can I say this? A piece of ass is some of these foreign girls, you know, Mr. Trump in, my country, we say hello to vagina Well, you could also say as the owner of the pageant, it's your obligation to do that. So you have done that. I'll tell you the funniest is that I'll go backstage before show. Yes, and everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. And I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore, I'm inspecting it. You know, I'm inspecting. I want to make sure they're like every dog is good. Yeah, the dresser is everyone okay? You know, they stand thereing with no club. Is everybody okay? And you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that. So we hear some clips there, Michael , of Trump saying things which, again, for attention I mean, really strange things to say for a man and yet they got him attention and sort of set him up to be the performer that he becomes on the apprentice eventually. Yeah, no. And and part of that thing, part of his persona, part of that that stick is all about I am a, you know, I am not a domestic guy . Marriage is a, you know, is a is a pretense or or a fiction . I'm a guy who's out with the most beautiful girls in the world and this is always a major a major thing with him to be with the most beautiful girls in the world . That's the point of life . That's success . If you're success if you if you made a lot of money, but you're you have an you have an ugly wife, that's then you fail. Which he uses against Ted Cruz famously when Ted Cruz is a candidate for leader of the Republican Party when he's running for president, he goes after Heidi Cruz and just says you know, she's really, really frumpy and he's thoroughly unpleasant. And of course, Ted Cruz promises that he'll never support Donald Trump and then lo and behold, he elbows his wife out of the way and is frantically supporting Donald Trump. No, I mean, it's a very clear thing. What kind of what kind of woman are you with? What kind of woman are you married to and always a commentary on that ? Which is interesting that he chose Mike Pence as his vice president because Mike Pence comes with mother Pence know just again I can't imagine what Mother Pence and Donald Trump had to talk about apart from Mike Pence . But you know, although maybe Mike I',ve always wondered why Mike Pence wasn't allowed to be in the room with a woman on his own if Mother Pence wasn't there. Is that about Tight Pence? Losing control because he's got an out of control Libida, which seems unlikely, but who knows? Or is it because women find Mike Pence so attractive that they're going to throw themselves at him? It's always I've always found that mysterious completely mysterious and they would make fun of this . Everybody in the White House would make fun of pence and and mother pence . And Trump, Trump, especially I'm sorry to laugh because I like Karen Pence because she refused to shake Trump's hand at Jimmy Carter's funeral, but it's such a strange relationship Mother Pence. Mother Pence who had to be in the room with Mike Pence in case goodness knows what happened . Goodness knows she . Anyway, Trump did not marry someone that he was calling mother. He married M elania, wife number three , who's not in evidence. And who we've spent a lot of time talking about , but who essentially , as you have always said, remains unknowable. She's a mysterious figure. She looks mysterious, she looks a bit like a cat. The surgery that she's had done makes her look a little cat like. And of course, she's very elegant. Of his three wives, she's the most elegant. And he is , you know, to understand that, so she's, you know, she's a model. She's part of this model circle that is most of his social life at this point in the late nineties is in the model circle, which is which is to say with models , with the men who supply models. Jeffrey Epstein, obviously a major figure here . And then he has this , you know, Melania comes into the picture and it's very important to him that she's a supermodel . Supermodel is the kind of , you know, that's the that has become the term of art for the ultimate woman . So she has to be a supermodel. The problem here is that she's not a supermodel . She's actually a kind of not all that successful of a model . So it is Donald Trump who turns her into a supermodel by pronouncing her a supermodel and then setting setting up with, you know, with with the accoutremons of being a supermodel without her ever being actually a supermodel. And I wonder I wonder if that's why she 's now so invested in doing things like the movie and her book because she wants to reclaim something that she never really had, which is the status of being a super model ? Yeah , I'm sure that that's part of it. I'm sure it's also part of a part of this you know, everybody else in the Trump family is on the griff, why isn't she getting something here? And again , because she lives a separate life from Donald Trump, she sees this as , you know, she needs a she needs a separate, she has a separate life and she needs to support a separate life . Right. And again, she's not a domestic goddess. She's never pretended to be a domestic goddess. There's no evidence whatsoever that she is, but she produces him a son, the fifth of his children , Baron Trump . Yeah, and she seems to be an attentive , you know , honorable good mother , but separate from Donald Trump and separate from a domestic arrangement with the father of her child , which is how Ivana Trump describes herself as apparent that this was completely separate to Donald, Donald had no input she describes saying, I am going to tell you where they go to school. Ivanka's going to Chapein. The boys are going here and he was like, fine, fine. He wanted no decision making responsibilities. And as I mentioned earlier, Ivana basically hands the children fully formed over to him at the age of eight een, which is when he begins to take an interest. And that apparently seems to be the case with Baron. And again, in the Melania of the movie, they have a conversation about Barron where it's very clear that they don't talk about him very often together and that Trump is talking about him as if he really doesn't spend very much time with him at all. No, and just and remember, these are the children become employees . This is very, I mean they become actually employees . He support he supports them. He writes the checks, they do the work , you know, it's kind of like an old fashioned family business . It's really, I mean, there's so much about Donald Trump that seems like living above the store and everybody has to has to pitch in and go to work. And he rather treats it like that the other , you know, the other modern arrangement , you know, the arrangement that people have with their children now to see them as something other than functional presence in their lives is not the relationship he has . I mean, you never get a sense that he has enjoyment takes enjoyment from his child from his children , you know, that conversation that I've described before of him saying to people , you know, Don Jr., I wish I could take my name back . Right . This episode is brought to you by Fox One . Watch all one hundred four matches of the FIFA World Cup live in four K for just ninety nine nineteen a month with three days free. Build your own multi view, choose up to three streams, and follow players spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays. The FIFA World Cup, streaming live on Fox One, offers a subject to change CFOX. com for complete terms and conditions. And also yet, that's very it's counter to the enormous photos of them, the sort of campaign photos, the presidential photos of this burgeoning family. I mean, his kids go on to have lots of kids. I think John Jr. has , does he have five kids? So when you see them en masse they look very powerful and you have no sense of the , I'm sure internisine war between them. It's not really a war. It's just a wall. They have a particular particular thing and there's no , there's no sense within that of a family , you know, of the of a fight going on because there's lots of emotion here . It rather is no. You know where you stand . And if you try to take more of that , that's going to be a I'm not even sure you think about taking more of that. It's not you're not going to get more he is Donald Trump is what he is . And yet he's perceived by his evangelical base and by, you know, the conservative part of the Republican Party and by MAGA as the ultimate family man, a man who has no domesticity. Do you think that's true because they kind of believe it because this idea of because of the photographs, because they look , you know, pretty good because Melania is a good looking woman because Ivanka is a good looking woman. They actually look kind of the same . Same doctors, no doubt Well, same hair. I mean, very similar hair . I think , you know, they look like a family that people would envy. I mean, you know, I understand, okay, the leaders of the evangelical movement make a basic faustian deal. Donald Trump is an is an immoral so and so, but he's going to give us what we want so we do the deal . But what about all of those other people in the evangelical Christian constituency , don't they say, hey, what a minute, God, this guy of is is a dog. Well, in a man who's been dogged with , I think more than twenty five accusations of sex abuse, sex assault at this point. And you know, and at this point, Egene Carroll is still going the courts with him as the sole person who's actually taken him on in court and managed to win her cases against him for assaulting her in the changing room at Bergdorf Goodman. So a very complicated and unpleasant relationship with women, three marriages. His third wife clearly doesn't like him. His first wife accused him of rape in their initial divorce arguments which she then recanted on and Marla Maples get away soon. Right, right . So what is let's get back to the politics of this all or good of the nation . I mean, here is a guy in the White House who has nowhere to turn , who has no comfort , who has no warm th, who is alone . What does that ? And doesn't appear to have a best friend either. I mean, when he was tooling around with Geoffrey Epstein and they were hunting for women in Atlantic City, which they used to do together . At least perhaps you could say maybe both of them were sociopaths, but they had each other, but it doesn't have anybody. That for each of them that relationship was the closest relationship they've ever had in their lives . Well, how does this impact it impacts everybody because he's lying there alone at night when his colleagues are trying to get some sleep truth soling in the middle of the night, not sleeping properly , not having any intimacy. You know, and you have to say, I mean let's not let's not psychoanalyze too much, although that is really our purpose here . But but the certain how does that emptiness relate to that rage, that need to fill the space with his own monolog izing on a constant basis ? The need to always be right and to have people around him confirm that he is always right and to have the people around him who have no other function but to be sycophants and to bend to him and to agree with him and to always be the center of attention . The world's attention at this point . Oh, Michael, it's always interesting to discuss this stuff because it's essential to how someone lives their life and essential to understanding them. What is their domestic support? I mean, the fact that he eats burgers , the fact that he eats junk food all the time, also he's not someone that anyone has ever made a cottage pie for. You know, he's not someone that is moved by the scent of a roast chicken on a Sunday lunch because he's eating at the calvary at Mara Lago I mean , nobody's having home cooking. You know, I see your wife on her wonderful newsletter at Amagens at House and from time to time she writes out the menu of what you and your family are going to be eating that week. No one is doing that for Donald Trump because he's only eating either at Mara Lago or he's eating fast food that the chefs at the White House produce for him. Extraordinary. And just to go back to what actually this is highly relevant to what we are doing here , that it's interesting how all presidents and the comfort they take in the family lives frustrate them or sustain them . But Donald Trump, in particularly, because of the way he operates as the president, which is it is a government of one . It is all about what comes into his head. It is all about what he wants, what he thinks , the stray facts he's absorbed and everybody else is at most a bit player . So what is going the life he leads is This has an immediate effect on all of us. And I suspect if you asked him he would think that domestic life in as much as he understands it or does think about it and perhaps he doesn't is somehow a weakness that the need for a domestic life, the need for someone that you can talk to, to have someone to tell things to and help process the day is actually a weakness that he doesn't need that. He doesn't need to tell anybody his insecurities or his anxieties because perhaps he thinks he just doesn't have any. He obviously has them, they just play out in different ways. No, in always women are accoutrements here , you know, in ways, I mean, he does this thing when he's with, you know, these old rich guys who he hangs out with always of a great proportion of them, if not all of them younger wives , of which he always makes a point of, always points this out . Now the curious thing about them is that many of these guys are so old that you are that the younger wives are also now pretty old . Well, it's fascinating . No, the wives are a reflection on him, right? He wants a model wives because it's a reflection on him, because everything is a reflection on him . Well, Michael, we can talk about this indefinitely , I find it fascinating that we have a president who appears to have no one to confide , no one to confide him. But as you say, he doesn't think he needs it. He is a government of one. If you have been, thank you for joining us, we will be back with our next episode of Inside Trump's Head. Michael, do you want to thank our team? Ryan, Rachel, Heather , Neil , John , you thank as always . So the good news is we have so many Be Tier members now. There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads than they do on social ? Let me introduce you to fans and they're here with me on Spotify . Trust me, I know fans. They don't skip, they stay for hours. They don't move on, they manifest. They're not a demographic group, they're fans . Spotify advertising, you're among fans.