Dictators And Their Domestic Habits

This episode is brought to you by Fox One . Watch all one hundred and four matches of the FIFA World Cup live in four K for just nineteen ninety nine cents a month with three days free. Build your own mult iew,i ch voose 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 CF.OX com for complete terms and conditions. Spotify, it's J etty. 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 . The discussion that I'm having with people is that sixty , seventy, eighty percent of his time is devoted to the reflecting pool. This is against the background of a peace deal which is very precarious polling numbers which are contin ue to drop looking at the midterm calamity , but he is focused on the reflecting pool. This clearly has become in his mind and hence in the White House an obsession. And the fact that this too is not within his control is making him crazier and crazier by the moment. Michael . Joanna, still in can, I say. I'm still in can, and guess what ? This is actually a wine glass full of water , but I have in defiance of your instructions been drinking Rosa . I would count on nothing less the great middle brow experience Rosa Middle owbr experience. But the news from the cosette. The news from the quaset is , you know, we live complicated times. No one knows what to do. It couldn't be a better example of the first line of William Goldman's memoir Nobody knows anything . It feels like that moment right now. Just for some background here, the Jelana is in Cannes at the Cannes Lions Festival, which is about the advertising business . So which is fundamentally about the media business , the business we obviously work in , but and always a harbinger of what's going to happen or of people who have no idea what is happening. Right. So I would say it's a celebration of the creative side too. So there's a lot of hustling going on, but then there's a kind of layer. Since there hasn't been a creative thought in the advertising business for two generations, it's an equivocal experience to say Well, what I would say right now is everybody's chasing YouTube. It's all about YouTube. What's YouTube doing? How can we do what YouTube's doing? Do you think we're as good as YouTube? So there's a lot of that going on . But everybody is still very much talking about is this war over , what is Donald Trump happening? Everybody who I've spoken to who's European, here is is America doing with Trump? How did this happen? Is it as bad as it seems? So I'm very curious to know what's happening. We have so much to discuss today, Michael . It's ten years since Brexit, so I want to talk about how did Trump know that Kier Starmer was leaving before Kia Starmer did? I want to talk about I have a good story about Trump in Brex it. So let's remind me. Okay, I will remind you. I want to talk about Ukraine because we know that there's been an increase in attacks on Moscow from the Ukraine with drones, I mean biggest drone attacks for some time . But really, I want to know what's happening with the reflecting pool. I mean, when I left, it was American flag blue. It was all going to be absolutely mar vellous and now it appears to be a fetid pool of algae and anybody or algae as you say algae, whatever you pronounce it algae . And whoever goes near it, whoever tries to pick up a piece of the floating paint that separated itself from the bottom of the two thousand long foot pool gets arrested. You know, I,' wellve been talking to people close to Trump about this and then there is kind of a level of clear concern because Trump is devoting almost all of his time to the reflecting pool, all of his anger, all of his rage, all of his demands , all and now his need for vengeance . Someone must be responsible. Someone is responsible for this. It's clearly not Trump. Let's get them and let's punish them. Let's arrest them . This is it's an insult to the country and and a challenge to him personally . And I'm really not exaggerating this . The discussion that I'm having with people is that you know, sixty, seventy, eighty percent of his time . And remember, he doesn't work that much. There's not that much time he's working anyway Is devoted to the reflecting pool that somehow this is gotten into his head as the thing that stands for everybody else. And let's remember this is against the background of a peace deal which is very precarious . His polling numbers, which are continued to drop, looking at the midterms calamity , but he is focused on the reflecting pool . Now we can obviously make a little nod here to Narcissus and his reflecting pool , but it is this is this is I think it has they in these conversations that I have you can tell that they kind of stop in a way to suggest they don't quite know what to make of this. I mean that it is even for them, even for people who work with Donald Trump and every day a weird moment . And it's a weird moment because he's so thoroughly obsessed. Is this because he thinks of himself as a sort of hotelier slash builder? And this is actually something he should be able to do. No, I think that that probably is involved with this . And but you know, and and I think you know, you know, I've said I've said before that I'm against I'm against diagnosing people . But you know , Jesus, for anybody who has seen this before and I have seen this before and so many people have . This is one of those dementia things. You close out the rest of the world and just and you focus on these problems which are which are really minor and you turn them into obsessions . I mean this clearly has become in his mind and hence in the White House an obsession . What is the largest problem in the world today ? It is apparently the reflecting pool. And why can't he just delegate the reflecting pool to Doug Bergam , Secretary of the Interior? There is the question and the fact that he has not is an indication of something something extraordinary and yes , possibly , possibly dementia, possibly just a sense on his part that everything else is beyond has become beyond his control . And this is or at least ought to be within his control. And the fact that this too is not within his control is making him crazier and crazier by the moment . That's interesting because I know we have discussed at length your refusal to believe that he has signs of dementia? Well, no, I mean, I think he obviously has signs of dementia. I'm just not comfortable with moving that to a diagnosis. I mean, you have that guy on. Dr. John Gartner s.ays He that because Trump's been in plain sight for so many years, you can actually diagnose the decline of his language, which is key to understanding someone's mental state. That's what all television doctors say. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just fifteen dollars a month. Of course if you enj,oy over paying, no judgements, but that's weird . Okay, one judgement . Anyway, give it a try at mint mobile dot com slash switch. Up front payment of forty five dollars for three months plan equivalent to fifteen dollars per month required , intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Seefull turns at MintMobile. com . Okay, well, this is the first time I've heard you say that this is a potential symptom of demand. I mean there is, I mean, there is what are we can say here something is unusual , something is not as it should be, something is weird. The president of the United States of America engaged in all kinds of crises, which get larger and larger , has chosen for the past week and a half, at least, to focus almost exclusively on the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. That's odd . Is it because as a july the fourth deadline, two hundred fifty years since the beginning of America and it now looks like it's going to be more theoretically, but I think and that's that's how this began . I mean, he had this idea I'm going to make the reflecting pool. I'm going to paint it a bright blue for the fourth of July . Good enough. And then and then painting this bright blue seem to somehow how create create the algae problem. I don't know . And that then became in his mind this obsession. And again, I think it is, you know, this ought to be everything's out of control. This ought to be within my control , but even this is not in my control. But one of the reasons it's not in his control is because of the sl oppy contract process. If he'd actually bothered to go through a proper bidding process and they'd actually had a group of people who've done this kind of monument before. I don't think that's the issue at all. I think that the issue at all is that the president of the United States should not be engaged in the minutia of the reflecting pool . Of course. Exclusion of everything else. Don't worry. I mean, this is somebody else's job and the fact that he has made it his job an indication of something not good . And it may be but Michael, he does that with everything . Yes, he does do this with everything , but this goes to an extreme, which actually goes to the goes to the dementia consideration. That's what happens in dementia. The kinds of things , the kinds of things that you might otherwise do become crowd out everything else . So I mean that's what that's what surfaces in a dementia symptoms. Yes, that was a trait you might have and now it is the only trait you have. And this is I mean again, the people around him, the people that I am talking to , say, whoa , this is a little this moment is a little unusual . Even for Donald Trump. Even for Donald Trump. Because you would think that he might want to focus more on the war, but we know he doesn't want to do that because of the memo of understanding which really doesn't have any understanding in it, possibly the memo of misunderstand and of a worse situation than we were in before we went to war. Yeah, let's step back . It he can't usually the Trump response situations in which in which he's not looking good or he can't control or things are not going his way. He changes the stories, creates another narrative. This is what he's been so good at . Evenori creates another crisis . But this is different at this point. He's not out in front of this. He's retreating from it and he's retreating into this small thing . So effectively he is so in his own head that he has lost sight of the bigger picture , you know, the algae becomes the most pressing and existential problem facing . Well, and of course Mary Trump, the president's niece , with whom he's just finally settled long , long legal dispute says that she sees in him exactly the same look she saw in her grandfather at the age of eighty when he started dis playing dementia symptoms. So who knows whether or not that's what's going on here, but clearly an overfocus on something which amid everything else he has to deal with is not as important. I think the thing to note here is that so much else has gotten out of his control. He's not in a good place politically he's not in a good place. And this is in contrast , remember, we've had sixteen months of this term when for most of that time or at least a year of that time he was the dominant guy , you know , I mean, I mean, I saw some publicity for the , you know, the this new book about the Trump presidency , the Maggie Haberman book, you know, talking about him as the most powerful president of the modern age . And I think it's already that thesis seems already out of d ate . He is clearly a president who is arguably like all other presidents at some point , is doesn't know what to do is kind of standing there in some amount of nakedness . And so and I think we should mark this as a as a certain turn in this presidency. He's kind of lost. You know, one of the things in thinking about the reflecting pool has what's what I have reflected on is that there was a moment in Trump's New York history a pivotal moment when there was an ice skating ring Wolman Rink in New York and Wolman Rink was the city of New York had been had made many promises about the upkeep of the rink and they didn't deliver on. And Donald Trump, still quite a young man at this point, stepped forward and said he would do it. He would pay for for the renovation of the rink and he would do it within a very short period of time . And he actually managed to do this and this was the moment that kind of gave him the can do . I can cut through the red tape. I can accomplish anything. I'm a guy with his feet on the ground and goddamn it , get government out of the way and let me do it . And then he put up signs calling it the Trump Walman Rink, although its name had never been changed to the Trump Walman Rink . But I think that this may be again , and again it's a kind of a dementia thing , that he's returned to this moment in his life , a moment , a moment of great success, a moment in which in which part of the Trump mythology was born . The only problem is, of course, it's not quite working out as it did once long ago. So you have a substack later today, dropping today. We're recording this on Tues about the nature of politicians and whether or not politicians, the demands on them have changed and they have to pivot to meet that. But one of the things I found curious was that Donald Trump for all his potential dementia symptoms managed to truth social out on Sunday night that the British Prime Minister Kier Stahmer was resigning before anybody else knew Kir Starmer hadn't even resigned at this point. He would come out later in the morning on Monday and make a rather moving speech saying that he was leaving and then as he got to the end of it as, so many politicians do, standing outside that familiar black door at number ten downing street, their voices begin to quaver at the end of the speech and his did as he thanked his kids and he thanked his wife for their support A, how did he know? How did Trump know that that was happening? And B , and then I want to talk a little bit about the ch anging nature of politicians and whether or not anybody can now do this job. These jobs. , he, I mean, it didn't take a genius to know that this was gonna happen, but this was Well actually, a ton of people said it wasn't going to happen. I mean, your friend, Alistair Campbell on the Rest is Politics UK , said it wouldn't happen for several weeks. I think a lot of people were taken aback by it. And I would say that Alistair who I saw a couple of months ago in the UK said it would never happen then. So he's but but no, I mean, I think by Sunday night it was pretty it was pretty clear that this would happen in the short term. But Trump's information, precise information on this comes came from Nigel Farage , who was who was , you know, who's a , you know, I mean , I don't I don't know how would Nigel ? I don't know. Yeah, I don't this is Trump said this on the basis of what Farage told him whether it was true or not is irrelevant to Donald Trump. So he just happened. This is just a broken clock is right twice a day. But don't you think it's possible that you don't think it's possible that the Brits had told the Americans and told an American intelligence had said to Trump, Kierstarmer is going to resign tomorrow. Do not say anything. And he couldn't stop himself and he blurted it out on truth social. That to me had more of a ring of truth than Nigel Farage telling me. Well, I know the Nigel Farage thing has happened that Nigel Farage has been in almost constant touch with Trump in the last couple of weeks of the Brits having a meltdown. I mean, first thing because Trump enjoys the gossip . He enjoys the fact that that that Kirstarmer who he has not been fond of recently because of the war was in jeopardy . So in Nigel's and Nigel is always looking for ways to get close to Trump supplying Trump with this kind of gossip about his enemies works for them both. Okay, and we should just remind people that Nigel Farage is the head of the Reform Party, which is the far right party in the UK. But before we do Trump, whose career has been supported by Trump since for the past ten years , really . And whose appeal to the popular voter is that he's frequently, if not always , photographed with a pint of beer in his hand and when accused of being an alcoholic , he simply says I am a boozer which is different to being an alcoholic. And it's just such a wonderful word boozer. And again, it's that thing of he's the guy that people think they want to hang out with down at the pub. And I have spent an hour or more in a room with Nigel Farage and Steve Bannon in which Nigel Farage was so drunk he couldn't sit on the seat . Wow, that is quite drunk. That is almost as drunk as you once describing you saw who is the Washington who's the DC Attorney General? Janine Pyrrh. Oh yeah, and then Judge Janine. Totally. Man . That was yes , that was even more of concern because I thought, Oh my God, I'm going to have to deal with this. Okay, well happily you didn't. All right, I want to read , I want to read the beginning of your substack. Here we go. A problem with politics is obviously that it allowed Donald Trump to become president, but it's hard not to conclude too that the problem with politics is politicians , any politician. Okay, can you explain what you mean? You know, I think that the demands of the job , the demands of leadership have so expanded that it might not be that there is anybody who has all of the talents required to achieve office , stay in office, be successful in office . So Kirstarmer is out as the last four prime ministers before him were quickly out . He will be likely replaced by Andy Burnham, who had been the mayor of Manchester now as a you know labor party a l,abor party celebrity hero and probably replace Kirstarmer and become the prime minister . But in this was you know, I began to think about this. There was a substack piece by a writer by the name of Ian Leslie , a terrific, a terrific writer who wrote the book last year's book about John Lennon and Paul McCartney and their relationship . A fantastic book and kind of one of those I mean moving to the extent that that relationship, you know, you suddenly start to think, well, the twentieth century was not all bad . But he's also a good political writer. And he wrote about Andy B urnham. He said that there was no logical reason to believe that Andy Burnham , if and when he becomes the Prime Minister of the UK, will be any more successful than Kier Starmer or the four prime ministers before . That the issue is not any one of these people at this point , but the issue is that the job, the demands of the job are so myriad and complex and almost in some sense contradictory that it goes awry for anybody . And then I began to think, well, that's probably also true about Donald Trump . You know, and we see him we see right now or at least many people are seeing as this as things go south for Donald Trum p there going south for him because he's a monster, because he's preposterous, because he's unfit in any way. And I think that that is probably true that is certainly true, but it is also equally as true that this would probably go awry for anyone. I mean, it went awry for Joe Biden, the exact opposite person of of Donald Trump . And it went awry for Donald Trump the last time he was president . So even in this country, we have had, you know, this is this is probably the third presidency in a row that's going down the tubes . And this is this what is this? Is this a social media phenomenon? Why now? Because surely this is something that's been true of the presidency certainly because it is such a big job . Because probably it becomes harder and harder that the expectations for leadership ever bigger. The resources to be a leader ever slimmer in a period of low economic growth you just the expectations , you just don't have the skill set to manage these kind of expectations . In order to get to be president, you have to be a kind of media star , but to succeed as a president , you have to be a you know, a keen backroom bureaucratic play and and and not even these things. There are a whole sense a whole set of other demands. You got to be a you got to be a sympathetic figure. You got to be a killer at the same time . You have to, you have to be a brand manager , you know, which you know, of kind of Maga or Maha or Mom, Donnie right now is the is doing an extraordinary job of being the brand manager for Democratic Socialism . But these are all skill sets that that all of these skill sets have to be present at the same time and in the same person But isn't this the point of delegation? Isn't this the point of having a cabinet? Wasn't that the genius of Barack Obama hiring Hillary Clinton to be a secretary of state, that actually you don't need to be all these things? And any leader, any good leader knows they can't possibly fulfill everything . Well , that's actually another job that you have to have. You have to have the ability to hire good people . So you have to be an exceptional manager . And most people actually are not . So I mean, Donald Trump has hired exceptional boobs , but most what most people, most presidents hire relative mediocrities . Fair. Well, I was talking to I was talking this week to a big democratic donor who said that he thought , you know, I was pestering him for who do you think is going to run? Who should the next leader of the Democrat ic Party be? And he said he thought it couldn't be a professional politician that good though, you know, JB Pritzker or Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitma or Joshh Sapiro might be, actually at this point that's not going to work. And what the Democratic Party should do is look for someone outside of politics who's been extremely successful in another line of business and he proffered two people. One was Peyton Manning and the other was Doug McMillan, who was the CEO of Walmart, not a well known fig ure, but someone who has got extreme managerial experience as Walmart's the biggest or certainly was the biggest employer of people anywhere in the country, which prompted someone else to say, yeah, Doug McMill an's social media game is really, really rivaling Mandanis right now. And I couldn't tell if this was a preposterous idea or actually a rather good idea. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And in my experience and in my experience, Democratic donors are some of the have some of the dumbest ideas I have ever heard. And it's an interesting thing . You know, Republican, big Republican donors are almost always focused on their self interest . And it's really about who can get elected, who's going to give them what they want. Democratic donors I have always find is all about their cocktail party game. What does that mean in their cocktail party game? Do you mean like they can say I'm hanging out with ? Yes, I'm hanging out and they like to sound like they know that they know what they're talking about and it's all, you know, and they are the authorities because they know so and so because they've given such and such they know so and so and therefore they, have the authority to spout off and to say ridiculous things . And that is really not that true among among Republicans. It's always it's much more surgical , much more strategic because it's for them. It's about how can we make more money. So I mean, that may be more corrupt, but it is often more effective than the Democrats bl ah blah blah. I can tell you Doug McMillan and Peyton Manning not only will never , ever, ever become the president of the United States or hold any elective office, but no one will ever regard them as serious possibilities to do so other than this single person you spoke to. Okay. And then in which case, how does someone like Graham Platner who I actually quite like despite the fact that he's got all sorts of controversy around him , but I think he's a sort of breath of fresh air. How does someone like that get chosen then? I mean, if Pteony Manning, you don't think can make it, admittedly Graham Platin's running for Senate, he's not running for president, but if Peyton Manning can't get it , he hasn't made it yet. We should actually take a bet on whether or not Graham Plattner brings Susan Collins to the end of her political career . Okay . What do you think? You think he's not going to make it? I think he's not going to make it. I think he might make it but by a very slim slim majority . I think then we're both saying the same thing. No, we're not saying the same thing because that seat is important enough to swing it one way or the other potentially fighting. I know but you can't say he might make it. I'm saying no , I think he'll make it. I think he'll I think he makes it, but with a very slim majority . But I think he makes it obviously it will obviously it will be a slim majority . But you think he will be elected? I think he could be elected overseas. You can't say could be. He could be okay . I think he would. I think he would. I think he will get elected over Susan Collins. Okay, and I think he won't. Okay, well that's I'm going to drop this down as our yeah, okay, come November we'll remember this. But I also think that this is an this is a pretty good example. Graham Platner possesses some of those things, which Susan Collins , which the former governor whose name I cannot even now remember who ran against him in the Johnny Mills , which is an extraordinary media game and you know, that that kind that kind of candidate that that bursts through the clutter precisely because he is all of those things that he's now getting getting that are yes that are now causing him a great deal of problems . So again, you know, you have those things. This is what you have to do to be nominated and this is we're talking about in a primary , but those are the things that might not get you elected. So all right. I'm going to whip through the list of things that you think are now essential for every politician to have because you actually list them in this substance. So one, high quality media performance and a sharp social media game. So perfect example someone like Mamdani. Two, personable, relatable presence. I would say that's Graham Platina, authenticity means you've made mistakes, but you cop to them . And I get that his mistakes are kind of pretty mistaky . They are as Dennis Potter , the British playwright would say, the mistakiest of mistakes, but nonetheless, he's owned up to them. Three, superior executive function, very hard to find. Clearly, Donald Trump doesn't have it. Clearly Kier Starmer actually voted in as a technocrat and someone who'd completely cleared out his party of the unelectables , so finally got Labour elected after I think fourteen years of conservative rule , but to be bounced by his own very ungrateful party two years later . But superior executive function, almost impossible to find, I would say, at this point, managerial excellence and the ability to hire and shepherd a talented team . Not dissimilar to the previous point. Old fashioned political instinct, an ability to count heads and achieve something greater than fifty percent, Nancy Pelosi's great talent Brand guru flare for whatever particular new politics you're selling , so Trumpism, Maharism, Democratic Social ism, seven, bureaucratic savviness . Isn't that the same as superior executive function? No, no, no, no, I think bureaucracies in dealing with government bureaucracies are is a special learned talent. I mean, and I think you could say that was Biden's singular talent. Oh, interesting. Okay, fair, I'll let you have that. All right, eight, a personal countenance that engenders great loyalty , Joe Biden definitely had that. Too much of it probably. Right, right, because people should have said, Joe, we love you. It's time to go. And at the same time, number nine, final point , a killer instinct , which is what Obama had, the ability to see the right timing to go up against the Clintons and to see this is his chance. And that may be what Platina has going up first against Jan a Mills and secondly against Susan Collins. Yeah, but a killer instinct that's not really. I mean, I mean, Platin in that instance is taking a , you know, I mean, he's a risk taker in that, I suppose you could say. But a killer instinct is the ability to say to say to your friends and who have helped elect you and people who have who have close to you say you're fired . I mean that actually is a Trump thing . Trump Trump created that sense because he had a television show that he could do that, but has never shown any indication that he could that is actually what he does well. And it's still remarkable that the only people that have been fired from the cabinet despite the presence of Pete Hegs is a woman. He's able to fire women, but he can't fire men . Yeah, well, he's he's fired. I don't even think that's the problem. I mean the problem his problem is that he's always doing things for what he needs instead of for what he needs to accomplish. So that brings us to someone we haven't talked about for a bit who turns out to be a remarkable leader and that's Vladimir Zelensky . I mean last two weeks hammering drones on Moscow four years after the war began for an almost a half. I mean, this thing has gone on longer than the First World War. Well, let's compare two wars that have now occurred at least in the last number of months simultaneously the war , the war in Ukraine and the war in Iran . And the war in Ukraine , which is experiencing an un extraordinary turnaround . And this would be probably I guess, I guess the second extraordinary turnaround in this in this war . The first turnaround is the expectation that that Russia would sweep in and overwhelm the Ukrainians. They stood up and for an extended period, the first real year and a half of the war fought the only fought the Russians to a standstill , but But but clearly were fought the Russians to an incredible Ukrainian advantage . And then the war kind of plateaued and it was at a standstill . And now recently within the past six months , seven months , the Ukrainians have come back, have mastered drone technology really at a level that no one had foreseen them capable of and no one had foreseen that drones itself, that technology would be capable of and is now has, I mean, Russia is in a at an extraordinary disadvantage versus the Iranian war in which the United States , the most powerful military might in the world in the history of the world has been , dare I say defeated . Well, it surrendered. The president surrendered essentially with worse terms than we had before we went to war. I mean, how can we see that sadly as anything other than as a defeat for the U. S. Yes. So but to go back to I mean, I mean the Zelensky thing and and the Zelensky thing I think there's another I mean clear element here the Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians had the support of the U. S. and Europe through the Biden administration. Trump Trump was returned to office and one of his pledges is that he would solve the problem in his first night in office . When you put it like that, it sounded even more ridiculous than it did when it said it. It always sounded ridiculous, but yes . And he has backed off from this. He has he has , I mean remember that that Oval Office meeting where he dressed down a dress down Zelinsky . And we have pulled back our support incrementally ever since . I mean , although we have never entirely pulled it back, so Trump was always a kind of a weird thing in the middle here. I mean, he never abandoned Ukraine but he never supported it either . So in the forcing Ukraine to basically stand on its own for a basically to focus on its own weapons game and which has allowed it to not only survive, but relatively speaking prosper and put the Russians in an extremely difficult situation. Yeah, it's interesting because the British defence minister just resigned with his number two. This was last week before Kiir Stamer resigned, saying that Russia would likely invade the UK Europe in their next few years and that they didn't have the resources to withstand that invasion . And yet that seems highly unlikely given the stalemate that's gone on with Ukraine and the fact that they can't get that finished. Yeah, no, you know, there's a I mean let's let's clock this, you know, upwards of a million Russian casualties at this at this point. I mean , extraordin ary. Well, and they're entering the jails and sending prisoners to the front . You know, how Vladimir Putin remains in power is another mystery . And I mean , you know, just through the the means of despotism , I would say , but even that probably cannot go on for ever and ever . And especially as if the Ukrainians are able to turn their present advantage into yet a further advantage , attacking Russia itself on a constant and continual basis . Which brings up all kinds of other scary and existential questions . It does. Well, that brings me on to a book that I would like to recommend, actually , not least because it's about dictators, but every single one of them has now left office. And of course, when they were in office, it felt like they were insurmountable that they would never leave office. But of course regimes do change . And this is an old book. It's been out for some time. It was actually suggested by one of our viewers , and it's called How to Feed a Dictator . At least not suggested by a big democratic donor. Not suggested by a big democratic donor, suggested by a fan, a daily beast podcast fan. It's by Vittold Sablowski. And actually, what's interesting about it is it's that domestic insight into what people like in their downtime and the things they found soothing and how they behaved to people who turned out to be very important to them because they were feeding them and they didn't want to be poisoned by these people. And they also wanted to be fed well. And it has all sorts of interesting details in it, like Saddam Hussein, for example , having a group of friends for dinner saying that he had cooked the meal and then packing the meat that he'd cooked for everybody with very, very, very hot sauce , so that when they ate it, they immediately started weeping and breaking out in hives and they all had to pretend that they liked it because he was that kind of a guy. So he was having a joke with himself. Then, of course then, he feeds it to his chef and his chef has to say this is completely inedible. It's impossible. What on earth have you done with this? And Saddam realizes that his chef is one of the few honest people around him . So it's actually filled with fascinating little details. Paul Pot, it turns out, used to just love smiling over a bowl of soup, presumably smiling over the extreme damage he was doing to his country. But I really recommend it for those who want a different kind of a history. It's a really it gives wonderful domestic insight into people's habits. And of course, it feels very relevant to Donald Trump's own eating habits , which you have chronicled , where he's lying in bed with his slimy burger dripping off the edge of his plate, and then he's tossing the wrappings on the floor reaching for a carton of ice cream which he eats in one. It's the wrappings of the candy candy bars . Well, I'm sure he throws the wrappings of the burgers on the floor too, right? I can't believe that he puts those in the bin and doesn't worry about the candy wrappers. That comes on a plate . In other words, they get the burgers, the in the White House, the, you know, this is all through. He doesn't get taken out at his door . The White House waiters bring up the hamburger, but it's in the hotel rooms that aides always remark on that the floor is littered with candy bar wrappers . Well, either way, it's just it's just odd, but I wonder, I think I mentioned this to you before, having spent a lot of time in the fashion world where people would frequently be flying back and forth to Europe and taking Ambien. Ambien would sometimes trigger them raiding the minibar. And there were many stories of models and fashion editors who would wake up in the morning smeared with chocolate wrappers because they had in their sleep eaten everything they could get their hands on. Yes . Now to make that more vivid the, idea of waking up in the morning and smeared with brown stuff is the point. Seared with mars bars and snickers. I think it's also a reflection on people who've got disordered eating and when you take a night time sleeping aid it sometimes triggers strange behaviours. Anyway, it was every fashion editor's fear that they would wake up and discover that they had added an unnecessary twelve thousand calories by eating their way through the minibar and they couldn't remember anything about it. I would be more disturbed to wake up smeared with brown. But okay, so Michael , we will be talking again on Thursday, all being well, by which point I should be in Paris, which is experiencing the hottest days ever in the history. Europe is going through an incredible heat wave. I will say even in Can, which is set up for very hot weather, it is unbelievably stifling here well into the nineties and you can't really get a break from it. There's no breeze. It's incredibly still and slightly humid and everybody's going around with a sheen of sweat upon them . Which would make you repulsed. You would be like, Oh no, stay away, I'm not going to embrace you . But I know in the Hamptons, you have a delicious breeze of the Atlantic. Delicious and today we're waiting . We're waiting for a storm at this very moment. The sky the sky is darkening by the minute. Oh, a lightning storm Yeah. Well, some kind of storm, yeah. Okay, well I hope you don't get washed away or blown away back to Kansas, Michael Yeah, that would be or washed. I think it would be to be washed out to seaee ? Yeah, not a great way to go. Alright, if you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast. We rely on your support and the only reason we can bring you conversations as independent as this one is through your support and the fact that we are genuinely independent media. Thank you Ryan , Heather , Rachel , Neil , and John . Why can't why is this so difficult for me? Every time this is the challenge of this hour of conversation to remember the people to thank my challenge. 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.