President Donald Trump was seen seemingly yelling at his close assistant Natalie Harp, with whom he reportedly has an unusually close relationship. While the media has focused on the jarring image of Harp plastering a smile on her face for the cameras while Trump points at the ground near her with a scowl on his face, one Trump expert noted that the president is notorious among aides for his abusive behavior — so much so that they've developed a code for managing his moods.

“Everybody takes abuse,” Trump biographer Michael Wolff told his podcast co-host Joanne Coles, according to a report by The Daily Beast's Erkki Forster on Thursday. He added that everyone who works for the president will eventually find themselves on the receiving end of his tongue lashings.

"Wolff, who has written four tell-alls about Trump and spent time in the White House during his first term, revealed that aides devised a secret phrase to tip one another off about what awaited them before seeing the president," Forster wrote. "'People around Trump would say, ‘How’s the weather?,’' the author recounted, a discreet shorthand to find out, 'What’s his mood?'"

Forster quoted Wolff as adding, “This is a man who is wholly unfiltered. There are no restraints here... If he feels it, if he thinks it, he expresses it, and his powers of expression are... blunt force. That’s it. You’re going to get it. It’s going to come at you.”

Wolff also said that women who work for Trump are in for a particularly tough time.

According to Wolff, “And let’s remember, these women around him... they are there... in the most abject capacity... There’s no pretense that they are there for any other reason but the succor of Donald Trump. They are there to be his comfort blanket.”

Forster also pointed out that Harp, who leaves loving letters to Trump at various places in the White House where he can find them, included in one of those letters comments that seemed to be a plea for forgiveness for unspecified actions which angered him.

“If there is anything else I have done to cause you trouble, please forgive me,” Harp wrote.

In July, Anthony Scaramucci — who briefly worked for Trump as his White House Communications Director — said that no one who works for Trump sincerely likes him because of his mean-spirited behavior.

“Getting fired after 11 days was brutal, but there was also a genuine sense of relief,” Scaramucci posted on X. “Yes I had a shortcoming. I failed at the job. There was humiliation in it, but there was also relief.”

He added, “Here's what I've observed about everyone around Trump. Nobody likes him. I don't think his family members like him. I don't think his cabinet members really like him. They kiss his a—— because he's powerful.”

Scaramucci finished his point by saying, “The people who genuinely like him are one or two electron orbits away, close enough to feel the warmth, far enough to avoid the heat. I don't know a single person in his inner circle who came out unscathed.”

Speaking to AlterNet in September, Scaramucci observed that people who know Trump and are aware of his personality flaws stick by him out of fear.

"We started this interview by me saying that they only care about themselves and their own personal power, and they've become cowards," Scaramucci told AlterNet. "If they were not cowards, they would've sought Donald Trump's removal. If they were not cowards, they would've convicted Donald Trump in his second impeachment after the ridiculous, and I want to emphasize the ridiculous, Matthew, the ridiculous insurrection and the fomenting of that insurrection. If they were not cowards... But they're cowards."

A journalist who has written four biographies of President Donald Trump, Michael Wolff, told a podcast on Tuesday that he and other Trump experts are surprised at how rapidly he has self-destructed since the start of his second term.

"Donald Trump’s narcissistic impulses have set the stage for the 'first act' of the president’s 'downfall,' says his longtime biographer.'It is hard to truly express how bad things are for Donald Trump at this point,' author Michael Wolff told the Inside Trump’s Head podcast," reported The Daily Beast's Erkki Forster on Tuesday.

"Wolff said even Tony Schwartz, the remorseful ghostwriter behind Trump’s 1987 book The Art of the Deal, whom he called 'one of those people who really understand Donald Trump,' told him he has been left stunned by how Trump has been on a path of self-destruction in his second term," Forster added.

Speaking to his podcast co-host Joanna Coles, Wolff observed that "I think that that is now a pressing question. I mean, in terms of certainly trying to understand Donald Trump and possibly in terms of understanding what may be this turn in history. Why is Donald Trump so self-destructive?”

He speculated that when Trump resumed office last year, he was determined to pursue his personal agendas without regard to the political consequences.

“The story of our podcast, now slightly more than a year old, is that he charged into this second term with more aggression, more venom, more determination than almost any president, certainly in modern memory, doing all sorts of things that were not thought out, in which he didn’t really make a political calculation on what their ultimate effect would be,” Wolff argued.

Now those chickens have come home to roost.

“‘OK, my numbers are sinking here. Obviously my immigration policies are incredibly unpopular. Having masked men in the streets; that’s not a good look. Shouldn’t I adjust that? The war in Iran, should I have gone into that? I’m a president who got elected on the promise of no more forever wars. Shouldn’t I have thought about that? Shouldn’t I have had an exit strategy?’” Wolff said. “I mean, this is where the self-destructive nature of this comes in.”

Earllier in October, Wolff argued that Trump may also be motivated in terms of his foreign policy by his fear about what Russian President Vladimir Putin might be able to prove about him.

“Steve Bannon and I were talking about what Putin might have on Trump, and Bannon went through all the things dismissing them," Wolff said. "He said, what I think he has on him are his college transcripts," which may prove that Trump struggled academically.

In September, Wolff argued that Trump has "departed reality," citing as an example his refusal to listen to experts about the threats posed by AI.

"What advisors are saying on a larger basis is he has departed reality," Wolff told Coles, continuing that Trump "can’t see clearly" that he should listen.

He continued, "In the case of the coming midterms, to deny that the Republicans are in serious trouble is again a departure from reality. So what the advisers, that is to say, the White House, and I detect Susie Wiles' hand in this... are taking issue with the president and with this president. Now, remember, these people know that he is Donald Trump, that he is mercurial, that he is, that he doesn't listen to people. They know this. They're used to this. So what they are saying is that this goes beyond that. We're in new territory."

Biographer Michael Wolff walked through the knots the White House staff must untangle as they try to get President Donald Trump to focus on tangible outcomes in meetings with foreign leaders.

Over the past week, Trump welcomed China's leader, Xi Jinping, and it appeared their activities were centered around the president showing off his construction, his military and what appeared to be his first trip to the National Archives as president. Meanwhile, the visit from Xi was said to be a "summit," which would focus on trade, avoiding a crisis with Taiwan, discussions over minerals, market access, guardrails for artificial intelligence and arms control.

Trump’s approach to meeting foreign leaders puts his aversion to detailed briefings on full display at a time of high-stakes diplomacy. It's a "difficult moment for a president" who must hold a lot of information in their brain about customs and gestures all while remembering the specifics about policy and intelligence about the country.

"You've got to know what you're talking about," said Wolff. "If you don't know what you're talking about, you know, you're giving away the store."

Wolff told The Daily Beast's Joanna Coles, "Trump goes into these meetings. He can't — he refuses to look at the briefing books, refuses to have extensive conversations about the issues at hand. Doesn't care, I suppose. Doesn't know what he's talking about.
It's all, 'I can handle it. I'm good.' He is always saying, 'I'm really good with this.' And then he goes into these meetings and all it is, is flattery. Him flattering the other side and the other side, I think very clearly, taking — understanding what they can get by this guy."

He confessed, "I'm trying to circumvent using the word buffoon, but I think that's what they see him as. I think they're like, oh my God."

Traditionally, there would be weeks of preparation for such an event.

"But if Trump is an information phobe, as you say, then how did they slim it down?" Coles cut in to ask. "How do they whittle it down to the one or two points?"

Wolff said that it's exactly what is done. They simply give him two points. "And even that usually doesn't register with him. I mean, this is something I don't even know how people — how you can get people to appreciate this. How do you get people to appreciate that the presidency has — the workload of the presidency is extensive. And if you don't do it, if you adamantly don't do the work, can't do the work, what happens? What's the effect? That's really hard to make clear to voters and to the American people."

"So, I mean, first, it's incredible. So, he doesn't do the work. He can't do the work. The president of the United States does not know what he's talking about in these situations. How do you begin to explain that to people? And within the White House itself — and they have had the people within the White House have had to explain it to themselves, what do we do here? But that becomes for them, a kind of, well, it's Donald Trump. You know? He's been elected twice. He must know what he's doing."

He thinks a considerable part of the country focuses on that idea. He anticipates that the U.S. will ultimately see the impact of that. In some ways it already has.

The meeting resulted in a two-month extension of the trade deal they currently have. They also agreed to lower tariffs on about $30 billion worth of goods. China agreed to put new export controls on two fentanyl precursor chemicals, the White House claimed. They also said that China made commitments related to American agricultural products, Boeing aircraft and access to U.S. beef facilities. There was no movement on Taiwan, AI or Iran.

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Biographer Michael Wolff wrote Monday that President Donald Trump’s political career has always rested more on performance than on his actual accomplishments. That ends Tuesday, he predicted.

The long-time researcher wrote on his Substack that Trump’s only real talent has been in dominating attention while making himself the central character in every political story. With that, he can obscure weak results, including his 2020 loss, Wolff said.

He described Trump's first year through the lens of a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, which paints Trump's return to power as redefining and expanding presidential power in a significant way.

Wolff explained that the nail in the coffin of Trump's power was that he began believing his own spin.

"But, in fact, this performance came to rely so much on illusory accomplishments that Trump seemed to actually believe he had accomplished something," wrote Wolff. "Or, in that always fatal mistake, he came to believe his own bulls——. So much so that, by the second year, the accomplishments, or lack of, came to overshadow the performance. His power grab made him believe he was all powerful — but his performance kept highlighting what he had done, or failed to do, with his power."

When the lack of results overshadows the showmanship, an increase in showmanship won't help save Trump from disaster.

The midterm elections are a referendum on Trump’s record rather than merely his persona, whether or not he sees it that way. Wolff listed policy failures, issues like economic pressures worsened by tariffs and war, an Iran conflict that has lasted far longer than Trump promised, and a border policy that he said shifted into fear and intimidation of immigrants and Hispanic Americans as part of this referendum.

Meanwhile, he and his family are growing increasingly wealthy using his power and control over government contracts and putting his name and financial interests behind digital tokens, while offering access or perks to people who buy and hold them. It has become a significant enough issue that "government corruption" is among the top three issues in the 2026 election cycle. Ethics experts have said that Trump's ploy created a channel in which wealthy supporters and foreign investors can financially support Trump while seeking proximity to him.

Wolff goes on to criticize Trump for using the Justice Department to pursue his own personal grievances. While some of those efforts failed, Wolff said, Trump’s repeated attempts only exposed his bitterness, and it ultimately drew even more attention to his failures.

Wolff’s broader warning is that Republicans tied their political future so close to Trump that all of his failures have become their failures too. Trump's demand for the party’s obedience has forced the GOP to shoulder the burden of Trump’s incompetence, grudges, financial self-dealing and erratic behavior.

He closed by explaining that history might be fascinated with Trump's ability to draw attention, but attention will also be drawn when those voters are booing "him off the stage" on Election Day.

President Donald Trump has a deep, dark fear, according to a journalist who has spent years studying the man — and it is that people will discover he is quite literally stupid.

"Trump’s fear of this is so great, Michael Wolff tells the Inside Trump’s Head Podcast that the president’s college transcripts may very well be what Russian President Vladimir Putin holds over him," reported The Daily Beast's Sarah-Jane Collins on Sunday. "Wolff says the theory is not just his, adding that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon raised the same possibility."

During the podcast, Wolff observed that “Steve Bannon and I were talking about what Putin might have on Trump, and Bannon went through all the things dismissing them. He said, what I think he has on him are his college transcripts.”

Wolff's co-host, Joanna Coles, pointed out that despite numerous efforts from journalists, the public has yet to see either Trump's high school transcripts or his college transcripts.

“We haven’t seen his high school transcripts. We haven’t seen either of his college transcripts,” Coles told Wolff. “They have been so successful in locking that stuff down. And, you know, if they were good, he would have floated them out there immediately.”

Wolff continued, “I think top of his list, top of the things that plagues him is being seen as stupid, for one reason: Because he is stupid.”

Coles added that the purpose of this speculation is to understand Trump, not to shame him for his potential intellectual deficiencies.

“We should say that the point of going through these fears is to understand why he is as he is, because actually, he’s a man that’s been created through his fears,” Coles said.

Trump has often fixated on his supposed intelligence as a way of boasting to voters. In September, when Trump was criticized for not supporting AI regulations, he pointed to his brain as a reason why voters did not need to worry.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “and the USA has that, in spades!”

Also in September, Wolff said that Trump's intellectual insecurities explain why he repeatedly hires incompetent people to staff his administration — namely, so that he won't feel inferior to them.

"Speaking on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast, Trump biographer Michael Wolff said, 'This is not a secret,'" reported The Daily Beast's Erkki Forster at the time, noting of Trump's Secretary of Defense that “Pete Hegseth is a... blithering incompetent... yes-man, a suck-up, a man who... knows nothing, and no logic would say he would know enough to run the military-industrial complex."

Wolff added that Hegseth's "primary qualification is that he was... a weekend television co-host. So what in the name of God would he know about running... the United States military... at a moment... in which we are in the middle of a, basically, a revolution in terms of munitions, logistics, and supply.”

He continued, “Pete Hegseth is in this job because Donald Trump is intimidated by competence. It’s not just that he doesn’t want to be bossed around by people; it’s that he can’t deal with people who know things because—for the obvious reason—because he doesn’t know things.”

In August Wolff also said that “he’s filled the administration of the second term with unqualified people, morons of one variety or another, because he can’t have people who are clearly smarter than he is.”

When AlterNet reached out to the White House in May regarding a letter signed by three dozen health professionals alleging that Trump is mentally incompetent, a spokesperson attacked the credibility of the signatories.

“If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor,” Davis Ingle told AlterNet. “President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history and any so-called medical professionals engaging in armchair diagnosis or false speculation for political purposes are clearly breaking the Hippocratic Oath they’ve sworn to.”

One of President Donald Trump's biographers, Michael Wolff, wrote in his column Thursday that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s combination of diplomatic influence, family access and Gulf-backed wealth represents a breakdown of government safeguards and a failure by the media to investigate how he accumulated so much power.

Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from the Saudi royal family after leaving the first Trump administration for his hedge fund. He scored additional backing from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Now he has returned as an international negotiator for the administration, but without any oversight, financial disclosures or even a national security apparatus around him.

Wolff expects the newly elected Democratic House and Senate to likely have Kushner in sight as they reinstall guardrails on ethics requirements and disclosures.

He cited a new book, Princes and Thieves, by Matthew Cole, which he said "offers an explanation. It centers its story on Kushner’s relationship with the world’s two richest men, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ), the headman in the UAE, and Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS), headman in Saudi Arabia, and how Kushner became a prime beneficiary of their money and machinations."

Wolff said that there is an "extreme need for an explanation" and the "Trump-era press" has done little to demand it while Kushner hides "in plain sight" with "the grift across his forehead." People are evidently "so cowed and stupefied by the combination of his own lack of substance and the enormity of his influence and self-dealing that they just look at their shoes."

The biographer confessed that, in his books, he's tried to explain Kushner's rise to power given his lack of experience. He wondered if Kushner was able to make it to the top office because he could oversee "areas too complex for his father-in-law to understand or want to think about."

Wolff recalled one time Trump advisor Steve Bannon saying that Kushner's real success was “when the going gets tough, Jared gets out of the room."

Cole's book offers a different interpretation that Wolff concedes is "much better" than his own. Kushner was not the mastermind of anything. Rather, he was an inexperienced intermediary whom sophisticated Gulf rulers cultivated and manipulated. His access to Trump, admiration for wealth and transactional outlook allegedly made him useful to foreign leaders seeking influence.

Now Trump is using Kushner as an "unofficial" Middle East negotiator, far outside of traditional diplomatic channels. He has no training as a diplomat or negotiator, which may be why he's been unable to craft a deal with Iran or between Russia and Ukraine.

Cole's book alleges that Gulf money supported influence operations and Kushner’s financial interests. However, those allegations remain disputed, and Kushner has issued denials and legal threats about it. Wolff said that it almost sounds like a spy novel the way Cole wrote it.

"Indeed, the immersiveness and fluidity of the narrative — edge-of-your-seat stuff — may have given ammunition to some reviewers’ skepticism. They are more suspicious of the cogency of Cole’s explanation than they are of the persistent lack of explanation for Kushner’s accomplishments," wrote Wolff.

But that's the important point, Wolff said. "There is no world in which Kushner’s accomplishments happen without a hidden deus ex machina," he wrote. Kushner allegedly deployed "a step-by-step primer of skullduggery and diplomacy, producing a vastly more detailed and useful account of Jared Kushner’s remarkable journey than any other to date," said Wolff.

Kushner ultimately prevailed, navigating Trump's flood of problems and, as Wolff added, his "jealousy and whims," while ending up with $2 billion in his pocket for his hedge fund.

Meanwhile, Wolff contends journalists became so accustomed to extraordinary Trump-era scandal and corruption that they failed to investigate Kushner’s position. He wrote that CNN apparently canceled promotional appearances by Cole after Kushner threatened legal action. The Guardian framed its coverage around Kushner’s denial, rather than Cole's book. But Wolff defends the reliance on unnamed sources, arguing that secrecy is unsurprising in reporting on powerful people and alleged influence schemes.

That said, Wolff cautioned that some details were plausible rather than proven, writing, “Plausibility is not truth.”

Ultimately, he found the book to be a persuasive explanation for an otherwise puzzling matter.

The more important argument, he said, is that Kushner’s growing fortune and ongoing diplomatic role deserve greater scrutiny.

The Trump administration has been scrambling to identify the leakers behind recent stories about his Air Force One ruse, but according to his longtime biographer, there is an "easy answer" as to who leaked the most recent "catering truck" story.

This week, the Washington Post reported about a new wrinkle in President Donald Trump's Air Force One switch-up. Prior reports had revealed that Trump flew out of Turkey last month on an older model Air Force One, due to the new one lacking security features needed in the face of alleged threats from Iran. According to the Post story, the Secret Service had gone a step further, sneaking Trump out of Air Force One on a catering truck and flying him to the U.K. on a military craft, prompting concerns about the lack of care shown for the safety of reporters left to fly out on the legacy craft.

Michael Wolff is a longtime journalist and author, best known for his extensive coverage of Trump's political career, including several books about his first term based on purported insider sources. In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," Wolff touched on the catering truck situation, and suggested that the answer to the question of who leaked to the Post was simple: Trump himself.

"No one knows about it, and no one knows about most of these things that the Secret Service does for a very good reason,” Wolff explained. “These are all security precautions... If people know about them, then they’re no longer part of the security protocol and no longer a safe part. So people don’t know about this. The Secret Service certainly would not leak this. So who leaked it? This is an easy answer.”

"Donald Trump leaked it," co-host Joanna Coles suggested, which Wolff confirmed.

“He has a method here. And the method is, more attention on me,” Wolff added. “And also, there’s a theme here. The assassination theme has worked very well for Donald Trump. And I think that he wants people to know he’s the target. ‘I’m the main target. I’m the guy.’”

Wolff and Coles also wondered how the assembled reporters on the "decoy" Air Force One did not notice anything odd about the flight, given Trump's proclivity for talking to them, and insulting them for attention.

"They literally were on the plane," Coles said. "And they must have thought, ‘Why isn’t the president coming back to talk to us?’ Because he always goes back to talk to them because he loves it. He wants them. He loves to insult them. He knows that will be the next story."

Michael Wolff, one of the biographers of President Donald Trump, revealed that he will begin telling his long tale of trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and the relationships he had and the stories he told.

In a kind of introduction, Wolff likened the "fog of war" to a similar "fog" in the ongoing Epstein scandal.

"The Fog of Epstein" is similar in that his story can be "shaped to fit almost everybody’s view, right-wing or left, of what has gone wrong with our time, and to confirm the depravity of virtually anybody you don’t like," wrote Wolff on his Substack Friday.

The problem, he explained, is that anyone who had an up-close view of Epstein's life had every reason to want to hide it because by sharing it, they were making a confession, Wolff said. They risked becoming part of the cover-up or the conspiracy. It means the majority of the stories come from the accusers.

"So," he explained. "What I am going to try to do is tell the story as I have been privy to it. All battles for truth seem to end up creating even greater fog. My intention is not to engage with the battle, but to offer a personal version of the story—I will tell it only according to what I have seen."

He prefaced it by saying, "This is a story I inadvertently walked into. In the beginning, it did not appear much different from other stories of grandiosity, wealth, and opportunity that seemed to regularly present themselves in Manhattan. I stayed, in part, because the story seemed to unfold as a heightened, purer version of that tale of life in the city during the years of its greatest avarice."

The story Wolff had, he explained, was never told by journalists, survivors or prosecutors, much less Epstein's friends, in large part because he controlled the story. To Epstein, his story wasn't all that interesting or unique, and there were others he could tell.

They seem to all be about "greed and aggrandizement and entitlement; what’s more, Epstein, like his friend Trump, was too vulgar, excessive, and not of our class, to take seriously," said Wolff.

All of these stories, he teased, will unfold on Monday.

All eyes have been on Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the names most likely to chase after Trump's "MAGA crown" after his second term. However, a one-time biographer with inside sources this week claimed that a new name has been circling the "lame duck" president, looking for his own shot at being the successor.

Despite his earlier teases and musings, Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term in office, setting the stage for an unprecedented fight for his place as the 2028 GOP presidential nominee and, in effect, the new leader of the Republican and the MAGA movement. As vice president, Vance has long been seen as the most obvious candidate, but due to his historic unpopularity, other names have also been under serious consideration.

Michael Wolff is a veteran writer and journalist, best known for his tell-all books about the chaos behind the scenes of Trump's first term, based on sources he maintains close to the White House. During the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," Wolff explained that the president's plummeting approval and the suspected drubbing coming for the GOP in the midterms mean that his "lame duck" era is fast approaching, and will see "power starts to ebb because other people start to step up” as “the party begins to think beyond the current presidency.”

In this search for the next MAGA leader, Wolff revealed one name within the administration possibly angling for a shot: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. His chances, however, are strongly dependent on whether or not both Vance and Rubio flame out on the path to the nomination.

"Is Pete Hegseth somehow, because he’s a performer, because he seems shameless, because he’s pro-military in some comical way, does this make him someone who can be a number two or three, and then number one and two fall, and he rises? Unlikely, but not impossible," Wolff said.

He also mentioned a name outside of the administration, making serious considerations about mounting a run for president, one who has emerged as a vocal critic of Trump in recent months: Tucker Carlson.

"I’ve had this discussion on quite a number of occasions with Tucker about his desire to run for president,” Wolff said. “And he has done the deflecting, but not the denying.”

Former congresswoman and Trump-ally-turned-critic Marjorie Taylor Greene has also purportedly been pushing for a Carlson candidacy, potentially priming herself to be his running mate.

Wolff also predicted that, no matter who ends up on the GOP ticket, Trump will try to sabotage their run in some way.

“He will hobble anyone trying to be the nominee. But whoever is the nominee, he will then undermine,” he suggested. “It’s part of the story to be told, and that I trust we will be telling, how he reacts to all of this over the next two and a half years. It won’t be pretty.”

President Donald Trump will not be able to escape the blowback from his MAGA movement's vile new low point, with his one-time biographer predicting that it could cast doubt on the viability and future of his entire political identity.

Michael Wolff is a longtime author and reporter, best known for his extensive coverage of Trump's political career, including several books about his chaotic first term. In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he and co-host Joanna Coles discussed the ongoing fallout from Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's widely criticized new attack ad, which featured his opponent Amy Acton's mother, who previously lost custody of her children after her second husband allegedly abused them.

As Wolff noted, the reaction to the ad, in which Acton's mother called her a serial liar, was overwhelmingly negative from members across the political spectrum, with only Ramaswamy himself and the White House standing by it.

"This has backfired in every possible sense of the word,” Wolff said. “I mean, disavowed by Republicans, Democrats. All voters seem to be completely appalled by this. You can basically find no one to think this was a good idea except Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump, and JD Vance. I don't know of anybody else who would be on the side of this ad, but that threesome is hanging tight, and the Ramaswamy campaign is pledging to put an additional $4 million behind this ad in the closing weeks.”

Coles called the ad "utterly exploitative" of Acton's childhood abuse and suggested, as many have, that Ramaswamy should be "ashamed" of himself. Wolff concurred, but argued that it is more interesting to dig into why the likes of Trump and Vance are choosing to double down on the ad, suggesting that "there's an important political point here."

"And the political point here is that they believe, and so much of Donald Trump's career would support this, that the illiberal and the cold-hearted and the 'f—— you' and the owning the libs works," Wolff said. "So this is... this desperation moment for the Republicans, down to the wire, these close races, which should not be close. They are this is their Hail Mary pass. Let us revert to what has worked for us."

Wolff argued later that the fallout from the ad could prove a disastrous signal for the future viability of Trump's signature brand of politics.

“Does this continue to work, or have people suddenly woken up and said—going down the long list of... Trumpian accomplishments, or the reverse of accomplishments... from the war in Iran to the masked men on the streets, whether people have had enough of this," Wolff added.

President Donald Trump might have effectively "limitless money" to work with, but according to his one-time biographer, it will not be enough to stop the wipeout coming for him next week.

Michael Wolff is a longtime author and reporter best known for his extensive coverage of Trump's political career, including several books about his messy first term in office. In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he told co-host Joanna Coles that he expected a solid sweep of Democratic victories in the midterm elections next week, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that ultrawealthy donors have flooded into Trump and the GOP. This, he argued, would also send a major message about money in politics.

“The Republicans have limitless money,” Wolff said. “So if the Democrats win, that’s a marker. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. The contempt for Donald Trump overwhelms that.”

Digging in further, Wolff made even more optimistic predictions for the Democratic opposition than Coles was willing to make, particularly about the hotly contested Senate race in Texas. Once the dust settled, he added, Trump will be facing a Congress unlike anything he has dealt with before.

“I think [James] Talarico is going to win,” Wolff predicted. “I think the Democrats are going to win the Senate. Trump is going to lose the United States Congress.”

He added, interrogating his co-host: "I just want a record here — you don’t think the Democrats are going to win the Senate?”

“I actually don’t think the Democrats are going to win the Senate,” Coles responded. “I do think they’ll win the House by a serious majority. But I do not think they are going to win the Senate. I think the Senate hangs in the balance ... I think Elon Musk has put an enormous amount of money into people getting out the vote. The operations on the ground for the Republican Party are really extensive.”

Wolff, for his part, argued against Coles's view, predicting that the intensity of voters' hatred towards Trump was simply too much for the Republicans to fundraise their way through.

“That’s the velocity of the contempt for Donald Trump,” he added. “There really is a chance that it will overcome all of that.”

He also noted: "And I think that James Talarico has done a very smart thing to pivot to say he's running against Musk, that Musk has poured over 250 million [dollars] into Texas alone and is now like, you know, Musk is trying to buy this election. I think that's all very effective messaging."