Journalist and Trump biographer Michael Wolff joined The Daily Beast Podcast ahead of Election Day to dish about rising tensions in MAGA world as the Republican candidate’s presidential campaign enters its final days.
With the fallout from last weekend‘s “garbage”-fest rally in New York City‘s Madison Square Garden continuing to dominate coverage of the race, Wolff told hosts Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee that many in Trump’s camp “felt good” about the event.
"It‘s more like a hockey game... there’s a lot of whooping, a lot of cheering,“ Wolff explained. ”It is a fandom thing. And I often try to make the distinction that (Trumpism) is not a political phenomenon. It’s a fan phenomenon."
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And with fandom comes loyalty, Wolff noted of Trump’s die-hard base and regular rallygoers. "They sit through this whole succession of morons who get up there and say these moronic things, which are now billed as dark and racist, which they all are... But these are the same morons that speak at all of these events. It has a kind of a family feel."
Coles then described the ethos as “tribal,” and Wolff agreed. “It’s the moron tribe,” he said.
On the flipside, Wolff continued, many other members of the former president’s campaign are “perfectly normal political professionals.”
“In another Republican campaign, they would be not noteworthy. They would just be doing their jobs, but they’ve been caught, like the rest of the Republican party, in this Trump vortex,” he claimed. “This is their career. They can’t just suddenly become investment bankers.... Their job is to make this guy win, but at the same time, they’re clear eyed. It’s Donald Trump.”
These “political professionals,” according to Wolff, are not ideologues, and are under “no illusion” that Trump is a “is a normal figure.” Rather, they are just perplexed by the former president’s ability to prevail against all odds.
And while Wolff described the desire to work for Trump as “almost impossible to understand,” given the former president is known for throwing his allies to the wolves, he hypothesized that the decision came down to “the nature of power and the nature of the certain hubris that people who are attracted to power feel.”
Regardless, he said “it is going to end badly for all concerned.”
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