This week on The Daily Beast Podcast, co-hosts Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee welcomed Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and Wharton professor who’s racked up 80 million TED Talk views, to discuss the current “brace for impact” moment in America, as Bee described it. In the aftermath of the presidential election, and amid other looming cultural shifts, Grant says people feel stuck in uncertainty, gripped by “threat rigidity.” His advice? Focus on meaningful work. “The best antidote to helplessness is a sense of helpfulness,” he advised.
Grant’s approach to leadership is similarly thoughtful: “Be a giver, not a taker; a learner, not a knower,” he told Coles and Bee. Political leadership isn’t about being a “super genius,” he continued, but relationship and coalition-building—skills he says Elon Musk and Donald Trump lack. Instead, Grant advocates for “internal disruptors” who understand public service, adding, “Let’s not bet on Iron Man.”
The Daily Beast’s executive editor—and “Mar-a-Lago patio correspondent,” as Coles deemed him—Hugh Dougherty also joins the podcast to discuss the “patio power games” currently playing out at Trump’s Palm Beach headquarters. Musical chairs this is not.
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As he assembles his new administration, Trump is working from a “fake situation room,” Dougherty explained, filled with TV screens on which the president-elect scrutinizes candidates' on-air appeal. “And the big judgment for Trump, we are told, is how do they perform defending him?” Dougherty said.
This focus on loyalists with cable TV credentials is perhaps also pushing more outlandish names to the top of Trump’s wish list. The president-elect picks thus far include Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard , Kristi Noem and Elon Musk—with RFK Jr. likely still to come.
As Dougherty noted, Trump’s team has normalized—encouraged, even—extreme discourse to the point of “smashing the Overton window,” in an attempt to make Trump look tame by comparison.
So with the rules of leadership shifting and Trump’s power-drunk suitors swarming, Mar-a-Lago’s political fly trap awaits its next catch. Listen to the full episode to find out why that won’t be a ‘regular’ bug.
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