On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, co-hosts Samantha Bee and Joanna Coles unpacked the chaos in D.C. during a particularly turbulent week at the White House.
President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements sent markets worldwide into disarray, while cracks have started to show among the power players in his administration. (Case in point: the very public feud between Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro and billionaire cheerleader Elon Musk, who broke ranks to criticize the tariffs and called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks.”)
Speaking with Coles and Bee, The Daily Beast’s executive editor Hugh Dougherty suggested Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles may be losing control of her ship.
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“There’s a real sense of this discipline that Susie Wiles was supposed to be bring beginning to crack at the edges,” Dougherty argued, pointing to far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer gaining Trump’s ear and successfully pushing him to fire several National Security Council officials.
“Laura Loomer has gone and given this display of power, and Susie Wiles—who is known to oppose Laura Loomer in all shapes and forms—has been powerless to stop it,” he said.
Later in the episode, Bee and Coles welcomed David Bernad, executive producer of the hit TV series The White Lotus, to spill behind-the-scenes secrets—and address drama that’s spilled into the public eye.
Bernad revealed that this season’s plotlines—blackmail! incest! Buddhism!—were quite literally dreamt up in a drugged daze by showrunner Mike White, who came down with bronchitis on a scouting trip to Thailand. While recovering in a hospital, White was hooked up to a nebulizer and flooded with steroids.
“He basically was up for two nights and he hallucinated this season,” Bernad recalled. “I saw him the next morning in the scout van and he said, ‘I had this vivid hallucination,’ and that is pretty much what we shot.”
Coles joked, “I need that nebulizer. You need to bottle that and sell it.” For much more from Bernad—and some of Coles’ best new skincare tips—listen to the episode in full.
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