Trump and the Cocaine Owl

Sometimes, I like to imagine what would happen if historical figures from American politics were transposed to the current day. How, do you think, would Dwight Eisenhower react to a man telling him that cocaine “will turn you into a damn owl, homie, you know what I’m saying? You’ll be out on your own porch. You’ll be your own streetlamp.”

Well, I can tell you how Donald Trump reacted: with intense curiosity. His discussion of drug and alcohol addiction on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast demonstrated perhaps the most interest Trump has ever shown in another human being. Before watching the video of the episode, I hadn’t realized the former president was capable of sentences that end with a question mark.

The setting was Trump’s club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and his interviewer was a 44-year-old with a mullet, a syrupy Louisiana accent, and a knack for surreal lyricism. (“It’s like God hit you with a mirror,” Von once said of taking hallucinogens, and to Trump he described Kid Rock as a “dirt serpent.”) This Past Weekend is one of the 10 most popular podcasts in the United States, allowing Von to talk with regular people, fellow comedians, and top-flight politicians. His last political guest before Trump was Bernie Sanders, for whom he wore a neon tie-dye sweatshirt and a backward baseball cap. Trump got a respectful jacket and an uncovered mullet.

[James Parker: Is Theo Von the next Joe Rogan?]

The release of Trump’s episode of This Past Weekend was effective counterprogramming to the Democratic National Convention. My colleague James Parker described Von’s audience as a “strange (but massive) constituency of fiends, seekers, truthers, strugglers, and comedy nuts.” One of them is Barron Trump, the 18-year-old son of the former president. “He knows you very well,” Trump told Von. “He said, ‘Dad, he’s big.’” Von’s content is tailored to young men—exactly the demographic that the Republicans hope will take them to victory in November. One of his advertisers is BlueChew, an off-brand version of Viagra whose mission, Von said, is to make “the entire country rock hard.” From that phrasing, you can tell which half of the country watches or listens to This Past Weekend. Accordingly, Trump and Von’s conversation rambled through classic barstool topics: their favorite fighters, Kid Rock’s golf swing, and the question of why people no longer have heart attacks from the excitement at sporting events.

Von’s persona oscillates between folksy and faux-naive, but some of his funniest lines with Trump were completely unintentional. Discussing the CNN debate that drove Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race, Von observed: “Like, my dad was really old when I was born—my dad was 70 when I was born, right?—so I don’t like seeing senior citizens get taken advantage of.”

Trump, 78, nodded.

The former president described what happened to Biden next as a “coup” where “they threatened him violently,” which prompted Von to offer a question that I wish more journalists could ask whenever the talk gets a little conspiracist: “Who were they?” They were Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Trump said, and they wore down Biden even though he had claimed that “only God will get me out.”

“Somebody dressed up like God and just chased him out of there,” Von said. (In my head, I have cast Pelosi in this role.)

[Devin Gordon: Why is Joe Rogan so popular?]

Trump’s appearance on the show had been brokered by the UFC’s Dana White, a personal friend of the podcasting king Joe Rogan. Like Rogan, Von has a weakness for Bernie Sanders and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—two politicians who invoke the specters of shadowy forces and dark money, to different ends. This segment of the podcast market is right-leaning, but shares leftist concerns about anything you can put “Big” in front of—Big Pharma, Big Agriculture, Big Law. “Did you know that only four companies control 80 percent of the U.S. meat industry?” intones Von mid-podcast, on a sponsor read for a company that will deliver steaks to your doorstep. Shows such as This Past Weekend and The Joe Rogan Experience plow the great crunchy intersection at the middle of American politics, where the Supplement Bros of the right find communion with the Wellness Vegetarians of the left. (Just don’t let them talk to each other about vaccines.)

The podcast circuit is a rich hunting ground for the Republicans; I half expect to see Trump being interviewed by Shane Gillis as Trump at some point before November. Commentators wonder a lot whether the Roganite podcast space has replaced traditional journalism. Its leading lights like to claim so, loudly and often. But that is the wrong way to look at what’s happening: Podcasts have expanded the talk-show circuit. Theo Von is Ellen for men. And for a presidential candidate, he offers the same bargain that Ellen DeGeneres or Oprah Winfrey or The View hold out: Tell us a little about yourself, and in return you can push your policy talking points.

“We had the greatest economy in history,” Trump said half an hour in, belatedly realizing that it was time to do some politics.

“Oh yeah,” Von replied. “My cousin got a boat.”

Trump also claimed credit for reducing insulin prices, cutting taxes, and building a border wall. He responded enthusiastically to Von criticizing Big Pharma and complaining about seeing prescription-drug ads on television. “What do we have to do that our government won’t help us?” Von asked. “You have to stop listening to lobbyists,” replied Trump, in a statement that would terrify lobbyists, if they believed it even a little bit. “I was not a big person for lobbyists.”

The Trump episode of This Past Weekend was firmly homosocial—a brotherhood where relationships between men take center stage. Von kicked off by asking Trump about Barron’s college prospects and, “What’s something you admire about each of your sons?” (The answer was that Don Jr. is a “hunter” and, overall, his sons “get along great with the rest of the family.”) Later, the conversation moved on to Trump’s older brother, Fred, who died of alcoholism at 42.

Von is open about being in recovery from addiction, and this is what led to the owl-and-streetlamp business. “I had a great brother who taught me a lesson: Don’t drink,” Trump said. “He was a handsome guy … He had a problem with alcohol.” (The young Donald took his advice, meaning that Trump was plausibly the only person at Studio 54 in the 1970s stone-cold sober.) He peppered Von with questions: Which was the “bigger up”? Which was harder to quit, cocaine or alcohol? How long had he been sober? Which was a greater problem in the U.S., alcohol or opiates? “Fentanyl is laced into everything now, it’s horrible,” Trump said. Von lamented that the blow these days was terrible and he had no idea where people were getting it from. Trump looked sympathetic.

Many have wondered if there’s a howling void at the center of Donald Trump’s life, one that has compelled him to boast and lie, to mistreat women, to bully opponents, and to react to being laughed at by a successful Black man by running for the most powerful job in the world. Having a distant, racist, disciplinarian father, who picked on the troubled older brother he idolized, and then watching that brother succumb to addiction and die young … well, that might fit the bill. During the interview, Trump fell into a reverie about how Fred Jr. was a “great pilot”—a profession that he chose instead of competing to inherit Fred Sr.’s real-estate business, and for which Fred Sr. regularly disparaged him. But alcoholism forced Fred Jr. to give up flying.

“The wildest thing to watch,” Von said, “is people losing everything.”