In Conversation with Wajahat Ali

16 June, 2026

[Transcript edited for clarity, flow and length]

I had a great conversation with my friend and fellow Nerd Avenger, Waj Ali, and we covered a lot of ground.

We started with Sunday’s obscene, grotesque extravaganza at the White House, the people’s house, which was really a taxpayer funded celebration of Donald’s birthday disguised as something else. We talked about why it failed to resonate, even with many Republicans, and why turning the White House and the military into props for a personal spectacle was not only deeply disrespectful, but also an astonishing grift designed to enrich Donald and his allies.

From there, we broadened the conversation to something even more important: the future of this country. We discussed the kind of candidates we should be supporting, the values they need to embrace, and the promises they need to make if they expect to earn our trust. It’s not enough to simply oppose what’s happening. We need leaders with the courage to meet this moment and a vision for building something better.

We don’t just talk about the problems. We talk about the solutions. I hope you’ll check it out.

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Wajahat Ali: Hey everybody. This is Mary Trump. You know her, you love her. She was about to give me some juice, but she’ll give it to me later because I accidentally pressed live.

What I was discussing with Mary right before we went live was this. This is just my take, my observation as a human being with a simple English major. Donald does not look right, and he has not looked right for a long time. He has not sounded right, as a morally decent human being, for a very long time either.

If you saw him in his meeting with Macron yesterday in France, the water retention, barely staying awake, barely lifting his arm, all of it was visible. This was after him being mostly awake because, of course, he wasted taxpayer dollars on this carnival of corruption at the White House and even at his birthday bash. Sorry, I mean to celebrate the birth of the country.

It was not even free to everyone. You had to spend $11 on Paramount +. Paramount bought exclusive streaming rights to UFC. The people who own Paramount now are the Ellisons. UFC is under TKO. Donald Trump bought shares in TKO. The fighters who won were paid in Trump Coin, and all of it was promoted by crypto.

But it was for America, Mary, right?

Mary Trump: Of course. Don’t be cynical.

Wajahat Ali: And he fell asleep during it. Mary, yesterday, your uncle did not look right.

Mary Trump: No. There are a couple of things going on.

One is the continuing psychic erosion that has been going on for a very long time. It has taken longer than it should have because he has had so many people protecting him from the reality of his own incompetence and from what other people think of him.

But there is only so long those mitigations can be effective.

The reason we are seeing these increasingly grandiose projects in service to protecting his ego is because his ego is under such assault. There is very little other people can do when the reason he is feeling increasingly out of control, and increasingly confronted by the reality of his incompetence, is because of mistakes he is making. He cannot blame anybody else.

He threw this $60 million taxpayer funded, obscene, grotesque extravaganza for his glory in order to fill what I have often referred to as the black hole of need within him. And he woke up this morning to discover, yet again, that it was not enough.

Wajahat Ali: Too much and never enough. There is so much there someone could write a book.

Mary Trump: Somebody should. Oh, wait.

And, of course, as you mentioned, the cankles are cankling. It is kind of like the reflecting pool. You can keep putting billions of dollars into it, just like Donald has access to the best healthcare and the best doctors on the planet, and they can keep trying to stitch him back together.

But if you paint the reflecting pool dark blue and do not put in a filter, it is going to become pond scum. If Donald keeps doing things that are detrimental to his health, there really is not much you can do.

Wajahat Ali: The reflecting pool is such a beautiful microcosm for the soul of America under Donald Trump.

You have something that should not be touched. It has tradition. Experts have maintained its beauty. Donald says he wants it deep blue, like the flag. The experts say that if you paint it deep blue, the pH level will rise, algae growth will activate, the algae will turn everything green, and then eat away at the blue.

He says, I want it done.

Then he spends $14 million, and now the algae has come into full bloom.

Mary Trump: Yes, and there is foam developing. That might have something to do with the hydrogen peroxide. What do I know?

But this is what happens when you are incompetent. It is what happens when you do not believe in science and do not understand that dark colors absorb heat. That does not end well if you are talking about water and you do not have the knowledge or skills to get something done properly.

This was also so he could hold up that stupid poster board comparing the length of a pool to the height of a building.

Wajahat Ali: Speaking of another microcosm, I want to go back to the UFC fight. I called it a carnival of corruption. It was an open, naked grift.

He made money. The Ellisons made money. Crypto made money. He used the military and the White House as props. He gave people slop and some Roman gladiators, and the MAGA base thought it was amazing.

But it did not work. Only 16% of Americans approved of it. Even some UFC fighters said they love UFC, but this was gross. Why do you think this was a step too far?

Mary Trump: Because the White House is the people’s house.

It was not just a way to shove his preferred cultural touchstones down our throats, which is something the right has accused the left of doing forever even though we have not. He perverted the very concept of what the White House stands for.

The worst thing he did was use the Honor Guard. The Honor Guard is an elite corps of service members who typically greet the remains of fallen soldiers at Dover Air Force Base. Instead, they were lined up at the Lincoln Memorial behind a bunch of those guys.

I do not follow UFC, and I assume plenty of UFC fighters are perfectly decent human beings, whatever their politics are. But the people they picked to represent UFC were despicable.

Then they dragged the Honor Guard to the White House to salute these people, one of whom was apparently vomiting on himself.

Wajahat Ali: Yes. That same man came in completely drunk, could barely walk up for the weigh in, vomited on himself, and after he won the fight, made that comment about Michelle Obama.

Mary Trump: So part of it is the misuse of American ideals and the Honor Guard. Then there is the fact that this was a spectacle, but it was grotesque.

There was nothing honorable, decent, or aesthetically pleasing about it. It was just a bunch of violent, overwhelmingly white men reveling in violence.

On top of the fact that we paid for it, it cost $60 million. Donald called it his birthday present to us. Well, guess what? Only if you wanted to pay $8.99 a month for Paramount Plus.

It matters that it was a massive grift. It matters that all of this was not just in service to protecting his unprotectable, fragile ego, but in enriching him, his cronies, and his useless children.

Wajahat Ali: And maybe his son Eric, who may have tried to illegally bet on rigged fights. This should be a bigger story.

Allegedly, Eric Trump messaged Daniel Cormier, who is a ringside announcer along with Joe Rogan, asking him if the fights were rigged and if he could bet on them. Daniel Cormier tweeted out screenshots, then deleted it and said people were dumb. The White House said it was AI.

But Daniel tweeted it. He had screenshots of the conversation. Eric Trump deleted tweets. So it looks like we have photographic proof of Eric trying to bet on fights he assumed were rigged.

Mary Trump: Well, Waj, they are not making nearly enough money off the American taxpayer or their grifts. It is only a couple of billion dollars. Clearly, they need more.

Wajahat Ali: That is why I always go back to your analysis of Donald’s psychology. To me, he is the end result of America. He is American as apple pie, rape, and slavery.

People do not like hearing that, but I feel like he represents cruelty, misogyny, white supremacy, greed, and selfishness. If you do not confront those things, you get Donald Trump. You get Idiocracy. You get the UFC as a 250th anniversary celebration.

Everything is going badly. The polls are bad. The Iran war is bad. The trade war is bad. He does not go to his own son’s wedding, and when he is asked about it, he says, I have known him for a long time. That is a totally normal thing for a parent to say about his child.

Does he care about the financial hardships of Americans? Not one bit. Two days ago, when asked about inflation, he said, I love inflation. Does he care about anything, Mary?

Mary Trump: Of course. Money. That is it.

Wajahat Ali: Does he care about anyone?

Mary Trump: No.

That has nothing to do with America. He is a deeply psychologically disordered human being who had very severe developmental issues and grew up in a family run by an authoritarian, patriarchal sociopath, my grandfather, who valued nothing but money.

When you grow up in a family in which money is literally the only currency, it stands in for everything else. It stands in for love, respect, and affection.

If my grandfather valued you, as he valued Donald, you received hundreds of millions of dollars. If he had no value for you at all, he either killed you off symbolically or literally, or he disinherited you.

Wajahat Ali: Your father wanted to be a pilot.

Mary Trump: My father was a pilot.

He had every intention, as the oldest son and namesake, of taking over the family business. But for reasons I do not fully understand, my grandfather did not think he was the right kind of person. He was not tough enough. He was not a “killer.”

After three years of being miserable in Brooklyn, working with my grandfather, who refused to give him any real responsibility, my dad said, I’m going to be a pilot for TWA at the dawn of the jet age in 1964.

My grandfather had no respect for that. He hounded my father until he could not fly anymore. My dad joined the family business again but was completely sidelined. A year later, Donald, at the age of 24, was made president, leapfrogging my dad, who was eight years older and had been working with the company for 11 years.

That is what happened in my family when you did not do what my grandfather expected. The problem was that it was almost impossible to know what my grandfather expected because he was not clear about it.

He picked Donald. You grow up in a family in which one person is so favored and everything is a zero sum game, and money literally is the only thing that matters. It destroys your relationship to money. You cannot have a healthy relationship to money.

And this is one way in which Donald is like the American ideal.

We have made three major mistakes as a society. We have failed to acknowledge, let alone atone for, the genocide committed against the Native population and the genocide and enslavement of another population. We needed truth and reconciliation. We needed reparations. We never got them.

We have also never confronted what a misogynistic society we are.

Finally, the myth of rugged individualism and the idea that personal wealth is the most important thing have gotten us to this very dark place. As you said earlier, somebody like Donald was inevitable.

Wajahat Ali: And someone like Elon Musk. You cannot get the world’s first trillionaire without this system. Elon Musk was created by a bipartisan establishment.

Mary Trump: The fact that Biden did not cancel every single one of Elon Musk’s government contracts is amazing to me.

Wajahat Ali: AI and crypto are buying out Democrats and Republicans. I spoke with Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who are both running in New York. I asked them how a Democrat can claim to change the system if their nest is feathered by AI, crypto, and AIPAC.

Darializa was blunt. She said it will not happen. The system will continue, which is why we have primaries.

The more Donald messes up, the more obvious it becomes. Just today, it was reported that the ballroom Donald said would not use taxpayer dollars has already taken taxpayer money. The internal cost estimate in March was hundreds of millions more than he claimed, and the project contradicts his claim that no taxpayer money would be spent.

Mary Trump: The original budget was $200 million, which is already $200 million too much because we do not need a ballroom.

This is another scam, and it proves what everybody should have known back in 2016. Donald is a terrible businessman and a terrible deal maker.

This is all about impoverishing us, enriching his cronies, and creating a tech oligarchy in which one person has more money than the rest of us combined.

The other reason we got here is because we failed to value education. We have allowed our education system to diminish over decades. We punish intellectualism, do not fund the arts properly, and hire people like Linda McMahon to be Secretary of Education.

Wajahat Ali: The latest news is that the Department of Education plans to move special education and civil rights out of the agency.

Mary Trump: That has been the plan all along.

It is most obvious at the Department of Education, but it is also operative at the Department of Justice, the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, and elsewhere.

The goal of Project 2025 was to put in place cabinet members whose mission was to destroy the agencies they were hired to run.

Wajahat Ali: That was the goal of Betsy DeVos. She wanted to destroy the Education Department. There were some guardrails, and now Linda McMahon is doing it.

And guess who controls WWE and UFC? TKO. Guess who bought stock in TKO? Donald Trump. Guess who controls TKO? Ari Emanuel of William Morris Endeavor, the alleged liberal and Democratic bundler in Hollywood.

It is all a grift. It is a big club, and none of us are in it.

Let me ask you about J.D. Vance. He was on The View today. They did a better job than Meet the Press. They pushed him on inflation, the Epstein files, and the administration’s hostility toward Black people. He just sat there and smiled.

He is out there promoting a book. He became Catholic. He becomes whatever he needs to be. He was groomed for his entire career by Peter Thiel, the white nationalist billionaire who hand delivered him to the White House and exchanged emails with Jeffrey Epstein.

With everything happening, I see J.D. Vance getting thirsty. I think he is making a play for the crown.

Mary Trump: He has to, because Donald is never going to endorse him.

Vance has to forge his own path. Peter Thiel desperately wants him to have more power because it means Peter Thiel will have more power. Vance exists to do Thiel’s bidding.

But Donald cannot comprehend that any of us can or should live beyond him. He is a nihilist. He also cannot comprehend that anybody could possibly succeed him or that anybody deserves to succeed him.

He is not going to endorse anyone any more than he was going to go to Joe Biden’s inauguration. It will be up to Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, and whoever else to start making inroads.

This is Vance’s opening bid.

But do not buy his book. The man does not have a sincere bone in his body. Instead, buy Joyce Vance’s book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable.

Joyce Vance, Mary Trump, Trump Vance. It is a thing that could happen.

Wajahat Ali: It could be a thing.

Now, Mary, you reached out and said you wanted to talk about your new PAC. Tell us about it.

Mary Trump: It is good madness.

As you know, there is money in politics that should not be there. It is difficult to make sure money reaches the right candidates instead of lining people’s pockets.

This is largely thanks to John Roberts and the corrupt, illegitimate supermajority on the Supreme Court, especially Citizens United, which opened the floodgates to dark money.

Since there is nothing we can do right now to get money out of politics, that has to remain a goal. There is an excellent PAC called End Citizens United dedicated to that cause.

But we also need to elect candidates who understand everything at stake and have the guts to meet the moment.

As long as money exists in politics, we need to raise it and get as much as possible to people dedicated to changing the system in comprehensive and fundamental ways.

We are not looking to rebuild. We are not looking to go back to before.

We are looking to change everything.

If America is going to fulfill its aspirations, it needs to become a multicultural democracy in which all of us are equal, all of us have the same civil rights, and all of us have access to the franchise.

We need real safeguards. Everything has to be codified. We are not leaving anything up to norms and traditions anymore.

We want people in power who are not afraid to shake things up. We want people who are going to reform the Supreme Court in meaningful, lasting ways, combat climate change, get rid of the filibuster, make D.C. and Puerto Rico states, and show real vision and courage.

We want people who are not beholden to anybody except the people.

Wajahat Ali: It is called Transcend PAC.

Mary Trump: I probably should have said that. It is called Mary Trump’s Transcend PAC. If you Google Mary Trump Transcend, that should get you there.

The website is marytrumptranscendpac.org.

I started another PAC four years ago, but we are in a completely different universe now. We thought the clearest thing to do would be to start a new PAC with a new mission.

In 2024, we talked a lot about democracy. That message did not work because too many people do not know what democracy is. Some people voted for a fascist while telling pollsters that protecting democracy was their most important issue.

We need to support candidates and causes that understand where we are, who we are, and who we want to become.

We cannot cling to the familiar just because things are scary. We are not only talking about fighting fascism. We are talking about changing how Democrats do things.

We need to get out of the mindset that corporatist establishment Democrats want to keep us in. That means replacing people like Chuck Schumer with leaders who will never make common cause with fascists and who understand that fighting fascism matters more than collegiality in the Senate.

Wajahat Ali: The mission says you are building a grassroots coalition to elect real leaders who believe in public service and will work to fulfill the promise of American democracy.

If people give five or ten dollars, where does that money go?

Mary Trump: As much as humanly possible goes to candidates, though of course there is some overhead because everything costs money.

My wife, Ronda Cress, is the COO. She was an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, worked in disability rights her entire career, and was forced out by the fascists of the Trump regime. She is on the right side of everything, and we are thrilled to be doing this together.

We are going to do our due diligence. We are going to choose candidates up and down the ballot. We want to play for everything because Democrats have made the mistake too often of leaving races uncontested.

In what should be a massive wave election, we will look at places like Iowa, Ohio, and red districts to find candidates who will put the American people first and understand that transformational change is necessary.

We will also support organizations doing good work, including nonprofits like ProPublica and independent media.

Wajahat Ali: Have you chosen any candidates yet?

Mary Trump: No. We will announce our first slate in July.

We just launched on Sunday, so we are beginning the vetting process and talking to a lot of people. We want to make the right choices.

Starting next year, we want to get involved in primaries because it is critically important that we stop electing Democrats who make common cause with fascists. That is not how you get to democracy.

Wajahat Ali: I hope the PAC asks candidates whether they take money from AIPAC, AI, and crypto.

Mary Trump: Absolutely.

We are going to have a comprehensive checklist of disqualifying factors. Taking money from AIPAC is one. Taking money from AI and crypto is another. If an incumbent voted to continue funding ICE, that is a deal breaker. If they voted to confirm judges who would not answer whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election, we will take that seriously too.

We want candidates who are on the right side of things and willing to prove they will be the leaders we need.

Wajahat Ali: Primaries matter. Vote blue no matter who does not work anymore. You have to back the right blue.

Mary Trump: Vote blue no matter who made sense when people were terrified. But we are beyond that.

That approach keeps bringing us to candidates who tell Black voters and other members of the Democratic base that their civil rights will be addressed eventually, just not yet.

I am sick of that.

We need candidates who respect and pay attention to the needs and rights of our base. We cannot keep supporting candidates more worried about offending the Republican base, which is full of white supremacists, Christian nationalists, antisemites, Islamophobes, anti immigrant extremists, and misogynists, than fighting for the people who actually make up the Democratic coalition.

Wajahat Ali: Republicans flex power when they get it. Democrats need to stop worrying about what people who already hate them think.

This is the Left Hook. Everything is free, but go support Mary Trump’s Transcend PAC at marytrumptranscendpac.org.

Mary Trump: We also need to remember that we got here with the help of the so called never Trumpers.

When Democrats get back into power, many of those people are positioning themselves to continue having influence. These are the same people who tell Democratic presidents to choose Republicans as vice presidents or cabinet members.

We need candidates who will not fall for that nonsense.

Thank you so much for the time and the platform. You have a great audience. We will keep everyone posted as soon as we start announcing candidates.

I really believe now is our time.

Wajahat Ali: Go subscribe to Mary’s Substack.

Thank you all for watching. Stay healthy, be happy, be joyful, and remember why we are doing this. We have to live for ourselves, for democracy, for freedom, for human rights, for all the advances made by our ancestors, and for our children’s generation.

Be kind, be informed, and please don’t be a fascist.

Thank you, Mary.

Mary Trump: Bye. Thanks a lot.

Check Out Wajahat Ali’s the Left Hook. Everything is free, and go support Mary Trump’s Transcend PAC at marytrumptranscendpac.org.