[Transcript edited for clarity, flow and length]
Mary Trump: What do the D.C. Grand Prix, I can’t believe I actually just had to say that, Hakeem Jeffries meeting with Jared Kushner, and Donald’s relationship with What’s Her Name have in common? Well, I sat down with friend and fellow Nerd Avenger, journalist Brian Karem, who’s also the host of Just Ask the Question and the author of the excellent book Free the Press, and we tried to sort all of the insanity out. Enjoy.
Mary Trump: Despite the fact that we are currently at war with Iran, a war of Donald’s own choosing, despite its illegality and unconstitutionality, American farmers are going bankrupt by the score. We are in an unprovoked, unprompted, and, quite frankly, really stupid trade war with Canada, one of our closest, oldest allies, which will be to the detriment of many states. Republicans need to win in the fall. Let’s see what else. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Food prices are skyrocketing. Our produce is killing us, all because of this inept, corrupt, grifting, traitorous Trump regime.
But good news. According to The New York Times, 2026, the 250th anniversary of this failing democracy, is Donald’s summer of fun. And it’s been going so well that he’s taken a victory lap in the form of an obscene, grotesque Grand Prix event in D.C., through the streets, which, as you can imagine, was not very well received by the people who actually live there. So, Brian, am I missing something?
Brian Karem: Yeah, I think he took a victory lap through the Reflecting Pool. Was he in the Beast? Was he driving the Beast? Well, they did do that.
Mary Trump: I know. That’s why it’s ruined. Unless Donald took a box cutter to the Reflecting Pool, you never know.
Brian Karem: Well, who would’ve pegged Donald Trump as the secret weapon for Democrats this fall? What concerns me? I could laugh about all of it because it’s so fun. It’s so off the wall bad. I never had any of this on my bingo card, I have to tell you.
When Donald was on the South Lawn the other day pitching fertilizer and telling people that Scotts had paid him, so he was happy to, I mean, you pay him, he plays. And that’s just corruption. Sometimes he’s as transparent as he claims he is, especially when he’s glomming on the money. But none of this. I have to admit, I’m rather naive at this. I’ve only been doing it for forty some odd years, so it’s really hard.
Mary Trump: Well, that’s why we call you our cub reporter, because you’re a neophyte.
Brian Karem: Yeah, I’m a neophyte to this. I admit to being a little naive about how politics works, but my old man used to have a saying:
I’ve been to three county fairs and a goat wrangling, and I’ve never seen anything like this.
That’s the only way to describe what we’re seeing in the White House. There are no checks. There are no balances. There’s nothing left except pure delusional insanity. And this seems to be something that even the Democrats will be able to defeat Donald with, and they’re notorious for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. Please, not this time.
Mary Trump: Well, a perfect segue. Brian, you have been talking for a very long time about how dangerous it is that corporate, mainstream, traditional media seem just hellbent on normalizing the depravities of Donald as an individual and his regime in general, hence that appalling New York Times headline that this is Donald’s summer of fun and the rest of us be damned.
Brian Karem: Just for a second, the green flag. Just waving the green flag. I thought he was swatting at flies, but go ahead.
Mary Trump: Did you see, first of all, as somebody, I think it was Carrie Pennebaker, pointed out on Twitter, this guy can’t do anything normally. He can’t even wave a flag like a normal person. But somebody, because that flag is green screen green, turned it into an image of Donald, or projected onto it the video of Donald and Jeffrey Epstein with their white man, middle aged underbite while they were dancing. That was fun.
Anyway, we need to call out the normalization because, one, it’s increasingly untenable. Are you kidding me at this point? Secondly, it continues to be more dangerous as he gets more dangerous and more delusional, more untethered from reality, but also more enabled. Because, as you said, there’s no separation of powers anymore. Basically, the Republican Congress, just as the DOJ, just as the corrupt, illegitimate majority of the Supreme Court, they’re all in service to his whims as long as they get their agenda.
But what makes it worse is when Democratic leadership also normalizes the worst aspects of this regime. And I’m talking, of course, about Democratic leader in the House Hakeem Jeffries, probably soon to be Speaker of the House, meeting with Jared Kushner, who is among the most corrupt, vile people in Donald’s orbit. And, Brian, as another kick in the teeth, he’s not even part of the government. What in the world is going on here?
Brian Karem: All I know is that the silver lining in that playbook is the fact that it’s pissed off both Democrats and Republicans. Even his supporters are upset about it. But look, when you talk about reaching across the aisle and bipartisanship, I’m all in. I think the last great effort we had at bipartisanship was Biden’s trillion dollar infrastructure bill. That works. When you reach across the aisle to other lawmakers and try to find a consensus, that’s what this government should be about.
But Jared Kushner is not part of that, and Hakeem Jeffries, the timing of it is horrible. First of all, you’re in the middle of a fight for your life for the republic and democracy. Reaching across to Jared Kushner, who you pointedly pointed out is not even a member of the government, to what ends are you doing it? It almost looks like you’re there for yourself.
It almost looks like you’ve got an agenda outside of the agenda of the American populace. And it also looks like you don’t know what you’re doing because if he reached across the aisle and tried to find Mitch McConnell in his crypt, that’s one thing. But you’re reaching across the aisle to what? To who? Why not reach across the aisle to Fred, who owns the grocery store down the street and votes Republican? It makes no sense. There’s nothing politically that makes any sense about it. There has to be a hidden agenda, and that’s what people are afraid of.
Mary Trump: Yeah. And look, I think there are a lot of things that Jeffries has done that are disqualifying. I think we could find a better Speaker of the House. He’s been disappointing. I had a lot of hope. I thought he was awesome. And every time he’s had a chance to take a stand, he’s failed to meet the moment. So it worries me that he will never learn. He seems not to understand.
I think this thing with Kushner is alarming for many reasons because I’ve heard speculation that it’s because Kushner’s reaching out because he knows that the Republicans are toast in the midterms and he wants to position himself or the party to get some say in things. I’ve been saying this about Democrats for a very long time. When you get power, wield it without mercy, and I don’t mean be cruel like the Republicans.
Brian Karem: I know what you mean. Get your agenda.
Mary Trump: Do not compromise. It’s like Jeffries is saying to the Republicans, “We have you exactly where we want you. What can we do to help?” No. We do not.
I feel this way, but I don’t think Democrats should be working with the Republicans at all, any even legitimately elected ones, until after the election.
Brian Karem: Until after the election, then you can search for common ground. But until the election, what you ought to be doing is trying to win the election. Now, there is a silver lining, like I said, in the fact that even the far right is upset with them for reaching across, but you’re not going to win those people over.
There are some conservative Democrats or Republicans who are now going to vote Democrat in Texas, according to the latest polls, but that doesn’t have anything to do with Hakeem Jeffries. That just has to do with the fact that everybody thinks Ken Paxton is the most evil, corrupt person to ever walk down the pike. So there’s that.
But right now, I would love it if the Democrats would just concentrate on putting the right people in the right places, turning out the vote, and getting elected. Then, wherever it takes you after that, fine. But again, I would like to say wherever it takes you, as long as it follows an agenda that adheres strictly to the Constitution, not what we’ve been getting out of the Republicans. So after that, fine.
Mary Trump: Yeah. My stance has always been, you never make common cause with fascists. I don’t care if it’s President of the United States or majority leader or some random creep who just happens to be the president’s son in law.
But I think what’s interesting is, you alluded to this, this doesn’t do anything to change people in the mythical middle or the undecideds to vote Democrat because they’re not going to.
Brian Karem: Exactly.
Mary Trump: All this does is anger the Democratic base. And here’s the great irony. Democratic establishment politicians, and I don’t think they’re establishment voters. When I say establishment, I mean the Jeffrieses and the Schumers of the world who still believe in this nonsensical idea of bipartisanship. They’re basically saying that the progressives are the problem. The DSA is the problem. They’re more of a problem than the fascists. Of course they’re not.
But what Jeffries is doing is making the case to those disaffected Democrats who are going to the progressive wing and the DSA wing that we can’t trust you guys in leadership because look what you keep doing. It’s not because we want to be socialists. It’s not because we think that there’s that much daylight between the policies of mainstream versus progressives. It’s that the people currently empowering the Democratic Party won’t fight for us.
So again, Brian, what is this impulse toward ceding power to people outside of the Democratic Party and ignoring your base?
Brian Karem: Because I think they’re scared to death. Whenever someone says the word socialist, the Democratic leadership runs for the hills. Whenever they allow the Republicans to frame the argument, and when the Republicans scream that there’s a communist conspiracy, where are the Democrats going, “What are you talking about, you fascist?” Why aren’t they standing up and demanding an accounting of what it is that they say? Why doesn’t the leadership in the Democratic Party actually ask the Republicans to define their terms?
Donald Trump is the one who’s buying, under the guise of government, stakes in private enterprise. That’s communism. That’s him. That’s not the Democrats. And you want to call them a democratic socialist when they’re talking about healthcare for everybody. Well, who are you going to listen to if you’re a voter? Why don’t they make that clear?
I’m tired of the labels, honestly, because most of them, and again, I’m a neophyte, so maybe there’s something here I don’t get, but their definition of socialism is ridiculous. We have paved roads, schools, all of our public interests are paid for by our taxes. You can call that socialism. Strictly, it is, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Democracy is what counts, not fascism.
So every time one of these Republicans starts screaming, I just wish one Democrat would come out and say, “I’m for healthcare for everybody. What are you for, buddy, other than yourself?” And it bothers me, Mary, because at Christmastime, the Congress of the United States adjourned for Christmas with free healthcare for themselves and would not even take up affordable healthcare for anyone else. The President of the United States, his press secretary took eight weeks off with paid maternity leave, and millions of American women can’t get that. You call that socialism? I call it justice. I’m tired of that term. It bugs me, and the Democrats need to stand up for themselves.
Mary Trump: Well, Brian, when you get a little bit more experience, maybe we can have this conversation. Before we continue, please take a second to like this video and subscribe to the channel. Also, leave a comment below and let’s keep the conversation going. Thanks for watching.
Thank you for joining us. I’m here with the amazing cub reporter, Brian Karem, host of Just Ask the Question and many, many other things. Check out his Substack, et cetera, et cetera.
So, yeah, it is infuriating because Republicans continue to misuse these terms and Democrats continue not to define the terms appropriately. And hey, if you don’t like socialism, good for you. Then give back your Social Security checks and let’s not have a Veterans Affairs system.
Brian Karem: Or a military.
Mary Trump: Or a military, or paid healthcare for people who have it. By the way, in case people don’t know, in addition to having the best healthcare on the planet, if you’re in Congress, you get to keep that forever, even after you’ve retired or been voted out of office. So, nice work if you can get it.
Brian, I wanted to shift gears a little bit. First of all, I think it’s important to say I’ve seen some Canadian flags. Elbows up, Canada. We love you, and we are deeply, deeply sorry. We continue to be deeply, deeply sorry about what this horrific moron continues to do to your country and to our alliance, and it’s despicable. I’m just hoping that someday we’re given the chance to mend fences and make up for it. But I did want to shift gears to something else, Brian. You may have heard.
Brian Karem: I may have.
Mary Trump: That there’s a new woman in Donald’s life. And I think one of the things about this story that just sort of exemplifies where we are right now is that what people are glomming onto is the potentially salacious nature of it. I mean, this is a thirty five year old woman, young enough to be his grandchild, who’s with him more than he’s with anybody else on the planet. Sometimes it seems like they’re together twenty four hours a day. She clearly has this unhealthy obsession. She clearly seems troubled and needs help, just as much as he does, really, but nobody seems to care about either one of them enough to get them help.
And so the focus is really on that nature of it. I was thinking the other day, how ironic would it be that not killing millions of people with COVID, not committing insurrection, not destroying our economy, no, Natalie Harp is going to take Donald down. Maybe.
Anyway, but what’s much more important than that, Brian, is that she’s a serious national security risk. I don’t know that that’s getting quite enough attention.
Brian Karem: That’s the real issue here. I talked to Mark Zaid, who is a national security expert and helps people get their national security clearance. He says, “I need a vacation. I’m having dreams about having clients. I’m at dinner with him and I’m talking to him about national security issues.” I go, “You need better dreams, pal.”
But here’s the issue. You want to reach Donald and you’re a head of state, you can bypass everything and go straight to her text and email and her phone, and she’ll put Donald on the phone. That is a national security issue. Sneaking into the trunk of the car of the President. If she’s not vetted, if she doesn’t have clearance, how do we know? We don’t know her background. We don’t know how troubled she is. We don’t know the danger that she would be and can pose.
I mean, personal danger to the President of the United States and national security danger for the rest of the United States. This is not a healthy relationship by any stretch of the imagination. It’s nice to know where some of his weirdest posts have come from, straight from her pen, apparently, and her phone. So now we know how that’s getting to us because many of us have wondered. It can’t be Donald all the time. Sometimes it’s spelled correctly, so we know Donald didn’t post it.
She’s my child’s age, and I keep thinking about that. Here I am, the neophyte cub reporter, going, wow, I have a child that’s that age. And having them in close proximity to the President of the United States with no experience in government, no experience in how to deal with politicians, and none in national security, zero. Under any other title, she’s a stalker. But Donald likes the stalkers, and he loves his cultists as long as they’re blonde and female with blue eyes.
So that, to me, is the real issue. It’s not Donald’s peccadilloes and what he may or may not be doing with her personally. It’s what she poses as far as a threat to the Constitution and to a democracy. And that, my friends, is the issue that we all should be concerned about. Sneaking into the trunk of the car. I don’t even know where to go with that.
I didn’t have that one on my bingo card either. I remember I thought one time that Ronald Reagan was kind of a cheesy guy. Still, as cheesy as he was, I can’t imagine anybody doing what Donald does with the presidency. It’s shocking, and it’s horrible.
Mary Trump: Well, the thing about so many of what seem like isolated, unrelated incidents is that there’s a through line here. The ballroom bunker, the Reflecting Pool, the UFC or whatever that cage match thing, the Grand Prix, Natalie Harp. Yes, they have elements that are different and distinct from each other. One’s more about grift, and one’s more about incompetence, and one’s more about the fact that Donald is a traitor who has no intention of leaving office. One’s about national security.
But I think one of the through lines, and there are more than one, but for our purposes right now, is what?
Brian Karem: Jeffrey Epstein? There’s a through line.
Mary Trump: Oh, yes. I think Jeffrey Epstein is always the through line. But in this particular instance, it’s the inability and unwillingness of anybody to say no to him. And it just shows us that our system is broken, has been broken for a very long time, and broken systems bend toward their most dysfunctional member, and that person ends up with an outsized amount of power.
And here we are. This is a thirty five year old woman. Nobody can get rid of her because Donald wants her there, despite the very real threats she may pose, not just to him, because I don’t know, whatever, but to us, to our country, to our national security. And it’s just not one person. I guess they’re too busy spending billions of taxpayer dollars making roadshow documentaries about themselves so they can feel cool.
Brian Karem: Well, I mean, I have to give it to Donald Trump. He has stacked the deck with the most incompetent. You couldn’t try to find incompetence and find them as well as he has. From Pete Hegseth, who will end up being the fall guy for the war in Iran, to the only one, actually, who has any gravitas at all, and he bent the knee too, who’s the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. He does have some background in doing government work, so I’ll give him that.
I’m not saying he’s actually competent. I’m just saying he has the background in doing the work. He’s the only one that’s even close. I mean, you’ve got Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury, who doesn’t understand the law of supply and demand. He can’t even tell you why oil prices are up.
Mary Trump: I’m glad oil prices spiked today. I have no idea what. That’s your job.
And just quickly, as for Marco Rubio, I don’t think anything in your past counts anymore if you have become a sycophantic war criminal. So it doesn’t matter if he used to be competent. He’s actually worse than they are because he should know better, but he sold his soul because he wanted power.
All right, Brian. I said twenty minutes. It’s been almost twenty five. I just wonder, is there anything you want to alert people to? Is there anywhere you want people to go?
Brian Karem: Well, I always pitch Free the Press. It’s a fine book. It’s in its fourth edition, and I recommend that people pick it up. If you want to find out what’s wrong with the press today, I think somebody wrote a book about it. Oh, me.
Then, of course, @BrianKarem on all social media. It’s Just Ask the Question as a podcast wherever fine podcasts are sold.
But more importantly, I want everyone to pay attention this week to what’s going to happen in the White House regarding the war in Iran. I think there’s going to be a lot of, or at least one or two, horrifying shocks come out about it as far as the amount of casualties, what actually happened to the base in Bahrain, and how despicable Donald Trump has been. This is an issue. And I’ve said this before, mark my words here.
I’ve said it. This war will not end as long as Donald Trump is president, unless he gives up, and he won’t. And he won’t put boots on the ground. No one wanted this war. This is the story that’s going to drive the midterms, along with the economic ruin that he has brought to us.
Keep those two in mind. The salacious stuff, it’s fun to talk about. It always goes viral. But these are the two things that affect the American electorate more than anything else, and I think people need to keep their attention focused on the economy. The price of oil, since Scott Bessent doesn’t know about it, we need to know about it. The beef cattle, then the beef, that is horrifying. And the Make America Great Again president is backing Argentina versus American ranchers. So that’s going to be horrifying to look at.
Brian Karem: So I’d say keep an eye on that prize.
Mary Trump: And people should care about that stuff.
Brian Karem: Well, everybody does. I mean, that’s a law of supply and demand too. If there were subsidies for not having more cattle, you might have a greater supply of beef. But this is part and parcel of the problem, and Donald Trump doesn’t care about that at all. Short term gain is what he would like.
So he’s lost MAGA farmers. I say everyone, if you’re going to do anything the rest of this fall, just get out and make sure you vote. Get on phone lines. Volunteer in precincts. Don’t let Donald Trump steal the election in the way that he wants to do.
If you have to stand for hours in line to vote, do it. This election counts more than any other in our life, and I’m not saying that as hyperbole. It’s not hyperbolic. This is it. Get out and vote.
Mary Trump: An unnecessary war of choice against Iran, a ruinous economy and reputational harm, a traitorous fascist regime, a completely complicit Republican Party and supermajority.
Brian Karem: Well, you’ve read my latest column.
Mary Trump: Yeah. So I think, let us not take anything for granted, please. There are three Dan Sullivans in Alaska. Who knew? We cannot take anything for granted.
So everybody, thanks so much for joining me. And Brian, it’s awesome to see you, as always.
Brian Karem: Oh, I love you.
Mary Trump: I love you, my friend, and I’ll see you soon.
Mary Trump: Bye, guys. The conversation continues in the comments, so let us know what you think.
