Eight years into writing about Trump, Michael Wolff finally addressed the one question none of his previous books had to answer: what happens after he’s gone.
“If he died suddenly and in office, that might well transform Donald Trump into an iconic historic figure,” Wolff said on his podcast, Inside Trump’s Head, speaking with co-host Joanna Coles.
The topic wasn’t hypothetical for its own sake. Trump, 80 as of last month, had recently been filmed appearing to nod off at Lindsey Graham’s funeral. Wolff doesn’t think Trump has spent much time actually planning for the possibility, saying the president likely assumes he’ll simply outlast the term and is, in Wolff’s phrase, “no doubt” already working out how to remain “the dominant figure in American politics” from Mar-a-Lago no matter what the calendar says.
Coles raised a very different vision of the aftermath.
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She pointed to author Kurt Andersen’s upcoming novel The Breakup, which imagines Trump dying of a stroke on his 89th birthday and sparking unrest among supporters who believe he was the victim of a “deep-state assassination.”
Wolff pushed back on that entirely. “I actually disagree with Kurt,” he said. “It’s like when you remove any dominant figure, dictators. I think people breathe a big sigh of relief. I think it’s like the world clears, and with Trump, the quiet will be extraordinary. People will breathe again.” He closed the thought with four words: “History starts over again.”
From there the discussion moved to succession itself.
Coles floated that JD Vance is “thinking a lot about Donald Trump’s death,” and Wolff described the particular bind that comes with being next in line. “That’s such an interesting thing about vice presidents because, you know, they live for the death of the president, but they can’t think about that,” he said. “I mean, they certainly can’t give any intimation that they are thinking about it.”
None of this stands apart from what Trump has said himself.
He’s raised his own mortality more than once this term, telling a February rally crowd: “I hope to make it. But I doubt I will, to be honest with you. A lot of you will. I’m not so sure,” referring to getting into heaven. Those comments began shortly after the White House confirmed his diagnosis with chronic venous insufficiency, a vein condition responsible for the swelling regularly visible in his ankles.
Political analyst David Rothkopf, speaking separately on The Daily Beast Podcast, tied that mortality talk directly to Trump’s construction projects this term, including a $400 million ballroom, a $100 million triumphal arch and a push to attach his name to the Kennedy Center. “You know, he’s hearing the footsteps of the Grim Reaper in the background,” Rothkopf said, describing the pattern as an attempt to “memorialize himself everywhere he looks.”
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
