The Daily Beast Podcast - How Trump Just Became America's Biggest Traitor

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

David Rothkopf joins Joanna Coles to sound the alarm on Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping betrayal of America, from pumping money into Putin’s war machine to potentially helping fund attacks on U.S. forces. As Trump’s administration embraces authoritarian tactics and threatens a televised execution, Rothkopf explains how the president is torching America’s global standing. Plus, Marco Rubio’s presidential ambitions collide with the growing scandal engulfing Kimberly Guilfoyle in Greece, while a disastrous Republican debate performance and a suddenly competitive Senate map raise the stakes for the midterms. With Trump’s own party growing nervous and a wave of damaging leaks threatening to bring down one of his most controversial appointees, the cracks in MAGA’s grip on power are getting harder to ignore. #ad Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BEAST at https://www.oneskin.co/BEAST #oneskinpod  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Does he want to just keep the war between Ukraine and Russia actually going? So he's playing both sides. It has to do with Donald Trump's pathological desire to please his daddy. Vladimir Putin. This is the product of a diseased mind, okay? It's crazy. Aiding and abetting an enemy is a crime, right? People would call it treason, except we haven't actually declared war on these two enemies.

So technically legally, it's not treason. But it's certainly traitorous. This is one of the most dangerous. demented, disloyal betrayals of the United States of America ever by a U.S. official, much less a president. David, happy holiday. Happy holiday weekend. Happy Indigenous People's Day. Oh, okay. That's the holiday. I always get confused by these endless holidays. Well, at the White House, they think it's Columbus Day. And I just say Indigenous People's Day,

out of respect, but also to piss them off. Okay, so because we know that they're paying attention. They are. They're constantly commenting on The Daily Beast. Well, it's true. They're obsessed. Well, we have a new person in the White House press secretaries, anti-chamber.

Katie Zakaria, what do you know about her? I mean, how many mad conspiracies have she put forward quite a lot? We should remind people, by the way. This is the Daily Beast podcast. It is Indigenous People's Day. We're recording this on Monday morning, and we don't know if Kimberly Guilfoyle, we will be marched out of the Hellenic Republic by the end of the day. And we've got a lot to get to. Elon Musk funding the midterms for the Republicans. We've got Darlene Graham's even worse debate performance than the last debate performance.

We've got Donald Trump spiraling out of control, but we always have Donald Trump spiraling out of control. More importantly, we have David Rothkopf, who's spiraling in control. control. That's me, spiraling in control. What do you know about Katie Zakaria, the new White House Press spokesperson, other than poor old Scott Jennings is in the fetal position rocking back and forth? Poor Scott Jennings. Well, you know, she is one of these in the mold, right? She's got some fox background. She's got some right wing background. She loves conspiracy theories, apparently, which she promotes. She's blonde. and she looks like the other ones.

And her name begins with a K. And he's had three press secretaries. And so some wags online are calling them KKK for some reason. Who was the other one? Obviously, there was Carolyn Levitt, normally spelt with a C, but I'm sure she wanted to be different. No, no, she was different. Do you think that she changed her spelling to Caroline

when she was sort of 13, which is what a lot of girls do? I just don't know, but I do know. that this new one is, you know, she's already a mess. I call them the Steffford Liars. The Stefford Liars. That's good. That's good. You know, they all look like they're out of Stepford wives, and they look the same, and their job is to lie for Donald Trump, which she's already started doing.

Well, Sarah Ewell Weiss, one of our correspondents in Washington, wrote an excellent piece about one of Katie's conspiracy theories, which was that she says that the abortion pill, Mithopristone, was produced by the same companies that produced the gas that was used in the chambers in Germany and the Holocaust. Zykoan B. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. No. I mean, completely untrue. It actually was produced out of a French lab by a Frenchman in the late 80s, I think. So a crazy conspiracy. That's what she does. She's just a right-wing shill. And, you know, it is a sign that Trump is having a hard time getting people who are not crazy conspiracy theorists to join the team. Because he is circling the drain.

Like, look at the polls. And Republicans are now going, oh, my God, the polls are terrible. And look at what's likely to happen with him if the Democrats win. And look at all the crazy shit they're doing in order to distract from this, you know, from, you know, funding Russia's war against Ukraine and Iran's war against us to, you know, having FBI agents go through Ilan Omer's home, which is unbelievably shocking. I mean, all of those things are shocking. You know, last week he was like, let's have a race riot and let's attack the Somalis. He's losing it. And so who's going to join that team

except somebody else who's already lost it? Fair, fair comment, David. So can you bring us up to speed on his suggested ceasefire with Ukraine and Russia, which is supposed to be, they're supposed to stop attacking each other's oil refineries? Yeah, that didn't go so well because he announced it. And within an hour, there was a Russian attack on a refinery. And last week, there were 180-od Russian attacks on a refinery. And it has nothing to do with the ceasefire. It has to do with Donald Trump's pathological desire to please his daddy, Vladimir Putin, you know, and, you know, because his other daddy is long gone, and Putin was the next best thing he could find, I guess.

But, you know, what he has done is he has struck a deal to buy Russian oil, which, of course, particularly Russian diesel, which we're not supposed to buy, nobody's supposed to buy, because we have sanctions against Russia's sale of oil. But he thought, well, look, if I buy some of this, and he talked about initially three tranches, 300,000 metric tons, 500,000 metric tons, and a million metric tons, then this will help the American oil market

and reduce the price of diesel in the U.S. There are a couple problems with that. First of all, the amounts that he's bringing in amount to a tiny fraction of U.S. consumption and will have no effect on the availability of diesel in the U.S. Secondly, Russia's diesel production is under siege, and they may not be able to meet this. Thirdly, there are plenty of other people we could have bought it from.

Canada would have sold it to us for much less, but he wanted to buy it from the Russians. And fourth is the big one, because those three are big. It won't help. it's not supposed to do what it's going to do. But the big one is he's pumping money into Russia at the time that Russia is having an economic crisis and Russia is having an economic crisis because it's using its money to attack Ukraine. And so, you know, because money is fungible, what's going to happen? Our U.S. dollars will make it possible for Russia to fund more attacks

on Ukrainian civilians, more attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, more of their illegal, immoral war against Ukraine, more war crimes. But it's worse than that. Okay, it's worse than the fact that he's funding them in an attack against an ally who is a bowwork of democracy and defending all of us with their courage. No, it's worse. Because what else is Russia doing? Well, as we've learned in the past couple of weeks, Russia is resupplying missiles to Iran and Russia is supplying intelligence to Iran. Well, who are those missiles aimed at? Who is the intelligence intended to help them identify? Us.

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weekend, we saw him calling for Zelensky to step down saying to the people of Ukraine, you need a new leader. In terms of his own understanding, do you think, what is happening here? Does he want to just keep the war between Ukraine and Russia actually going? So he's playing both sides. It's impossible to understand any kind of strategy here. Well, first of all, why are you looking for strategy? This is the product of a diseased mind, okay? He doesn't know what it's going on. He may even believe this thing that he goes around telling everybody, which is the reason

diesel prices are high is because Ukraine is waging a war against Russia. First of all, Russia is the one waging the war against Ukraine. And secondly, the primary reason that oil is. fuel prices are high in the world is Donald Trump's illegal, reckless war with Iran. As, by the way, Zelensky pointed out over the weekend after Trump called for him to be behind, to leave. And, you know, it's kind of crazed in that regard. You would think that his Secretary of Energy would have said, you know, Mr. President, why don't we buy the oil from somebody else, from Canada, from India, from somebody else who produces more diesel?

and not the Russians where it's illegal. But nobody said that to him. Or his Secretary of Defense would have said to him, you know, Mr. President, probably not a good idea to be aiding and abetting our enemy in the middle of a shooting war. When the next time a U.S. ship is hit or a U.S. person is hit,

people are going to say rightly, oh, that was partially funded by your tax dollars. The killing of Americans, the wounding of Americans, the wounding and killing of our allies in the region will be funded by U.S. tax dollars. You know, this is crazy. It's crazy.

You know, this is, you know, aiding and abetting an enemy is a crime, right? You know, people would call it treason, except we haven't actually declared war on these two enemies, so technically legally it's not treason. But it's certainly traitorous. I looked it up. You know, the last time somebody in the United States

was put to death, for treason was in the Civil War. And you know what their crime was? They tore down an American flag. During World War II, a bunch of the people who were convicted of treason were convicted of treason by spreading propaganda. Tokyo Rose was convicted,

but then she was pardoned. Other propaganda spreaders. Some people were convicted of it for aiding and abetting, providing aid and comfort to an enemy. Well, what would be more aid and comfort to an enemy like Russia, or particularly to an enemy like Iran, than making cash available to them? But, you know, Trump has since 1980 umph been cozing up to the Russians

and doing deals with the Russians. In 2013, he pleaded with Vladimir Putin to come to his Miss Universe pageants so they could see all the beautiful women together. He kisses Putin's ass in public. And, you know, he has had Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner in Russia negotiating a deal where Russia, if they stop attacking briefly, temporarily, Ukrainian energy resources, that they would offer to buy part of the Russian oil company. They would offer to buy more Russian oil. In other words, they're just sitting there giving goodies to Vlad.

Of course, the Russians have no part of it. When Trump announced his ceasefire over the weekend, which lasted 10 seconds, the Russians didn't even acknowledge it. They just kept fighting. The Ukrainians, who are the ones who are the aggrieved party and actually are allies, they are not being consulted and they're being portrayed as the villains. I mean, seriously, we talk about this kind of thing. in this podcast a lot. The reality is this is one of the most demented disloyal betrayals of the United

States of America ever by a U.S. official, much less a president. It's crazy. I don't even understand why it's not a bigger story. But I do know that Republicans on Capitol Hill are gagging and say, oh, my God, we've got to stop this somehow because we can't fund Russia and help run Russia fund Iran. Do you think he will take any notice of the Republicans who are now saying this is not on? You've pushed us too far. Look, I doubt it because he knew there were sanctions. And the first boatload of Russian diesel was sent out of Russia weeks ago.

In other words, he cut the deal and set it in motion long before he announced the deal and announced the arrival of the diesel. I think what Trump thought, because he's not just disloyal to the country and has a diseased mind, but he's also kind of an idiot. He thought that the American people would go, oh, he's lowering the price of diesel.

Isn't that a great thing? Let's vote for the Republicans. And this was one of his October surprises, except, you know, surprised, Don, nobody wants a president who's a traitor. Right. And who's funding a war against this? It's quite difficult to get your head around. Do you think this is the worst moment in American foreign politics since you've been reporting on it? Look, I mean, waging a war against Iraq when there was no reason to wage a war against Iraq when six to 800,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, that was pretty bad, right? But this is, you know, but, you know, there was at least a rationale behind that war that we were trying to, you know, defend our interests and at least we were attacking an enemy.

In this case, we're funding attacks on ourselves. That's what's, you know, cloud, cuckoo-land crazy about this. It really is very strange. So, too, is Pete Higgsett's announcement that they're going to live stream. an execution. And no one's defending her sound, but the idea of live streaming his execution, I mean, even Donald Trump actually has said he's not convinced it will happen. Even Donald Trump, even J.D. Vance was like, well, I don't think it's going to happen, but if it does, I'm not watching.

Well, J.D. Vance can't be on his book tour for communion, talking about reembracing his Catholic faith and then saying he's slavishly looking forward to watching an execution, right? I think the Pope at that point would have had enough. It'd be like, you killed the last guy. You're not going to do this now to the Catholic faith. Well, the poor Pope, by the way, is being operated on today for a lump in his leg. So wish him well. Oh, I am wishing him as well.

I did not know that. Well, good luck with your operation, Pope. Donald Trump said it might not happen. It's impossible. No terms and conditions on any normal broadcasting platform. You know, even 4chan, if it's still going. would allow this. Trump TV.

Trump TV, which nobody is watching, David. We had more viewers on the Daily Beast TV than Trump TV. You'll be pleased to know. I mean, again, how low can things go? They can't go lower than this. I mean, betraying the country, funding attacks on American soldiers and sailors, that's pretty bad, betraying our values, saying that we want to have Americans watch a public execution.

of a guy? And why are they doing it? Do you think if the guy's name or John Smith, they'd be doing it? No, it's because he's a Muslim name. He's a person of color. Yeah, he did a terrible thing. He deserves to be in prison forever. But let's be perfectly honest here. This public execution part is straight out of the fascist playbook. Authoritarian leaders like to flex their muscles in public and say, don't mess with me. Don't mess with me. I have no scruples, I will do whatever I need to be the strong man and keep you in line. And, you know, the expert, I saw something by Ruth Ben Gai, who you've had on here, who's an expert on authoritarianism. And that's exactly what she said. She said, this is what you'd expect, you know, Hitler and Mussolini to do. And in fact, they did it. There's also the argument that actually it does the complete opposite of what you want to do.

It doesn't act as a deterrent. It acts as a rallying point for people to start, you know, frankly, creating jihad here. Well, it does. It also says we're a barbarian nation. You know, it reduces our standing. You know, another thing that happened over last week was senior justice on the International Criminal Court, South African woman, won the Nobel Peace Prize, which drove Trump absolutely crazy. It's so crazy that he had Marco Rue.

Ruby will go out and say, we're going to sanction people with the International Criminal Court. But the reason the Nobel Committee granted her the prize was she has spent her entire life fighting for the rule of law in the world and fighting for human rights. Over a period of time, even as we resisted getting part of becoming part of the ICC, at least the United States would pay lip service to the idea that we were for the rule of law and for human rights. Well, how do you do that when you're conducting public executions of people? And the reality is, you can't.

But Trump was outraged, and he said he should have won the award. And he should have won the award eight times because he's won eight. He's solved eight wars, which, by the way, is a completely made up number. He hasn't done that. Ignoring the fact that he is illegally killing people in the Caribbean and the Pacific, simply for driving their boats around, that he's waging an illegal war where they've killed 160 Iranian schoolgirls, that he is, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He's the least qualified person to win this.

But it all goes back to the barbarian strain in this administration. Pete Hegseth, you know, sells warrior mentality, and he wants to look tough and ruthless and brutal. He doesn't want anthropic to produce. AI that has got guardrails because he wants the deadliest most lethal AI. Stephen Miller doesn't want to follow the law when he's rounding up people in the streets, even innocent people, and sending them to countries they have nothing to do with or shooting them in the streets or letting them die in U.S. prisons. The United States has adopted by, you know, the entire playbook of, you know, North Korea.

Now, you know, Trump says he loves Kim Jong-un, and he's like, you know, the next thing you know, he's going to appoint his daughter to succeed him as president, or as Kim Jong-un once did, put to death someone, I think was a relative even, by shooting them with an anti-aircraft gun, just to make a point, you know. So, I mean, Donald Trump is among the barbarian leaders of this world, drenched in blue, no morality, and with every act like this or every threatened act like this, diminishing the United States as standing and causing the world to ask this question, which you must get every time you travel overseas, which is, have you lost your fucking minds?

Indeed. It's one of the comments that comes up so frequently when I look at how people respond to, you know, our podcasts together and people from, you know, as far away as Australia and New Zealand and then, of course, in Europe, they say, what is happening in America? What is happening? So we know who was in Europe last week. You mentioned him just now. Marco Robio, Secretary of State, hundreds of jobs, possibly still running Venezuela, of course, head of national security, let down by one of his ambassadors. He is the Secretary of State. He is the National Security Advisor. I think he's also the archivist of the United States.

The archivist, yes. You know, he's got a few, he's got a few of these special roles, and he's desperately trying to sell himself as a normie, you know, like I'm the normie in the Trump cabinet. But he can't do it because every time Trump asked him to do something insane, he does it. Well, he was in Greece to basically lay out his campaign for 2028, right? Pete Higgs-eth had done that with his The State of the Force speech the week earlier. Marco suddenly on the plane lands in front of the acropolis, makes a speech sort of alluding to all sorts of Greek philosophers and saying that the West must, you know,

predominate over the next century, and this decade will test that, and he, of course, will be the person ready to step up for the test. Speaking to the Thucydides fan club in the United States, which is a big, it's a big base. But, you know, he did some really gross stuff that was very hegsethia, if you will, because essentially what he was saying is that he is a champion of Western civilization,

by which he means European civilization, by which he means Christian civilization. And it was related to a speech he gave a year ago at the Munich Security Conference, which scared the crap out of everybody, because it sounds like Victor Orban, it sounds like Marine Le Pen, it sounds like Nigel Farage, it sounds like all the extreme right-wing groups, where their sort of organizational principle is what they call civilizational, which really means we want to keep European civilization white and Christian. And in fact, one of the kind of gross and revealing elements of this was that Rubio, whose parents came to this country from Cuba, said, well, I'm a Spanish descent.

In other words, he portrayed his roots, you know, going back as he. European roots because that's okay because he didn't want to portray his roots as Caribbean roots because, you know, some of the people in the Caribbean are people of color and that's not so good. But it was particularly gross. But he had another surprise waiting for him, which he also mishandled him in Greece. And I know you were going to get to that. You know I'm going to get to it. The surprise is, well, actually, perhaps it's not a surprise that his ambassador, Kimberly Gilford, formerly married to, of course, Gavin Newsom, still so hard to get one's head round how you go from Gavin Newsom to Don Jr. And then, of course, onto whatever's happening in Greece for Kimberly.

That she was demanding that a MAGA donor pay off her $100,000 amex bill before she got confirmed by the Senator's ambassador. And when he protested, in a sense of, series of text. She was like, oh my God, stop sending me text. You're going to lose me the ambassadorship. No one can know about this. Just go straight to Amex and pay the bill off, okay? No one will know anything. And of course, he, Eric Dieter's a struck-off lawyer from Kentucky, reminds me of that character in Network. He's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. So he's out telling everybody what Kimberly allegedly was getting up to. Asked about it, Marco Rubio said, well,

we would never comment on something like this isn't how we do things in America. And, you know, in front of the press, of course, it's exactly what his boss does. What's going to happen to her? Does she survive the day, David? We're recording this Monday morning. I doubt it. You know, if she doesn't, if she's not gone today, she'll be gone tomorrow. She'll be gone the next day.

Or does the news story just pass on? Do they just write it out? I doubt it also because somebody seems to be leaking on a daily. basis stories to the Wall Street Journal. Don't you think the timing was odd, too, that this story would land in the middle of Marco's visit. We had a previous story the week before saying that she'd become very close to a lobbyist, that she was threatening the Greeks that, you know, America wanted to. They could upend the Greek government, which point the energy, the energy secretary said, well, war, not so fast, the Greek

people will decide. But you're right. There's a systemic series of leaks. There's stories about her having her lobbyist friends in meetings with her. There's stories about her at Davos, bragging about how there are all these rich Greeks who are flying her around the world to Gestad or wherever people like Kimberly Gilfoyle go and, you know, treating her in a certain kind of way. This is, by the way, following all the stories of her inappropriate behavior, dress and everything else. And didn't she fire one of her security detail because she didn't like the way they turned left? when they were driving at one point,

and another she called at 4 a.m. to get ice for her drink and they weren't available. Well, you know, maybe, maybe. I mean, you just can't get the staff, David. You cannot find the staff. You can't. You really can't. But maybe, you know, picking, you know, your son's ex-girlfriend and sending her to Greece

to get her out of the country is not the best criteria for picking an ambassador, particularly to an important European ally. But this is where we, are. And I just think the level of her corruption and the fact that there are receipts make it impossible for her to stay in this job for any protracted period. But Rubio's response to it was pathetic. I mean, frankly, Rubio should have read the Wall Street Journal article, told her to come home, stepped down. The Greeks should have sent her home. And then she could have resigned in a more traditional way. But, you know, that's not who we are. You know, when Rubio says we don't do it that way, you mean, oh, you mean instead of the way we're planning to publicly assassinate somebody on television that way, or the way we're sending people out of the country without due process to countries they have nothing to do with or the way we're gunning down, as happened last

a father in his car in Brooklyn when his five-year-old kid is in the backseat or the way we have stormtroopers barging into Ilan Omar's house, you know, because, you know, Trump is now got Todd Blanche working as his secret police attacking his enemies. That's the way we are, Marco. I mean, it's incredible. Can you imagine being Marco Rubio and waking up thinking today is my big day, I'm going to make my speech? And then you are laid low by Kimberly Gilfoyle. And you can't even say to the press because I'm sure he had read the Wall Street Journal article. You can't say anything because you know you have to call Donald Trump and ask what to do about his, you know, his gone rogue former fiancé daughter-in-law.

Marco Rubio made a deal with the devil. He always wanted to be Secretary of State. He always wanted to be up there. He thought it was a stepping stone to the president. And he was a, you He was a strong critic of Donald Trump a long time ago, right? He knew that Donald Trump was bad news. And he thought, well, you know, if I get to do this, then I can use it for my own benefits and I'll just swallow heart. What he didn't take into consideration is what he should have known, which is Trump is a serial violator of norms, values, outrage, laws, you know, stand. standards, underminer of institutions, embracer of our enemies,

and that sooner or later this was all going to land on him. And you've got three people in this administration who think they're going to run for president. Two of them, Rubio and J.D. Vance, are desperately trying to figure out ways to distance themselves a little bit. One of them is so dumb, he doesn't know he has to do that. That, of course, is Hagseth.

So, David, someone desperately trying to figure out how to justify the war in Iran, Darlene Graham, did you by any chance watch any of her debate against Annie Andrews, a local pediatrician who at one point had no prospect of beating her, but now, like so many other seats in the country, it looks much tighter than it was, and Darlene looks uncomfortable. I mean, poor Darlene, right? But she, you know, she doesn't know anything. And Trump picked her because she would be loyal as he picks everybody.

And she, every time she opens her mouth, she reveals she doesn't know anything about the world. She doesn't even realize that her brother was opposed to certain Trump policies, particularly the ones that were soft on Russia. And that he would have been outraged by Trump's plan to. fund the, you know, Russian war machine. But, you know, in this, you know, debate with this lovely woman who's a pediatrician, you know, she has revealed herself to be a knit with. And all of a sudden has made Andrews look like, you know, kind of genius politician. Because the reality is she's also from South Carolina. And she's very centrist, Andrews. You know, She's, you know, strong stand on immigration, strong stand on, you know, fiscal responsibility, strong stand on, you know, a lot of things that people of South Carolina can relate to.

And she also knows what's going on. And she has been brutal in her debates with Darlene Graham, including a reference in a debate over the weekend in which she said, you know, Trump was making fun of her. He calls her Tranny, Andrews, because, you know, what do they have? But racism and homophobia and, you know, hate speech, right? And she says, no, my name's Annie Andrews. It's been my name my whole life, unlike my opponent who's changed her name in order to be eligible for this job. You know, and, you know, where there's a lot of that going around, J.D. Vance. But anyway.

Three times. Three times J.D. Vance has changed his name, right? So South Carolina once assumed to be a very safe seat now. I mean, may still go to the Republicans, but it's much tighter than it was. Tell us what you know about James Talariko's disappearance from the campaign trail for a week. All I know is that James Talarico reported that he was sick. There's no reason to believe he wasn't sick. He took a couple of days off.

We've seen this in all campaigns. Campaigns are hard. You go out. You're working around the clock. Sometimes people, Bill Clinton, Kamala Harris, they lose their voice. You know, other people get, you know, briefly wheyed. It's not like he's a Republican, like, I don't know, Mitch McConnell, who stops showing up for the Senate for four months. But Tala Rico's back.

He's on the campaign trail. He's running a good campaign. He's ahead in all the polls. And, you know, he's been pretty sharp in his response to Paxton saying, where's Telerico by saying, you know, where's Paxon's spine? He said he wants proof of life for me. I'd like to see proof that Paxon has a spine. Well, we know where Paxton is.

He's on a hot mic somewhere saying something to roguatory about Donald Trump, like Trump of Palluso didn't help me at all. I'm not allowed to run my own campaign. And where is Ken Paxon? probably in one of his 15 homes, right? Right. He's got 15 homes on a small government salary, which is amazing.

The guy must be a master financier. But Talarico, by the way, is running some pretty good, pretty funny ads attacking this, pretty hard-hitting speeches on it on the campaign trail, and he's up four or five percent in the polls. And so when you look at what could happen in just a couple of weeks, you know, nobody wants to take anything for sure because, you know, Trump still says he has the right to send in troops wherever he wants.

And Trump clearly has people, you know, Russell Vaude and Mark Wayne Mullen and Todd Blanche and other people planning different ways to screw with the election results. And there are already reports that the post office may not be processing mail in ballots as quickly as they should be or sending them out as quickly as they should be. But, you know, the thing about this is, if you look at the Senate, which was considered a long shot, Democrats could win in Texas. They could win in South Carolina. They will probably win in North Carolina. They could win in Maine. They could win in Ohio. They could win in Iowa. They could win in Alaska. The reality is the Democrats have a shot. And a couple of the sort of pundits who handicapped these things now say, it looks likely the Dems may end up with a two-seat advantage, or as we like to think of it here in Washington, D.C., a fetterman-proof advantage,

because, you know, that lunatic will switch parties if he thinks it will benefit him somehow. Well, David, it's a holiday. We really shouldn't be here discussing this at all. You should be relaxing. We don't want your voice to give out before the midterms, because on election night, we're going to want to be talking to you, obviously, about what's happening, and we can't have you. Are we going to do live Daily Beast election night coverage?

Well, I think we should, don't you? I think we should. I think it's going to be a very exciting evening. It could be, although, you know, I've done this before in live events. I remember once doing a live event on the 2016 election, and we were at the comedy club, the comedy seller in New York, and 250 people absolutely sold out. And we had a bunch of pundits and a bunch of comedians and everybody got in it. It was like, Hillary's going to win. And this is great.

This is New York City. And it's fantastic. And then during the election night, the New York Times needle, which said, who is more like that it went, gradually shifted. And around 9 o'clock, it shifted over to Trump was going to win. And the audience became deader and dead. And I was emceeing this thing. And my wife was sitting in the front row.

And she was like, cut it. Get out of here. Let's get out of here. here we have to get because nobody could make anybody laugh it was and we walked through then the deserted streets of new york as everybody was in absolute shock so we lived through that we lived through the shock of Donald trump being reelected and i don't think you know we should take anything for granted this time around if people can vote vote if people can help people vote if people can help them vote if people can donate they should donate they should do whatever they can um

and maybe there'll be a good outcome, but let's count those chickens after they hatch. Okay, well, we'll be back next week. We've still got more time, David. We'll be back next week, yes. I just remember, you know, being excited to have tickets for the Javit Center for what I thought would be a celebration of America's first female president, and it has yet to happen.

It has yet to happen. Soon, I hope. I wonder. wonder. Anyway, great to see you on the holiday. Thank you and we will be back next Monday. And you know, leave your comments, please, those of you who've been watching us and want to leave comments on YouTube about your favorite part of the conversation. And who do you think is leaking about Kimberly Guilfoyle? Is this, it does feel like it's being orchestrated, doesn't it? It does feel like it's being orchestrated and every single day there's new releases. But we also love it

when people comment on this thing when it comes out live, and we join for that sometimes. But in the interim, Joanna, happy not-so Columbus Day. Thank you, David. I won't be able to join live today, I think, because I'll be flying back to New York. Regular viewers will know that I'm not in our usual studio. I'm on the West Coast, but I should be back in the studio tomorrow,

but I will miss the live chat today. But I hope you will pop in. I'll pop. I definitely will pop. I know. People love it when you pop in. Great. All right, David, I will see you next Monday. Bye-bye.

Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Pissarro and Neil Rosenhaus. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.