The Daily Beast Podcast - These Are All the Signs Trump's Grip is Slipping

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

David Rothkopf joins Hugh Dougherty to discuss the acceleration of Trump losing his grip on power. Rothkopf, a veteran foreign-policy analyst, details how key Republicans—from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Marco Rubio—are quietly defying Trump, exposing fractures in a party long held in thrall. They trace the personal and political signs that the former president is obsessed with legacy and self-aggrandizement—from renaming institutions to fixating on minor details—revealing a man increasingly out of step with reality. Together, they lay bare a central question: Can Trump’s inner circle survive a leader whose past is eclipsing any vision of the future? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump is at the end of his story. This is not a person whose biography is about their future. It's about their past. And everybody can see that in Washington. Republicans are making fun of Trump. Behind the scenes, they are saying he's not up to it. He's crazy. He literally cannot pass an object without thinking it should be named for him.

Welcome to the Daily Beast podcast. I'm Hugh Doherty. I'm executive editor. I'm keeping the seat warm for Joanna Coles, who is currently pow-wowing with the world's power elite in the Middle East, but she will be back. She'll be talking to Michael Wolfe about what is going on inside Trump's head later this week. Thank you to everybody who commented on our interview with Senator Lissa Slotkin

and Major General Paul Eaton. It was an amazing insight into what's in the mind of the national security people as they deal with Pete Hexeth, but we have somebody who's even better qualified than that here today. Joining us in the studio, we are honored to have David Rothkoff. David Rothkoff is our incomparable columnist. I'm claiming you first for the Daily Beast, David. That's fine. I'm happy to be.

Perhaps more importantly, you, well, I think the Trump lot would say you are the Deep State, right? You run the Deep State podcast network. You have worked for the Continent White House. and you have provided your expertise as part of Henry Kissinger consultants and then as your own consultancy and you've edited Foreign Policy Magazine. So, I mean, that sounds like the deep state, although maybe the deep state has been dismantled by Pete Hickseth, while we were all not watching.

Yeah, I mean, the last time I was here you told me that when you called the White House for a comment on something I wrote, they said I was a nerd nobody had ever heard of. A no-name nerd, yes. Thanks for clarifying that. Yeah, right. Well, I think it's only fair to do our best to be accurate with the White House. So, I mean, no name. I go by no name nerd also.

Well, thank you for, thank you to our no name there for joining us. I aspire. I would aspire to get anything like that out of the White House. Well, they're too busy these days. I believe they've got a lot. The Kennedy Center honors. So you're obviously, you're in the studio, and I should say we're recording this just after the Kennedy Center honors. You weren't honored.

No, I was honored not to be there. So I wanted to talk to you, well, I mean, there's so much to talk about, right? But I wanted to talk to you particularly because, as I said, you are the deep state. But more importantly, you have been a chronicler of America's foreign policy and how America deals with power abroad. And right now we have a defense secretary who, oh, I'm sorry, a secretary of war, a defense secretary who is blowing boats out of the water, which may or may not be bringing drugs to the United States. And it seems like a pretty serious situation. What should we be thinking about this? I think it's serious on a couple of levels, right?

On the one level, they're committing murder, right? There's no justification. Whether the two guys that got blown up were floating on a boat that was right-side-up or upside-down or signaling for help or not signaling for help. And by the way, all those stories go against their stories. The boat was upside-down. They didn't have a radio. There was no way for them to signal for help. and if you are shipwrecked in the water, you are off limits to being attacked, right?

So that was murder. But sinking the boat in the first place was murder because we're not at war with anybody. The premise that there is somehow a kill list that it's okay, you know, if the Secretary of Defense gives you a list of people to kill, you may kill them legally. That's ridiculous and offensive. And it's going to catch up to whether it catches up soon or later. This is breaking international law. It's breaking the laws of war. It's violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which guides what the U.S. does.

It was wrong of Hegsteth to say kill them all. It is wrong of Admiral Bradley to have gone ahead and supported killing them all. and it's bad and they're bragging and doing more of it. So it's getting worse and worse. But if I may, there is another reason this is more troubling. And that is that last week the U.S. government did something that nobody else pays attention to outside of Washington. And often in Washington, they don't pay attention to it. And that is they release something called their national security strategy.

And the national security strategy of this administration is to coddle Russia, coddle China, pull the rug out from under our allies, attack the Europeans for having too many immigrants, but shifting the focus to this hemisphere, where Trump is essentially saying there's a Trump corollary to the Monroe doctrine. He gets to decide who gets to deal with what in the hemisphere, who gets to tap in the, into what resources in the hemisphere. And if you cross the United States, we're going to take care of it on our own. And we're going to move assets here.

So my point is, what we've seen, they want to do more of. They want to make this the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. I want to talk to you about this, because this document, 33 pages, do administrations normally set out a foreign policy like this? Well, I mean, hard to answer that question. By law, Congress has mandated that they issue a national security strategy.

Typically, the national security strategy is kind of a bowl of porridge. You know, it's, oh, we like these guys, we like these guys. We're supporting democracy. We're trying to do good things. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Typically, it gets released. It gets put in a drawer. It may not get put in a drawer.

nobody ever reads it again. This one is different because it is so outrageous. And on one level, essentially, you know, there's been over the past few years led by Vladimir Putin, this new kind of global alliance. It's not just anti-globalist, but it's pro-authoritarian, it's ethno-nationalist. It takes a very harsh view against immigrants. And essentially what Trump is doing in this document is saying, we're part of that group. You know, those allies we've had since World War II, since World War I, they're not our allies anymore. And the document is brutal.

Well, I just wanted to read out a bit of it, which is exactly about that topic. And it's called promoting European greatness. And I should say, I often offer a disclaimer at the top of when I'm sitting in for Joanna that this is my Scottish accent. I am sitting here live and direct in Manhattan. So I feel I've got some tiny insight into European greatness, and I don't think normally it gets decided by who's sitting in Washington, D.C. Scotland is not in Europe.

And Scotland is not in Europe anymore. But for a while we were, and it's all changed. But I just wanted to read some of it about Europe, particularly, because I think this is like the one that goes to the heart of what's going on in this document. And inside MAGA, it says that Europe's an eco-executive. decline, eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. Can you just, what does that even mean? Well, it means that there are people coming to Europe who aren't white people.

That's particularly non-white non-Christians. It's the same thing they're saying here. It's the same thing that Putin says and Orban says, you know, and in other parts of the world, it's the same kind of scapegoating another and racism that is, used by Narendra Modi in India about Muslims in his case or Bibi Netanyahu in Israel about Muslims in his case or was used by Yar-Belsanaro in Brazil, Javier Millet in Argentina. There are a bunch of people who are playing on this kind of demagoguery, this kind of racism. But this is, you know, particularly disgusting.

And the document goes down a few levels from that saying, We're going to support the parties that are, you know, aligned with these views. And if, you know, if the Germans pass a law saying that being, you know, white supremacist is hate, then we're going to go against that because that's hate speech. And so we've lined ourselves up with the far right in Germany, the far right in France, the far right in the UK, with Nigel Far Right. Raj and the Reform Party. It's, you know, if you're an American, you may say, well, all that is remote from me.

But essentially, you've got to think of two things. One, we're casting aside democracy. We're promoting and embracing racism as an American export. We're signing on with the world's other races. But the other thing is, we're attacking our real allies, the people who are the frontline defense against Russian aggression. And we're pulling the rug out from them, you know, in what we're talking about here. I expect what you'll see is efforts to pull troops out of Europe and the Congress is

afraid of it. They're passing laws. And should say the Defense Authorization Act has actually been, which was published in the last couple of days, has got clauses in it about refusing to allow troops to be removed. He's going to ignore it. Right. Because what he does is he ignores it. somebody brings them to court, then they'll go to court, they'll fight it.

Meanwhile, the troops are moving, right? They're going to get out of, he's going to do what he wants to do. But, you know, similarly, or as part of this whole thing, it says, you know, Ukraine's better sign on the dotted line and, you know, our job, but it's our job, according to this, is to promote stability in the European-Russian relationship. And, you know, this is, you know, this is Trump, as Putin's air, boy signing on. And if you read the document, you know, as the joke goes so often these days, you know, it probably read better in the original Russian.

They've erased the metadata, so we don't know. We don't know. But we do know, for example, that the last peace plan for Ukraine did include Russian talking points. And we do know they're meeting with the Russians. And we know that at the Kennedy Center honors last night, because the president was doing his Jimmy Kimmel impression, he was hosting these things. 27 minutes of Jimmy Kimmel impression, which is double the length of a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. Including insulting the audience. And it was ugly.

But as part of it, somebody asked him about Ukraine and he said, oh, Zelensky hasn't read our stuff. I'm disappointed in him. You know, we're going to, you know, and Don Jr. said, well, dad, you know, one of the strengths of my father is that he's erratic. He didn't use the word erratic, but that he's unpredictable. And I think he may just walk away from Ukraine. And I was like, walk away. Right. He walked away from Ukraine from the beginning.

He was on the side of Russia from the beginning. And this document institutionalizes it. There's another document, a defense strategy document, that almost surely is going to come out and say, yeah, because we're focused on this hemisphere, more assets in this hemisphere. Because we're not as focused on the Middle East. Eastern Europe were pulling assets out of there. And it was also very kind of cozy, soft on China as well. And perhaps a lot of people in MAGA will say, well, you know, really we're focused on America first. And with Marjorie Taylor Green on 60 minutes saying she's not MAGA, she's

America first. But why does this matter? How does it affect normal people? Because a lot of this sounds highbrow and difficult to relate to. But it must matter, right? Well, I mean, yeah, it depends. You know, I mean, you know that meme that's out there where the guys saying, we're the baddies, you know, we're the baddies, right? We are now signed up to be the baddies in, you know, we're on Russia's side. We're on Netanyahu's side. We're on Shiz's side. We're on Xi Jinping's side. We are on the side of authoritarian. We are not for democracy. If you think democracy is a good thing, that's bad, right? If you think standing up against aggression around. the world is a good thing, then what we're doing now is bad. And, you know, in the past, there have been people who didn't stand up to aggression. Neville Chamberlain didn't stand up to aggression. World War II was the result. I mean, we have some history to know that this is bad. But, you know, it's also institutionalizing further racism. It's institutionalizing further the kind of anti-globalist attitude. You know, Marjorie Taylor Green, you know, says America

First, you know, where did America first start? It started in the interwar period with people like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh saying, let's not get involved with the rest of the world. Let's isolate ourselves. And, you know, part of that is isolating ourselves. Part of that is saying, well, you know, if Hitler wants to be Hitler, let Hitler be Hitler. You know, and frankly, Henry Ford was kind of cool with that. Lindberg was kind of cool with that.

They obviously had particular anti-Semitic prejudices that they were very public about. Yeah, and they, you know, they sort of went along with that. And so I think we are shifting to a place that has been the place we've opposed for 100 years. You know, we're throwing out everything we've learned about how the world works. And we're throwing out the people who've been our friends. And we are, you know, embarked. You know, we're just a year in. to this administration. Where is this going to be in three years from now? Where is it leave Taiwan?

Where does it leave Ukraine? Where does it leave the Baltics? Where does it leave other places the Russians may go after? Where does it leave international institutions? Where does it leave NATO? All these things could be damaged in ways that are, you know, you can't put the pieces back together. I'm in Target. I'm in Walmart. I'm worried about the price of shopping. How do these two things come together? How do you bring that home to people that it's... Well, I mean, look, it dovetails with the tariff strategy because it's like we don't trust globalization.

We don't trust the world. We're not working within multilateral systems anymore to make sure that there are no tariffs, which was the goal of U.S. trade policy for 80 years. But, you know, people know because the prices go up. The price of chocolate is higher. The price of coffee is higher. the price of anything you import is higher.

And by the way, today, as we're recording this, you know, Chinese trade data came out, and the Chinese trade data said China's trade deficit is up to a trillion dollars. And all the U.S. steps that were allegedly meant to eat into Chinese exports to the U.S. and put pressure on China didn't. Zero effect.

No effect. And the idea that Trump put forward was, oh, they're going to take more of our soy and they're going to take more of our beef, and that hasn't happened either in these statistics. Well, you know, Trump likes to say, you know, he holds the cart. I think the Chinese have revealed he does not hold the card. And they manufactured them in the first place.

Right, and they hold the cards. And I think, you know, I think we're going to see more of that in the year ahead. I think one thing you can look for is that Trump is planning to go to China. And the first part of the year, he wants Xi Jinping to come here in the latter part of the year. And I can give you a theory of foreign policy here that my wife had gave me, and I'll share it with you and your viewers and listeners, which are very sophisticated. It's called the dog park theory of foreign policy. If you ever go to a dog park, you notice the dogs are going around sniffing each other's butts because they're trying to figure out who's the alpha dog. And the funny thing is when the alpha dog walks in, it can be the smallest dog in the park.

and all the other dogs are like that bowing down to it, letting the, and this is just, you know, sort of pack behavior. It's like trying to figure it. Donald Trump is looking around the world, sniffing all the butts. And for all the puffing himself up, he has concluded, Xi Jinping is the alpha dog. He's always seeing it. He's my friend.

That's the thing that can lift it. He doesn't think Europeans can lift him up. He doesn't think it's the prestige relationship to have. You know, he has a trophy wife. He's got trophy houses and so forth. The trophy international relations relationship he wants is with China. You've mentioned the next year. And again, I know you've spoken to Joanna, but it's a great length.

There's a column. And I'll just say, go in the Daily Beast and find David Rothkoff's column from early in November. Trump's year of hell is just beginning. And one of the things you mentioned in that is tariffs, that people are going to really feel the impact of them. We're causing this on Monday morning. This is a warning this morning that the big retailers are looking at late December and January after Christmas to put up prices.

Hold that thought, Hugh. Let's have a word from our sponsors. And we are back talking Trump and the Deep State with David Rothkoff. Well, you know, Trump lives the life of the chronic bullshitter. You know, he's got his patter down. He goes out. He sells a good line. But every so often, the chickens come home to roost.

You know, certain people say, well, you promised me this. Where is it? You know, and that, you know, he ran for her office again saying, I'm going to fix the economy, and I'm going to make everything better, and we're going to be respected in the world, and I'm going to be a peacemaker and so on and so forth. And the reality is you can get all the made-up trophies from FIFA and other people you want. And you can have your cabinets say that you're handsome and you have a six-pack and all that kind of stuff. But what does it mean for regular people?

And the problem is, this ties to your prior question, over the next year, what are you going to see? You're going to see prices go up. You're going to see the economy slow down. You're going to see that the services you got from the Veterans Administration or not is available to you anymore. You're going to see the cost of your health care double or triple or quadruple, you know, and that you're not going to be able to actually afford your health care. If your kid got picked up on a school bus because they're disabled, you're going to see that that program is canceled.

If you look outside your window and you're living in most American cities these days, you're going to see ICE rounding up your neighbor or rounding up somebody who works in your neighborhood, dragging them off, whether they're an American citizen or they're not, whether they did anything wrong or not, whether they're contributing in the community or not. And that's going to add up. And I think that that's why the year is going to be terrible. And it's just doubly terrible for Donald Trump because despite all his efforts to put his thumb on the scale of the elections, there will be an election next year. And all the signs say the Republicans are going to do terrible. in the election next year. And so the chickens are going to come home to roost at the worst possible time. Voters are going to know about it.

He can't give a speech to talk his way out of this one because it's people's lives. And that's going to be bad news for him. And if the Democrats win control of the House or the Senate, the next year is going to be even worse for Donald Trump. Because he will be impeached. People in his cabinet will be impeached. His programs will be dead in the water. And the Donald Trump chapter of American history, it'll be over because he'll be 80 years old. And he will have no future in politics.

And the guys on his own team will be going, maybe this isn't, you know, the star to hitch our wagon to anymore. And they're going to be looking for outs like Marjorie Taylor Green is now. So you mentioned his age. Trump is 79. He'll be 80 on June the 14th. And I mention that date because National Parks will be open for free. On his day. On his birthday.

Not on Martin Luther King Day. Not on Martin Luther King Day. No. Why would you celebrate Martin Luther King Day when you can celebrate the president's birthday? Well, you know, we're going to also, on the president's birthday, there's going to be a big celebration on the White House South Lawn. Yes. And it's going to be, you know, I think it's going to capture the spirit of the, of the, Trump administration because it's going to be a cage match, a W-W-E cage match on the south lawn of the

White House. In an octagon? Well, of course. I mean, how would you do it? I don't know how else. Although, you know, maybe they'll add a ninth side to it just in honor of Trump. You know, give that a new name. I hope it's gold as well.

A trumpagon. Yeah. And that's because they should, right? He's the president of the United States. They should be fighting in a golden Trump. And we've yet to see where on this Trumpagon, the guilt goes, because there's obviously, you know. The guilt, the guilt should go on American voters who elected this asshole in the first place. I think it's spelled differently than the guilt.

I believe we are talking at two different forms of guilt. Two different forms of guilt. But nonetheless, it's a homonym, and we can, you know, we can embrace the transition because, you know, folks, you should have. have known this was coming. This isn't our first rodeo. It should not be a surprise. We've spent four years with this, right? You know, this guy is one of the most visible people in America and has always been, you know, a repugnant figure. I mean, it's like the Epstein thing. It's like, what do people think they're going to discover from the Epstein files that they don't already know? I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of confirmation. Right, but that's just, it's just

It's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. One of the, I just wanted to go back to one of the things you mentioned, the cage fight. Yeah. I knew we'd end up there. Well, we brought you here for, you're from New Jersey. You're from New Jersey. I'm from Scotland.

Both of history. Yeah, thank you very much. Michael Wolfe is from New Jersey. Michael is also from New Jersey. Yes, we could have a special Daily Beast reenactment or a cage match. Cage match. A preview of the cage match. Yeah, he would not do well against me.

I'm good to sit that one. I'm not even going on Polly Market. Yeah, no. But the idea of the cage match. Or Kalshi. Either. And we would welcome sponsorship from either. Please get in touch in the comments.

You know where we are. It does look a bit like there's a cage match going on in the cabinet because there are people who are beginning to see, as you have said, that this ends and they have to be. position themselves and Marjor Taylor Green has got out first and is denying that she's going to run for president, which is usually the most effective way of running for president. But there's a lot of wounded, there's a lot of potentially wounded wildebeest. I want to, in the cabinet, I want to talk about Hexith.

And the reason I want to talk to particularly to you is you wrote a history of the National Security Council. Yeah. And we have not heard anything about the National Security Council. Well, the National Security Council, you know, was put out of its misery, essentially. when he had to fire his national security advisor, as he does so often. During the last term, he did it a few times as well. And instead of replacing him, they said, okay, Marco Rubio is going to run it,

in addition to, by the way, running the National Archives, the State Department, and USAID. He's got four jobs. And they got rid of most of the staff, and they don't listen to the staff. I think the staffing level, professional staffing level at the NSC is down around 60, 70 people, which is the size it was sort of when Henry Kissinger was National Security Advisor in the 1970s. In the past 20 years, it's been 300, 400 people. Why? Because presidents wanted expertise to guide their decision making.

Well, Trump doesn't listen to any expertise. So it's become irrelevant. But I think to your point, Hegsth, you know, if you had to handicap, who's going first, Hegsteth could be on that list because it's not that there's one problem. It's just from the beginning he has been a problem. You know, he did Signalgate. His staff then turned on him and ditched him.

He then started, you know, going his DEI purge, getting rid of admirals and generals who were women or people of color. He got, you know, Jackie Robinson books. thrown out of libraries. He renamed bases after Confederate generals. He did a lot of things that were super unpopular. But the worst thing he did for him and for Trump was with his speech at Quantico, which I think you and I talked about the last time I was here talking to you and all of his other behavior is he pissed off all the generals and admirals. And they know how to play the game better than he knows how to play the game. And so when he starts to think,

throw them under the bus like he did with, you know, the admiral who's been in charge of the boat incident. They didn't say, hey, boss, you're throwing us under the bus. They said, you know, Bob or Betty, get me the Washington Post on the line. And, you know, or call me Senator Wicker that Republican head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Who is notably not calling Pete Hexeth, the Secretary of War? No. Well, nor should anybody. Let's be honest.

And I should say we do it. The daily-based policy, very strictly. We refer correctly to him as Secretary of Defense. Yeah, because that is actually the name of the department, right? And, you know, what do these people do? They just throw them under the bus. And they will make his life a living hell because he is making their life a living hell. He is actually putting troops at risk.

You know, if the U.S. starts to say, well, You know, you can shoot anybody anytime for any reason. Who's going to be vulnerable to that? It's going to be U.S. troops, right? I mean, the last time that this happened during World War II, when American sailors were floating in the water beside a wrecked ship and Germans or Japanese shot them, we prosecuted them for war crimes. Right? And they know that this is not a game.

It's not a Fox TV show. It's not Trump and Hengseth pumping up their testosterone levels. This has real consequences. And they're going to go after him. And so my sense is I don't think Hegseth can survive this. Does Tulsi Gabbard also go because she's alienated people or does Christy Nome go because, you know, she's done some crazy nonsense with Corey Lewandowski or does, you know, are there others who will go? Allegedly.

Allegedly. You know, the reality is, yeah, there'll be others because this, you know, at the end of a year tends to be in an administration. There's some turnover anyway. But I don't think Hegseth, I think it would be too big a headache for Trump as he goes into this year where his party is fragmenting. And I think that's the, you know, the bigger thing is Marjorie Taylor Green, but also Wicker and O. other people saying, you know, or, you know, the, what's the one who's co-leading the Epstein effort. Oh, right.

Thomas Massey. Massie, right. These people are like, they're not afraid of Trump anymore. And that, in some respects, the biggest development in U.S. politics in the past couple months is nobody's afraid of Trump. David, hold that thought. We need to hear from our sponsors. And we're back talking Trump, Hegsef, what's going on in the Trump world, and a cage match.

Now, you worked very closely with Henry Kissinger. Yeah, but I just raised that because he's a man. I apologize. Well, I raise it really because he's a man that people were afraid of, but also respected. And I'm not going to go down, you know, the difficult road of right and wrong here. but he was a figure. You can go down the difficult road. He was wrong in a lot of things.

Well, I was only avoiding that because I just wanted to focus on the personality issue of it a bit. That Trump doesn't have a Henry Kissinger, right or wrong. He doesn't have... He doesn't think he needs one. He thinks he's the only Henry Kissinger he needs. You know, and he's got Steve Whitkoff to go and essentially be the most powerful foreign policy figure

other than him. and maybe Jared is coming back. I mean, he likes people who will confirm his impulses and that will, you know, do what he asked them to do. Now, by the way, Rubio had his spine surgically removed. He is not standing up for anything either. But I think Rubio, like J.D. Vance, is sitting there going, how do I play this? Because I want to succeed Donald Trump. And I just think, you know, this is going to be the whole thing.

You know, you guys cover with a great avidity, how many band-aids he's got on his hand. We are always on cancels alert and Band-Aid Watch. And the circumference of his cancels. Yes. And, you know, I mean, you know. Those are, these are actually, I mean, these are serious issues. They actually are serious issues. Because they are evidence that Donald Trump is at the end of his story.

They are signs to the world. that this is not a vigorous person. This is not a person whose, you know, biography is about their future. It's about their past. And everybody can see that in Washington. And especially the people who are sitting in Marco Rubio's case to his right. And in JD Vance's case across the table. Or at the cabinet meeting, Marco Rubio is sitting there going, you know, the president

is the most vigorous, brilliant man ever. And Trump's like, you know. Trump is passed out next to him. You know, so, you know, I mean, Rubia is like in the shot that then everybody uses to go, these people are losing it. Yes. And, and, but, but, but they're also. And if you're Marco, if you're Marco Rubio, you've got to be unhappy that you're in that shot because you can't, you're in,

you're now in this territory. You can't say. Well, that's the thing is they're going to spend all their lives going, well, you know, I was there advising Trump not to do this horrible thing. You know, I was, I was, I was the conscience of this administration. But, you know, I think I don't trust anything Marjorie Taylor Green says. And, you know, if you watched her 60 minutes interview over the weekend, she was still pretty gross and still pretty much Marjorie Taylor Green. But there's one thing she says that everybody knows is true. And that is behind the scenes Republicans are making fun of Trump. Behind the scenes, they are saying he's not up to it. He's crazy. What is he's going to name? He literally cannot pass an object without thinking it should be named for him. You know, I mean, you know, he wants to name the Kennedy Center after himself.

The past week, he renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself. He said last week that he wants to tear down Dulles Airport, and you know why? Because he wants to name it after himself, and there's a move of foot to name things after himself. To me, by the way, you know, if you're watching his band-aids and you're watching his cancles, The number of things he wants to name after himself, I think, is a good indicator of how ill he thinks he is. Because this is just him looking for some legacy. It's just him saying, well, that could make me immortal. Because I think he realizes that he is shuffling off this mortal coil sooner rather than later.

Well, if you were in the Trump cabinet or maybe if you were a Trump cabinet member's chief staff, what would you be doing right now? Looking for plan B. You know, you'll be, you know, how do I get a soft landing? How do I get out? How do I put a place where, you know, I don't alienate Trump while he has some power, but that I can distance myself from Trump. And by the way, it's not just the cabinet.

You know who else is doing that? Elon, Peter Thiel, Mark Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, all the people who are catering to him, all the people who are funding his, you know, ballroom where he, by the way, fired the architects last week and the price is getting bigger and bigger. You know, all these people are walking a fine line. How do I keep this lunatic from screwing up my life now? How do I get as much? as I can out of him while he's like selling pardons and selling market share and, you know, all that. And do it in a way where whoever comes next doesn't throw me in the slammer or, you know, or sort of stigmatize me. Because, and I'm going to tell you, you know, if I, I mean, this, I'm not a stock advisor. You are not giving out investment advice, right? Do not.

But if I were a Pallenteer and I were a shareholder in Pallentier, which has just said, we're all in with Trump and we have the most overvalued stock in the whole stock market because, you know, look at our multiple, which is just crazy compared to our actual real earnings. I would be like, oh, boy, there's a reckoning coming. And I think that's going to be true in a lot of places, as has been true in crypto, by the way. Well, I've seen the Trump family wealth is a lot. The Melania crypto is down. I can't believe you made me buy, though. Well, I thought it was going to be a short thing. It's down to, I think it's 1 20th of its high point.

It's down 90% in its value. And I would just move all your assets into her new production company. That's an investment tip that we should all perhaps ignore. Ignore. But if we can get that production company to do. a cage match of you and Michael Wolfe. That would be the shortest cage match in history. Come on, bring it on. I'm ready.

I will happily. We'll be refereeing it in the Trumpagon. In the Trumpagon. Two aging Jews from New Jersey who went to Columbia University. Oh, I've forgotten those. Yes. Yeah, exactly. But there are differences, folks. There are differences. They're just. May it grow your own conclusions. there are many differences one piece of one thing I will say in common

before or after your cage match is that both David Rothkoff and Michael will provide unparalleled insights into the world of Trump into the world that's going to come after Trump absolutely a deluge and also that they are regularly to be found here on the Daily Bay's podcast

and inside Trump's head not to mention Deep State Radio. And David, I was like to say, where else can we find Deep State Radio? Deep State Radio. We do lots of podcasts every week. So, DeepStatradio.com, and I do a substat called Need to Know, which people can go to and get videos and also get stuff I've written. And I have a new article in the New Republic today on President's National Security Strategy.

And I definitely recommend checking out, check out Deep State Radio, which is, I was going to say every day in the world. week. Every single day of the week. We do 15, 16 podcasts a week. Desperately trying to stay one step ahead of you guys. David Rothkoff, I hope we'll be back soon to bring his wisdom if he survives that cage match. David, thank you for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you. David Rothkoff, thank you for your insights. Good luck with cage match prep. You can keep up to date with the other cage match, the one in DC at the Daily Beast. Subscribe to never miss a canckel or a bruised hand at www. www.com. The Daily

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