The Daily Beast Podcast - This Is How We Know Trump Is A Sociopath: Author

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

David Rothkopf joins Joanna Coles to unpack a presidency stripped of empathy after Trump’s disturbing Truth Social post responding to the murder of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife. Rothkopf, the founder of Deep State Radio and former editor of Foreign Policy magazine, argues that this moment exposes Trump’s defining pathology: an inability to respond to tragedy without cruelty, self-obsession, and grievance. From mass shootings to corruption, donors, and a cabinet quietly hedging its bets, they trace how Trump’s personal brokenness has become national policy—and ask the defining question: How long can a political system function when it’s built around one man’s pathology? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All of this is convoluted, and the corruption is connected to the closeness to our enemies, is connected to Trump's lack of character, is connected to his failure to rise to critical challenges like trying to end the war in Ukraine or address the problems of the United States. And all of it comes back to the fact that the president of the United States is a sociopath. And we don't talk about that enough. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast, and we are starting the week afresh after what feels like a terrible weekend. The Bondi Beach murders, the Brown murders, and then the terrible news about Rob Reiner. Who better to unpack this with than the all-talented, all-thinking, David Rothkopf, the founder of Deep State Radio,

a former official in the Clinton Commerce Department and the former editor of foreign policy. He knows about everything. And David, let's unpack what an earth is going on in the world. David Rothkopf is in the house. David, it's very good to see you on what feels like a very gloomy Monday morning. I'm in a fantastically bad mood. And I don't know if it's because the news over the weekend was just appalling. or if it's because I've had too much coffee and I'm going to have some more.

So by the end of the podcast, I may have exploded. Great. Well, I really look forward to talking to you too, Joanna. I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's such upsetting news. My son went to Brown University, so I know the campus well and I feel particularly

moved by that one. But then this morning, Donald Trump's Truth Social on Rob Reiner is beyond the pale. I don't know if you've seen it, but for those who haven't, perhaps I should read it. Please. And this is obviously, and I know you knew Rob Reiner and I want to come on to that. But this is how our president responded to the fact that Rob Reiner, one of the foremost cultural figures of the last 40 or 50 years, was found murdered in his home last night, along with his wife who died in the last night, along with his wife who died in the last. the ambulance on the way to the hospital. And here's what our president said. A very sad thing

happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star has passed away together with his wife, Michelle, reportedly, and here's the bit that's just sociopathic, due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind-cripling disease, known as Trump derangement syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people crazy by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness. And with the golden age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michelle rest in peace.

I mean, how does one even respond to something like that? Well, I think you put your finger on it. Donald Trump is a sociopath. It stands in particularly stark contrast to the fact that Rob Reiner was a Mitch. Rob Reiner was warm, caring, a guy committed. A guy committed. to trying to make the country a better place. You're right, I've met him a couple of times in the context of a lot of the activities that he did involved with Democratic Party politics. But let's set that aside for a second.

Donald Trump's true social post in which he takes this horrific tragedy, sets it aside, makes it about himself, attacks Reiner for being opposed to Trump politically debases the event. It's disgusting. It's nauseating. And it's completely consistent with Trump. And, you know, over this weekend, you mentioned Brown University. We had another example of Donald Trump, the sociopath. when he was called upon to give a response to the mass shooting at Brown,

and he said, as he has said before, things happen. In other words, he shrugged it off. He didn't really speak to the human tragedy involved, nor, of course, did he speak to his own culpability for promoting violence in America for opposing common sense gun regulations that 90% of the American people

support. And you've got to ask yourself. Let me ask you, have you ever seen Donald Trump express a human emotion ever a normal emotion of joy,

of happiness for somebody else, of grief about something else, of compassion for the American people, ever, ever in his life. He doesn't do it because he's broken. He's broken and he has no empathy. I mean, that's the thing that we learned when Mary Trump came on the podcast and had watched him from a little girl. She said that on the occasion of her 16th birthday party, her father, who was Donald Trump's older brother, had rented a room from Donald Trump in the higher hotel, which at the time he owned, for her 16th birthday. And Donald Trump turned up and behaved as if it was his birthday and was going around asking all the guests if this was the best birthday party they'd ever been to.

And literally elbowed his 16-year-old niece out of the way so he could be the center of attention. This is a man who seems, well, just seems incapable of making it not about himself. Well, that's exactly right. We've seen pictures at international meetings where Trump elbowed foreign leaders out of the way so he could get to the head of the crowd, so he could get to the camera, so that he could be the center of attention. And we talk a lot about Trump being a narcissist because of that, because Trump is all. about Trump, you know. Trump wants to name everything after himself. Trump wants to, in this second term as president, just build monuments to himself. He, you know, a week ago, he changed the name of the U.S. Institute of Peace to the Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace. He gave himself top

billing over the United States of America in naming himself the head of the U.S. naming the place after himself. He wants to name the ballroom he's building after himself. He wants to name the Kennedy Center after himself, the Trump Kennedy Center. He wants to name Dulles Airport after himself. He wants, for reasons that are also absolutely deranged, build a triumphal arch in Washington, D.C., he said, his domestic policy advisor's main preoccupation was building a triumphal arch, but not just a triumphal arch, a triumph that is bigger and better than the Oct de Triumph in Paris.

I mean, holy shit. You know, the Arc de Triumph in Paris and most of the other triumphal arches ever built in history were built when there was a triumph to commemorate. You're beginning to thaw my bad mood, David. You're beginning to make me think that there are normal people back out there, but I can't wait the cabinet to start nodding to this and saying, yes, Rob Reiner, you know, died because of Trump derangement syndrome. And it's all Rob Reiner's own fault, which is the implication of what he said in his truth social, when, in fact, we know that the police are looking for his son, who's the person of interest here. Yeah. Look, I mean, you know, or Mike Johnson will say when interviewed, oh, I'm not familiar.

with that. I haven't been following it. I've never watched a single Rob Reiner film. I've never watched a few good men. I've never watched when Harry met Sally. I never saw him as meathead. I've never watched Spinal Tap. Well, I can believe that he's never watched Spinal Tap, actually. But, you know, I mean, you know, the Rob Reiner movie to remember at this moment. And there've been a lot of quotes about Rob Reiner movies in the past 24 hours is Rob Reiner's fantasy of what a success decent American president was like. The movie, an American president. I loved that with Michael Douglas and Annette Benning.

Yeah. It's a great movie in which Martin Sheen is demoted to being the chief of staff. He would only later become president. In the West Wing, in Aaron Salkins, wonderful West Wing. Yeah, but the whole point was that the president was human. The president could feel love. the president would do the right thing even when it was personally awkward for him. You know, the president that Michael Douglas played in an American president was the

antithesis of Donald Trump, just like Rob Reiner is the antithesis of Donald Trump. And of course, he was meathead in All in the Family, where he was the liberal son and bumped up against Archie Bunker, his more conservative father. Yeah, there's another irony in all of that, because of course, Archie Bunker, bunker was the conservative from Queen where Trump is from. And this must have, you know, sort of hit Trump pretty hard as he was sort of coming up. Because it became used, and the brilliance of the show by Norman Lear, was that it became a way to present progressive ideas on television and broke an enormous number of barriers. And I did note that in Trump's psychotic truth social post,

he referred to Rob Reiner as a television star who became a director. And I think that sort of signals that it was Rob Reiner playing Archie Bunker's son that made the first real impression on Donald Trump, who is now, of course, the signature right-wing nut from Queens. And of course, a former television star. Former tell. Yeah, from your lips to God's ears. The less we see of him on television, the better. I mean, how ironic if the obit for Donald Trump mentioned that in the first paragraph, former TV star turned president. I would love that. I have a whole theory. It's called the

first line of the obituary syndrome. Is that what we're all essentially guiding towards? No, but I've seen it in Washington where certain people achieve a high-level job. And they know that the first line of their obituary will mention that job and nothing they do after. And so they immediately begin their sort of downhill arc. You know, so-and-so, former national security advisor, you know, which they did 30 years earlier, died today. In other words, that was it. That was the peak. That was the peak.

I think in Trump's case, the more emphasis there is on, just how loony it was that a former reality show star, five times bankrupt, ran a casino, managed to get chosen by the American people to be president. I mean, it's like, come on, that's not possible. But it happened. So, David, what do you think his cabinet members are saying between themselves when Trump isn't in the room? I mean, we often hear that people talk about Trump behind his back and laugh about him behind his back. Do you think Marco Rubio is looking at this truth social and rolling his eyes?

Do you think he's so inculcated now that he's nodding vigorously and going, yes, he had Trump derangement syndrome. And that's why Rob Reiner died. Marco Rubio is a specific choice. And I think you should break the cabinet into a couple of groups. there are people in the cabinet like Marco Rubio or people near the cabinet like J.D. Vance who think they have a future in politics. And so every time they see something... I love the way you said that, who think they have a future in politics.

Yeah, well, I don't think they do. But they, you know, whenever they see something psychopathic from Donald Trump that might stick to them, I think they get concerned. I think they try to find ways to disappear, sort of do that home. more Simpson thing where he fades back into the shrubbery, you know? They just sort of come out of the imagery. But I think

they're, you know, they're true believers. I think Caroline Levitt or, you know, some of the particularly characterless people that are around Trump or who would never ever have the jobs they have if it weren't for Trump, you know, RFK Jr.

would never have this job if Trump weren't so broken. Well, Pete Hegseth. Yeah. He would never have this. And so they, they see that, you know, they've got to follow the Trump train right to the end because the minute it disappears, you know, the scales will fall from people's eyes and they'll be seen for what they are. But this is a bigger story. And, you know, there was just a poll out overnight, I think it's an NBC News poll that shows Trump's low popularity rating. And also shows that although he's still got substantial support among Republicans, fewer people are identifying themselves as MAGA. Fewer people are identifying themselves as Trump brand Republicans. And as we've talked about before, I think what we're going to see in 2026 is, you know, sort of people backing towards the exit, you know, to sort of do in a Marjorie Taylor Green, but edging out, whether it's, you know, you know, Nancy Mace or whether it's other members of Congress. But I think people are going to start to say, who boy, I got to have a new identity because

Trump's a lame duck, Trump's psycho, Trump is doing crazy stuff, and that's going to stick to me. And you know who it's going to be worse for? All the business sycophants, Peter Thiel, the folks at Palantir, the, you know, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Andreson, Larry Ellison, Tim Cook, Wall Streeters who sucked up to Trump, foreign leaders who sucked up to Trump, who have a double prop. First of all, they've destroyed their reputations by short-sightedly associating themselves with this maniac.

But what if Democrats win in November? What if Democrats take over the House? Do you think that the sweetheart deals that Trump is cutting with these people are not going to be investigated? What if Democrats win the White House in 2028? Do you think Palantir because it's a Trump company or Larry Ellison's empire because it's so closely associated with Trump is going to possibly. conceivably play the role that they play now or they're going to pay a price for it? And my sense is they're going to pay a price. Well, even Donald Trump seemed to think that they were in for a shalacking at the midterms next year.

I mean, he was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal at the weekend and said that he thought that his economic strategy, i.e. tariffs might not yet have, you know, revolutionized the economy by the midterms. he foresaw losing. And so he's obviously preparing the ground for a loss there. Well, I think there was an insight embedded in a lie wrapped in a bunch of bullshit because, you know, the insight was, you know, he was trying, he was acknowledging that he's going to lose. And what he's starting to do now is what he did prior to each of the elections. If you're crawl in 2016 and 2020, he said, if I lose, it's because it was rigged.

Yep. Right? And, you know, he does this because he, you know, he can't stand the idea of losing face because he's a narcissistic sociopath. And so, you know, what will he do over the course of the next year? He'll say, well, this is the Biden economy, or this is because of the Fed, or the Congress didn't act quickly enough. or people just don't appreciate how great they really have it, which, of course, would be ironic because that's kind of what is known now as the Biden trap, right? Of sort of saying, hey, life is great.

And people are saying, well, actually, no. You know, and this is the problem. You can spin people only so far. If you've got a relative who was dragged away by ice, if you've got a relative who can't afford health insurance and who dies, if you've got a relative who's a kid who needed to go on a school bus and there's no school bus, if you've got a relative who depended on vaccines and has now been infected because the next door neighbors don't use vaccines, you can't make up a story from the White House that's going to counteract all that.

And this is also part of the beginning of the end. There comes a certain point where sort of smooth political patter and owning a big microphone or a big megaphone just isn't going to work for Trump. And we're at the beginning of that point. He also reminds me of that show, kids say the darnedest things. Donald Trump says the darnedest things. What did you think about his comment that families should just buy two dolls, not 30 dolls, again, this holiday? I mean, he said it before, but he said it again. And I don't want to be told how many gifts I can buy my kids by Donald Trump. It wasn't just dolls, by the way.

He thinks you should have two pencils. What would he do with a pencil? He wouldn't have the slightest idea of what to do with a pencil. Well, he could do his sort of strange sharpy signature. Yes, well, that's true. But he has a sharpy band, as we know. And he would break the point of the pencil. Well, he'd miss the point.

point of the pencil. And this is the point of all of these things. And I think, you know, this idea of your daughter having 30 dolls tells us a lot more about Ivanka's upbringing than it does about the normal life of a normal kid. Well, and very notably, Ivanka is nowhere to be seen, apart from on her Instagram where she's wearing the latest designer outfit and parading around Paris or wherever she is, surfing the waves in Jupiter, Florida. She must be mixed in how close Jared is figuring. and everything these days, right? Jared is going to meet with Putin.

You know, there is this project that Jared is involved when in in Belgrade. In Serbia, that there is now a backlash. It's kind of a sign of what I was talking about before where people are saying, no, no, we don't want to be involved with a Trump project.

But in the Wall Street Journal article on that... This is about him buying a hotel in the center of Belgrade in a historic site. Right, exactly. And it's an ugly project where they wanted him to build a statue, you know, that was sort of against NATO and Richard Gridale, who now runs a Kennedy Center when he was ambassador to Germany, got involved in trying to plump for this project.

But, you know, I think there was something embedded in the story that was real interesting, which I hadn't noticed, which was that, of course, Jared has this big money management company because, well, he never managed money before he was in the last administration. It's because of the friends of Trump, right? $4.6 billion. This is affinity partners, which has also got a $2 billion investment from the sovereign wealth fund in Saudi. Right. Exactly. Well, some of that money is apparently going to try to help finance Larry Ellison's takeover of Warner Brothers.

right you know which is like and Trump the other day said oh yeah I'll be involved in that I mean we've gotten to the point where because the Supreme Court gave him immunity and because he's a sociopath he thinks he can do anything you know and somebody is going to test that theory you know the Supreme Court gave him immunity against official acts and I think somebody could probably make a pretty good case before the Supreme Court Supreme Court, that violating the emoluments clauses in the Constitution, that breaking anti-corruption laws can't be an official act because it's illegal. You know, they're putting their thumb on the scale of American politics through those

arrangements. And, you know, sometimes the quid is not directly connected to the quo, right? But, you know, Jeff Bezos gives a bunch of money or Larry Ellison, gives a bunch of money to a Trump project, say the ballroom, and then later gets favorable regulatory treatment. That's what is known to the inside world and something that the founders were worried about. That's regulatory capture. David, hold on.

We're just going to take some ads. And I'm back with David Rothkopf unpacking what the hell is going on in the world. What happens if the ballroom doesn't get built? I mean, now what appears to have happened is that there is a resistance to Donald Trump's plans for the Trump ballroom. And so there are to sort of on-pass. So it's possible that the East Wing could stay demolished for the next three years. Then do companies ask for their money back? Is there a time frame that they've made the donation on?

I mean, all things that we should know. Yeah, and, you know, we don't even know how real this process. of donations is because he lies about that stuff all the town. Time. But I have to say, a big hole in the ground next to the White House would be a better memorial to Trump than a gilded ballroom, right? You know, I mean, sometimes people do that. You know, in the middle of Berlin, there is a blown up church called the Gedecknesskirche

that was destroyed during World War II, and they kept it in its destroyed form as a reminder. That's what that name means. to think about that. And I think the hotel in the center of Belgrade was actually sort of kept as a cruel memorial of an attack by NATO, actually. There's a sort of resistance to building a hotel on it

because it stands for something and weirdly not what you would think Jared Kushner would want to take on. Yeah, but they don't care. It's just as part. Trump is trying to get a deal with Ukraine where Ukraine doesn't seek NATO membership anymore. But at the same time, Trump has put forth the national security strategy where it's clear.

He doesn't think Europe is important anymore. And will he draw down U.S. involvement with NATO? Will he weaken NATO? Sure. And will that serve the Russians? Yes. And, you know, that would have been unthinkable before because NATO were our allies. They were on our side.

But Trump has switched sides. And so, you know, all of this is convoluted in the country. connection, the corruption is connected to the closeness to our enemies, is connected to Trump's lack of character, is connected to his failure to rise to critical challenges like trying to end the war in Ukraine or address the problems of the United States. And all of it comes back to the fact that the president of the United States is a sociopath. And we don't talk about that enough. And if you were to get on most mainstream media and say he's a sociopath, or say, let's have a bunch of psychologists explore what the consequences

of his narcissism and his other pathologies are, they wouldn't do it. And so we bury it. We bury it. Well, I don't feel we've buried it at The Daily Beast. We've had Dr. Bandi Lee on. We've had Dr. John Gartner on both of whom talk about his malignant narcissism, which is a very specific form of narcissism. And, you know, Dr. John Gartner talks about the fact that as a child, and this is actually an anecdote in Maggie Haberman's book, Confidence Man, he threw rocks at a pram when he was a child. Donald Trump threw rocks at a pram with a baby in it. I mean, it's like something out of an Edward Bond play. Yeah, no, look, I wasn't saying that the Daily Beast isn't covering it.

In fact, I think it's to your credit. And I think, frankly, if people want to go and discuss these issues, they and hear about these issues, they've got to go someplace other than the mainstream media because they're squeamish. They're squeam. And, you know, imagine Trump's reaction if CNN does a special call, you know, our lunatic president. You know, I mean, sorry.

Okay, that's definitely broken me out of my morning bloom. Although it's not going to happen, though, to be fair, Caitlin Collins is doing her best. She's like a one-woman resistance at the moment, and she's got fantastic hair. Caitlin Collins is a legit reporter. She really is a legit reporter. And people need to know that her background was working for publications that leaned right. Which is why Donald Trump was excited about having her at C. initially, right? Well, that's right. But she's come on and she has just stuck to her guns and been a good

reporter, even when it's hard, even when he's, I mean, did you see the behavior again last week? Of course. With his attack on yet another reporter who happened to be a woman and happened to be a woman of color? Yeah, he never does it against the male reporters. Well, he did it against Jonathan Carl, I suppose, but he particularly picks on the women. But David, before we go down that spiral, I wanted to talk to you about something else, the Epstein of it all, because Jeffrey Epstein does appear to be the thing that gets most under Donald Trump's skin in as much as he has skin. And it's very orange, as people are always pointing out. The Oversight Committee has subpoenaed both Bill and Hillary Clinton for this week, actually, and they have, through their lawyer, attempted to avoid.

appearing in front of the Oversight Committee. They've said they'll write sworn statements about their relationships with Epstein, or at least Hillary says she didn't have one. Bill said, well, we know that Bill flew on his plane many times to Africa for the Clinton Global Initiative. What do you think? Do you anticipate them actually turning up in front of the Oversight Committee? You worked for the Clinton administration. If you were advising them now, what would you, what would you suggest they do? I advise that they would go and testify. because they're not going to be able to keep anything from the public eye. This is going to be followed, and Republicans are going to push them into the public eye more and more.

And, you know, you just said Clinton went many times on the plane. It's the assertion of Clinton that he went four times on the plane and that he ended the relationship well before some of the worst stuff started to come out. Look, honestly, Bill Clinton was kind of a pig, right? Bill Clinton was, his attitude towards women was bad. He had a bad track record with women. Don't ask me why Hillary Clinton stuck with Bill Clinton. But, you know, if he's involved in this thing, I also know, every Democrat out there is like, then fine.

We should know that. And I think the position of people who want Trump to come clean should be to come clean themselves and not to get tied up in lawyers. Now, I know that the Clintons also know that Republicans want to make them the center of discussion in the hopes that it'll distract from Trump. And they want to weaponize this investigation against Democrats like them or like Larry Summers. And, you know, I get it. And I understand why they're skeptical of that. But I think the thing that is in the interest of the American people right now is transparency. and the thing that is in the interest of people who want there to be accountability here

is for everybody to be transparent at this point, for everybody to say, speak the truth about what happened here, speak the truth about the cover-ups, because that is the only way to have the accountability we need for the women who are the victims of this. Because at the end of the day, this is not about Bill Clinton, it's not about Donald Trump, It's not about Jeffrey Epstein. It's about a system that lets rich, powerful guys abuse and scar women in the worst possible way and get away with it. And that's what's got to stop here. The other thing I would think is that men who don't do this would want this all to come out because all men get tarred with this brush.

I mean, look, I don't know if all men do. but I think men who want to respect the law, men who seek always to respect women, men who abhor this kind of behavior ought to support transparency. And, you know, we do have a deadline coming up this week, December 19th, which is just four days away,

where by law, the administration has to release the files that they've got. Now, it's going to be a telling day because almost surely they're going to say, well, we have ongoing investigations and so we can't let you have this, this, and this. And that's going to create a big battle. It is not going to provide them with the cover they want it to provide. It is just going to keep the story alive longer. And, you know, it's like quicksand. You know, the more Trump struggles, the deeper he sinks.

And I think that's going to continue for a long time, and he's going to struggle against it. You know why? Because what he did, how he led his life, is disgusting. David, in other news, and I think of you as an expert on the State Department, because, of course, you were the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, and the State Department was under your magnifying glass. Marco Rubio has decided to change the font. He's moving from Calibri back to, I think it's called Calibri, back to Times Roman Bold.

Or is it Times New Roman? I wrote this down. Times New Roman, sorry. But there's more to it than that, Joanna. And I'm so glad you brought this up because the psychosis of the president and mass murders over the weekend and, you know, the Epstein case and all that, they pale in comparison to Fontgate. You know, because it's not just that they got rid of Calabry. It's why they got rid of Calabry. because it was, you know, apparently the Biden administration switched to Calabry because it was easier for people with certain disabilities to read.

And so Calibri was seen as a woke diversity type font. And then we had to, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, this is lunacy, right? It's a woke font. It's a woke font, and we will not be issuing State Department documents in a woke font. You need a good right-wing serif to prove that, you know, what we're saying is in the American spirit. But the other thing they did was they insisted that the font on these official documents be 14.5. Okay, now that's just too big.

It's huge. It's huge. It's a waste of space. It's almost as big as the lettering, which now says the west wing, the Oval Office, which I'm convinced is because those in the cabinet don't quite know their way around the White House yet. Well, maybe it's related to the same thing. It might be that the West Wing has labeled the West Wing because of the fading memory of the president. And this type font is really large because of the failing eyesight of the 79-year-old president.

But how crazy? How crazy is it that they spent one minute doing this? But you know what they did a couple of days earlier that they are undoubtedly trying to distract from? Go on. They said, if you want to come and visit the United States, you have to give us access to five years of your social media posts. So we can screen them and determine whether you're suitable for entry to the United States. Do you know how much tourism is down this year because of the other things they've done? $30 billion.

Okay. it is a very big industry in the United States. Do you think people are going to come to the World Cup when they fear that ICE may come knocking at their door because three years ago they posted a meme of Trump as a, you know, that was unflattering to our dear leader? I mean, that the State Department, I mean, I don't know if it's even possible to do what they said.

Well, it might be, I was wondering about that. I mean, it's probably possible with AI, right? But surely people will just create fintsters. I had a moment where I thought, I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg is in on this, and perhaps he's recommended to Trump that they do this. So people simply have to open fresh new accounts. It's possible. It sounds like the kind of thing that Palantir said or Elon said, hey, we can handle this. And, you know, some of those guys, I mean, just speak as since psychosis seems to be a theme here.

What's going on with Elon and the Lee, you know, didn't like carp them, the, president or CEO of Palantir, like start doing handstands in his chair the other day? Well, he was at the deal book conference and it seemed with Andrew Ross Sorkin and it seemed that he had had something in his coffee that morning. Perhaps that's the kindest way of putting it. But he seemed very unable and I'm sympathetic to this to be able to sit in a chair for any length of time. Do a handstand right now.

I can't do it. I've never been able to do a handstand. The viewers. But Alex Carp had sort of. uncontrolled movements. It was peculiar and uncomfortable to watch. He was saying crazy stuff. And you go, oh, well, he's crazy. And, you know, he's running this. But the big boss at Palantir, Peter Thiel has regularly gone on rants about the presence of the Antichrist. These are the super-empowered people of our day. You know, it's not just that we've got oligarchs.

it's that we have insane nerd oligarchs. Insane nerd oligards. I knows. Beware the I knows. Beware the I knows. David, hold on. Please, we're just going to take a commercial break. And David Rothkopf and I are discussing Donald Trump's America.

David, you have thoroughly cheered me this morning. I came in just thinking, what is happening in the world? Now you've explained it. We have a sociopathic, malignant narcissist in the White House, and everything trickles down from there. And then his masters are all on the West Coast, and they are I-Nos. I can't even remember what it stands for again. Just remind me, nerd oligarchs. Insane nerd.

Insane nerd. That's kind of where we are, Joanna. The only thing that worries me is that we talk about this complete breakdown of Western civilization, and you're like, Okay, I'm cheered up. Now I can begin my... Well, no, no. And now I feel I'm back... I've hit my kind of normal level of energy.

So at the beast, we can fire up the team to make sure that we're reporting correctly on what's going on. And fight for truth, justice, and return to something like sanity. We have covered a lot of ground. And a really good sweater. David, you have a really good sweater on this morning. That's also cheered me. We're trying to make this a bit more fashion forward this podcast. Michael Wolfe has set the tone with his woolly cardigans.

Well, you set the tone every day. Look at your blazer. Look at your t-shirt of Sarah Jessica Parker, smoking a joint. Isn't it fun, this t-shirt? I felt like I needed a joint this morning and I don't even smoke. Well, you know, I think it sends a message. And I put this on, not for your benefit, but because I've got to finish a book proposal. and I feel like I look like a writer.

And I thought if I looked like a writer, maybe I would actually write. You do look like a writer. And in the immortal words of Rob Reiner, I'll have what you're having. Let us remember Rob Reiner kindly. Well, let us just go back to his wonderful movies and remember a few good men, you can't handle the truth. And the Princess Bride? The Princess Bride, I never saw.

but I did take the afternoon off work to watch the first screening of when Harry met Sally in London when it came out, because I was so excited to see it. Yeah, as it happened, I watched that day before yesterday again, and, you know, it made you feel good. And, you know, at the end of the day, the legacy of Rob Reiner is that he made you feel good. And the legacy of the guy who was attacking him this morning is that he makes you feel awful. Okay, well on that note, David Rothkopf, come back and see us soon. Look forward to more of your columns. And of course, you can follow David every day on DSR, Deep State Radio, for his wonderful podcasts, where you get more of what's going on inside Rothkopf's head.

Yeah, or go to my substack need to know. There's even bits there. And I promoted one of your podcasts in my last substack post. Excellent man. So this is all circular. we're just promoting each other. It's as it should be. And we're both suffering from TDS, Trump derangement syndrome.

So there you go. Yes. Well, thank you for contributing to mine today. Trump 79. Onwards, David, thank you very much for joining us and we will see you soon. See you. Happy holidays. Same to you.

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