The Daily Beast Podcast - This Proves Trump Is About to Get His Bubble Burst

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

The Daily Beast's Chief Global Affairs Columnist predicts what is about to happen to Donald Trump: A bubble-bursting moment when he gets confronted with reality. He tells Joanna Coles about what we can all learn from the moment Trump got heckled on a golf course on Sunday, and what to take out of what the president betrayed on a hot mic at the same event. #ad For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life, when you head to https://Smalls.com/BEAST. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Audio ads that connect. Display ads that stand out. Run them together on Spotify and unlock incremental reach for your campaign. I do think people will be motivated to go to the polls. And they will all have their own reasons for voting the way that they do. He hasn't kept any of his promises.

In fact, he's broken his promises. Everything is going in the wrong direction. The economy is going in the wrong direction. That war is going in the wrong direction. Recent polls have shown every single major initiative of the administration underwater, he doesn't get exposed to the real world very much. He's got a bubble of people around him who wouldn't want to be back, you know, in the womb of the Oval Office being hand-fed Big Max and Quarterponders by Natalie while she's

whispering all the flattering coverage from Mr. Pillow TV network into his ear. Trump is living in a bubble and he doesn't like leaving. the bubble because it reminds him of just what a incredible failure. This second term has been. David Rothkotz, how are you? Joe Anna at Coles, I'm good. How are you? I'm feeling a bit bedraggled because I got caught in the tail end of the Nor' Easter, David. Did you kayak to work? Almost. I almost kayaked through the AI floodwaters. People kept sending me videos over the weekend saying, oh, I see that Soho is underwater and I was looking at my window thinking, no, we're not underwater. It's all good. But David, how are you getting on with your hit

replacement? Because it's two, is it two weeks? What is it? Ten days. It's only ten days. It's only ten days. It's a miracle. I'm, you know, I'm super grateful to you for inspiring me and I'm looking forward to replacing some other parts of my life. Well, when you come up to New York, you can come and do Pilates with me, which is my latest thing now, throwing my legs around all over the place because they feel as if they are new and yours will too. Oh, Joanna. Oh, my God. Yeah, I'm looking forward to just getting back playing tennis, you know, not worrying about

pain and things. And focusing on what's going on because, you know, Joanna, in just five weeks, there's an election in the United States. Isn't that exciting? There is. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Well, you guys don't cover that stuff at The Daily Beast.

It's mostly just Hollywood stuff, right? Yeah, it's just, it's Trives. You know how I know that we have an election coming up, because Donald Trump's got an advertising campaign that the U.S. government has been paying for. Before we get into it, yeah, before we get into it, we should just remind people to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. Please, wherever you get your podcast, the reason that David can. have such a disinhibited conversation about the state of our politics right now and the state of our people in power is precisely because we are independent media. So we appreciate your support. Sign up wherever you see signs for the Daily Beast, wherever you get your podcast.

And we're going to be talking about Trump's, you know, paid for campaign. We're going to be talking about people profanely heckling him at a... the golf tournament that he appeared at, we're going to be talking about John Fetterman's Freudian slip. What was going on there? Ken Paxton failing at the pen theft. Okay, James Talariko on that, like, what did they say, white on rice? I've never understood that expression, but I do understand why James Telerico is going after. Axton quite so effectively. You know what color rice is, right? Yes. It's a white all over, right? Well, I eat black rice from the Himalayas, or however you pronounce them.

How do you pronounce the Himalayas? In English... Himalayas. We say Himalayas. No, don't you say Himalayas? Don't you say Himalayas? No, they say that in like, you know, Sussex or someplace. We don't do that. We say Himalayas here in the U.S.

Do you? I didn't know you said the Himalayas. I thought you said the Himalayas. Well, whatever. David, how come the U.S. government is paying for an ad for Donald Trump. Surely that is not legal. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communist, Marxist and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media

and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all. Surely it's not, Joanna, as he point out. And the only reason the U.S. government is paying for it is because Donald Trump is stealing your money. And, you know, there's a lot of ways we could dress this up. But the reality is that you're not allowed to use government funds to pay for campaign advertisements or campaign messages, their laws against it. But thanks to our friends at the Supreme Court, Donald Trump got a message a couple of months before the last election saying he has immunity and that he can do whatever he wants.

And he also knows he has unlimited pardon power. So Donald Trump's whole approach to his presidency is figuring out crimes that he can profit from and doing them knowing that he probably will not be held to account. Now, there's little loopholes in this. The Supreme Court said he has immunity with regard to official acts and there is a pretty strong school of thought that says, If you do something that's illegal, it can't possibly be official.

But we'll see whether the Democrats or whomever has the stomach to hold him accountable for it. Meanwhile, everybody watching the NFL yesterday got to see an ad of Donald. A weird, I mean, a weird ad. Weird ad. You know, I mean, he must be using some North Korean political consultancy because it's like he's real, I can explain this to me, but he's really, into this menacing images, a menacing image of himself where he's got the scowl that looks like his wanted poster shot. I mean, and he somehow he thinks that him looking pissed off at the world is what people want to see, but it's in black and white. And he said, we will

keep America from being communist. I mean, there's no chance of America becoming communist. The only person put his policy footing around with communists is Donald Trump. I mean, he just had Xi Jinping in town and said, hey, you want to buy some weapons? I mean, do you think about that? You want, you want some weapons? You want some relief on the tariff front? I love you, baby. You know, so, I mean, he's got that going on. He's doing everything he possibly can for Kim Jong-un. He's doing everything he possibly can for ex-communist Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump is the most pro-communist person in America other than members of the American Communist Party. But he's running this on your dime because he just doesn't think anybody will hold him to

account. But it was a pretty odd that he had the ad on the NFL because social media exploded. I mean, there was a line saying paid for by the U.S. government. It was very much an ad for Donald Trump, as you say, scowling and promising to make America a safe. And social media exploded. His friend Elon Musk's platform, and we'll be talking about Elon later in the show too, but Twitter slash X slash Elon Musk's personal jotter exploded with people outraged that taxpayers' money was paying for Donald Trump's ad for himself. Yeah, of course. And it's made worse by the fact that also,

the other day, he exercised a power that he doesn't have under the Constitution, called Executive Rescission, where he has said, we're not going to spend a billion dollars of the money that the Congress has allocated, money that would go to social programs, money that would go to people in need, money that would go to help immigrants, money that would go to help fight the climate crisis. He just said, I'm not spending it. And, you know, he's got people around him. saying whatever you want to do, boss, but it's illegal. So at the same time as he is spending money illegally on things like the ballroom or on, you know, the arch or on the reflecting pool, which is not reflecting, it's empty right now, or on these ads, he is not spending money

where the Congress, people's representatives, have asked him to spend it. So it's, I mean, it's almost as if he's flaunting, you know, the position and sort of tweaking everybody, saying, I can do whatever I want, screw you. If a genie gave me three wishes, I would use all my wishes to wish for my cats to live forever. But since genies don't exist, I feed my cats smalls. Smalls is fresh, human-grade cat food that does so much more than just feed your cat. It helps them live a full, healthy life. Most cat food out there is made with meat byproducts, cheap fillers and artificial ingredients,

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No, that's... I think, you know, Joanna, you have summed it up. Donald Trump thinks he completed a hostile takeover of the United States, like an acquisition. Right. It's a brilliant description. Yeah. And that he now is in charge of the United States, and, you know, he can get whatever he wants. And so, you know, if there's Venezuelan oil money coming in, let's send it into an account. Who knows who'll get where that account goes? Scott Bessent the other day couldn't say where it went.

There's money going into the Gaza Fund. Who knows where that's going? There's a big story in the New York Times today where he, you know, where they election. he cut a deal with Venezuela, which means, you know, we like broke into Venezuela, I held a gun to their head and said, give us your oil and your gold. And, you know, apparently he cut a deal to get Venezuela's gold. Who knows where that money is going? Budget money is going to his campaign. Budget money is going to companies owned by his family. You know, it's the most overt, corrupt, I defy you to find a government from recent history of the emerging world or anywhere else, where there was a kleptocrat who was more brazen in his theft than Donald Trump has been as president of the United States.

Well, as he said himself, people don't seem to care when it was clear that he made $2.2.2 billion. last year, largely from his crypto endeavors, he said people don't care. I mean, it's 36 days to go until the midterms. Many people are sitting with their mail-in ballots. Do you think this will actually motivate people to vote? Or do you think they're going to be more motivated by just the price of gas, the price of groceries, an illegal war in Iran, the fact that their neighbors are being rounded up on the street and some of them shot by ice. I mean, there seem to be so many things against Donald Trump's crew winning in November. Do you think people will be motivated to go to the polls? I do think people will be motivated to go to the polls. Of course, there's

certain things we don't know. We don't know what the weather's going to be. We don't know if he's going to send out troops. We don't know whether he's going to declare a, you know, martial law or do something crazy like that. But if we have anything resembling free and fair elections of the type that we had, people are going to show up. And they will all have their own reasons for voting the way that they do. And, you know, many of those reasons cut against Trump. And as you say, it may not be corruption.

It may be the fact that it costs $137 to fill your pickup truck with diesel fuels so that you can go and do your job. It may be that food costs more. that he's closing down your school, or it may be that he's taken away your health care, or taken away the subsidies that allowed you to support health care. It may be that he is waging an endless war in the Middle East when he said he wouldn't, or maybe that he's supporting a genocidal government in Israel when, you know, it's profoundly immoral. It may be that he's not supporting Ukraine. It may be, you know, and maybe any of a number of things. I think the bulk of

them will have to do with how did electing Donald Trump hurt me and my family as individuals? And or did it help me? And I think the vast majority of Americans who aren't billionaires, who didn't get some big tax cut from the big, beautiful bill, I think the vast majority of Americans will say economically in terms of my sense of security, in terms of the promises that were made to me, in terms of education, in terms of education, in terms of of the environment, in terms of my life as a whole, having Donald Trump as president makes my life worse, I want to change. Okay.

The other subject that we haven't talked about for a little bit, but at one point we talked about a lot was Jeffrey Epstein. The Epstein files were still waiting for another three million of them. We had three million drop earlier this year, but there's still another 50% of the files to go. But this weekend when Trump was out at a golf tournament, he was, it was the President's Cup trophy, actually. He was heckled in a most disrespectful way, David. Someone called him a pedophile.

And you could hear across all the clips on social media, one voice just came sailing over the top of the crowd. It was very noticeable, actually. Can we play the clip? Oops. That was a bit of a heckle. So, David, this reminds me of a moment when King Charles was actually heckled in the UK and shortly after Andrew, formerly known as Prince, was called him for questioning with the police. I wondered if he was a bit disconcerted by this remark because at another event over the weekend, he was caught on a hot mic moment. Well, can we play it? So there's a lot of background noise there, David, but it's a hot mic moment and you can hear Donald Trump saying, I want to go home.

Yeah, I think Donald Trump feels I want to go home a lot of the time. He doesn't get exposed to the real world very much. He's got a bubble of people around him, you know, who sort of keep him at a distance from real human beings. Because things like the Epstein file, I think you're really smart to bring it up. These things don't go away, right? You know, Todd Blanche may be withholding files, and there may not be a case in the news right now. But in the minds of a lot of Americans, Donald Trump is a pedophile or a sex offender. And over the years, and we've had these stories now for many, many, many years.

Remember the first of these Epstein contacts and stories came out almost a quarter of a century ago. And Donald Trump was seen sleezing around New York long before that. This colors his character. And I think, you know, for a lot of Maga World, they were like, yeah, well, nobody's perfect. But if my taxes come down, if we don't have to fight any more long wars in the Middle East, if he, you know, gets rid of all that woke stuff that I don't like, then it's worth it. And, you know, everybody's got their little peccadillos. Well, the reality is, of course, we now know that he hasn't kept any of his promises.

In fact, he's broken his promises. Everything is going in the wrong direction. The economy is going in the wrong direction. That war is going in the wrong direction. The price of energy is going in the wrong direction. The services that are being offered to America are being cut back. The popularity of his programs is plummeting. Recent polls have shown every single major initiative of the administration underwater.

And, of course, his political popularity. Well, you know, who wouldn't want to be back, you know, in the womb of the Oval Office being hand-fed Big Max and Quarterponders by Natalie while she's whispering all the flattering coverage from the, you know, Mr. Pillow TV network into his ear. And, and, you know, that's the point. Trump is living in a bubble. And he doesn't like leaving the bubble because it reminds him of just what a incredible failure. this second term has been. You know, I just tell you, if I, if you let me riff here for 30 seconds and a theme that I'm writing about for you guys in a day or two, I think we've truly entered what I would call late stage Trump. You know, there have been different phases, the young playboy, the fake tycoon phase. There was his first presidency where he seemed momentarily

like a bit of a master of the universe, he'd game the system for himself, even though the results were bad. But since this second term began, and particularly in the course of this past year, every single thing he does fails. The war fails. His press efforts fail. His efforts with the Congress fails. His political charm fails. He's become less and less popular. He seems old. He doesn't seem in control. He can't get the narrative back. He always used to be able to sort of do something to claim the narrative back. This is late stage Trump. This is declining Trump. It's one stage away from, you know, where Mitch McConnell is these days, which is to say, kind of a vegetable in a wheelchair. And this, you know, of course Donald Trump wants to be in the comfort of his own home,

because otherwise he's out there being reminded that everything he's built is decaying. before his eyes, including himself. Yes, I was going to add, his health appears to be failing. DC itself, all the things that he's been trying to do, the reflecting pool, which, as you say, doesn't have water in it, his marriage, his relationships, his family relationships, they all seem to be failing around him. I was going to ask you about his relationship with the press. As we know, CNN's still having problems, getting out.

access to the president. Now he's talking about taking the briefing room, the White House briefing room where the press ask him questions or used to ask Caroline Levitt normally ask a White House press secretary, but there isn't one at the moment. So Donald Trump or his cabinet ministers are stepping in. He's talking about taking the briefing room and turning it into a swimming pool. He released AI photos, which I think we can show here. although presumably he must have actually, for once, been reading about the history of the White House, because it was traditionally a swimming pool. FDR had it put in as a swimming pool to help with his own health issues. So is it possible that Donald Trump is trying to, you know, is deciding that he's going to start swimming laps and he's going to get back into health?

I was trying to imagine Donald Trump swimming in this pool, actually. I imagined he would wear flippers and a snorkel and maybe floaties. Is that what to imagine? You were imagining Donald Trump half naked swimming around in his pool. No, I was imagining him in one of those kind of red and white stripy, unitarred costumes that people wore, men in particular wore in the 1920s. But I... Well, that's an image.

Look, I think I wouldn't expect fitness anytime soon. In fact, there were several stories over the weekend that Trump has gained a lot of weight in the past few months, which will tie to your earlier theme, which is, you know, if this is the golden age of anything right now, it's the golden age of decay in Washington and decay of our president and decay of our institutions. But, you know, in this particular case, you know, I suspect if Trump had the option of filling the press, room with water while the press was still in there, he'd do it. You know, if he could have drowned them all, he would do it. But I think what he wants to do is take away privileges and proximity from the press so that he can hold everybody at arm's length, speak to the people he wants to speak to, and continue what is an extraordinary war on the First Amendment, freedom of the press,

free expression in the United States, that, We've never seen before, whether it's at the Pentagon or whether it was at the White House earlier when they took away certain people's credentials or more recently when they kicked out, you know, CNN or MS now or Politico. And they just keep doing everything they can to, again, this is back to the bubble. You know, it's back to Donald Trump. You know, it's like the line from a few good men. He can't handle the truth.

And what they're trying to do is. is keep them away from people who are going to force him into proximity with reality. And, you know, what does that lead to? I think it leads to a president who is more and more hostage to his own delusions. And those delusions don't get challenged. The problem is that then he makes decisions based on delusions, and the rest of us have to suffer the consequences. Where are we with the press ban?

As you say, he banned MS Now, CNN and Politico. The pool then, the press pool that operate together to save the incredible expense of actually covering the president, then said that they weren't going to actually cover the president on pool events, an S CNN and MS Now will. reinstated, a judge, a Trump-appointed judge, then said that this isn't okay. He's trampling on their constitutional rights. They must reinstate their press passes. Where are we now? Do you know, David, what's the most recent? Well, the most recent is that we don't know where we are. The courts made its decision. After the court made its decision, the White House didn't comply before it did comply.

And since then, the White House has been a little bit more selective, saying, well, you know, Politico can go here, but CNN can't go here and so forth. And it's led to some pretty uncomfortable displays. Yesterday, you had Jake Tapper on his own show on CNN going to an administration official and saying, please tell the president that we'll, you know, let us speak, cover this. And no, sort of pleading for something that shouldn't be pleaded for. You know, this is a right. The president is a right. The president is a doesn't, is not the highest office in the land. The highest law office in the land is citizen. The president works for us. And the reason that we have a free press and the reason that we're able to cover the president however we want is that that is what holds him in check fundamentally. I mean, Thomas Jefferson famously said he would get rid of all the other benefits that come from a democracy so long as he could keep a free press because that was the one that was the most essential to the forward functioning of the democracy. Donald Trump hates it. And, you know, I think he is spotty complying with the court order now. But I expect, as we've seen at the

Pentagon and the White House and so forth, for the course of the past 18 months, and frankly, in the first term of the Trump administration, we will see more efforts to reduce access to Air Force One, or to public events, or to reduce the number of events where the president takes questions, or to turn the White House press room into a swimming pool again. All of this has to be seen for what it is, which is an effort to try to keep from the people of the United States the transparency and accountability from the president

that they deserve, that they're entitled to. psychologist, Dr. John Gartner, talks a lot about this. We've seen Donald Trump over the last 50 years. We know his language is deteriorating. We can see he's physically declining, as you say. We can see his cancals. We can see the makeup trying to cover the strange purple blossoming bruises on both hands that he now has. We've seen the kind of unfortunate rash at the back of his neck. Just can you remind people why it's so important that we have as much coverage as we can have of the man who is, frankly, the most important man in the world? Yeah, he's 80 years old. This is what happens to people. But the reality is this guy has the ability within three minutes of giving the order to launch enough nuclear warheads to destroy the planet. This man has the ability to launch conflicts like the one in every day. Iran that are entirely unfounded and illegal and cost hundreds of billions of dollars and

thousands of lives in the region and American lives and injuries and so on. He's got the ability to do all of that. He can destroy the world economy. He can destroy the environment. He can destroy our institutions and so on and so forth. And if he is doing that, we need to know that he's doing it. And if he is doing that because he's decaying in some ways, we need to know that. And if somehow he is no longer compisementous or he is less capacity than even that which he had before, we need to know that.

And, you know, he has been lying about his height and his weight and his health ever since he got into office. You know, he still says he's six foot three and he's 225 pounds and he has the, you know, no body fat. And, you know, he looks like a cross between an NFL linebacker and a mystery. universe. But, you know, we saw him, right? We saw him standing next to 5'11 Xi Jinping this week, and he was the same height. I mean, you know, he shrunk. I don't think Xi Jinping looked that great either, actually. He looked exhausted, I thought. Well, he did. And the Chinese, you know, the Chinese press, by the way, you know, while we were talking about Trump and then he was, you know, 75 degrees out and he was wearing gloves because he didn't want any pictures of his hands.

and he was wearing an overcoat, and he was scared by the airplanes flying over his head. The Chinese press, a lot in social media, were saying, is Xi Jinping sick? Because there had been a number of rumors that a few weeks ago he had suffered in some way, possibly a stroke. And was he leaning on his wife to take him down the stairs? And in fact, so they were focused on something entirely different. And I think Trump knows that, by the way, because I think, if you recall, the day after Trump arrived, Xi Jinping arrived, Trump went on social media and saying Xi Jinping looked very fit. Right. Yeah, he did say that, yes, which he really didn't.

He didn't, but I think Trump was doing that as kind of part of his, you know, it was like a party favor for Xi Jinping. Let me help you out there. But, you know, I mean, for sure, the person who emerged the strongest from the Trump-Siz Jinping summit was Xi Jinping's wife, who seemed to be the one guiding Xi Jinping around, who is very powerful, who for many years, by the way, many Americans don't know this, but for many years, she was much more famous in China than he is because she was a singer and she's very popular. But, you know, the day before they arrived in Washington, she held an event at the United Nations General Assembly in which she gave a speech in perfect English, which led to this big social media explosion of people going, how come the Chinese First Lady speaks better English than the American First Lady? Which was, you know, fantastic to see and to read, particularly since we got also, I don't know what your opinion of these was. There were also all these pictures of Donald and Melania together at these events, and they looked so pissed off. I mean, they looked so unhappy, you know, glowering at the world. And then I think the Daily Beast reported this, but literally the minute Xi Jinping left,

she was on a plane back to New York. And of course, Xi Jinping's daughter went to Harvard and Stanford, right? Yeah, and she, you know, went to Harvard under an assumed name and, you know, sort of had her life on the campus there because a lot of senior Chinese government officials' kids and rich Chinese kids go to American universities because their universities used to be considered the best in the world. And of course, we've now made it much more difficult for them to do that. We've cut the funding to the universities and we've tried to cut what the universities are able to do. And we've They've cut science and research funding for scientists, so they're leaving the country. And so a lot of the reasons that that kind of thing happened a few years ago are being reversed. And I thought it was quite interesting that Xi Jinping said, I welcome 100,000 American students to come study in China. Yeah.

It was a very subtle form of shade. What was your takeaway from the end of that Xi Jinping visit, David? The takeaway is obvious, which is Xi Jinping is the most powerful man in the world. Donald Trump was currying favor. I wrote an article for you guys about it where I said, you know, Donald Trump was in the, had a bad case of man love. Not that there's anything wrong with man love, but he clearly wants, you know, the approval of Xi Jinping, the embrace of Xi Jinping. That's why he's like offering to sell American weapons to China. They're saying, oh, no, tariffs, we're not going to have tariffs.

We're going to have a moratorium on that. We're going to give you breaks. And, you know, we're not going to, you know, guardrails and problems with AI. Forget it. We're over that. And he was just, you know, there's an old tradition in China from the days of the emperor called cowtowing, where people would go and get on their hands and knees and prostrate themselves before the emperor to show respect.

That's what happened here. Donald Trump cowtowed before Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping, whose only objective was to come away being viewed as Trump's equal or his better,

came away with a home run being his better, and the U.S. came away with zero, zip, nothing, except, as you have brilliantly written about, a big, fancy state dinner where we got to see, not, you know,

used to go to a state dinner to see the leaders of the administration, talking the leaders of another demonstration. Here, we roll out our royalty, our oligarchy, got to come to this steak dinner, all the big tech bros who are actually in charge of America and sent a very strong message decision

paying about how America works today. But you have a sub-stack on this, which is great. Well, thank you for calling it out. I have a column on it just comparing the guest list last Thursday's dinner. to a state dinner I had attended in, well, 12 years ago now, under Obama, which was really the point of the state dinners, I think, is to bring leaders from different worlds together to A show the strength of America in all sorts of industries,

but also to allow those people to talk to each other and see what comes of it, right? So you have head of tech companies talking to Hollywood directors and actors and musicians and journalists, and obviously CEOs. And instead, on Thursday, you just got this big group of tech bros. And of course, Elon Musk sitting next to the first lady, which made me think, aha, are they perhaps talking about their documentaries?

Although Melania was in charge of her documentary, Elon Musk is busy like playing whackamol, stopping any ad for the documentary that Alex Gibney has made about Elon. It's apparently four hours long. There's an intermission in it, but no one is taking ads for this thing, including, of course, Elon's own platform X. But surprisingly, there seems to be censorship around this documentary, which I, for one, cannot wait to see. Either can I. I mean, look, the more we know about Elon, the worse he looks. But in also suggests that the more we know about Elon, the more we need to know about Elon. Because this is a guy

who still has enormous clout, as evidenced by where he showed up at that dinner and what he did with Doge. And, you know, the role he is playing in the debate over how we handle AI and the role he is playing with regard to SpaceX, which had a big launch today and the future of American space exploration, but also the future of American national security. And, you know, having a guy who is clearly a racist and has a ketamine problem and is a little too close with some of our enemies and who is incredibly erratic and, you know, is running a breeding ranch for his kids someplace in Florida. You know, I mean, knowing as much as we can about this guy is really important because it says something, again, going back to the theme of decay, about the decay of the

United States of America, that this is the kind of person who in the past would never have been allowed anywhere near a president. And now because he's so flawed, I think Trump feels comfort with people who are flawed because he feels, you know, that they won't judge him as harshly and that he has some leverage over them. And, you know, but I, you know, the broader message, and I think one that Americans really need to take to heart is, yeah, Donald Trump's indicate. this is not just late stage Trump, this is last stage Donald Trump. He is on his way out. He will lose power in November. He will then lose more power when he leaves office.

He's over. Well, what remains? And, you know, it's not about, well, is it Marco Ruby or J.D. Vance? It's about who writes the checks for the Republican Party? Who writes the checks for the right? Who is the, you know, the board of direct. of the right-wing movement in the United States. And they were at this state dinner.

And it's people like Elon Musk and Bezos and Altman and the Ellisons and so forth, who have sort of signed on to try to make America less democratic and to make every apparatus of our economy work to enrich the 1100 billionaires in the United States at the expense of everyone else. And it was, you know, to me, it's almost like a kind of a trip back in time to some ancient era where you go into a society and the elders of the society, a bunch of rich old men, sit and preside and hold the entire society's future in their hands, except in this particular case, it's a bunch of the weirdest wackos who ever lived Elon Musk and Peter Thiel who thinks

the Antichrist is around the corner and has kind of. who don't think women should vote. And Jeff Bezos, who's, I don't know, you can talk about his wife's outfit to the state dinner, if you like, but, you know, who's, you know, going through the world's biggest, weirdest midlife crisis in history, or Mark Zuckerberg, who is clearly a bot. He's not actually a human being. You know, and these are the people who are in charge of our country at this moment. And Donald Trump will be in the grave, and they will still be with.

us. That's a rather depressing scenario, David. So I was going to ask you whether or not you think that this is, is this a technique that Donald Trump has picked up from Vladimir Putin, that you surround yourself with billionaires? And if so, if I were a billionaire, I would feel extremely reticent about spending time with Donald Trump. I mean, Jensen Huang from Navidia was saying that he now speaks to the president. several times a day. And of course, Navidia is now, you know, its value is around $5 trillion. It's the biggest company in the world. I can see that there might be reasons for him to speak to the American president frequently. But I would also think that the more times you talk to

Donald Trump as a businessman, the more you have to do with him, the more apprehensive you might become of him getting involved in your business. He's very unpredictable. I would think that the business people who are staying out of his way may be the wiser here? Well, I think there's a case to be made for that because I think, you know, historically, business people in Washington have played both sides of the fence, right? They give it to Democrats. They give it to Republicans. And so when there's a change in power, they have the ability to maintain some influence.

And it's why businesses have been so successful, regardless of whether the president's a Democrat or Republican, in getting the tax exemptions and the regulatory relief and the big government support packages that they have always wanted, kind of corporate welfare. But the reality is Trump works differently. Trump is essentially pay for play. Trump is saying, you've got to show your loyalty to me, but if you do show your loyalty to me, I have no problem whatsoever in doing things other administrations would consider incredibly corrupt. Think about Elon Musk running Doge, chopping the government to bits,

while Elon Musk's most valuable corporate assets, SpaceX, is doing business with the United States government and depends on the announcement of contracts with the U.S. government in order to make their money. I also think, you know, we're just mere mortals. And so to you or to I, the idea that Donald Trump does a crypto deal with this guy or does a crypto, you know, some deal with some company and makes $10 million or $100 million seems like a big deal or Don Jr. makes that kind of money. The reality is if you're Jensen Wong or you are Elon Musk, you're dealing in hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars and paying off a little bit here and a little bit there is just the price of admission. It's not a big deal. And I also think we need to remember the truth. And the

truth is, Nvidia is not worth $5 trillion. SpaceX is not worth whatever it is, $700,000, $800,000. That's what it's being valued by the market best. And that means that investors are buying the arguments of these people, that they have a wonderful, bright future. And the reality is, of course, that's all perception. And having the president of the United States making public statements about this is a good company, that's a bad company, we're going to do a deal, we're not going to do a deal, we're going to let them freely rain without getting guardrails, et cetera, et cetera, or we're going to go and introduce them all to the president of China. And, and, and, and, and, and, or we're going to go and introduce them. And, and, you know, say, these are our most prized national leaders, treat them well.

All of that translates many times over into market valuation, which ends up in these people pocket. You know, Invidia right now is in the middle of doing like a $150 billion stock buyback, the biggest stock buyback in history. Well, why do you do a stock buyback? Who does that benefit? It benefits the people who hold the stock who end up with. the bigger portion of the company. And they are getting a bigger portion of the company, not because

they spent money, but because the company spent money. It's an incredibly good deal for them. And they're all playing a different game than we're playing. And, you know, I think Trump is happy to make billions. He's happy to be president. He's happy to have his ego stroked. And, you know, they're happy to play the game. And they're happy to play the game. And they, they're, all think, all of them think, our companies are too important to the U.S., so whenever a Democrat comes in, they're going to have to deal with us. And for all I know, they're right. I know the Palantir, for example, which has been rabidly pro-Trump. And, you know, Peter Thiel was one of the people behind making J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States. Palantir is

hiring Democrats right now, because they think they can just make this smooth move in Democrats are not going to go, was it what you were doing incredibly sleazy and corrupt? And I'm not sure every, I think a lot of them are going to survive the transition, but some won't. And if I had to pick, you know, Palantium might be one of the ones that's going to get squeezed. So one person who didn't appear to be at the dinner, but I bet he wished he were, was John Fetterman. He was. I thought you were going to, I really have been waiting this whole episode. What, for me to say, why weren't you at the dinner?

No, for you to say the two words that I've been most longing to hear, which is Tommy Tubrivit. Oh, Tommy Taborville. Well, we can come on to Tommy, but before we do, can we just do a drive-by of John Fetterman, who was doing a Q&A this weekend and had a bit of a Freudian slip? Let's play the clip. Why not become an independent? Because I'm a lifelong Republican. Democrat.

Oh, my shot. That's... Uh-oh. And he needs the moderator, Major Garrett, from CBS to lean in and say, I think you're a Democrat, Democrat. It reminded me of when poor Mitch McConnell lent forward and said no, and the people next to him said, aye, aye, or was it the other way around? He said the wrong thing, and he needed an advisor to tell him where he was, who he was and how he was voting. John Fetterman needed a reporter to remind him that he was a Democrat.

Not a lifelong Republican. I feel bad going after somebody who is obviously, no, I do, who is obviously so neurologically challenged. Just like I feel bad, you know, when I watch the Mitch McConnell videos where he's dancing to thriller. Right. Of course I've seen them. Yeah. And he's doing endless flips. Yeah, yeah. No, I feel terrible when I laugh at those things.

And I feel terrible when, you know, I see videos like that about Trump. We are led by people who are neurologically challenged, either because of, you know, mental decline or strokes or some other kinds of things. And Federman is one of them. He had a stroke. His whole personality changed after he had a stroke. He can't, you know, he spent many months where he couldn't put together a sentence. And I feel bad he should be taken care of.

You know, his wife, who I, you know, talked to once her, you know, she's like a nice Brazilian woman. She should take care of him. He shouldn't be in the United States Senate. But instead, because the nature of his ego and whatever, it's like, no, I can do this. And yes, I may not be firing on all cylinders. But I'm going to go with it no matter where it takes me. And it's like, he is an absolute menace.

And he is going to, I guarantee it, he is going to switch to the Republican party after the midterms if the Democrats gain a number of seats. And the people of Pennsylvania are then going to have to spend two years with a guy who betrayed them. Overtly, he's been betraying them less overtly for the past couple of years since the stroke. But it's pathetic. Fetterman's pathetic. He can't formulate a sentence, a clear idea. And he is, you know, just sort of cleave to the most extreme views. And somebody is taking advantage of that. And there is a kind of a weird, interesting story about, like, who is it that's like

Federman whispering to try to take advantage of the fact that this damaged guy still holds the position of senator from the state of Pennsylvania? Well, there have been lots of leaks about him recently, haven't there, from his, he says, disgruntled ex-staffers who are saying he hates the job. He hates having to talk to consterns. He thinks they all want a free ride to Washington. Yeah, no, there. But in fact, some of these leaks have suggested he, like, makes up excuses not to see his constituents and so forth.

And, you know, if there were an election or recall election, he'd lose instantaneously. And undoubtedly, his staffers are disgruntled. You know, they signed up to do work for a Democratic senator. and they are now working for a loose cannon, a guy who does more support of Trump than he does support of the Democratic Party. Well, talking about another loose cannon, now we can get to your friend Tommy Tuberville. That's fantastic. It's, you know, we struggle each and every week, you and I, we go through all these stories, we write about these stories, we talk to people writing about these stories, we watch the news of these stories, And so much of it is so bleak and horrible.

War in Iran or war in Gaza or people being shot by ice in the streets or people not being able to get health care or people shutting down programs for medical care, measles spreading to record levels in Pennsylvania. All these kind of things like are happening. And it's very depressing. But then every so often there's a ray of sunshine. When you don't just get the typical,

idiocy. You don't just get the neurologically damaged. You get a guy like Tommy Tuberville, who is very possibly one of the stupidest human beings who ever lived, a former football coach who somehow got to be elected senator from Alabama, even though he doesn't live in Alabama. And he got up and made a speech in the Senate in which he talked about something that seems appropriate, which is air safety in America. And he said the reason that we are at risk in the United States of America is because our pilots and our air traffic controllers and flight attendants across the entire air traffic control infrastructure of this country have been infiltrated. Now, you might think, communists, you know, spies.

or even the incompetent, but no, he said we have been infiltrated by furries. That there are people that we are at risk, and he literally almost verbatim said that that there are pilots out there who spend their free time dressing up as a plush animal and presumably having sex with other people who are dressed up as plushed up as plush. plush animal because these furry costumes they wear have various of the holes and things in them so that things can happen. And he was tedly serious. And, you know, this is the thing that floats our boats, right? In a week ago, we got to talk about bestiality because Cash Patel wants to make sure that people who are involved in beastiality get into the FBI. And now we have

heard that in our air traffic control system, you may not be able to actually do the bestiality, but you can do the next best thing. You can have sex with a furry little stuffed panda who's also a 747 pilot. Many airline pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community. Lord help us. So, David, I was absolutely. I was absolutely, I assumed this story was AI. I couldn't believe that this was actually Tommy Tuberville, a man who says that he doesn't read, actually. And he says he doesn't need to read because he only needs his own opinion.

So he's quite similar to Donald Trump in that way. And of course, we should just remind people that he is the senator from Alabama. And didn't he step in to Jeff Sessions? That Jeff Sessions wanted his seat back, but Trump actually backed Tommy Tuberville. Am I not right in that? I think you may be right about it. But Tupperville is, you know, on a regular basis, he says crazy stuff. And his whole background was that he was the coach of the Auburn football team.

I mean, that was literally the only thing he achieved. But he, you know, has said, you know, that he doesn't like to read because it could change his opinions. because, you know, the facts could change his opinions. And he has put this out there as a real thing. And, you know, I don't, like, there's an election going on. Like, Trump's doing corrupt things and raising prices in the middle of an election. And there are other loose cannons in the Republican Party doing all sorts of stuff that just make their party look ridiculous. And it's because they are.

It's because they're ridiculous. It's because they're the party of bestiality and furries. And, you know, who would have ever thought? You know, they were anti-woke and they didn't want trans athletes and sports, but bestiality they're okay with. Beastiality and furries. Furries, they're spending a lot of time studying. I just double-checked.

Jeff Sessions was replaced briefly by the unfortunately named Luther Strange, who was then replaced by Doug Jones, who was then defeated by Tommy Tuberville. Right. And Doug Jones is, I think, running for governor of Alabama? Right. And in between times, Jeff Sessions ran off to be attorney general, recused himself because of Russia, and Trump in a fury then basically made it his business that Jeff Sessions could not go back and, he was. He said, reclaim his Senate seat. That's what I was remembering. I see. Well, look where we are. Look where we are. Look where we are. We've got Tommy Tuberville. We've got John Federman. We have Donald Trump. We have Cash Patel. The guy is running for Senate from Texas. Ken Paxton. Ken Paxton,

who also lives in multiple states and he stole a pen. Like, what? I mean, sometimes we really have to stop and say we are living in the, not just the stupidest timeline, but literally the craziest timeline. This stuff is so absurd. It's the golden age of stupidity, David, the golden age of stupidity. It is the golden age of stupidity. And for the Daily Beast, every single day, it's gold. It is. It's the golden age of golden stupidity. David, we opened with Donald Trump's ad for himself that the US government has paid for. Let's end on the ads that James Tala Rico, Democratic hopeful for Senate in Texas standing opposite Ken Paxton, Donald Trump's candidate, is putting out there, the Tala Rico ads are pretty funny. They're pretty funny. They're calling Ken Baxter the most corrupt politician. in the world. But do you remember the incident with the pen, which is sort of the origin story of

Ken Paxton in a way, and his corruption, although goodness knows his corruption has been much worse than stealing a colleague's pen. Colin County Courthouse, the same courthouse where Paxton would later be indicted for investment fraud. Paxson walked up to the trays next to the metal detectors, rummaged through them, and came across someone else's expensive Montblanc pen. He decided to take it for himself. The pen belonged to Joe Joplin, a local attorney who'd accidentally left behind. It was a special gift from his wife. When Joe realized it was missing, he contacted courthouse security. This is the footage they pulled. Ken Paxton, on camera, stealing this man's pen. He's corrupt. He was, I think he was

impeached. He wasn't removed from office. He's currently being sued because of rulings that have led to the death of people over Texas' very stringent abortion. laws, he's, I think he has 15 homes. How did he have 15 homes? There's a lot wrong with it. But basically, you know, the pen story is he was going through the metal detector at the state house or whatever. And he saw in the plastic bin a thousand dollar pen, Mount Blanc a pen or something like that. And he just said, yeah, I'll take that. And then the other guy found out about it. And Ken Paxton had to return the pen, but, but, you know, he's just, these guys are crooks. He's crux.

He's crux. Donald Trump has been in. And the pen story, I think, is such an interesting story because it belonged to a man. It was a thousand dollar Montblon pen. A man's wife had given it to him for his birthday, I believe. And it's one of those things that everybody can relate to that you leave something in the plastic tray when you're going through security. It falls out of your jacket pocket.

You leave it because you're in a hurry. You're trying to get a plane. and one is so grateful to the people who return it or track you down. You know, I've been tracked down by TSA officers who say, Mom, you left your iPad in the tray because I had to put my computer there and my phone there and my bags and I'm in a hurry. One is so grateful to people doing the right thing. And it was actually on CCTV that they caught Ken Paxton finding the pen

and slipping it into his own pocket. Instead of finding the pen, realizing this was a class, and handing it to the security guard. What did he do? He just slipped it in his pocket. We all know people who would do that. And he's that guy. He's that guy. And sometimes it's those little anecdotes about people that speak so much more clearly to their character than the 15 homes he got when he was Attorney General. That's almost too much for people to fathom. But the guy who steals another man's pen, which was his birthday present from his wife, is the guy we all know. We know him from school.

We know him from the office. We know him from politics. And it's a very smart thing to make an ad about. And of course, Talariko found the guy whose pen it was, who's now endorsed Talariko. So it's come full circle. Well, you know, I think at the end of the day, it may go without saying, but given the state of this country, it bears repeating. character matters. And what you need to look for when you're looking for a candidate is signs of what their

character is. And there's an old saying, you know, in Washington that, you know, among presidents, but it's true among anybody in a senior position that character is revealed in moments of crisis. You know, that leaders come into crisis and they face a war, they face an attack, they face something else. And it's at that moment that we realize who they really are. And, you know, I think, you know, an incident like a pen being stolen may sound small, but it should be a red flag. Now, having said that, if somebody has, they're running for president, let me just pick something out of the air, you know, two dozen women have accused them of sexual abuse. I would say that's also a character flaw.

Or they've been bankrupt five times, or they only hang out with criminals and did business with the mafia, or their business was primarily predicated on money laundering for Russian oligarchs. I mean, there are other signs of bad character than stealing a pen. But the problem is that the American people have become so desensitized towards flaws of the character of their leaders that they have been willing to. to accept this. And I, by the way, I blame Ronald Reagan. I blame the people who 40, 45 years ago, said government is the problem. And we've got to get, you know, the less government, the better. And government people will always do wrong. And everybody is always stealing. I blame, you know, the Jill Stein crowd and all those people who say, Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same. because what they've done over 40 years is they've made people say, yeah, well, okay, Trump will steal a little bit, Paxon will steal a little bit, Tommy Tubberville's a moron, you know, et cetera. We can live with that, provided they, you know, do one or two or three things that is we seek out of a leader. And that's how we got to where we are. We have the most flawed, most ignorant, least competent, most corrupt, president and cabinet,

and leadership class in the history of the United States at this moment. And the big test, five weeks from now, is whether the American people are tired of that and want change and want to turn to people like Tala Rico who studied in a seminary and is notable for his good character. Or as they did after Watergate with Jimmy Carter, who ran on a campaign who said, we deserve a president who's as good as the people of the United States of America. And the whole future of this country is going to depend on the fact or the answer to the question of what happens five weeks from now.

When the American people are said, is enough enough, do we want to go back to having leaders of decent character? Does it matter how our government behaves? Do we care about the law, ethics, and morality, and decency? see. And if we don't, it's over. If we give them another couple of years, forget about it. So, I mean, literally, this is such a ripe moment in the history of the United States and the world. And at the end of the day, it all comes down to things like your story about the pen and whether we care about the character of our leaders or not. 36 days to go. 36 days to go. If that doesn't

make people get to the polls, David Rothkopf, I do not know what will. Thank you, David, so much for joining us. And thank you, too, if you have joined us, if you've been watching, if you've been listening. And a big thank you to our production team, John Romero, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passe, Heather Basaro, and Neil Rosenhaus. David, I will see you back here next week when it will be, what will it be, 29 days? 29 days. It's just the way you do that. It's just the way you do that. your head is breathtaking. I don't need a calculator. It did they do it? Yep. It'll be 29 days. I look forward to it as I always look forward to it. By the way, when these things go live, I'll go on as you have sometimes as people watch it live and exchange comments with the listeners if they're

interested. Yep. It's so much fun doing that. You did that last week. We appreciate it. I love joining I love joining the Beast community. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. some of their names, Jock McFrosty, John Hart, Cindy Brown, hippie artist, one. It's great to get all your comments. And I know they loved it when you appeared last week, David. So thank you. Okay, see you next Monday. Bye-bye.

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.