The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump's Appalling 9/11 Lie Is Just The Start

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

David Rothkopf joins Hugh Dougherty to confront Donald Trump’s latest attempt to make America’s darkest moments all about himself, from his grotesque rewriting of 9/11 to a Republican Party increasingly willing to lie, grovel, and look the other way to keep Trump in power. They take apart Trump’s bizarre “Trump-a-palooza,” the dysfunction and sycophancy consuming the White House, and the powerful forces already positioning themselves for the next chapter of the MAGA movement. Rothkopf connects Trump’s politics to the surging far right across Europe, Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine, and the possibility of another Russian intervention before the midterms. Meanwhile, Mark Carney’s rise as a symbol of resistance to Trump offers a striking glimpse at what American leadership used to look like. As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Rothkopf delivers a sobering warning: the danger isn’t simply Trump himself, but the movement, money, and ideology waiting to carry his legacy forward. #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. #ad Go to https://san.com/dailybeast to get the unbiased truth on the stories that matter, only on the Straight Arrow app. Let’s exit the echo chamber. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anybody who had tried to steal valor from first responders who responded on 9-11, many of whom were killed, he wasn't anywhere near this. His first response to the falling of the towers on 9-11 was to say, well, now my building is now the tallest building in the area. And then he has been making up stories like this for the past 25 years, trying to say 9-11 was about me. If Donald Trump didn't have stolen valor, He would have no valor at all. And, you know, Trump talks about being carried out of the rubble of 9-11. Well, we're all living in the rubble of Trump's psyche, and we can't get out. Welcome to the Daily Beast podcast.

I'm Hugh Docketty. I'm executive editor of The Daily Beast. I'm in for Joanna Coles. She is stuck in the United Kingdom in a crazy series of events that we are going to talk about with our brilliant guest, David Rothkoff, this morning. We have got lots more to talk about than that, though, don't we? David. Yeah, but we can talk about that. It's a likely story. She's off on some hijinks and she's, you know, taken down the British air traffic control system as a cover for whatever her secret mission.

We will find out the secrets of Joanna's secret and obviously glamorous because everything in Joanna's world is glamorous mission. Exactly. Including us. Including us. We put on jackets for the podcast. David, we are at the height of glamour. We haven't done, do you know what? We should have done get ready with me videos like Joanna does. I'd love to see you do that. I've chosen this white shirt because all I have are white shirts. It's blue, David, it's blue. Blue is in.

No, no, no. No white after Labor Day. It's well known. Well, you're a lot of white shirts. But I'm bleary-eyed because the U.S. Open tennis match went until 3.30 in the morning last night, and I was watching it. on television. So I don't know which end is that.

I have to say, David, I was actually there and we Come on. We strategically had to make a decision to leave, unfortunately, before the 3.30 a.m. finish. It was epic. It was amazing. We're going to get into that. Before we get into all those topics and others that are way more important, please hit the subscribe button, join the Daily Beast community.

It's because of your support and your subscription that we are able to bring fantastic independent media conversations with stars like David Rothkoff. Now, before we even get into that, David, it's slightly confusing. It's Wednesday. You're usually here on a Monday. Usually it's Joanna. It's all the world has turned upside down. Well, if we're not adaptable, we're not going to make it through the next two months, right? What's going to happen in the next two months as we get closer to this election and everybody he goes crazier and crazier, is going to require that all of us, including our audience, remains flexible. And so, but by the way, a lot of the people watch the podcast not on the day

that it's posted. So there may be some Wednesday habituays who are just like, oh, yeah, that's where they are. Joanna looks like crap today, but otherwise. Everybody has always delighted to see you, David. Your expertise, I was good to say needs no introduction, but we should say you are our distinguished columnist. You are a former member of the Clinton administration, and you have been editor of Foreign Policy Magazine. And I haven't even finished the first page of your distinguished resume. Yeah, we'll keep going.

But we should start this morning talking about, you know, probably the third, people have always talked about Trump's always hitting the third rails of American politics. But you do not really get more transgressive than getting into 9-11 and making it all about you. And that's what we've seen Donald Trump doing. I just want to play this sensational jaw-dropping, unbelievable clip. And just to set the context, Donald Trump was speaking on Tuesday at the White House in front of the relatives of people who died on September the 11th and firefighters who were there digging through the dirt and people whose relatives are suffering from illness.

And yet, this is what he had to say. If you get two firemen, we thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen, big, strong guys, and I'm not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arms, they got to get out of here. And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me.

I said, fellas, I can run myself. but they were amazing, but they thought it was coming down. It didn't come down. U.S. Steel. So there's some truth hidden in there. Yes. Yes. There's no, there's not.

There's actually no truth hidden in there. Starting with his statement that he's not the smallest guy in the world. He is the smallest guy in the world. I think, you know, anybody who had tried to steal valor from first responders who responded on 9-11, many of whom were killed, 3,000 other people were killed, great national tragedy. We know where Donald Trump was. He wasn't anywhere near this.

His first response to the falling of the towers on 9-11 was to say, well, now my building at 40 Wall Street is now the tall, or wherever the building was, is now the tallest building in the area. That was his first response. And then he has been making up stories like this for the past 25 years. trying to say 9-11 was about me. I saw protesters on the far bank of the Hudson River celebrating, you know, the fall of the towers, all those awful Muslims. He made that up. He made up that he was there. He's made up all this stuff. And, you know, you think about it, and you realize this follows a pattern.

If Donald Trump didn't have stolen valor, he would have no valor at all. This is a draft Dodger who tries to sell himself as a warrior. And it is a man without a hint of humane, decent, courageous qualities who tries to put himself in the middle of all of these things and suggests that he was the hero. And it's disgusting. And I'm surprised the people who were there, who lost people, didn't walk out. And of course, I'm not surprised, but I am disgusted that not one of the so-called hyper, you know, patriotic Republicans who wrapped themselves in the flag every day did not attack Trump for this lie in the way they would have had any Democrats said anything like this. If a genie gave me three wishes, I would use all my wishes to wish for my cats to live forever.

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While you and I were both, and I think just about the whole of the United States was glued to the tennis last night. Ted Cruz was on CNN, and he was giving Trump a pass saying, oh, 9-11 was 25 years ago. And yes, it's 25 years ago. It's pretty hard to forget where you were and what you were doing on 9-11. Well, that's right. But, you know, I mean, the story is actually bigger than that. In some ways, this is the big story of this week, right? because the 25th anniversary of 9-11, which is certainly a watershed moment in American history, is at the end of the week on Friday, and there is going to be a ceremony in New York.

And you know what's going to be there? Every living president, except Donald Trump, because Donald Trump wanted to give a speech and make it all about himself, and they wouldn't let him. So he said, well, I'm not going then. I'm not going to go and honor the day. dead, honor the people who sacrificed their lives, honor the firemen and the policemen who ran into a building that was burning and certain to collapse and try to rescue people, honor all the people who subsequently died in the U.S. conflicts that followed that as an effort to hold al-Qaeda

accountable. Who's not going to be there? The president. But what is the president doing? The president is holding a festival in Dallas, Texas to celebrate himself. David, why are you not there? Well, because the Daily Beast private plane that I required to fly to these kind of events was unavailable. I think Joanna must be using it. We might have to do an airlift to get Joanna back. To get her back from the UK. But I'm ready to go at a moment's notice.

nothing I like better being with a bunch of slavering sycophants who are, you know, you know, sitting there, standing up one after another, is saluting the worst president in American history for all of his great traits. And by the way, some of them will actually be breaking the law as they do it. For example, Todd Blanche is going to stand up and give a speech there about how great the president is. And that's against the law. It's against the law for cabinet members to campaign like that for the president.

But he's going to do it anyway, which says everything you need to know about Todd Blanche and the law and having Donald Trump. And, you know, nobody's, you know, the coming, you guys have written about this. You know, the Republican Party has lots of people who you might think want to go to an event like that. And they're like, hey, I think I'm washing my hair. And so now Trump has put out some social media posts saying, well, you know, the only people we want there are the ones for whom the races are close. The reality is something different.

Trump controls hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign funds for the Republicans. And he is only giving it out to those who make the loyalty of. But I'll tell you one other thing that I heard from a Republican just the other day. There's a lot of concern that because the way some of these funds work, you know, they're controlled by the president and he can hold on to them after the fact, he may not distribute the money. He may not actually use the hundreds of millions they've got to help win. He'll use some few millions of it, but he'll keep the rest of it so that he can put

it to Trumpy purposes later on. And all of this is making people in the Republican Party behind the scenes more pissed off with the President of the United States than I have seen them in the past 10 years. And that includes right after January 6th. Right. And just to go over some of what's happening, first of all, they're calling it a midterm convention. And our brilliant columnist, Nels Govill, who's one of the great humorous, points out

that there is literally no such thing. as a midterm convention. But they have then said it's the biggest ever midterm convention, which by definition, I guess, is true, right? It's the onlyest ever. And it may be the loneliest as well. No, no, that is absolutely true.

But, you know, Trump likes naming things, as we know. And so he'll, you know, name it a midterm convention and he'll say, therefore, it's the biggest ever. And I was pleased to see, by the way, that his predilection for naming things has been set up by the great trolls at South Park who have renamed South Park for the entire year, South America,

which is just, you know, they get it right every time. The wits named it Trumpapalooza, and it seems that the Magalot have actually embraced that as an idea, and, you know, people called it Trumpa Palooza because that's a bad idea. This guy is so far behind in the polls,

He is so down that if you're in a tight race, hanging on to Donald Trump is the last thing you want to do. And, you know, there are candidates across the country who are raising him from his website, from their websites. But he's holding this Trumpapalooza. The tickets are Farah Thomason, revealed on Monday, are being given out for free to try to get people to go. There's a local Republican party that's just 20 miles up the road that said, oh, we'll just have a watch party in our, in our, in our local Republican Party. local hall. Well, it's only 20 miles, guys. Even those who are half an hour in the car away are like, oh, don't think I'm going. You can still get a hotel room. I just mentioned that, David. If we fire up the private jet, we will find a hotel room. And on top of all that,

you, if you want to speak, if you want to be a candidate who's there, you're supposed to pay $25,000 just for the honor of attending. And then, it's all up against the football anyway. Yeah, well, I mean, there is that. This is not Trumpapalooza like Lollapalooza. This is the Trump Fire Fest, right? Like the Fire Fest that was such a big fiasco as one of these things goes, it is ridiculous.

He has said that it is sold out. It is not sold out. There will be children. There will be elementary school classes bust in wearing Trump. shirts and surely there will be many shots of the big empty hole there. But the other thing is, you know, what Trump wants to do with this is he wants to say, hey, I'm a big success. My economic policy, big success, my international policy, big success. The war in Iran, we won, the war in Ukraine. We're solving the war in Ukraine. We are making America energy independent. We are, you know,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Guess what? The only way he can do that is lying. So what the principal byproduct of this gathering in Texas is going to be is a volcano of lies, you know, just an explosion of the, and literally, I think up to him, possibly including the introduction of some of the people who are attending this thing, will have to be lies. for this thing to work out. But what they are going to say about Trump is a scene setter,

a tone setter for the upcoming election because the only thing the Republican Party can do in order to sell themselves for this election is to lie. Because the economy is in bad shape, because the Iran war continues, because oil prices. Rent crude went up over $100 again today. diesel prices in some places in the United States are over $7 a gallon because 25 million people are either losing Medicaid or they're losing the subsidies that enabled them to pay for health care in these period of months in the next couple of months. And on and on and on. So they don't have a good story. All they have is lies. And that's why so many Republicans are just staying away and saying, you know, maybe I'll just go to the state fair and eat some fried

butter instead. Or just stay at home and lock yourself in a basement and hope that people don't notice your campaigning, which I think some of them are in fact doing. But I mean, all of this, we're expecting, first of all, we're expecting Trump to speak three times at this convention, which says that maybe they had some booking issues. We are not going to to see Melania Trump. Well, have we seen Melania Trump? I mean, has Melania Trump spent one night at the White House since they got there? I don't think she has, right?

I mean, you guys have covered that. We believe that she has, in fact, spent zero nights at the White House, thanks to the work of Michael Wolfe, the peerless chronicler of the Trump era. And on top of that, we know who's going to be with Donald Trump. It will, of course, be Natalie Harp, his human printer, his human printer, his own entourage. We just learned that she and other members of the entourage got cash gifts from him. And the economy is doing well for them. Well, look, you know, here's a couple of things about that. First of all, you know, you're not allowed to supplement the salary of federal employees.

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and go deeper into the issues influencing your. everyday life. To me, that's what trustworthy journalism should do, help you understand what's happening instead of adding to the noise. If you want a better way to get your news and you haven't downloaded the Straight Arrow app yet, now's the time. They've just launched their subscription and members get access to exclusive discounts before everyone else. Go to sAN.com slash Daily Beast to get the unbiased truth on the stories that matter only on the straight arrow app. Let's exit the echo chamber. Well, I was going to ask you, David, you're up for Bill Clinton.

Did this? I've done other things in my life. I was just that was the... Let's not hang all that on me. Five dollars in a Christmas card. There wasn't anything like that back then. But the reality is, you know, Trump has said, no, no, these are my personal gifts to Natalie and to Walt Nauta, you know, his body man, who with Natalie were on the good plane, right? They were not in the decoy plane.

Yes. And of course, it's, you know, pissed off some people in the White House. By the way, as you have reported, more and more people getting more and more upset at the White House. But there is an interesting contrast there because Melania Trump is, you know, making. millions of dollars from whatever deal they had struck with her to remain the president's wife but not have to ever show up, showing her sophistication in dealing with the president, whereas the president feels like he's got a fork over the cash to Natalie to keep her in her printer nearby. By the way, other people getting this money, Margot Martin, who's in the White

House communications team, she has regularly been mistaken even by Fox News for Melania Trump, because she kind of looks like her from a distance. So there's a lot of questions here. But look, the reality is there is a lot of dysfunction in the middle of this White House. And we all, you know, you're a very respected journalist and you try to cover things in a respectable journalistic way. But, you know, the relationships between these people

are abnormal and, you know, what they're doing and how they're doing it and, you know, what Trump demands of that. And we know that, right? Because we've seen cabinet meetings. We've seen cabinet meetings that unlike any cabinet meetings that have ever taken place anywhere other than North Korea involve people going, oh, you're so beautiful. Oh, you're so handsome. Oh, Mr. President, no president has ever had better smelling breath than you do. Oh, Mr. President, the ferret nesting on your head looks so realistic, you know. And the, but they do it and they do it every time. So, you know, to me, what is a weird thing about this moment, a kind of a scary thing about this

moment is I don't think there has ever been a moment in the history of the world where more global events are a product of the psychopathology of one person. And, you know, Trump talks about being carried out of the rubble of 9-11. Well, we're all living in the rubble of Trump's psyche. And we can't get out. everything that we do, you know, the way our economy works, the way the world works, whether we're safe or not, how AI gets regulated, you know, how corrupt our system is, whether we're a democracy anymore, is all driven primarily by the psychopathology of a malignant narcissistic personality in the middle of this whole thing who's like paying pretty girls to hang out nearby him and paying his wife. not to visit him and you know

ditching the the real national security team so that he can be protected on a plane because he's a coward and always has been all his life whereas in lying about 9-11 we're it's somehow our nightmare is being trapped inside of Trump's psyche and there is no way out apparently well not so long as that psyche is is still sort of spluttering forward. And, you know, that's our, you know, our problem. I have to say, I don't think everybody should go, well, you know, he's old and he'll drop dead or he'll leave office or something will happen sometime soon. I don't think you should be that chill about it. Because there have been other things happening in the world that remind us that Donald Trump is the product of the efforts of some really cynical people.

some of them are extremely rich, to try to shape the government, to serve their economic interests, and at the same time serve their political biases, which tend to be white supremacist, nationalistic, xenophobic. And, you know, there's a great example of that far away in Germany in a state most people in the United States have never heard of. The far-right party won a big political victory this week, which was celebrated by who? Elon Musk and Donald Trump. You know, this is a far-right party with echoes of Nazism in Germany, and these guys are celebrating it 80 years after we finished a war that was caused by the rise of a far-right party like that. And now Elon is spending 100 million.

to go and influence U.S. elections. Elon, who claimed credit for Trump winning in 2024 because of whatever it was that he did to manipulate election results back then. And on top of that, you've got things like, you know, we're approaching the one-year anniversary of the Charlie Kirk assassination. We've got turning point, Charlie Kirk's group, working hard on its white Christian nationalist agenda to lay the groundwork for a political campaign for J.D. Vance, who we know will say anything to anybody about anything to advance J.D. Vance, although that's not his real name. And so here we are, you know, in a world in which we're trapped in Trump's crumbled psyche, but we also must look ahead and realize there are successors,

waiting in the wings, who will be well-funded, who will carry forward a lot, it may not be quite as corrupt as it was under Trump, it may not be quite as chaotic as it was under Trump, there may not be quite as much sort of comic relief as there is under this clown president, but a lot of the bad stuff is going to continue on, or at least they're going to try to make it continue on. And honestly, you have a piece on The Daily Beast as we speak, we'll get the QR code up on YouTube, so you'll be able to scan and go direct and read David's piece. I absolutely must read about this link between what we see here in the United States and what's been going on. As you say, a small German state of part of the former East Germany that has turned

to this alternative for Deutschland, AFD party, that the German government itself say are dangerous and extremist. You know, they've been funded by people. people who want to advance this far-right view of the world. And they're not, they're not alone, obviously. There are similar rumblings in France. In Italy, there has been the election of a populist further to the right party, although, as people point out, as moderated in government, and in fact, weirdly, has now termed anti-Trump. Don't forget the UK. And I was going to say that Joanna is stranded in the UK, but at the same time in the UK, my native country,

there has been disorder along parts of the southern coast, fermented online, and it's people who are protesting against immigrants arriving by boats. This has been a running soar in the UK, that the UK, of course, is surrounded by water, so there's no land border, and people have been crossing the English Channel in small boats to try to reach the United States.

kingdom. This is a source of huge tension, and this has blown up in the face of, I think, you know, a huge amount of online fuel being thrown on the fire by people who want to create this order and difficulty. And what you've got are literally large groups, legions, of supporters of the Reform Party in the UK, showing up wearing black ski masks. But, you know, as this kind of army to turn away the immigrants. This is the same message as in Germany. This is the same message as Le Penz Party in the National Front in France. This is the same message that Orban had until he was defeated in Hungary.

It's the same message that you get from MAGA, Donald Trump, turning point, that the problem is all lie elsewhere. And if we would just put up walls and make our countries white. more traditionally run by men, more traditionally Christian, keep out anybody who has any slightly different view that everybody would be better off. And so, you know, it's easy. It's easy because Trump is common. Trump's, you know, I mean, South Park has plenty of material with Trump. The problem is, you know, Elon celebrated this German victory. Trump celebrated calling it the populist party in Germany. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it is for shadowing of difficult times ahead for all of us.

And it means we just can't drop our guard and just sort of look at our watch and say, well, Trump's gone soon because there's more to come. You mentioned J.D. Vance. We've also seen Marco Rubio, who a conventional wisdom had been, this is somebody from the sort of, you know, the establishment of the Republican Party, he also appears to be very willing to make noises that are in sync with this sort of rightwards drift. Not just noises, right? You know, he has taken departments within the State Department that devoted themselves in the past to the promotion of democracy.

and he's turned them to the promotion of these right-wing parties and the condemnation of what they call censorship, which has been efforts in the past to reduce hate speech and some of the vile things that have been said by these parties which actually violate European laws. So what he's trying to do is turn the State Department programs that once promoted democracy and do not any longer into programs that promote the foreign.

far right around the world. And this is, you know, this is not Donald Trump's plan. This is Vladimir Putin's plan. This is Vladimir Putin's plan to create a right-wing movement. And we see it around the world, whether it's Belay in Argentina, whether it was Bolsonaro in Brazil, or whether it's Modi, or whether it's Erdogan, or whether it's Bibi Netanyahu, or whether it's any of the people that we mentioned in Europe, or MAGA, Turning Point, and the GOP in the United States. They're all one movement. They talk to each other. They coordinate these things.

And by the way, I would not rule out, and we've already seen some rumblings of this, that Vladimir Putin may conjure up in consultation with the real estate brokers that we sent over to negotiate with him a week ago, Whitkoff and Kushner, he may conjure up some October surprise to try to help the GOP coming into November. Like, okay, let's go to the negotiating table in Ukraine, and Trump will go, oh, my God, we're going to have a negotiation. I am the peacemaker. Give me that Nobel Prize. Everything is going great.

None of this could have been done without me. And then, of course, it all blow up afterwards because all these things are a fabric of lies. But the point is, they work together to try to produce outcomes. And, you know, we saw that in 2016. Sorry, Donald, but Russia, Russia, Russia was real. There was Russian efforts to try to get Trump elected. And there was a reason for it. And we're seeing that reason right now.

And Putin and Trump, in fact, appeared to have spoken this week. We only know this because the Kremlin said that they did. We haven't had anything out of the White House. They have spent the White House Communications Department that might normally confirm these sort of things, have spent their time trawling people on Twitter and accusing. Including us. Why do they keep coming after the Daily Beast? Well, I don't understand that. I hope because we speak frankly, openly, and we report fairly.

And we put all the facts out there. We let people decide. But Stephen Chunk said I have a brain the size of a peanut. I haven't examined your brain, David. I am very convinced that it is much more functional than a peanut. It's at least the size of a Brazil now. But listen, but you know, you're absolutely right. The White House would normally be taking a different stance, but this is not a normal White House.

And just part of that, right, as you were saying, you have these parties in Europe and elsewhere in the world, that are marching much further to the right. The traditional American approach was that these things stop at the water's edge, and no previous American president would have encouraged Marine Le Pen. They would certainly never have encouraged an active right-wing, far-right-wing party in Germany whose own government say they are too extreme to govern. Or Nigel Farage. Or especially Nigel Farage, yeah.

Right, right, or Malay, but they do it. And, and, you know, their deals, everything is a deal. Vladimir Putin is in a heap of deep water right now, right? Because the Ukrainians are winning that war. The Ukrainians are using drones to strike Russia's energy infrastructure. The Russian central bank is, according to reports, cashing in its gold, because it doesn't have the resources to survive. The Ukrainian government estimates that the Russians probably can underwrite this war into 2027 or 2028. But the implication there is that their economy is in such bad shape that if there is no solution, it will collapse, and this may come down on Putin.

So what does Putin want? Well, what he'd like is a U.S. that forces a solution that he can call a success. And that's, you know, I mean, I don't know if you saw it, but I know you guys. reported on it. Steve Whitkov, Kushner, going into Putin and saying, these are the meetings we will treasure. Yes. You know, these, I mean, fawning, fawning over Putin, a war criminal, responsible for the kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, the deaths of probably 1.5 million Russian troops, not to mention tens of thousands of Ukrainians, one of the worst people in the history of mankind. And Steve Whitkoff is like, when I look back on my time in government,

this is what I will cherish. And one of the things that was really noticeable was that after this meeting, they got driven to the airport in the Russians cars, which seems, I mean, I'm no expert. There's a reason people don't do that, right? Because the cars have listening devices in them. Right. But, you know, similarly, there's a reason people don't bring their phones on these trips. And we know that earlier on Whitkoff brought his phone on these trips. These people view themselves as close allies of the Russians. And that's why I'm saying that when I look between now and the election, I think, oh, I expect, you know, there have been Russian surprises before. I expect some kind of coordination. We've got reports that Cash Patel is

going to go over in the weeks before the election to Russia. in fact, still waiting for Cash Patel's Moscow voyage, John Ratcliffe beat him to it, but he has not said that he's not going. Right. And so what is all that about? They don't do this stuff just, you know, either they're making money or they're holding onto power. And those are the only two things they're interested in. And the only reason they're interested in holding under power, by the way, is to keep making money. And so are they going to go and try to cut some kind of deal, try to make some kind of pretend peace deal,

try to do something to prop up the Russians, try to do something to put pressure on the Ukrainians who have the upper hand at the moment, even though we predicted they would not? Yeah, I would expect something out of that. And can they use pressure on the Russians to help possibly, you know, get some different kind of outcome from the Iranians? They'll try.

the Iranians will say, fuck off on that, by the way, because everything's going just fine from the point of view of the ruling elites in Tehran. Right. And they've forced up, you mentioned gas prices, diesel prices. People in the northeast are about to start buying their fuel oil, particular big issue in Maine and Massachusetts and New England generally. And those prices have hit a record high. And what is the Energy Department of Donald Trump blame it? Well, obviously Joe Biden. We've actually forgotten to mention that Joe Biden is to blame for all of this because that's all we ever hear.

Well, and and. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're right. I did miss another important cause. Which is Ukraine. Yes. You know, and the Secretary of Energy of the United States said we've got a fuel problem in the world because Ukraine is blowing up Russia's. refineries. And it's like, say what? Say what? You know, the war criminals, the illegal aggressors

in this thing bear no responsibility for that war. It's actually Ukraine trying to defend itself that is responsible for this thing. But it's, you know, it's similar to Trump saying the reason that we don't have enough precision armaments is not that he just wasted them all in this illegal war in Iran, it's because of Joe Biden giving them all to Ukraine. Yes. They blame Ukraine. They blame Biden. They accept no responsibility for themselves.

And it's all peace. You know, you take this, tie it to what we were talking about at the very beginning of the podcast. Trump lied about 9-11. He lies about his role in 9-11. Then flash forward to the event in Dallas. Trump is going to get up on stage and lie and the people closest to him are going to lie and candidates are going to lie in order to get.

money and then what's the rest of the campaign going to look like? Lies and why. So that Trump can remain in power so that he can maintain his corrupt reign as long as possible. And all the guys who donate the big money behind that are saying, yeah, that's fine because that'll help us tee up Act 2, the presidency of J.D. Vance, which is going to be even more repressive, less democratic, less diverse, more white Christian nationalist, more traditional male roles than we've seen before. It's going to be more repressive. And so all these little stories, you know, sometimes people say, oh, this story here's story here, Dallas, or Ukraine,

or what's going on in Iran, or what's going on in Ireland. They all connect. They're all connected. One thing we haven't talked about on the international front is our northern neighbors, Canada, who appear to be carving out a very different path. They don't have a rising populist movement. They instead have an incredibly popular prime minister. And they also, we've seen this week, have seemed to have the ability to troll back at Donald Trump. In fact, we have a clip from British Columbia.

Welcome to BC, Canada. Strong, proud, and never the 51st state. Sorry. I'm not sure you get more Canadian than ending your trawl with sorry. Yeah, it's true. But a lot of their trolling has been great. There have been little videos showing armies of beavers wearing Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniforms and mooses and Canadian geese fighting back against American Eagles.

And it's been quite inspiring. You know, Mark Carney, the prime. the prime minister is a brilliant guy who has served with distinction in a number of very difficult jobs, both in the UK and in Canada. But he was not super popular when all this began. Right. He's seen his popularity ratings go

from enough to be elected to somewhere, I believe, in the 60s and the 70s, which... Right, because Donald Trump turned him into Winston Churchill. He turned him into a war prime minister. who was standing up for Canada. And, you know, he's done it in this extraordinary way that we as Americans can only look at with jealousy and weep because he's done it by knowing the facts,

understanding his brief, speaking history. I mean, he was lecturing Trump over the weekend on, you know, that the tariff technique that Trump is doing has been tried before by President William McKinley in the 19th century. And it failed then, and it produced economic unrest. then. And it will now, and you go, oh my God, this guy actually understands history. He understands trade. Trump doesn't understand trade. I was a trade official. That's why I wanted to ask you about

this. You are dealt with the tiny nitty gritty of... Yeah, I was involved in these issues. I, you know, I was deputy undersecretary of Commerce and then I was acting undersecretary. I ran the international trade administration for some time. And, you know, we would deal with a lot of these kind of issues. And there were issues with Canada over, you know, lumber and aluminum and some other kinds of things. But, you know, over the weekend, Trump said, we're going to ban the sale of bombardier aircraft, Bombardier aircraft in the United States, which are the ones that make Canada Air Challenger. It's an aircraft that's associated with Canada. And I flashed back on my time in the government, and I went and looked it up, and it's still true. Canada Air Bombardier

makes jets that have more U.S. content in them than Gulfstream jets, which are made in South Carolina. The Canada Air Bombardier has a headquarters office in Wichita, Kansas. Bombardier jets often use GE engines, whereas Gulfstream jets often use Rolls-Royce engines. The reality is that Donald Trump does not understand trade. He doesn't understand global supply chains. He doesn't understand how tariffs

don't work. He doesn't understand who is paying the tariffs. He doesn't understand the effect on the economy. He is the biggest ignoramus on global trade issues that we've ever had in a senior position with the possible exception of his sidekick, Peter Navarro. Oh, my God. His trade whisper, who is one of the great imbeciles of modern times. But, you know, all of this has teed things up and turned Mark Carney, who is, you know, a former head of not one but two central banks, right? The nerdiest of all possible jobs. He's turned Mark Carney into kind of a cult hero. You know, the former Prime Minister of Canada is dating Katie Perry and he's not getting any of the headlines because Mark Carney has been put to the front lines of this thing and has covered himself in glory.

and Americans are, you know, like, gee, I literally talked to somebody who was a member of the Obama administration who just got back this weekend from Nova Scotia where she was looking at houses. You know, I mean, people are looking at Canada in a whole new light, and it's not the one that Donald Trump thinks they're looking at it with. Right, because, I mean, just in the last 24 hours, he's also sought to ban Canadian I think he's banning Canadian alcohol. I'm not sure quite how you do that, but if you're drinking Labat,

drink up, apparently. And he seems to have, to go back to your unified theory of, you know, this sort of populist movement on the right. When he can't foment this sort of movement in Canada, he doesn't really know what to do. He seems like a toddler

that's sort of just vibrational. Well, how is that different from how he's handling Iran? How is that different from how he handled global tariffs than the global trade war? How is it different from how he's handling relations with NATO? How is it different from how he handled things with Ukraine? How is it different from how he's handling our health care policy in the United States? How is it different from how he's handling the environment or the management of our national resources in the United States or the education department?

It's, there is, as you put it, there is a unified theory of right-wing cluster fuckery that we, you know, connects everything. And is, you know, I mean, we can talk, you know, we're like, you know, oh, yeah, we're influencers and we're, you know, doing a podcast on a podcast, on a streaming content and, you know, all that kind of stuff because that's what people do these days. But these are real human lives that are suffering. They're dead people in Iran. They're families that have been shattered by this.

They're Americans without health care. There are people dying of measles and other infectious diseases that didn't need to die of those kinds of things. There are people who are going bankrupt because they wanted a tax cut for Elon Musk. And so they took it out of the retirement health care benefits of poor Americans. This is a national tragedy on top of all of this kind of thing. And it's just like the 9-11 national tragedy. It also speaks to the lie of 9-11. I have to say it's not something I particularly like to get into,

but I was there on September 11th. I was a very young reporter. And the thing that I think everybody that experienced it so closely, closer than Donald Trump, but everybody that experienced it closely was aware that this was a moment of profound change in the world and it was based on a scale of death that nobody could comprehend. And the lies that Trump is telling about that, I think, are particularly cruel and insulting, but they sort of speak to this carelessness. I don't think that's even the word callousness.

callousness and obliviousness. Because as you say, this was a turning point in modern history. And it was a calculated bet on the part of Osama bin Laden that the United States would react badly to the attack. And we did. And it's not just Donald Trump that reacted badly. The Bush administration launched us into the wrong war in which hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died unnecessarily in which we've spent trillions of dollars setting us back in terms of our own global competition in which we've alienated the world and so forth. And he kind of predicted that we would overreact that way. But the point is that there was also a massive amount of American sacrifice and loss

involved, both in the 3,000 people who died that day and the thousands of people who then went on to Afghanistan or then went on to Iraq and have died. or who have been, you know, injured in war and who have made other kinds of sacrifices. And Donald Trump, in his desire to be at the center of attention, minimizes all of that. I remember on 9-11, I had a company that dealt with national security issues, and I had a couple of partners in that company. One of them was a guy named Tony Lake, Anthony Lake, who's a former national security advisor. One of them was a guy named John Gannon, who was the former deputy head of the CIA.

and one of them was a woman who had been a senior national security person who would later go on to be national security advisor, Susan Rice. And we watched this on our television in, it was actually the TV in Tony Lake's office. And as the second plane hit the tower, John Gannon had been tracking Osama bin Laden for a long time churned to Tony and said, this is UBL. Within the CIA, they referred him as UBL, Usama bin Laden. And they instantly knew what it was. And Washington then became deathly silent. Many people went home. My children will never forgive me for not having gone to school to pick them up.

But I talked to people and said, probably just as safe at school as anywhere else. And we went to have lunch. And Tony and John and Susan and I sat and we had lunch under blue skies, a couple blocks from our office in Georgetown. And we said, the world is not going to ever be the same. You instantly knew that America's role in the world, our relationships with the Middle East, a relationship to terrorism. And remember, the Bush administration, weeks before this, was not emphasizing terrorism as a priority.

That, you know, they had to enter into this whole global war and terror overreaction that they had. But the point was this was a profoundly important. important moment in terms of its human cost and in terms of its historic significance. And it is now, you know, 25 years later, we've lost all sight of that. We've lost all side of this. We have president who go to war in the Middle East without learning any of the lessons of the past 25 years, who does not appreciate any of the human or historical significance of all of this.

And it's got us on a slippery slope, which could lead to U.S. irrelevance on the global stage. You know, Mark Carney made this good point that middle powers acting together may play a more constructive role than the United States or the superpowers did. And we saw that over the weekend. Several of those middle powers got together and said, you know, we don't like what's going on in the West Bank. We are going to penalize the Israelis and we are not going to trade with any company that's doing business in the West Bank.

Bank, they are leading where the United States is not because the United States is now part of Team Putin. And so all these historical things have changed. And that's what we should be thinking about this week. We should be asking ourselves, what does this tell us? Because if there is one overarching lesson of this, it's that we can't make the mistakes of the Bush era and we should not make the mistakes of the Trump era if we ever want to move beyond an era that is defined by our vulnerability and potential losses.

David, you could not ask for a better point of moral clarity and intellectual purpose to end. I think many people will be watching this interview, you know, in the hours leading up to 25 years since September the 11th, it's a sober moment. Thank you for bringing such rigor and such more, as I say, moral clarity to it. Well, it's a pleasure, and it's always a pleasure to talk to you. And, you know, I have to say I really admire the independent perspectives and reporting that are going into the Daily Beast these days because you can't find it in mainstream media. And that's why your message that people really ought to subscribe and follow, I think is important to them as individuals. You need sources like what you put together here at The Beast. Well, David, thank you. Thank you for being part of the Beast.

And Joanna will be back to talk to you next time when we have flown her all the way from the United Kingdom. On Daily Beast One. On Daily Beast One. Our gold Qatari, the Katari's have given us a gold plane as well. Thank you. Thank you to everybody who subscribes. You can come on our plane too.

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