The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump's In The Deepest Hole of His Life: Guru

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Joanna Coles and David Rothkopf dive into Donald Trump’s escalating foreign policy chaos, from his shifting stance on North Korea and threats against Oman to the ongoing war in Iran and the mounting strain on U.S. military forces. They discuss the troubling conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, America’s dwindling weapons stockpiles, Pete Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon, and what Rothkopf calls a new era of “mafia government” driven by loyalty and corruption. Plus, they unpack Trump’s growing financial ties to crypto, the controversial White House ballroom, the strange mystery surrounding the bulky object spotted under Trump’s clothes, and why Democratic Sen. John Ossoff could be one of the party’s most compelling new voices heading into the midterms. #Ad Use code BEAST at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/beast #Ad Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BEAST at https://www.oneskin.co/BEAST #oneskinpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He has dug himself into the deepest hole of his life. I mean, he was better off with his bankrupt casinos in Atlantic City than he is with this war in Iran. He's such a literal dimwit. Donald Trump has done more to elevate the strategic position of Iran than anybody in modern Iranian history. Donald Trump, in one of the great ironies of foreign policy cluster f***ery, has actually given the Iranians more strategic leverage than had they gotten a bomb and detonated it? He is weakening the US and weakening our alliances day in and day out while they do nothing. Donald Trump is the atom bomb Iran wanted.

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Thank you for joining us. And I'm going to warn you ahead of time, we had some technical difficulties today. So you will see my background change. That was to do with chasing the internet because there were stories. where I was staying last night. Anyway, no technical difficulties for David Rothkopf,

and we really get into a fascinating conversation where he thinks that Trump is now America's worst enemy and that in paling around with our former enemies, like North Korea, Trump is doing something really weird and he can't figure out what it is. So we discuss South Korea, North Korea, Oman, Iran, What is that weird, bulky thing that Trump now has underneath his pants? We could all see it when he walked out at the rally this weekend.

And John Ossoff raising the subject of Natalie Hart and Trump flying around in his plane while everybody else is watching the prices go up at the pump. And are the families complaining about conditions on the USS Lincoln? Are they lying as Trump says they are? or are they actually in close contact with their family members who serve on the ship and reporting back accurately that food has mould in it, that morale is low and that mental health is even lower? Well, we're going to get into it today as always with David Rothkopf who's got a point of view, a very strong point of view.

And if you haven't, don't forget to subscribe to The Daily Beast. We love your support. Share this episode with a friend. And don't forget to press the bell icon, which notifies you every time we drop a new episode. Okay, let's get into it with David Rothkopf. David Rothkopf. Joanna Kohl. The world is on fire.

Never mind. We are here to be the firemen and spray water all over the current stories. We're going to be talking about Iran. We're going to be talking about South Korea. We're going to be talking about what John Ossoff said about Natalie Harp. That was an interesting moment in what is going to be a very interesting midterm election, as we know. And David Rothkopf, you've got all the knowledge at your fingertips. It's very exciting to talk to you. I have to say, of all the things that happened this weekend, and there were crazy things that

happened this weekend, the thing that I find most amazing. And, you know, it's like the number three story in some pages and number five is what Donald Trump did with regard to Korea. Donald Trump, let's roll back the tape. Kim Jong-un is one of the world's worst leaders, a dictator. He's actually had members of his family killed with anti-aircraft guns. He's the most repressive regime on the planet Earth. And so, you know, you would think we would be a little wary of getting too close to him. And even Donald Trump in his first term talked about, you know, that he's going to have the fire and fury of the U.S. and we're going to go to war. And he was saber-rattling. Well, guess what? Over the weekend, Donald Trump said, you know, Kim Jong-un is respectful to me.

And so I don't want to support South Korea in our war games, which are crucial to the defense of South Korea, crucial to the defense of Japan, crucial to all of America's interests in the Pacific. I'm not going to do that because Kim Jong-un is respectful to me. The idea that Trump has switched sides in the Korean conflict, you know, think of all the people who died in Korea fighting against having this happen. And it's just like, oh, yeah, that's another thing he did. That was Saturday afternoon or whatever the hell it was. That's crazy.

That was the first part of Saturday afternoon. Why is he doing this, David? And also, isn't he making the mistake that almost all leaders inevitably make, which is in their second term, they're bored with what's going on at home? So they start looking to express their grandeur overseas. And they start meddling. First of all, most leaders have a problem in their second term. And, you know, knock wood, it's the problem he's going to have in a couple of months, right? Because if their midterm election goes against him and he can't get anything done at home, he has a lot of.

He has a lot more autonomy as a maker of foreign policy than he does as a maker of domestic policy. And that's when they get on the plane and they go around and they do their farewell tour. And it's, you know, Frank Sinatra singing My Way or whatever is your favorite farewell tour. Because, you know, it's like people saying, oh, you were a great president and so forth. But the problem here is that's not why he's doing this. And he even hinted it why he was doing this, which is he doesn't like the way. way South Korea wouldn't support him on the illegal war with Iran. And so this, this betrayal of the United States, this betrayal of our ally, this putting U.S. troops at risk, this putting Japan at risk,

this incredibly reckless move, is yet another cost of this illegal war, like high gas prices, high diesel prices, high food prices, instability in the region. inability, you know, running out of all the weapons we've got, you know, inability to support Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This war, the costs of this half-year-long war are just piling up daily. And this is one of them. The U.S.-Korea relationship is collateral damage in the U.S. Iran War. Well, one of the other costs is that they're now having to remove or, well, they're having to

take out an aircraft carrier, the USS Washington and have it replace the USS Lincoln, because it's been at sea now for, I think, what is it, 255 days? It's the longest deployment ever. Understandably, the families of the sailors on board are say, wait a minute, this is enough. We're hearing from the sailors on board that the food is terrible. There are mental health issues. They don't know when they're going to get off this ship. More importantly, they don't understand the mission. No one understands what they are doing there because this was a war that Donald Trump promised would never happen.

There would be no wars with foreign countries, it's what he was elected on, and there would be no forever wars. He promised that this would be a bombing mission into Iran, that Iran would capitulate within four or five weeks, six months in Iran appears to have Donald Trump, and unfortunately, the United States and a headlock? Well, they do. And, you know, the U.S. knew that this would happen.

People in the U.S. knew this would happen, but Trump wasn't paying attention. What's happened on the USS Abraham Lincoln is appalling. There was a suicide attempt. The food is moldy. The toilets are not working. Women who are sailors cannot get feminine hygiene products on the ship. And the Navy is now in this.

massive cover-up where they've sent the head of scent combe there and he said, oh, it's not as bad as it all sounds. But I think the core of it, the crux of why this is bad, was captured in Trump's comment about it because they went to Trump and they said, you know, the families don't like this. And he said, that's not true. I mean, he just lied because he does. That's what Roy Cohn taught him to do. But then, you know, he said this other thing, you know, when he was asked whether they've been deployed too long. And he said, no, they haven't been deployed long enough. And other, you know, in the right wing, you know, infosphere that's out there, they've all been saying the same kind of a thing. But, you know, it ignores a fact, right?

Donald Trump was the guy who, you know, went to memorial services for U.S. soldiers who died in France and said they were suckers and losers. Donald Trump was the guy who made fun of the sacrifices of Senator John McCain. Donald Trump was a draft dodger. Donald Trump doesn't care about the soldiers. He thinks people who get drafted or go into the army and who are low level are suckers, and he thinks generals who don't agree with them should be fired. And so, you know, you have this combined with this unbelievable case. If nothing else happened in this administration, Trump and Hagsda should be impeached

for the mismanagement that's going on at the Department of Defense. Because here we are, and we talked about the Korea element of this, the Abraham Lincoln element of this, the food prices, the oil prices, but we haven't talked about the fact that we've depleted

some of our most valuable munitions, that we need to defend ourselves, that we need to defend our allies, that should be going to Ukraine to help us consolidate the biggest victory we could ever have had against our worst enemy, that should be available to us in case of flare-ups. The reason Trump can't follow through on his crazy threats against Iran is he doesn't have the weapons. Why? Because Pete Hegeseth didn't manage the defense department properly because they didn't manage the level of their stockpiles properly. And if you'd then add to it, you know, firing qualified generals and admirals because they're

women or firing them because they're black or getting rid of books that talk about achievements of people of color in the military and the libraries or, you know, forcing them to sort of into religious services that, you know, are tied to sort of Pete Higgs as weird religious beliefs. this is the biggest scandal of mismanagement in the history of the United States military. And that's saying something because we've made some big mistakes over time. But what could ever have possessed the Senate to confirm Pete Higgseth to be the Secretary of Defense slash war slash now forever wars? This is a man who twice was run out of veteran affairs organizations by his own staff for allegations of intoxification on the job and mismanagement and financial mismanagement. How could anybody have expected him to do this apart from Donald Trump?

And why did those senators around Donald Trump approve him when they knew he wasn't competent? Because we have a zombie Senate, right? The Senate, Donald Trump or MAGA or some, you know, a microbe we're not aware of, has eaten the brains of the Senate, and they don't make independent decisions. Donald Trump came in and he said, one thing is the most important thing to me, and that's loyalty. And if you are not loyal to me, and if you do not allow me to pick a cabinet that's loyal to me, I will destroy you. And he was very canny about how he went about saying he would do that. Because very early in this administration, he did a few things where he went after law firms

and other kinds of businesses and said, I'm going to sue you, I'm going to attack you for having people on board who are not loyal. And what does that do? That means that if you're leaving the Senate, right, if you're Cassidy or you're Tillis and you're leaving the Senate, you want to get a job, you think, holy mackerel, Donald Trump could call up those places and say, you're not going to get federal funding if you hire Cassidy. You're not going to get contracts from us if you hire Tillis. And so he had this tool, which is like a mafia enforcement tool, where he was saying,

you can't make money outside the government unless you go along with me inside the government. unless you go along with me inside the government. And if you go along with me inside the government, we are entering a new golden age of corruption where I will pardon everybody and I will make all this money. And we had again one of these reports over the weekend. Donald Trump, $2.2 billion made in 2025

for him off of the presidency, just pure corruption, right? of which 1.4 billion was crypto, and over the weekend, he slipped in this little thing, which is this pernicious, crazy story, where World Liberty Financial, his crypto company, was made into a bank. And who is it run by? It's run by Zach Whitkoff, the son of Steve Whitkoff, his special envoy, an old real estate buddy from New York. But all that, what does it do?

It kicks the corruption into overdrive. It puts the United States government in the position where it has to guarantee and protect the assets of this thing. It really, I mean, as bad as $2 trillion, $2 billion in 2025 sounds, I predict right now, 2026, they'll make more. 2027, they'll make more. However corrupt they've been in year one, year two will be more, year three will be more, and your four will be more. Here's something most people don't realize.

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have to be a tech expert, and I am definitely not one of those, to take control of your privacy. To get an exclusive 60% off, an annual incogny plan, go to incogny.com slash beast, or click the link in the episode description box. Well, we should also remember that one of the people that stood up against Hexeth, or at least one of the senators who claimed shared anxieties about him being confirmed as Secretary of Defense slash war slash forever. wars was Joni Ernst because Joni Ernst said that she had been sexually abused when she was in the military. There were allegations of sexual abuse against Pete Hegzeth. We remember that Pete Hegzseth's mother, his own mother, wrote a note to him which became public saying that he was

an abuser of women and then sometime later decided she wasn't going to run again. So she's leaving the Senate altogether. Right. But the way this Zon. Senate works is the way the mafia works. And it's like you stay in line or you're going to pay a price. And her divorce is like the horse's head and the bed and the godfather, you know, where it's like, you know, this is a warning. You want more of this? And it works for all of them. And the tragedy is that there is not a single Republican in the United States Congress who has any courage. With the possible exception of a couple of people who quit, like Massey. Thomas Massey from Kentucky.

Right. But even in his case, he backed a lot of terrible policies, right? But he's the exception out of nearly, what, 300 people? And it's what allows Trump to do what he's doing. And it is what allows Hegsteth to stay there. And it's why they're terrified of the midterm elections, because if the majority in the Senate changes, if the majority in the House changes, there will be investigations into World Liberty Financial.

There will be investigations into mismanagement of the defense budget. There will be investigations into whether or not Don Jr. and Eric are making money on defense contracts, or Whitkoff's kids are making money, or Lutnik's kids are making money, who's making money off of all of this kind of stuff. they're terrified of that because they realize even if Trump could pardon everybody, as this stuff gets out in the open, it's going to make them toxic to deal with, particularly if there's a prospect that in 28 a Democratic president comes in, and then they're really up shits creek. Well, and as Todd Blanche just got confirmed last week, we can only imagine that his inbox is now

going to be a series of subpoenas that just come in one after another after the midterms. Yeah, I mean, part of what we're going to see from Blanche is going to be his being under siege, possibly, from Democrats, if it gets that far. Because it's very clear from what he said on the Sunday shows that he feels he's the president's lawyer. And he said that the president would never ask him to do anything that was inappropriate or untoward, which, of course, we know is a lie. That's all the president asked them to do. And he, you know, made it quite clear that he was going to ignore the promises he made to the Senate. because one of the things that he said to the Senate was that this fund is dead. But then he said on the Sunday shows, but if somebody wants to sue us, you know, we can always work out a deal with them separately, which was, of course, their work around all along.

So Todd Blanche is going to be the president's hitman. He's going to go after his enemies. He's going to obstruct justice on Epstein. He is going to, you know, hand out cash to some of the president. supporters, and, you know, when it push comes to shove, he's going to have a big role to play on fiddling with the elections, because as he said, he would go to the court and he would try to get the court to give him the voting rolls that he hasn't gotten in 22 cases. So, you know, Blanche is every bit as bad as we expected. I think he's going to be worse

than Pam Bondi. And it's, you know, it's, we're moving to full mafia government right now. Full mafia government. Okay, so close observers of this podcast will notice my background has suddenly changed. And that's because we had technical difficulties. I'm actually staying with friends for the weekend. There was a storm and it's impacted the Wi-Fi. Anyway, big thanks to David and to Rachel Passeh, who's producing this episode for

their patience and also yours in figuring out what's going on with Joanna's background. But you are wearing that outfit that you described on a separate podcast that gets so much thought. It really made me feel bad because, like, I just put on a shirt and do the podcast. I like your summer outfit very much. I like the short-sleeved shirt, David. It looks good. The only reason I started putting my combos of t-shirts and blazers on Instagram was that people ask me about them, I don't know if they ask about your shirts.

And so I thought, I'll just, I'll explain it because if you're doing as many podcasts as I am, you need a lot of different combinations. I was trying to work out if I have 18 T-shirts and 12 blazers, there is some whack out there who will be able to figure out how many combinations. I think the combination is probably infinite. Well, I do as many podcasts as you do over at the DSR network. But for me, it's just trying to make sure that the sweatshirt I'm wearing doesn't. doesn't have a stain on it.

I dress up for your podcast. Good. Well, we appreciate it. You know, and I also watch your podcast, you know, and I saw that you were doing a thing over the weekend with your friend Michael Wolf about the question he gets the most, which was, does the president wear a diaper? And since then, we've had video of the president that sure looks like he's wearing a diaper, doesn't it?

Yes, I mean, well, it would be a very stiff diaper. I mean, this has caused a ton of speculation. weekend because the president came out to address a sort of rally and very clearly he had some sort of contraption on the backside, under, tucked under the backside of his pants, sort of hovering over his butt. And so who knows, who knows what it is? Is it a Brazilian butt lift? Is it, I mean, it looked too hard to be an adult diaper. I mean, I don't think it's an adult diaper. particular. He may be wearing an adult diaper. And I have to say, I did listen to the discussion. And your friend Michael was a little bit dismissive of, you know, does Trump smell bad? There's a lot of

people who say spells bad. And so, you know, who knows what he's doing in his pants. But to be fair, because we don't want to fall for the lowest tropes online. Michael said there was no evidence he's wearing a diaper. No, no, there's not. There's just a number of people who were in his presence, Adam Kinsinger and others who are credible who did bring this up. But having said that, let us move on from that. The thing in his back could be a medical device. You think it could be a medical device, what, administering shocks to keep him awake? Yeah. Yeah. It's Natalie Harp has a little, you know, like a little, and it's just like, right. And every time he slubs forward now, you'll see him. What else could it be, though? Could it be something that would be administering a drug?

I mean, it's hard to know. Is it an audiovisual thing? It could be some sort of weird big microphone for a rather unsophisticated rally. It could be. It could be. There are a lot of reports that he farts constantly in the meetings and it could be a fart suppressor. I don't know what it is. David, this is all getting a bit lavatorial. No, I know. It's unpresidential. It's unpresidential. Well, I'm from England. I'm from New Jersey. I can't help it.

But the point is, I think it's probably something medical. I think Donald Trump is probably getting drugs administered to him all day long every day. But if you ever heard of a drug that's administered into your ass, I mean, it would be such a weird... I don't know that it's administered in his ass. I think that there could be a tube or something that goes someplace else in his body. So it's like an intravenous drug, and that's the pack of whatever the drug is. Look, ladies and gentlemen, my grandfather was a doctor that doesn't qualify me to make this judgment. However, it did not look like a diaper.

It looked like there was a box or something underneath his pants. And, you know, why would he have a box under his pants, you know, to contain the nuclear codes? Let us count the ways. This president is Donald Trump. who knows what it could be? Well, who knows? You know, there's always a curveball. You know, having said that, you know, we've had other news since that over the weekend.

You know, first, as we started out, he decided we were going to side with North Korea. And then, if you thought that was not enough, you know, which was throwing two allies under the bus, South Korea and Japan, really, with that, earlier today, he said that if, oh, Oman continues to discuss with Iran a deal for how to run the strait of Hormuz that we're going to bomb the hell out of Oman. And I would just point out to everybody else, Oman is also a friend of ours. You know, so he is just, I mean, every single day Donald Trump is lashing out, not at our enemies, who he treats with kid gloves, but at our friends.

And we know that we can't bomb the hell out of Oman because we don't have very many bombs left. He's been running down, as you pointed out earlier, America's munitions. So actually, we can't afford to do that. And Omana, in fact, as you say, is an ally. And a lot of ships are trying to use the Omanee coast to edge their way out of the Strait of Hormuz. And there are a lot of, there are a lot of reports out of the Gulf that say our Gulf allies don't know what to believe, don't know who to trust, are very uneasy, and as a natural consequence of that are sort of taking things under their own advisement, right? And the Umani's, you know, they are right there at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, and they've got to work it out. And so cutting a deal with the

Iranians make some sense with them. And, but, you know, it's, this is part of Trump literally, systematically destroying every single alliance that we've got. And it leaves the door open for China, who at this moment seems much more stable than the states. And let us not forget that, you know, a month ago, we were discussing the, the, the, uh, a American business going into Saudi to help them build nuclear facilities? Well, and, you know, who knows?

That may continue depending on who pays, who, what, right? Because that's the way Trump works. It's all very transactional. But sometimes I think, and I was actually thinking I was going to write a column for you guys on this a little later today, we're covering Trump under the wrong lens because we cover Trump in terms of politics and policy and Washington process. We don't cover Trump like he's a foreign enemy attacking the United States. And yet, think of the damage he's done to the Department of Defense, to our weapons stockpiles, to the leadership in the Department of Defense,

to the intelligence community, shutting down parts of it that protect us from our enemies, to the law enforcement community with Cash Patel, shutting down the parts of it that protect our enemies, to our economy, blowing up the deficit, weakening, the dollar, to our ability to do research and development, to our ability to defend ourselves against pandemics, to our ability to use soft power in the world, which was, you know, through USAID, was a big tool. And there's a story today on how the current outbreak of Ebola in Africa is the fastest spreading outbreak of Ebola there ever was, to our institutions, to democracy in the United

States, if you took Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zaytung, and Vladimir Putin together, and said, if you launched a war on the United States, how much damage could you do? None of them would ever dream that they could destroy our institutions, destroy our military, destroy our intelligence community, destroy our credibility, destroy our alliances, destroy our economy, and do it as rapidly as Trump has done in this second term. And that's why I think sort of the lens for Trump. And, you know, in 2016, I wrote an editorial for Foreign Policy Magazine, and in 2017, I wrote one for The Washington Post in which I said,

Donald Trump is the biggest threat this country faces. And people are like, oh, melodramatic, Democrat, take a cold shower. It's not going to be that way. Well, here's the reality. No enemy we have has ever done as much damage as he's done. No enemy we have, whatever dream they could achieve what he's done. And sometimes I think what we need to cover the Trump administration is a war correspondent talking about how this enemy is blowing up the country. You've probably heard us talk about one skin before for their best-selling skin care, but now they're bringing that same breakthrough longevity science to their

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That's a really interesting perspective. to someone on Tuesday who has a lot of access to the intelligence services. And we were discussing Trump as target number one of the double one target in the world, double one. And she was making the point that actually the Iranians are thrilled to have Trump there because to your point, he's doing more damage to the US than anyone could have imagined. David, you're a student of foreign affairs. And as we often boast about you, you were an editor of foreign policy. You've worked in administrations. How are the Iranians using Trump's weakness against America? They know that the prices are high at the pumps. They know that he's vulnerable politically. They know that they're

able to keep him in this headlock, which we talked about earlier. How? How? How are they playing this understanding what's coming for him in November? Well, there are reports. There was a story over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal that is one such report that says that the hardliners in the Iranian government have said, you know something, I'm translating from the far as he. I'm kidding. But it's sort of what their point is.

You know something? We hold the cards. It's the opposite of what Trump said. We can go as long as we want. He can't squeeze us anymore. He's actually used up his weapons. Everything we do in the Persian Gulf to slow things down actually raises prices, which puts his Republican Party under the gun.

His alliances are falling apart. What's our rush? Why goes so fast? We can slow walk this whole thing, and every single day it's going to squeeze Trump. And you'll know it's squeezing Trump because Trump will get up in the morning and put out a tweet saying, they're not squeezing me, I'm squeezing them. You know, because he's so,

he's such a literal dimwit, and he will just try to deny it. But the reality is, of course, that right now, they have all the cards. Donald Trump has done more to elevate the strategic position of Iran

than any member of the Khomeini family either of the Ayatollahs, the former leader or the current leader, than anybody in modern Iranian history. Donald Trump, in one of the great kind of ironies of foreign policy cluster fuckery, has actually given the Iranians more strategic leverage than had they, gotten a bomb and detonated it because of the Gulf, because of the economics, because they don't have to have the bomb, because they don't have to endure those costs, because he is weakening the U.S. and weakening our alliances day in and day out, well, they do nothing. Donald Trump is the atom bomb Iran wanted.

Wow. Well, that's an interesting analysis. And I read that piece too in the journal, and it said that the Iranian Revolutionary guard are basically expecting more onslaughts and that they're preparing the country for that and they actually assume that there is much more to come and that the bombing campaign, you know, six months ago that started on February the 28th was a sort of appetizer for the entree is to come. And yet it seems unlikely there's an entree because we've got nothing left to serve them. Well, and also the reality is, I mean, you look at the controversy we were talking about earlier,

with the USS Abraham Lincoln and the other ships that are out there. Contrary to what you might hear from HECF or some of these other stooges that the administration rolls out, morale in the U.S. military is at an all-time low. They know we failed at this war. They know we're out of weapons. They know they are being mistreated. They know the president doesn't give a shit about them. But the president raises money for the Department of Defense,

Does he spend it on them, on veterans administration, on schools for soldiers, on higher salaries? Heck no. He spends it on Trump-class battleships, which we don't need. A Golden Dome, which will cost $100 billion, which won't work. He spends it on things to grandize himself, and he thinks the rest of the Army and the Navy and the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard can go screw themselves. And so the idea that somehow he would go and launch some major initiative, some major war without weapons, without morale, without allies, without budget in the middle of an election here is so ludicrous that, of course, the Iranians are taking advantage of it. And I can only imagine what Kim Jong-un is thinking as he says, yeah, we're not going to go and we're not going to work as closely as we have in the past with our South Korean allies.

if they don't understand what they're doing on the aircraft carrier, then it also makes it, well, it also impacts morale. Well, of course it does. But, you know, this is a problem that has plagued the United States. We have always, since the end of World War II had the biggest military, the biggest budget, the biggest airplanes, the biggest bombs, the biggest missiles, and everything else. But we're also a rich, comfortable country. And as a consequence, every time a president says, well, here's the thing.

We're going to go fight a war, and it will require some sacrifice from you Americans. The American people say, how about not? You know, the American people don't have the will to go and fight a war, and that's in justified circumstances. This war is illegal. It has been mishandled. It has been bungled. It is going terribly.

And if Donald Trump were to, you know, get on TV tomorrow night and say, I believe that we should put troops on the ground and we will lose thousands. of Americans, the country would go wild. It would, you know, no Republicans would win in November. You know, it would be the end. And he knows it. He knows he's got no wiggle room here. He has dug himself into the deepest toll of his life.

I mean, he was better off with his bankrupt casinos in Atlantic City than he is with this war in Iran. And yet there he was, David, with George Washington walking through his new ballroom. I mean, again, using AI, I'm assuming that Natalie Harp, his human printer and his AI machine, produced this one. But it's an image of Donald Trump with George Washington, and he's showing him the ballroom. And it appears as if George Washington approves of the ballroom. No, it said, on top of it, it said, I want to thank George for his suggestions for the ballroom. But I thought, you know, and Natalie Harp was very sensitive, obviously, to Donald Trump's preoccupation with size.

And you could see that six foot, two and a half inch George Washington was considerably smaller than Donald Trump, who these days is around 5-11. So, you know, they put them up next to him. And, oh, there's another one of the two of them on horseback. Trump is big, Washington is small. But having said all of that, you know, Trump said something today about the ballroom, which resonates and is so ironic given everything else that we've said. But Trump said that he believes anybody opposes the ballroom is disloyal to the United States of America.

And it's like, say what, dude? You're loyal to Kim Jong-un, to Vladimir Putin, to world liberty financially. to your sons profiting from the Defense Department, but you don't like our soldiers, you don't like our country, you don't much like our allies, and the measure you want to offer up of loyalty, it's not serving the country,

it's whether or not you're for this unnecessary $900 million eyesore of a ballroom? Cuckoo. Absolutely cuckoo. David, you're missing the point. He now no longer says it's a ballroom. it's actually a military zone that it's a security. It's for security. He's going to have a drone station on the top of it.

There's a bunker underneath should he need to go and repair from anybody attacking him. And there's a military grade hospital. So initially it was a ballroom. That's what he was raising money from, from his friends in Silicon Valley, who all came rushing forward. Apple gave money. Amazon gave money. You name it, gave money.

And now, of course, it turns out it's a military installation and it's needed for the security of the United States. Yeah, and there's, of course, two reasons for that. One reason is that he thought and thinks that he can pay for it through military budgets. And two, that he knows that presidents have more latitude on national security than on anything else. And so that if he says it's military, people can't argue with it. And even in some of the court decisions that we've seen so far, the courts are saying, well, whatever you want to do under the ground that's military, go ahead and do that. But what you can't do is build this ballroom above the ground as part of the White House complex without going through

certain processes. There's another interesting fact about this, though, and again, it's sort of fallen between the cracks. Presidents are supposed to be civilians. The White House is supposed to be a civilian bastion. The idea of militarizing the White House. is something that would have gotten any prior president run out of town. It's the kind of idea that Republicans would have attacked Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Bill Clinton or anybody else for trying to do because they would say, well, you know, we have separation of the roles these, you know, in the government, blah, blah, blah. And Trump is just blind to that. He's absolutely blind to that. He will do anything he can, say anything he has to.

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to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca.ca. Luxury sales claim based on SMP Global Mobility Canadian new vehicle total registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Okay, so talking about security, it turns out that Susie Wiles has, for the second time, appears to have had an imposter. The new British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, received texts from someone purporting to be Susie Wiles.

It appeared that it was coming from Susie Wiles' phone, which has been hacked before. But it soon transpired that, in fact, it was not Susie Wiles. or perhaps Susie Wiles is going road because she's just had enough. Yeah, and she's making prank calls in the middle of the night from the White House. Andy, are you there, Andy? Why wouldn't you make prank calls at this point? I mean, everybody assumes that she will leave as we in the run-up to the midterms, right? People assume that she's not going to stay post-November.

In the run-up or right after. Right. But around the midterms, the speculation is that Susie Wiles will have had enough that she's lasted almost two years, which is pretty long for a chief of staff with Donald Trump. We saw Caroline Levitt, his press secretary, is leaving. And we saw David Warrington, the White House Chief Council is leaving. So chief legal counsel is leaving. So it feels like the rats are leaving a sinking ship. There are plenty of them are going to leave.

Plenty of them are going to leave because they know what would wait in. door for them if Democrats take over and there's investigations and they won't be able to get anything done. And that's when the ketchup is really going to start flying around the Oval Office, right? If, you know, if Trump goes, well, I want to do this and I want to do that. And then they say, well, sorry, Mr. President, the Democrats won't pay for it. And he'll just start throwing ketchup bottles or whatever it is that he does when he melts down. And I think nobody wants, you know, I think as bad a job as you can think. Nobody wanted to be an aide to Donald Trump before,

but they did it because they thought they could enrich themselves. Now, to being an aide for Donald Trump in his declining years in the White House, I mean, it. I mean, that's a terrible job. Well, it's something that John Ossoff, the Democratic senator from Georgia, sort of zoomed in on this week in one of his rally. I'm assuming that you saw the delicious clip where he refers to Natalie.

He calls out the serviceman on the USS Lincoln who've been there for ages and yet are still endeavoring to deliver excellent service. I think of all the Democrats out there, John Assoff right now has as close to perfect pitch as an anthem. He's young, what is he, 39 years old? He is winning in all the polls in a red state. He's already won once in a red state. He knows how to speak really clearly,

but he has no hesitation about tweaking the president, as he did with he just wants to go and fly around in his Qatari-bribe jet with Natalie, you know. But, you know, he's also the one who coined the phrase or popularized the phrase, the Epstein class, which managed to, in one concise move, connect Epstein, scandal, Trump, and Sleaze with oligarchy, bro-lagarchy, billionaires,

impunity, and a society that serves the few at the expense of the many. So he took this one thing. It wasn't just a little slur. He turned it into a whole campaign position. And I think he is very, very talented. And although he says, I'm not interested in running for president, I think, you know, there is a real desire for new voices. And there's a real sense that some of the other Democratic leaders who are kind of old school don't get it, won't be able to put up a fight, don't speak as clearly as he does.

And so, you know, if there's going to be a changing of the guard, he's going to be one of the candidates that people look at closely. Well, I'm sorry, we've had technical difficulties today. Thank you for sticking with us if you managed to get to the end. Big thanks to David Rothcock. We love his perspective. Turns out he thinks Trump is America's worst enemy. What an indictment of a president. Anyway, if you have been, thank you for joining us.

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