The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump’s ‘Psychosis’ Has Insiders Terrified

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

David Rothkopf returns to the podcast to deliver a chilling behind-the-scenes account of a war spiraling far beyond public spin, revealing that while officials defend the Iran conflict on TV, insiders across Washington are privately terrified by how badly it’s unfolding. Drawing on deep sources inside the military, intelligence, and diplomatic worlds, Rothkopf exposes a stunning lack of strategy, mounting fears of global economic shock, and a rapidly escalating conflict that experts warned would happen—and now can’t control. From skyrocketing energy prices and the risk of a wider regional war to the unnerving reality that key decisions are being driven by instinct rather than planning, Rothkopf details of a crisis that is not only failing abroad but threatening to destabilize alliances, markets, and America’s standing in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We don't have people around the president who will say no to them. And even if we did, he wouldn't listen to that. This is so different from any other war that we have ever seen because it is being driven by the psychosis of one individual. And everybody in Washington knows that. All the guardrails, all the processes, all the systems that have evolved over time to avoid just this kind of catastrophe have been sure have been shut down, broken down.

And we're left with a decaying, elderly, ignorant, paranoid, vain, glorious, deluded, commander-in-chief, making it up as he goes along. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Who better to discuss the war with than the great David Rothkopf, our chief global affairs columnist, who was the former editor of Foreign Policy Magazine

and worked in the Commerce Department for the Clinton administration and now runs a network of podcasts for his own company, Deep State Radio, and has amazing connections in the intelligence community and in the foreign and the diplomatic corps. I don't need to tell you, we're at war. Pete Higgsath is telling us to pray on bended knee and Marco Rubio is apparently talking to the Cubans. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?

But for today, well, we have David Rothkopf to bring some sanity and some illumination to what feels like the creeping darkness. David Rothkopf, it's been, what has it been, a week since we last spoke. And now you're back with a very fancy new title because you are officially now, chief global affairs columnist. It's very exciting, David. Thrill to have you. And I'm assuming that the reason you look slightly low on your camera is because you are on bended knee per our defense secretary, Pete Higgsath, telling us all we should be on bended knee. Well, he said we should all be on a bended knee to pray to Jesus Christ. This is a guy with, you know, white supremacist Christian

tattoos all over his body. And he seems to think that the way to approach this war is Holy War. That, you know, he refers to the Iranian regime as an apocalyptic regime. There were stories of troops being motivated to head out into this fray with talks about the apocalypse and these kinds of issues. I have to wonder if he's ever read any history because, you know, the Crusades didn't turn out so well. Well, I wonder if this is enough to make him start drinking again. As we know, he's a man who has in the past previously liked a jar, as they call it in the UK. And he said he wasn't going to drink on this job, on this particular job,

but it seems like he's hurtling from one sucker to another. When I say sucker, I mean S-U-C-C-O-U-R. Thank you for clarifying that. Look, I think he's certainly behaving like somebody is drinking. He is incoherent. The policies he's supporting are incoherent. He's veering around. I mean, you know, sort of Trump administration foreign policy

is sort of following the footsteps of a drunk out of the bar, right? We go to the left, we go to the right, we're doing this, we're doing that, I'm on my knees, I'm standing up, you know, shouting at the heavens. But, you know, it all reminds me of the line from the movie Airplane, where he said, I picked a heck of a day to give up sniffing glue. You know, I mean, because you got to, you know, there's no metric by which you can assess what's going on in this misbegotten war in which is the success. There's nothing. Okay.

So, David, I know that you're sitting there in D.C. in the middle of a. an array of sources in the defense community, in the intelligence community, in the foreign services community. What are people telling you? What are you hearing about how things are going? And to your point about it following the footsteps of a drunk staggering out of a bar, do people understand and agree with why we are in this wall? Well, a bunch of good questions.

I would start by saying it depends on who you're talking to. You know, if you're talking to military people, one of the things they'll say is the missions have been carried out extremely well. Pilots who've been called upon to do bombing runs or, you know, people who've been called upon to do other sorts of missions have executed them with the professionalism that you would expect of the U.S. military. The problem is there's no strategy. The problem is there has been no planning.

There is no sense of consequences. You know, we've been adversarially involved with Iran since, well, almost 50 years now, right? And Democrats have faced the Iranians. Republicans have faced the Iranians. They've all disliked the Iranians. They've all seen the Iranians as a threat. And yet every single government, and when I talk to people, they're from those governments. Every single one of those governments thought, let's not attack Iran

because it's going to cause problems in global energy markets, because it's going to cause problems in the region, because there's 92 million Iranians, because this could spread around the world in a host of other ways, including terrorism, or perhaps some of their fissile material gets out and gets used in a dirty bomb somewhere. There are a lot of bad scenarios. And I think the thing that's really striking when you talk to people now is there's almost nobody who isn't at the inner,

inner circle of the Trump administration who thinks this is going well. There's almost, you know, you've got Republicans on TV who defend it because they know if they don't, Trump will come after them in their primaries or in the general election. But, you know, talk to them behind the scenes, talk to their staff.

They're terrified. And they're terrified of what? Because in theory, as you say, the military sorties have been successful. America has enormous dominance in the air. What are the things that they're terrified of? Well, there's severalfold, right? The Financial Times just said, this is the worst disruption of global energy markets ever, ever in history, right? And we've seen the price of a barrel of oil go towards $120 a barrel.

We know that there is a trigger slightly north of that for a global recession if it stays at that level. we have seen not just interruptions with the flow of oil out through the Strait of Hormuz, but in the past couple of days, we've seen attacks on gas fields. The big attack on the Qatari plant that took place yesterday, they're now saying they take three to five years to repair. So what you see there is higher gas prices, knock on effects, that include higher transportation prices, higher food prices.

The price of a ton of fertilizer, like urea, has doubled since January. If you're just a small farmer someplace, that really hits you hard, and it will lead to food shortages. So, David, should we take President Trump seriously when he says that they're going to to be able to keep open the Strait of Hormuz and that American Marines are on their way, why they weren't there in the first place, I do not know, probably because this wasn't

anticipated, even though people did seem to know it was highly plausible that this might happen, that the Iranians would choose to do this. So is it possible, and do your friends in the intelligence services think it's possible that Marines can keep this open? Well, first of all, everybody knew this would happen. And when you talk to military planners, they knew it would happen. You talked to diplomats, they knew this would happen. The intelligence community knew that this was one of the tools that the Iranians had. The Strait of Hormuz is, what, 21 miles across.

The Iranians can wreak havoc there without big military presence. You can have little boats with explosives on them. You can have small shoulder-fired missiles that could sink a big tanker. And, you know, each tanker costs $100 million. The insurance costs go through the roof. People are petrified by it. And, you know, what do you do with the troops? Apparently, Trump is now sending in thousands more marine expeditionary troops into the region.

The talk right now is that the White House is seriously looking at putting boots on the ground on Karg Island, which is this big energy facility on the sort of northern part of the Persian Gulf. That is, you know, once you start putting boots on the ground, then you start having people killed, then you start having pushback of the worst start. Then you start having the Iranians targeting more facilities in neighboring countries in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the Emirates and so forth. You know, you talk about there's a term of art that's used in Washington, the escalatory ladder, and... The escalatory ladder.

So it's just the deepening of the involvement. Right. And that is, you know, Trump says every day, well, we could leave and it would be a big victory. But he also knows it's not a big victory. You know, the nearly 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium that the Iranians have, they still have. The scientists who are in their nuclear program are still there. Even though the facilities were destroyed, the know-how is still there. The ability to launch missiles, the ability they have a big drone industry there,

the ability to launch $10,000 drones that can do a lot of damage. All those things are still there. The regime, despite having its first and second and third tier of leaders assassinated by the U.S. and by the Israelis, remains in place because it's been around a long time. The opposition to the regime has been killed and thrown into jail over the past few years by the Iranian government.

So, you know, this idea that they're going to kind of rise up and drive regime change seems extremely unlikely. And, you know, even Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the chief agitators behind this. You know, yesterday, acknowledged in a speech that you can't do regime change with an air war. And so, you know, whether your metric is the nuclear program or the missile program or regime change or regional stability, we're worse off right now and there is no prospect that it's

going to get better anytime soon. So, David, as you say, a lot of this was predictable. and predicted, why was no one paying attention? Or why do we seem so unprepared? You know, you would do a podcast here called Inside Trump's Mind, right? Inside Trump's head, inside his head. We're not sure he has a mind. Well, I think that's fair.

But the point is, all of the action that matters is happening between Trump's ears. And, you know, I think, as I wrote in my substack, a few days ago, you know, this, the world has not been as negatively affected by the psychological dysfunction within the mind of one person since Hitler blew his brains out in the bunker underneath the German Reich Chancellor. in April of 1945. And what I mean by that is, Trump doesn't listen to advisors, as he says, he relies on his gut. And so when General Kane says, you know, they could shut down the Gulf,

he says, well, come at him hard. They probably won't do that. And, you know, the story came out today, that said that, you know, a few months ago, or earlier last year, actually, Doge eliminated the people in the State Department who made assessments about the oil and gas industry and how global upheaval would affect them.

Days before the war started, Cash Patel eliminated the people in the FBI who were responsible for Iranian counterintelligence. So we don't have the experts. We don't have people around the president who will say no to them. And even if we did, he wouldn't listen to them. And so it's, this is so different from any other war that we have ever seen because it is being driven by the psychosis of one individual.

And everybody in Washington knows that. knows that. You know, everybody, you know, all the guardrails, all the processes, all the systems that have evolved over time to avoid just this kind of catastrophe have been shut down, broken down, side, you know, run around. And we're left with a decaying, elderly, ignorant, paranoid, vain, glorious, deluded, commander in chief,

making it up as he goes along. So, were he in the podcast studio with us right now? Donald Trump might say, well, you say all that, but actually there were lots of plans in 2003 when America

went into Iraq, and look how that turned out. Oh, I mean, what is that response? You mean, oh, we had a lot of plans and that was fucked up. And so even though we had no plans now and this is also fucked up,

it's the same? This is having plans? I think the point being that he doesn't appear to have a plan, as you said, and as we discuss thrice weekly on inside Trump's head, the world is enthralled

to what's going on between those two ears and under the carapace of moldy hay as one viewer described. his hair, which is still the best description. That's pretty fantastic. I've had for it, isn't it?

It's from a poem. But it's such a good description of his hair, moldy hay. And it probably gives off a smell, a scent, a fragrance like moldy hay, too. Yeah. I guess what I'm talking about is just the sense in which, with the best planning in the world, things go wrong in war, right? from day one. So he would argue that what's the difference?

I'm just plowing ahead here. National security professionals will tell you that a good process doesn't guarantee a good outcome, but no process guarantees a bad outcome. Okay, that's a very good line. Can you just say that again? Yeah. Can you remember what you just said?

No, no, it's a line a lot of people say, National Security professionals will tell you that a good process does not guarantee a good outcome, but no process guarantees a bad outcome. So what are these national security professionals saying right now? Are they in complete despair? I think many of them are in despair, and of course a lot of them, you know, are asking themselves what's going to happen next? will there be boots on the ground? Will there be an escalation?

Will there be an economic crisis? What does this mean for geopolitics? You know, we've lifted sanctions on Russian oil, which means Russia, which is an economic crunch, is making money off of this war, even though they acknowledge themselves, as recently as today, that they are the ones who are helping the Iranians

target Americans. We're essentially paying them. And by we, I mean Trump, is essentially paying them to potentially do damage to American soldier sailors and airmen to our vessels, to our allies. And how do we know? Because Steve Whitkoff said, oh, he said he wasn't, and I take him at his word. because the Russians today said, we'll stop doing that if you stop giving intelligence to the Ukrainians. So where does that leave Ukraine in all this, the forgotten war at this point? Well, first of all, it's not the, there are a bunch of forgotten wars. I would point out that the Israelis have gone into Lebanon.

A million people have been displaced. Over a thousand people have been killed. and nobody's paying any attention to that war right now. But in terms of the Ukrainians, you know, there's a little bit of upside and a lot of downside. The upside is Ukrainians have been dealing with Iranian drones and Russian drones for four years of war now, and they're pretty good at dealing with it. And so they are actually being hired to help various states in the region defend themselves against the Iranian drone threat. Now, having said that, as good as that is for them, you know, what do they need

from the United States? They need advanced air defenses. Are they going to get those? No, because we've depleted them all in the region. We're going to need more in the region. And so the ones that we would have sold to the Europeans, so they could give them to the Ukrainians, are not going to be available. That makes Ukraine more vulnerable. The United States is spending huge amounts of money on this conflict. The president wants $200 billion supplemental to help pay for this conflict. So are we going to give more or less to help support Ukraine? NATO, which is absolutely vital to Ukraine's defenses. And the president of the European Union yesterday said they were going to give $90 billion to Ukraine whether Hungary liked it or not. Hungary had been an impediment.

Trump today said NATO is a paper tiger if we're not involved. He's so pissed off at NATO for not stepping up and helping out with getting ships through the Strait of Hormuz that he's talked privately about getting out of NATO. And that would be, you know, oh, Trump's crazy. He'll get over it. He's been talking about that ever since he took the oath of office the first time. He has had to be stopped by senior officials from pulling out of or weakening NATO for the past five and a half years of him being president.

So a weaker NATO, that's bad for Ukraine. No missiles, bad for Ukraine. No U.S. support. Bad for Ukraine. Everybody distracted by this other war, bad for Ukraine. Russia making more money off of this war and therefore being able to buy more weapons and put more pressure on Ukraine, bad for Ukraine. So not only is this war achieving nothing,

putting our allies in the region at risk, destroying the global economy, but it's also putting a big boot on the throat of Ukraine. And just, you know, I know it's a lot to keep track out. But the Chinese are benefiting enormous. Well, I was just going to ask you about that because obviously Trump has delayed his trip there. What's the significance of the delay and what are you hearing about how the Chinese are viewing this whole matter? Well, I mean, the significance is that, you know, the big foreign policy win that Trump was planning to have this spring was to go meet with Xi Jinping and have some kind of a deal and be seen as a statesman.

He views Xi Jinping as the most important head of state in the world because he is. and, you know, that would be a kind of a win. And he's not going to get to that now because he's distracted by this war. He also thought he was going to go there with, you know, this tariff weapon that he thought he had intact, this kind of cudgel that he thought he could use. And, of course, the Supreme Court has taken that away from him

and he's finding it really hard to, you know, put it back in place for good reason. What he's tried to do is he'll be. illegal. So he's not able to go in and do what he wanted with the Chinese. Meanwhile, the Chinese, and I talk to people in China and know China really well, they're, you know, quietly to themselves, they could be happier. What's happening here? United States is weakening itself. America's allies are weakening themselves. America is no longer seen as a stabilizing force in the world, the Chinese are seen as the stabilizing force in the world. The Chinese are the number

one trading and investment partner of almost every country in the Middle East, which means when it rebuilds, when they need money, who are they going to turn to? They're going to turn to the Chinese, and Chinese influence, which has been growing in the Middle East, is going to continue to grow in the Middle East. And so, you know, here you have, you know, one of these kind of watershed moments where you can watch the United States administer self-inflicted wound after self-inflicted wound to itself and see it recede as a great power and see China sit back and benefit. And that's to say nothing of the fact that we're taking carrier battle groups and marine expeditionary forces and weapons out of the Indo-Pacific region

and moving them into the Persian Gulf or in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf, which makes our allies in the region more vulnerable and above all, makes Taiwan much more vulnerable to the Chinese. And if the Chinese decided to make a move on Taiwan, it said, well, in the past, the U.S. would say, well, that's naked aggression. Well, of course, we can't really say that anymore, right?

Because we have, without provocation, attacked Venezuela, attacked Iran, threatening Cuba. We've attacked a total of eight countries thus far in violation of international law, in violation of U.S. law. So this opens the door to all sorts of mischief by other countries around world. So, David, it's hard not to think about Mark Carney's comment, the Prime Minister of Canada at Davos, before this war, that the world's order had been ruptured. Is there, I mean, especially given the complexity of the Strait of Hormuz, and you can see a scenario where the Iranians keep that chokehold and we are in there for years. trying to protect it. Do you think there is an option where America pulls out and the straight somehow remains open? Look, I think the most likely option is that at some point in days or weeks, Trump says we're getting nowhere. I'm going to declare victory. I believe that we've,

you know, destroyed their military and destroyed their leadership. That's what we sent in to do. And so he'll stand up, he'll tell the American people who's another great victory following the Venezuela model. Not sure what that is, because all we did was decapitate the regime. This regime's still there. But he'll say it was a great victory. And then he'll turn his attention to Cuba. And by the way, I just tell you, it's a little bit of an aside. There was a little bit of an interesting note the other day, yesterday, I think it was, that didn't get paid. picked up. But at some point, I think during a press event, Trump was asked about the $200 billion that the administration is seeking at a defense supplemental. And they said, that's a lot of

money. It's more than the cost of this war. Does that mean the war is going to go on for a long time? And Trump said, well, no, there's money in there for some of the other things we intend to do. So, you know, if, you know, what does that mean, right? Does that mean Cuba? Does that mean that's the next war? Greenland? Who can be sure? But, you know, Trump's usual plan is he goes into something. He talks big. He promises a great return. It doesn't turn out that way. He fucks around. He finds out. And then he wants to change the subject. And he tries to change the subject. And he tries to. to turn it, you know, and the way he does it as president is he goes from one controversy to another controversy, because he knows that's what gets the Washington Press Corps all agitated. Well, and it's what distracts from what's going on at home, right? So we've got the Epstein files that people are still plowing through and are still unresolved, and we have another three million due to drop. It gets us away from ice. It gets us away from

increasing in prices, it gets us away from his inability to try and turf out the chairman of the Fed, which the courts overruled his efforts to do that and his constant losing in the courts right now. And it gets away from poll results that show, you know, just terrible across the board, there was a poll today that was announced on CNN, that at this time in the last administration, the Secretary of Defense, General Mattis, was kind of plus 30 in approval. Pete Hagseth, the Christian warrior we mentioned at the beginning. He's now down 17, negative 17 in approval. Trump is at negative 41 on his economic policies. And I think with independence, he's at negative 60. Yep, he is. I saw that poll with Harry Ent and talking everybody through it.

That's beyond underwater. That's somewhere in the Marianas Trench, you know. You know, that is as bad an outcome in a poll as any American president has ever had for anything. And, you know, that bodes poorly for him, especially since his big, his only domestic initiative that he's pushing right now is the SAVE Act, which is essentially a voter suppression act. And he's not going to get that through in all likelihood. And even if he did, it would get hung up in the courts, which means come November, the Democrats will control the House. It's increasingly likely that the Democrats could take the majority in the Senate. And Trump, at that moment, TikTok, tick-tock, midnight on election day, when all of a sudden that's clear, or five weeks later, when all of a sudden that's clear, Trump's over.

He's over. He will never get anything done. He will be investigated for everything. I'll tell you something. This is a little DC insider thing that you like. But I was sitting with a guy who's deeply plugged in to Dems and what the Dems on the House in the Senate are doing. And there is an initiative right now to identify what investigations,

the House Oversight Committee, will begin the moment they take. the majority back. You know, do you investigate Jared Kushner's businesses? Do you investigate Don and Eric's businesses? Do you investigate Whitkoff and Lutniks and their kids' businesses? Do you investigate the corruption at DHS under Christie Nome and Lewandowski? Do you investigate the corruption under Doge, the stealing of data, the transferring of social security data or IRS data into the FBI, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

You could do 100 investigations. All you could do around the clock is investigations. But right now, while all this other stuff is happening, in little rooms up on the Capitol, they're making lists. And Trump knows they're making lists. And as tough as he is and as much as he thinks, oh, I have immunity, you know, the Supreme Court has my back, he used to think that, he doesn't think it so much anymore, he knows that there are real problems for him in this, problems that may not involve the kind of immunity

protection that he thought he had when he came in this time around. Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, you keep saying, oh, I'm going to be impeached. If we lose the house, I'll be impeached, I'll be impeached. That will be the third time that he will be impeached. It's fascinating. And how would you prioritize any of those investigations? So do you think, I mean, are you hearing from people that the assumption is he will pull out?

Or will he like so many presidents and prime ministers before him in other countries get sucked into a longer war than he expected? Because it's all so much more complicated than he understood. And if he puts Marines into wherever he puts them on Kag Island or he keeps them floating around in the strait of Hormuz to try and keep it open, what is the point where he then declares that he can pull them back? I don't know. I think, you know, maybe we should turn to experts like Stormy Daniels on this who said that, you know, it was kind of overfast with him. And this could easily be invasion interrupt us. because, you know, I mean, he goes in, doesn't turn out the way that he wanted.

He pulls out. He tries to change the subject, you know. And again, I think there's no real protection. If we're going to stretch your analogy, right? Again, a germophobe like Jeffrey Epstein. Why did you have to stretch the analogy there? Well, because I'm always fascinated by, in particular men who say they are germaphobes,

and then it turns out that, at least according to, Stormy Daniels, Trump didn't use protection. And we know that Jeffrey Epstein didn't, because he was always getting diagnoses of, you know, he was always getting STIs. Well, you know, there are people out there, not among Daily Beast audience, but there are people out there who might go,

you know, this is a stretch, drawing an analogy between Trump and Epstein and Trump and Stormy Daniels and, you know, violating women on a serial basis, and foreign policy. And, you know, it's wrong to make these analogies. But I have to tell you something, as somebody who spent the past 30-plus years in the foreign policy world,

I don't think it's a bad analogy. He has serially violated people. He is violent. He has a history of being disloyal to people who are his friends or his wives. He is a lot of talk and bluster, but not well known for performance. There is almost no area of his history as a pathetic, disgusting, sex-abusing creep that is not a perfect analogy for his behavior as a pathetic, disgusting, sex-abusing creep.

that is not a perfect analogy for his behavior as a pathetic, disgusting, national security undermining, national interest undermining creep. A fascinating analogy, David, not one I've heard anywhere else, and of course I'm proud that we're offering it on The Daily Beast. There are, as we know, always with Trump, moments of unexpected humor. There was one such moment with the Japanese Prime Minister on Thursday when he was asked by a member of the Japanese press why he hadn't given anybody a heads up,

or he hadn't given any of our allies a heads up that he was going to start bombing Iran. And he made the joke about Pearl Harbor. And he said, surprise, surprise, surprise. Well, you guys know about surprise, Pearl Harbor. One thing you don't want to signal too much, you know, when we go in, we went in very hard. And we didn't tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise.

Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Okay? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor? Okay? Right? He's Eskabee. No, you believe in surprise, I think, much more so than us. And the Japanese Prime Minister's eyes just opened in astonishment.

And I was reminded of that John Cleese sketch in Faulty Towers where he says, don't mention the war. He's a hotelier. I don't know if you know the series, but he plays a foul. Every single, there are only 13 episodes of Faulty Towers that I've watched all of them many times. Right. The best English comedy ever. And for those who don't know it, John Cleese plays a foul-tempered hotelier who abuses all his guests and Germans come in into his dining room and he just can't stop making jokes about the Second World

War. And of course, when it came out, which was the 70s, it was slightly closer to the war. And yet this phrase about don't mention the war is constantly used in Britain as a kind of it. It's a refrain, a British refrain. But one couldn't help thinking, oh my goodness, he's turned into John Cleese in that moment, saying the unsayable. Well, I think it's a good analogy. I could debate whether Fulte Towers or Black Adder or, you know, any of a number of other shows are the best.

Or the thick of it. Have you watched the thick of it? Yes. No, no. Excellent. Excellent. What was the puppet show? What was the?

The puppet. Oh, spitting image. Spitting image. Spitting image. Also very good. But I think Faulty Towers is the father of them all. They don't exist without Faulty Towers. I have to tell you, I'm not big.

But when somebody says also very good. very good. I think of the scene in Bridget Jones' diary, where she's doing this introduction about this book. And she goes, this is the greatest book ever written. And then she sees Salman Rushdie there. And she goes, of course, other than yours, you know, it's right, yours. And then Jeffrey Archer's there. And she goes, and yours also were very good. Lord Archer. Anyway. Lord Archer, Lord Archer. Yeah. In any event. You know, this was a, you know, this was a, really ugly incident. It is funny. But Basil Faulty was an idiot. And Trump is something more than just an idiot. I think Trump is in a period of accelerated decline. I mean, I think, you know, you and I've

talked about this a lot, but you look at Trump now. And it's like his, it's like his neck is disappearing. His head is slowly, it's setting like the sun into his chest. He gets down. like this. For some reason, he sits behind the desk, the resolute desk of the oval office, and somebody's got his chair too low. So the desk is now... Yes, that's a very good point. He should be higher up behind. He's looking like a little old man. His head is down in there. And of course, he's got his blotched hand. He's got his swollen ankles. And his brain is complete mush. And somebody described this incident on the interwebs. by saying that as you look at the video of him saying this,

with this new Japanese prime minister there, you could see her soul leaving her body. And that is, you know, that's kind of what happened, right? He said the worst possible thing, the biggest gaffe. And it led, by the way, to another whole discussion that I had in person and also, you know, saw on the web, with people going, was this a more embarrassing moment than when George H.W. Bush threw up in the lap of a Japanese prime minister. There must be something about the Japanese that triggers American presidents. Perhaps it's there formal.

I don't know. But it was worse because George H.W. Bush couldn't help himself. And the Japanese prime minister's first reaction was to be thoughtful and to take care of him. In this particular case, she just was like, oh, my God, what do I say about this incredibly inappropriate analogy? And, you know, what was interesting was she was there sort of to avoid getting in trouble with Trump because he was going to say, send ships into the Strait of Ormuzano. She came up with some very soft language. And, of course, he couldn't hit too hard. because he had made this big mistake. And I think in the midst of laughing at him or commenting on his decline, we miss the fact that when he does this kind of stuff, there's a big national consequence.

There's a big geopolitical consequence. America loses face. America loses leverage. He is less able to achieve his goals in the world. And so it's ridiculous, but it's costly. And that's, you know, that is another way to sum up the Trump administration. It's ridiculous, but the costs are unfathomably high, which is why in the column I wrote for you guys yesterday, I said it's too early to say whether this war is one of the biggest screw-ups in U.S. history. But if you're looking for places where America lost or instances where U.S. lost standing, where innocent lives were lost, where there were economic costs, where, you know, and you say, well, there was a Vietnam War, there was the Iraq War, there were, you know,

there are all these things. Nothing has happened to Americans standing in the world as damaging as Donald Trump's five years in office, whether it's COVID, whether it's deficit exploding, whether it's getting rid of science and health care, getting rid of science and combat and climate change, whether it's this war, the other eight wars that he started, whether it's the embarrassment, the undermining of our allies, the undermining of the rule of law, the attacks on democracy, Americans being shot in the street, all of these things have made America weaker than we have been in a hundred years and are a blow to America greater than anything that any one of our enemies has ever delivered, whether it's fascists or communists, none of them ever did the kind of damage that Donald Trump,

president of the United States, has done during his time in office. Okay, so David, you have to promise me that when you come back next time, you're going to be a bit more cheerful. Well, we talk about Faulty Towers. We could talk about The Bachelorette. We could talk about The Bachelorette, but it feels almost too serious to talk about... The Iran War is not the Bachelorette, but... But the Bachelorette is?

I guess my final question to you is what feels like a decision, which I understand was led by the Israelis, and the opportune intelligence they had about the ability to take out the Iranian leadership. The sort of impulsive way that Donald Trump appears to have led America into war makes it feel like he's going to do something like that around the elections. And I take your point that the SAVE Act may not get through. but given what we know about what he's done before and January the 6th and pardoning everybody from January the 6th and his understanding that he may well get impeached and that there are people making lists on Capitol Hill of the first investigations they want to launch.

Is this a sort of all or nothing moment for him, do you think, coming up to the midterms? It's as all or nothing as it gets. Because this is not just politically existential. As we've talked about here, this is existential for Donald Trump. That Donald Trump is, you know, all he cares about is Donald Trump. You know, is he relevant? Is he getting richer? What do people think of him?

Does he have a future? Does he have any, you know, a media cloud? And the answer is he will have none of those things if this goes the other way. And so he will do anything he can. He will, he will, he doesn't care about the law. He doesn't care about tradition. He doesn't care about how people outside, you know, a handful of people who are in his, you know, bunker with him. Think about these things.

He's, he's a leader who's losing it. And, you know, I wouldn't, I mean, no one would be surprised if he tried to take over Cuba, tried to make it a state, tried to go after Greenland, sent troops into American cities, tried to have his opponents rounded up and thrown into jail. I mean, look what he's, you know, in the past week, we even talked about, you know, the way. the way that his FCC commissioner has come out and said, if you report negatively on the warrior traitor, and you should lose your license. I mean, that's the most direct assault in the First Amendment and the history of the First Amendment.

And that doesn't even make it onto the front page, you know, because there is so much other craziness going on. And so that, you know, the prognosis for the sort of stability of the United States and for, or any kind of normal behavior out of the president is really bad. Okay, well, it's Sunday. People need to have a glass of wine. They need to deep breathe,

and then they need to get ready to fight another day, David. Is that a fair estimate of where we're at? Whatever adult beverage you want, find something, change the subject. You know, my wife always uses this expression when she was going to school in France. of that when things were getting tough that she would go for a walk, she would describe it as needing to change a lazy day. It's to sort of change your thoughts in your mind, right? Yeah. We all need to change a lazy day. And then we have to get back to it. Then we have to get back to it. I don't want anyone at the beast changing les ideas. Changer les edi. I can't even say it.

Change les edie. How do you say ideas in French? Yeah, I'd do. Okay. I'd say these ideas. Because we have to stay on this. We have to stay on this administration and the president and what he's up to. David Rothkoff will be back in a week's time because we're going to start our new podcast every Monday, start the week with David Rothkopf. What better thing can we promise people?

Yeah. Well, we'll try. If we're going to start the week with me every week, we'll try every week to have a few things. to look forward to in the week and not just reasons to go and pull the covers back over your head. Okay, good. David. Excellent. See you. Thank you. And we will talk a week on Monday. A president in decline, a war that we have no idea how it's going to end, or in fact, why we got into it. And as David said, the war plan appears to be much like following the path of a drunk, as he staggering out of a bar, wandering into the night.

Let's hope that it gets better this week. At least the weather in New York is getting better. That brings cheer to everybody. We will be back tomorrow with Kurt Anderson and on Tuesday inside Trump's head. Whatever's going on in there with Michael Wolf. Don't forget to leave us a comment about your favorite part of the conversation.

Was it where David was describing the president's declining health? or how America has just lost so much standing in the world. Write and give us your comment. And don't forget, as you're doing it, as our first lady would have us say, Be Beast. So the good news is we have so many Be Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out.

And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team, Devin Rodgerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passe, Heather Prossaro, Neil Rosenhouse.