These Are All the Signs Trump's Grip is Slipping | The Daily Beast Podcast

Donald Trump is at the end of his story. This is not a person whose biography is about their future. It's about their past. And everybody can see that in Washington. Republicans are making fun of Trump behind the scenes. They are saying he's not up to it. He's crazy. He literally cannot pass an object. without thinking it should be named for him. Welcome to the Daily Beast podcast. I'm Hugh Daugherty, I'm executive editor. I'm keeping the seat warm for two articles.

Who is currently posing with the world's power elites in the Middle East. But she will be back. She'll be talking to Michael Wolff about what is going on. inside Trump's head, later this week. Thank you to everybody who commented on our interview. with Senator Richard Slotkin on Major-General Paul Eaton. It was an amazing insight into what's in the mind of. the national security people as they deal with exits. But we have somebody who's even better qualified than not here today.

joining us in the studio. We are honored to have David Rothkopf. David Rothkopf is our incomparable columnist. I'm claiming you first for The Daily Beast, David. But fine. I'm happy to. Be, perhaps more importantly, you. I, I think the Trump lobby say you are the deep state, right? You run the Deep State podcast network. You have worked for the white House, and you have provided your expertise.

as part of Henry Kissinger Consultants and then as your own consultancy. And you've edited Foreign Policy Magazine. So, I mean, that sounds like the Deep State, although has this. maybe the Deep State has been dismantled, but it's what we were all not watching. Yeah. I mean, the last time I was here, you told me that. when you called the white House. for a comment on something, I wrote, they said I was a, a nerd. Nobody had ever heard of some no name. No. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah. Right. Well, I, I think it's only fair to do our best to be accurate.

Well, so, so I mean, no name I go by no name nerd also. Well, thank you for it. Thank you to our new name. Never joins. I aspire I would aspire to get anything like that out of the white House. Well, they're too busy these days. To leave the. Center honors. So you're obviously you're in the studio, and I should say we're recording this. just after the Kennedy Center Honors. You were honored. No, I was I was honored not to be there. So I wanted to talk to you. Well, I mean, there's so much to talk about, right?

But I wanted to talk to you particularly because, as I said, you both, you are the deep state. But more importantly, you have been a chronicler of America's. foreign policy and how America deals with power abroad. And right now we have a defense secretary who, oh, I'm sorry, a secretary of war, a defense secretary who is blowing boats. out of the water, which may or may not be bringing drugs to United States. And it seems like a pretty serious situation.

What should we be thinking about this? I think it's serious on a couple of levels. Right. And on the one level, they're committing murder, right? There's there's no justification whether whether the two guys. that got blown up were floating on a boat that was right side up. or upside down or signaling for help or not signaling for help. And by the way, all those stories go against their stories. They were the boat was upside down. They didn't have a radio. There was no way for them to signal for help. And if you are a shipwrecked in the water,

you are off limits to being attacked, right? So that was murder. But sinking the boat in the first place was murder. Because we're not at war with anybody. The the premise that there is somehow a kill list that it's okay. You know, if the if the Secretary of defense. gives you a list of people to kill, you may kill them legally. That's ridiculous. And offensive and. and it's going to catch up to that whether it catches up sooner or later. The that this is, you know, breaking,

international law. It's breaking the laws of war. It's violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which guides. what the US does. It was wrong of Hegseth to say kill them all. It is wrong of, Admiral Bradley to have gone ahead. and and supported killing them all. And, it's it's bad and they're bragging. and doing more of it, so, you know, but it's getting worse and worse.

But if I may, there is another reason. this is more troubling, and that is that last week, the US government. did something that nobody else pays attention to outside of Washington. And often in Washington, they don't pay attention to it. And that is they release something called the National Security Strategy. and the National Security Strategy of this administration. is to coddle Russia, coddle China,

pull the rug out from under our allies, attack the Europeans for having too many immigrants. But shifting the focus to this hemisphere. where Trump is essentially saying there's a Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, he gets to decide who gets to deal with what in the hemisphere, who gets to tap into what resources in the hemisphere. And if you cross the United States, we're going to take care of it on our own,

and we're going to move assets here. So the big point is what we've seen they want to do more of. They want to make this the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. I want to talk to you first, because this document, 33 pages, to two administrations, normally. set out a foreign policy like this. Yeah. Well, I mean. Maybe to. Answer that question that there by law,

the Congress has mandated that they issue a national security strategy. Typically the national security strategy is kind of a bowl of porridge. You know, it's, we like these guys. We like these guys. We're supporting democracy. We're trying to do good things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Typically it gets released, it gets put in a drawer. It may not get put in a drawer. Nobody ever reads it again. This one is different because it is so outrageous. And on one level, essentially, you know, there's been over the past.

few years, led by Vladimir Putin, this new kind of global alliance. It's not just anti globalist, but it's pro. authoritarian, it's ethno nationalist. It takes a very harsh view against immigrants. And essentially what Trump is. doing in this document is saying we're part of that group. We're you know, those allies we've had since World War. two, since World War One, they're not our allies anymore. Yeah. And the document is brutal.

I just wanted to read a bit of it. Which is exactly about that topic. And it's, it's called promoting European greatness. And I should say. I often, after this author, often offer a disclaimer at the top of, when I'm sitting in for Joanna, this is my Scottish accent, but I am sitting here live and direct. in Manhattan, so I feel I've got some tiny insight into European greatness. And I don't think normally it gets decided.

By what? By who's sitting in more than DC in Europe. And Scotland is not in Europe anymore. But for a while we were and it was. It's all changed. But I just wanted to read some of it, about Europe particularly because I think this is like the one. that goes to the heart of what's going on and in the in this document. And inside Micah, it says that Europe's in economic decline. eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. Can you just what does that even mean?

Oh, it means that there are people coming to Europe who aren't white people. That's particularly nonwhite, nonwhite non-Christians. It's the same thing they're saying here that it's the same thing that Putin says. And Orban says, you know, and, in other parts of the world, it's the same kind of scapegoating another. and racism that is used by Narendra modi. in India about Muslims in his case, or, Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, about Muslims in his case, or was used by Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Javier Melaye in Argentina, there are a bunch of people. who are playing on this kind of demagoguery, this kind of racism. And but this is, you know, particularly disgusting. And the document goes down a few levels from that saying we're going to support. the parties that are, you know, aligned with these views.

And if, if, you know, if the Germans passed a law saying that being, you know, white supremacist as hate, then we're going to go against that because that's hate speech. And so we've lined ourselves up with the far right Germany, the far right in France, the far right in the UK. with Nigel Farage and and the Reform Party. It's, you know, if you're an American, you may say, well, that is remote from me, but essentially you've got to think of two things.

One, where. casting aside. democracy, where promoting and embracing racism. as an American export, we're signing on with the world's other races. But the other thing is, we're attacking our real allies, the people who are the front line defense against Russian aggression. And we're pulling the rug out from them, you know, in, in in what we're talking about here, I expect what you'll see is efforts to pull troops out of Europe.

And the Congress is afraid of it. They're passing a law saying, yeah, you. Should see the the Defense Authorization Act has actually been. which was published in the last couple of days, has got clauses in it. about refusing to allow. Troops to remove it. But. He's going to ignore it. Right, because what he does is he ignores that somebody brings them to court. and they'll go to court. They'll fight it. Meanwhile, the troops are moving, right? They're going to they're going to get out of there. He's going to do what he wants to do. But, you. know, similarly, or as part of this whole thing, it says,

you know, Ukraine better sign on the dotted line and you know, our job. But what's our job, according to this, is to promote. stability in the European Russian relationship. And, you know, this is you know, this is Trump as Putin's errand boy signing on. And if you read the document, you know, as the joke goes, so often these days, you know, it would probably read better than the original Russian. They've erased the metadata. So we don't know.

We don't know. But we do know, for example, that the last peace plan. for Ukraine did include Russian talking points. And we do know they're meeting with the Russians. And we know that at the Kennedy Center Honors last night, because the president. was doing his Jimmy Kimmel impression, and he was hosting these things. 27 minutes of Jimmy Kimmel impression. Yeah, just double the length of Jimmy Kimmel. Including insulting the audience. And it was ugly, but is part of it. Somebody asked him about Ukraine and he said, oh, Zelensky hasn't read our stuff.

I'm disappointed in him. You know, we're going to you know, and Donald Don Jr said, well, dad, you know, one of the strengths of my father is that he's erratic. He didn't use the word erratic, but that he's unpredictable. And, and, I think he may just walk away from Ukraine. And I was like, walk away. Right? And walk away. One he walked away from Ukraine from the beginning. He was on the side of Russia from the beginning. And this document institutionalize us.

And there's another document, a defense strategy document. that almost surely is going to come out and say, yeah, because we're focused on this hemisphere, more assets in this hemisphere. because we're not as focused on, the Middle East or Europe. We're pulling assets out of there. And it was also very kind of cozy, soft on China as well. And perhaps a lot of people in MAGA will say, well, you know, really we're focused on America first. And with Marjorie. Taylor Greene on 60 minutes saying she's not MAGA, she's America first.

But why does this matter? How does it affect normal people? Because a lot of this sounds highbrow and difficult to relate to. But I mean, it must matter, right? Well, I mean, yeah, it depends, you know, I mean, you know, that meme. that's out there where the guys saying we're the baddies, you know, we're. we're the baddies, right? We're now signed up to be the baddies in, you know, we're on Russia's side. We're on Netanyahu's side. We're on Modi's side, we're on XI Jinping's side.

We're on the side of authoritarians. We are not for democracy, the democracy. If you think democracy is a good thing, that's bad, right? If you think standing up against aggression around. the world is a good thing, then what we're doing now is bad. And, you know, in the past, there have been people. who didn't stand up to aggression. Neville Chamberlain didn't stand up to aggression. World War two was the result. I mean, we have some history to know that this is, bad. But, you know, it's also institutionalizing further racism.

It's institutionalizing further, the kind of anti globalist attitude, you know, Marjorie Taylor. Greene, you know, says America first, you know, where did America first start? It started in the, pre the interwar period with people like Henry Ford. and Charles Lindbergh saying, let's not get involved with the rest of the world. Let's isolate ourselves. And, you know, part of that is isolating ourselves.

Part of that is saying, well, you know, if Hitler wants to be Hitler, let Hitler be Hitler, you know, and that's. and frankly, Henry Ford was kind of cool with that. Lindbergh was kind of cool with that. And they obviously had particular anti-Semitic prejudices. But. Very public about. Yeah, they and they, you know, they sort of went along with it. And so I think we are shifting to a place that has been the place. we've opposed for 100 years. You know, we're throwing out everything we've learned about how the world works,

and we are throwing out the people who've been our friends, and we are, you know, embarked, you know, we're just a year into this administration where, where it's just going to be. And three years from now, where does that leave Taiwan? Where does it leave Ukraine? Where does it leave the Baltics? Where does it leave other places the Russians may go after? Where does it leave international institutions? Where does it leave NATO? All these things could be damaged in ways.

that are you know, you can't put the pieces back together. I'm I'm in target. I'm in Walmart. I'm worried about the price of shopping. How do these two things come together? How do. What do you. Bring that home to people? That it's. Well, I mean, look, it dovetails with, tariff strategy. because it's like we don't trust globalization. We don't trust the world. We're not working. within multilateral systems anymore to make sure that there are no tariffs, which was the goal of U.S., you know, trade policy for 80 years.

But, you know, people know because the prices go up. The price of chocolate is higher, the price of coffee is higher. The price of, anything you import is higher. And by the way, today, as we're recording this, you know, Chinese trade data came out. and the Chinese trade data said China's trade deficit is up to $1 trillion. And all the U.S. steps that were allegedly meant to eat into.

Chinese exports to the US and put pressure on China. Didn't zero effect. No effect. And the idea that Trump put forward was, oh, they're going to take more of our soy. and they're going to take more of our beef, and they're going to. that hasn't happened either in these statistics. Well, you know Trump likes to say you know he holds the cards. I think the Chinese have revealed he does not hold the cards. And they manufactured them in the first. Place and that. Right. And they hold the cards. And I think, you know, I think we're going to see more of that in the year ahead.

I think one thing you can look for. is that Trump is planning to go to China in the first part of the year. He wants XI Jinping to come here in the latter part of the year. And I can give you a theory of foreign policy here. that my wife gave me, and I'll share it with you and, and and your viewers and listeners, which is very sophisticated. It's called the dog park theory of foreign policy. If you ever go to a dog park, you notice the dogs are going around sniffing each.

other's butts because they're trying to figure out who's the alpha dog. And the funny thing is, when the alpha dog walks in, it can be the smallest dog in the park. And all the other dogs are like that, bowing down to it, letting the. and and and and and this is just, you know, sort of pack behavior. It's like trying to figure, Donald Trump. is looking around the world sniffing all the bats. And for all the puffing himself up, he has concluded, XI Jinping is the alpha dog. He is.

He's always saying, he's my friend. He's that's the thing that can lift it. He doesn't think Europeans can lift him up. He doesn't think it's the prestige relationship to have, you know, the. you know, he has a trophy wife, he's got trophy houses and so forth. Is the trophy international relations relationship he wants is with China. That you mentioned the next year. And again, I know you've talked you've spoken to Joanna, but there's a great alliance. There's a there's a column and I'll just say go,

go in the Daily Beast and find David Rothkopf column from early in November. this year, Trump's year of hell is just beginning. And one of the things you mentioned in the book is tariffs, that we are going. people are going to really feel the impact of them because. in this on Monday morning, this morning, this morning that the big retailers. are looking at late December and January after Christmas to put up prices. Well, you know, you know, Trump. lives the life of the chronic bullshitter.

You know he's got his patter down. He goes out. He sells a good line. But every so often the chickens come home to roost. You know certain people say, well, you promised me this. Where is it? You know, and that, you know, he ran for office again, saying, I'm. going to fix the economy and I'm going to make everything better, and we're going to be respected in the world, and I'm going to be a peacemaker, and so on and so forth. And the reality is, you can get all the made up. trophies from FIFA and other people you want, and you can have your cabinet.

say that, you know, you're handsome and you have a six pack and all that. kind of stuff, but. what does it mean for regular people? And the problem is this ties here. Prior question over the next year, what are you going to say. you're going to see prices go up. You're going to see the economy slow down. You're going to see that the services you got, from the Veterans Administration are not available to you anymore. You're going to see the cost of your health. where care double or triple or quadruple,

you know, and that you're not going to be able to actually afford your health care. if your kid got picked up on a school bus because they're disabled, you're going to see that that program is canceled. If you look outside your window and you're living in most American cities. these days, you're going to see ice rounding up your neighbor or rounding up. somebody who works in your neighborhood, dragging them off, whether they're an American citizen or they're not, whether they did. anything wrong or not, whether they're contributing to the community or not.

And that's going to add up. And I think that that's why the year is going to be terrible. And it's just doubly terrible for Donald Trump, because despite all his efforts to put his thumb on the scale. of the elections, there will be an election next year. And all the signs say the Republicans are going to do terribly in the election. next year. And so the chickens are going to come home to roost at the worst possible time. Voters are going to know about it. He can't give a speech to talk his way.

out of this one, because it's people's lives. And and that's going to be bad news for him. And if the Democrats win control of the House or the Senate, the next year is going to. be even worse for Donald Trump because he will be impeached. People in his cabinet will be impeached. His programs will be dead in the water. And the Donald Trump chapter of American history. It'll be over because he'll be 80 years old. And yet he will have no future in politics.

And the guys on his own team will be going, maybe this isn't, you know, the star to hitchhiker wagon to anymore. And they're going to be looking for outs like Marjorie Taylor Greene is now. So you mentioned his age. Trump is 79. He'll be 80 on June the 14th. And I mention that date because national parks will be open for free. On his. On his. Birth, not on Martin Luther King Day. On Martin Luther King Day. No. Why why would you. why would you celebrate Martin Luther King Day when you can celebrate,

the president's birthday? Well, you know, we're going to also. on the president's birthday, there's going to be a big celebration. on the white House South Lawn. Yes. And it's going to it's going to be, you know, I think it's going to capture. the the spirit of the Trump. administration because it's going to be a cage match, a WWE cage match on the South Lawn of the white. House in an octagon. Well, of course, I mean, how would you do it? I don't know how else. So, you know, maybe, maybe they'll add a ninth side to it.

just in honor of Trump, you know, give that a new name. I hope it's gold. Well, Trump. Trump is gone. Yeah. And that is and that's because they should. Right. It's the president of the United States. They should be fighting it a golden Trump a guy. We've yet to see where on this, Trump are gone. The guilt goes because there's obviously, you. Know, the. the guilt the guilt should go. on American voters who elected this asshole in the first place. But I think it's spelled differently than the.

People he we are looking at two different forms of two. Different forms of guilt, but nonetheless, it's a homonym. And we can, you know, we can embrace the transition. because, you know, folks, you should have known this was coming. This isn't our first. Should be. A surprise. Four years with this, right? You know, this guy is one of the most visible people in America. and has always been, you know, a repugnant figure.

I mean, it's like the Epstein thing. It's like, what do people think they're going to discover from the Epstein files. that they don't already know? I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of confirmation. Right. But that's just it's just kind of it's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. One of the I just wanted to go back to one of the things you. you mentioned the cage fight. Yeah. I knew we'd end up there. Mean we brought you here for. You're from new. Jersey. You're from new. Jersey? I'm from Scotland. Thank you. Both of history. Yeah, thank you very much. But,

Michael Wolf is from new Jersey. Michael Wolf is also from new Jersey. Yes. We could have, special Daily Beast reenactment or. A cage. Match. Match preview of the cage match. He would not do well against me. I I'm going to I'm going to sit that one. I'm not even going on public market. Yeah, yeah. No, but. The the idea of the cage match or. Culture. Or either and we would welcome sponsorship from either, please get in touch in the comments. You know where we are.

It does look a bit like there's a cage match. going on in the cabinet, because there are people who are beginning. to see, as you've said, that this ends and they have to position themselves. And Marjorie Taylor Greene has got out first, and is denying that she's going to run for president, which is usually the most effective way of running for president. But there's a lot of wind. There's a lot of potentially wounded wildebeest I want in the cabinet. I want to talk about Hegseth. And the reason I want to talk to, particularly to you, as.

you wrote a history of the National Security Council. Yeah. And we have not heard anything about the national. Well, the. National Security Council, you know, was put out of its misery, essentially, you know, when, the he had to fire. has his national security adviser, as he does so often. He during the last term, he did it a few times as well. And instead of replacing him, they they said, okay, Marco Rubio is going to run it in addition to,

by the way, running the National Archives, the State Department and USAID. has got four jobs. And they got rid of. most of the staff, and they don't listen to the staff. I think the staffing level professional staffing level at the NSC. is down around 60, 70 people, which is the size it was. sort of when Henry Kissinger was national. security advisor in the 1970s. In the past 20 years, it's been 300, 400 people. Why? Because presidents wanted expertise to guide their decision making.

Well, Trump doesn't listen that expertise, so it's become irrelevant. But I think to your point, Hegseth, you know, if you had to handicap who's going first, Hegseth. could be on that list because it's not that there's one problem. It's just from the beginning he has been a problem. You know, he did signal gate. His staff then turned on him and ditched him.

He then started, you know, going his die purge, getting rid of admirals and generals who are women or people of color. He got, you know, Jackie Robinson books thrown out of libraries. He renamed, bases after Confederate generals. He he did a lot of things that were super unpopular. But the worst thing he did for him and for Trump, was with his speech at Quantico, which I think you and I talked about the last time I was here talking to you. And all of his other behavior.

is he pissed off all the generals and admirals, and they know how to play the game better than he knows how to play the game. And and so when he starts to throw them under the bus, like he did with, you know, the the admiral has been in charge of the, the the boat incident. They didn't say, hey, boss, you're throwing us under the bus. They said, you know, Bob or Betty, get me the Washington Post online.

and, you know, or call me Senator Wicker, that Republican head of the, Senate Armed Services, who's. Notably not calling us the Secretary of war. No. Well, nor should anybody, but let's be honest. But but. I should say we do it the Daily Beast policy, very strictly. We refer correctly to him as secretary of defense. Yeah, because that is actually the aim of the department. Right. And, you. know, what are these people do they just throw them under the bus.

and they will make his life a living hell because he is making their life. a living hell. He is actually putting troops at risk. You know, if the US starts to say, well, you know, you can shoot anybody. anytime, for any reason. Who, who. Who's on who's going to be vulnerable to that? It's going to be U.S. troops, right? I mean, when the last time that this happened during World War two, when American sailors were floating in the water beside a wrecked ship. and Germans or Japanese,

shot them, we prosecuted them for war crimes. Right. And they know that this is not a game. It's not a Fox TV show. It's not Trump. And Haig says pumping up their testosterone levels. This has real consequences. And they're going to go after him. And so my sense is I don't think Hegseth can survive this. Does Tulsi Gabbard also go. because she's alienated people, or does Kristi Noem go because.

he's, you know, she's done some crazy nonsense. with Corey Lewandowski or does, you know, are there others who will go. Allegedly, Allegedly. You know, the reality is, yeah, they'll there'll be others because this, you know, at the end of the year tends to be in an administration. There is some turnover anyway. But I don't think Hegseth. I think it'd be too big a headache for Trump. as he goes into this year where his party is fragmenting.

And I think that's the you know, the bigger thing is. Marjorie Taylor Greene, but also Wicker and other people saying, you know, or or, you know, the, what's the one who, you know, the who's co-leading the Epstein effort? Oh. Right. Thomas Massie. Makes it right, you know, and these these people are like that, that that they're not afraid of Trump anymore. And that in some respects, the biggest development in U.S.

politics in the past couple of months is nobody's afraid of Trump. Now, you worked very closely with Henry Kissinger. Yeah, I just raised that because he's my mother. Jones. Well, I read it really because he's a man that people were afraid of, but also respected. And I'm not going to go down, you know, the difficult road of right. and wrong here. But he was a, he was, A figure you can go down the difficult road.

He was wrong. And a lot of things. Well, I was only going. I was only avoiding that because I just wanted to focus on the personality. issue of it a bit, that Trump doesn't have a Henry Kissinger. Right or wrong, he doesn't have. We listen. He adds, when he thinks he's the only Henry Kissinger he needs, you know, he's got Steve Wyckoff to go and essentially. be the most powerful foreign policy figure other than him. And maybe Jared is coming back because, you know, I mean, he likes people. who confirm his, his his his impulses.

And that will, you know, do what he asks them to do. Now, by the way, Rubio has had his spine surgically removed. He is not standing up for anything either. But I think Rubio, like JD. Vance, is sitting there going, how do I play this? Because I want to succeed, right? Trump and I just think, you know, this is going to be the whole thing. You know, you guys cover with a great avidity how many Band-Aids he's got on his hand.

We we are always on ankles. And this. War. And the circumference of his ankles. Yes. And, you know, I mean. You know, those are these are actually I mean, these are serious issues. They actually are serious issues because they are evidence. that Donald Trump is at the end of his story. They are signs to the world that this is not a vigorous person. This is not a person who's, you know, biography is about their future. It's about their past. And,

everybody can see that in Washington and. Especially the people who are sitting in Marco Rubio's case to his. Right. Well, I know JD Vance is case across the. Table at the cabinet meeting. Marco Rubio is sitting there going, you know, the president is the most vigorous, brilliant man ever. And Trump's like, you know, Trump, Trump is passed out next to him. You know. So you know I mean Rubio is like in the shot. that then everybody uses to go these people are losing it. Yes.

And and but but but they're also Marco. If you're Marco Rubio you've got to be unhappy. that you're not shot because you can't you're a you're not in this territory. You can't say. Well, that's the thing is, they're going to spend all their lives going, well, you know, I was there advising Trump not to do this horrible thing. You know, I was I was the conscience of this administration. But, you know, I think I don't trust anything Marjorie Taylor Greene says. And, you know, if you watched her 60 minutes interview.

over the weekend, she was still pretty gross. And still pretty much Marjorie Taylor Greene. But there's one thing she says that everybody knows is true, and that is behind the scenes. Republicans are making fun of Trump behind the scenes. They are saying he's not up to it. He's crazy. What is he's going to do that he literally cannot pass. an object without thinking it should be named for him. You know? I mean, you know, he wants to name the Kennedy Center after himself.

The past week, he renamed the US Institute of Peace after himself. He said last week that he wants to tear down Dulles Airport. And you know why? Because he wants to name it after himself. And there's a move afoot to name things after him. So, to me, by the way, you know, if. you're watching his band Aids and you're watching his cankles. the number of things he wants to name after himself, I think is a good indicator of how ill he thinks he is, because this is just him looking for some legacy.

It's just him saying, well, that could make me immortal if, you know, because because I think he realizes that he is. shuffling off this mortal coil sooner rather than later. Well, if you were in the Trump cabinet, or maybe if you were a Trump. cabinet members, chief of staff, what would you be doing. right now? Looking for plan B? You know, you'd be, you know, how do I get a soft landing?

How do I get out? How do I put a place where, you know, I don't alienate Trump? Well, he has some power, but that I can distance myself from Trump. And by the way, it's not just the cabinet. You know, who else is doing that? Elon, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, all the people who are catering to him, all the people who are funding his,

you know, ballroom where he, by the way, fired the architects last week. And the price is getting bigger and bigger, you know, all all these people are walking a fine line. How do I keep this lunatic from screwing up my life? Now, how do I get as much as I can out of him while he's, like, selling pardons and selling. market share and you know all that, and. do it in a way where whoever comes. next doesn't throw me in the slammer.

or I, you know, or sort of stigmatize me because and I'm going to tell you, you know, if I or if I'm in this, I'm not a stock advisor. You are not giving out investment advice, right? Do not. But if I were Palantir and I were a shareholder in Palantir, which is just said we are all in with Trump. and we have the most overvalued stock in the whole stock market. because, you know, look at our, our, our multiple,

which is just crazy compared to our actual real earnings. I would be like, oh boy, there's a reckoning coming. And I think that's going to be true in a lot of places. All right. As has been true in crypto by the way. Well, you see the Trump the Trump the family will come. A lot of the millennial crypto is down. I can't believe you made me buy into. Well I thought it was going to be a short thing. I think. It's down to I think is 1/20 of it's high point, maybe. It's 90% down 90% in its value.

And I would just move all your assets into her new production company. That's an investment tip that we should all perhaps ignore. Ignore. But. Ignore. If we can get that production company to do a cage match of you and Michael Wolff. That is be the shortest cage match in history. I've. Come on, bring it on. I'm ready, I will. I will, I will have to will will be refereeing it in the Trump garden. In the, in the Trump. I got two aging Jews from new Jersey who went to Columbia University.

Oh, I've forgotten those. Yes. You're right. Yeah, exactly. But there are differences, folks. There are differences. May draw your own conclusions. I just there are there are there are there are many differences. One piece of one thing I will say in common before or after your cage match. is that both David Rothkopf and Michael Wolff provide unparalleled insights into. into the world of Trump and to the world that's going to come after Trump.

I let the illusion, I hope. Yeah. And and also that they are regulated to be found. here on the Daily Beast podcast and inside Trump's head. Not to mention Deep State Radio. David, let's see, where else can we find Deep State radio? Deep state radio? We do lots of podcasts every week. So deep State radio.com and I do a Substack called Need to Know. which people can go to and get videos and also get stuff I've written. And I have a new article in The New Republic.

today on President's national security strategy. And I definitely recommend checking it out. Check out Deep State Radio, which is I was go see every day in the week. Every single day of the week, every single 15, 16 podcasts a week. Desperately trying to stay one step ahead of you guys. David Rothkopf I hope we'll be back soon. to bring his wisdom if he survives that cage match. David, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.

David Rothkopf, thank you for your insights. Good luck with the cage match prep. You can keep up to date with the other cage match, the one in DC at the Daily Beast. Subscribe to never miss a Kangol or Bruce Hand at. the Daily beast.com. Thank you to everyone who subscribes. Thank you to everyone who's part of our YouTube channel. We love your comments. Thank you to everybody who commented on our interview with Senator Slotkin. and Major General Eaton. I just want to give a big shout out to Karen White, one of our best level.

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