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- [00:01]
A
Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com
- [00:28]
B
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- [00:57]
C
have our wannabe king going to their successor to the emperor. What's gonna happen is that they're gonna do just what has happened throughout, you know, history. There's something called the great kowtow, which is when these leaders come in and they have to bow to the Emperor of China, and Trump's gonna do a bunch of that in private meetings. This is what really worries people. Is he gonna give a wink and a nod and say, well, I don't really care so much about Taiwan, or, you know, help me out a little bit on Iran and I'll help you out a little bit on Taiwan. Everybody knows Trump doesn't actually believe in anything that, you know, doesn't put money in his bank account or make him look better. And those are the things I'd watch for coming out of any trip of Trump anywhere.
- [01:49]
D
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast, and it's an enormous week for the leader of the free world. By whom I mean Donald Trump, because he's going on a trip to China. Who better to discuss this with than a man who talks to, well, all sorts of connections in China himself, David Rothkopf. He can explain why the Chinese call Trump behind his back, comrade nation builder. And he's not building the nation he should be building. Building and why J.D. vance is the equivalent of political hantavirus. Just before we get into it, please smash the subscription button wherever you get this podcast. We are independent media and we love your support and we appreciate your support. All right, no time to waste. Big trip to China this week. David Rothkopf. Let's get into it. David Rothkopf.
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C
Joanna Coles.
- [02:49]
D
If it's Monday, it must be Rothkopf. And on Wednesday this week, our leader, the great leader of the free world, Donald J. Trump, is going to China. He's going to China. You've written an excellent column on this. What's going to happen when he gets there? What are the Chinese planning for him?
- [03:11]
C
Well, I think he's going for two things. One is he's going to change the subject. He is so desperate to take the subject away from Iran, his plummeting poll numbers, controversies over what color he's painting the reflecting pool in Washington. Nothing is going right for Donald Trump right now. So what he'd like to do is have some big scene on the world stage where he feels like I am a statesman and going to China is one of those because he thinks Xi Jinping is the world leader whose approval matters the most. Because frankly, he is. In fact, I think Donald Trump may be on this trip the first time a US President has ever gone to China where the US President wasn't the most powerful man in the room. The Chinese president will be. But what he wants. Well, it is what it is, but what he wants is some kind of wins. He does not want to fight with the Chinese. The New York Times today has story they have both sides are ready to stand tough with each other. That's because they're talking to people in both governments who are saying that they want to appear tough. But what Trump wants is some deals. And he's gonna get the deals the way he usually gets deals, which is to say he's gonna take a problem that he created and undo it. That's how he gets wins this time around. And so he's created all these tariffs and he'll say, well, we'll remove some of the tariffs in exchange for the Chinese agreeing to buy a bunch of stuff, which is, by the way, exactly what happened in his last term. And they didn't buy the stuff. They know that they don't have to follow through on that. These are non binding promises. And I don't know, he'll get some kind of deal on rare earth metals or something and he'll say, look, it was fantastic. And there was a big dinner and there was a toast and they loved me. And Xi Jinping put his arm around me and so by association I'm a great man because he's a great man and if that's what he wants.
- [05:31]
D
Well, this seems so typical of leaders when they get into trouble at home that they go abroad looking for international validation, as if somehow that's going to impact American voters. But I do Remember, and I'm just picking up on your point that the last time you went to China, 2017, so nine years ago, he came back claiming that he had won $250 billion worth of business, most of which didn't happen or the rest of which had actually already been agreed upon. So this is basically nine years on, another PR exercise. Is that fair?
- [06:11]
C
Well, no, no, it's absolutely fair. First of all, second term presidents tend to do this. They realize that they're lame ducks and they have less influence here, and so they travel more, they go around the world. But I point out in the article, there's a long history of world leaders making their way to China, the Middle Kingdom, because it was so important. And in this case, we have our wannabe king going to their successor to the emperor, but Xi Jinping's the emperor. And what's gonna happen is that they're gonna do just what has happened throughout history. There's something called the Great Kowtow, which is when these leaders come in and they have to bow to the Emperor of China. And Trump's gonna do a bunch of that. You just know that he is. And in private meetings, this is what really worries people. Is he gonna give a wink and a nod and say, well, I don't really care so much about Taiwan, or, you know, help me out a little bit on Iran and I'll help you out a little bit on Taiwan or whatever? You know, I mean, nobody knows because everybody knows. Trump doesn't actually believe in anything that, you know, doesn't put money in his bank account or make him look better. And those are the things I'd watch for coming out of any trip of Trump anywhere.
- [07:40]
D
So, David, when you say that he wants to do deals, to what extent do you think he wants to come away with some personal grift here? Is this also about him getting Trump Hotels a chain of Trump Hotels across various provinces?
- [07:57]
C
Well, I don't know. I'd look to see whether his sons are with him on this trip or they go shortly after. You recall that when he went over to China in his first term, right before the trip, the Chinese granted a bunch of trademarks and other kinds of benefits to Ivanka Trump's businesses. So they're used to sort of buttering Trump's bread a little bit. And I think that's what happens when these foreign leaders used to go to visit the Emperor of China. They would bring presents for the emperor, but it was a tradition for the Emperor of China to give even bigger presents back to show how powerful he was. And, well, you know, Xi Jinping is not the emperor, at least in title. He's certainly got the authority of any emperor. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a little something something for a president in all this.
- [08:58]
D
Well, I hope he gets more than the crystal football that Marco Rubio gave the Pope to which the Pope looked nonplussed and went, oh, okay, wow. Because a crystal football, small. It was a miniature one. It wasn't even a full size one, seemed diminutive for the Pope. And I'm assuming that more will go
- [09:19]
C
to China, but there's always less than meets the eye to Marco Rubio.
- [09:25]
D
Well, we can come on to Marco Rubio in a moment, but I wanted to ask you to expound on the paragraph in your column I found most interesting, which is actually that tomorrow, Donald Trump is the single person who's helped China most in the last 10 years, that actually his. What's the word? Quarterizing of American foreign policy has allowed China to expand in all sorts of ways. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I'm thinking of the paragraph that begins. Furthermore, Trump has taken almost systematically steps to have benefited China. He's promoted fossil fuels and at the same time pushed up their prices, thus enabling China, the world leader in green technology, to cash in. He's turned away the best minds from our universities. He's cut scientific research, so China's increased theirs. He's directed dollars that could have been invested in American schools and the health of the US Workforce and siphoned them off to help America's billionaires. He's fostered trade wars. He's enabled China to step in and seize new markets. And he's made America look undependable and China, amazingly, as if it's the most stable nation.
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C
Yeah, that's a good answer to your question.
- [10:52]
D
Well, there's nothing better than having. There's nothing better than having your words read back to you. Right?
- [10:58]
C
Yeah, Right. Well, no, but I mean, I think that that's the point, Right? In fact, in China, there's a joke, and the joke extends back to the last term, but it continues to be used where in Chinese, Trump is often referred to as comrade nation builder. And it's sort of wry Chinese humor that he's not building the US As a nation, he's helping to build China as a nation. And almost every decision Trump makes, this Iran war distracts us. We're using weapons that we've had in the Indo Pacific, we're moving them to this part of the world where you're spending billions of dollars. We're sending the message to the world that we are not a reliable partner, that we are a rogue state. China is seen by all the countries in the region as kind of a stabilizing influence that helps them. When he goes into a place like Venezuela, when he goes in and seeks to undermine the NATO alliance, when he pulls funding for the things that help America grow, when he promotes division in the United States between rich and poor or white and black, or men and women, all of these things ultimately help China's relative influence in the world in a way that I would go a step further and say Trump is behaving in this kind of boorish way, this emperor's new clothes way of trying to throw around his power. There was this Atlantic article a week or so ago saying Trump thinks of himself as a great man of history. And the Chinese, meanwhile, are learning how to be a different kind of superpower than the US Or a different kind of superpower than the Soviet Union was. They're doing it low key. It's transactional. It's not ideological, unlike the Soviet Union. They want a global system. They just want to have more influence within it. And in every possible way. Under Trump, they've gained in every possible way. And they know that. They know that the longer Trump is in office, the better it's going to be for them, relatively speaking. And honestly, I don't think anybody in China, and I go to China periodically, I talk to Chinese leaders, talk to Chinese diplomats. I talk to journalists in China all the time. I've been to China, I don't know, 20 times in my life. And I have to say they had no idea that Donald Trump was going to assist them in kind of rocketing forward as they have in the course of the past few years.
- [14:01]
D
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- [15:42]
C
Well, you know, it's real interesting. I remember going to China in 2019, and I remember going once speaking at the Shanghai Institute of International affairs, and everybody leaned forward, who's going to win the election? And I said, oh, Hillary Clinton will definitely win the election. I'm an expert. I knew that that would happen. But then they were like, well, what would happen if Trump won the election? And I was like, well, he doesn't know much. He's never served in high public office before. He has less public service than anybody who has ever been elected president. He has no foreign policy experience. And they said back then, and a lot of people said it to me in that initial period, but he's rich. And being rich carries a lot of weight with it in China because it's assumed that because he's rich, he's smart, they felt the same way about Elon. Elon Musk's mother is kind of a big celebrity there. They like richness. The thing that they wish each other at Chinese New Year is may you get rich. And that colored their view. But over time, they came to realize that Trump was a kind of a buffoon, and they started to make fun of him. And this Comrade Nation Builder thing started a long time ago. You know, another nickname he has is the King of Knowing, you know, which, because he's, you know, he's always saying, I know everything.
- [17:29]
D
You know, he's the King of knowing. What a great name for him.
- [17:33]
C
Yeah, well, you know, these, these, you know, in Chinese, that's Dong Wang, W A N G. But, you know, he's, he's known as Tariff Beauty. He's known, you know, all these memes come up in Chinese social media, which is, of course, super Advanced. And the Chinese government, which, you know, censors some social media, is not so quick to censor comments about Trump, although they may be this week. But, you know, when Trump did that prayer circle and everybody got around him and, you know, put their hands on him, it instantly became a meme because it was so kooky. And they thought, you know, this is so kooky.
- [18:26]
D
So, David, if you're Xi Jinping and you're expecting Trump to turn up on Wednesday, what is your. Are you flattering him? Are you being passive aggressive as the British would be, and sort of laughing behind his back? Or what is. How will they show their, I guess it's sort of faux regard for his power, knowing that they think he's a buffoon?
- [18:58]
C
I think they won't show that. They will be formally very respectful of him. They will host banquets, they will take him on tours, they will give him gifts, they will have high level meetings, they will do photo ops. If Trump or somebody in Trump's orbit pushes on them hard, as US Visitors have in the past on Taiwan or on Tibet or on the rights of Christians in China or on what's going on in Chin Shang province with the Uyghurs or those kind of things, they will push back. But I don't think they expect much of that. I think if there is any nudging from Trump, they expect him to say, hey, could you cut it out with helping the Iranians? And they will say, well, we think this is an illegal war. And they've become very, very self confident. And what happens is when people challenge them, they just simply say no, they shut it down. And this has happened multiple times in the past, even the few weeks with other visitors coming by. And China is more confident right now in its global leadership role and its strength. And, and its leaders there has been in centuries, I think, and it's worth remembering, and I don't want to make too big a historical detour, but China was the largest economy in the world for all of world history until 1835 or so, when the Industrial Revolution gave countries in Europe, beginning with the UK a leg up. And it took about 150 years for the Industrial Revolution to catch up to China. But once it did, once China had the technology, it was only a matter of time before it would assume again the role of largest economy. And that's where we are. That's this inflection point in history that we're at. It seems we talk about Trump all the time, but it's not really about Trump. It's about much bigger historical trends.
- [21:41]
D
So you mentioned that this will distract attention, obviously, from Iran. What's happening in the Strait of Hormuz? What's happening? Where are we? Who's shooting at who?
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C
Well, at any given moment, anybody could be shooting at anybody else. What happened over the weekend was that the Iranians submitted their response to U.S. peace proposals, or whatever you would call the U.S. proposals. And the Iranian response was essentially to lay out their positions again. And Trump saw this and he blew up and he said, this is an unacceptable response because they're not going to give up their enriched uranium. They are not going to send it out of Iran. He is not going to get a deal on the Iranian uranium. Say that five times fast. He's not gonna get a deal on that. That is better than the deal we had in 2015 with the JCPOA. And that's which stands for Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And so he's desperate to say, I got a better deal than Obama, and he's not gonna get it. And that's why for him, his last best hope is to change the subject and hope something else happens.
- [23:10]
D
But how can he change the subject? I understand in domestic affairs, he can change the subject. He can say things aren't happening. But we know that oil is not being dispersed across the world. I'm sitting here in Europe every day, the papers are full of the increase in energy prices and the fact that people are gonna have to take their summer holidays in the UK because airlines are going to be unreliable because of the price and availability of jet fuel. This is not.
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C
And you don't even have summer in the uk.
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D
Right. So that's how bad it is. That's how bad it is.
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C
Exactly.
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D
So he can't hide from the energy shock that has rippled throughout the globe because of the Strait of Hormuz. So when people say, oh, he's going to ignore it, or he's going to say it's over, he can't. I mean, he can say it's over, but people know it's not over because they are experiencing the consequences.
- [24:16]
C
Yeah. And I think that's why, as I've said before, I think the most likely outcome is to move the goalposts on a regular basis. So you say, okay, well, let's have a framework agreement. And then they agree to a framework agreement, which is a predicate to a preliminary agreement. The preliminary agreement doesn't deal with some of the tough issues. Those will be dealt with in phases, and phase one will come. And how do I know this well because that's what happened in Gaza. There was going to be a 22 point plan and we came up with an agreement to discuss the plan. And I think we've done one of the 22 points or two of the 22 points. And the hard things like getting Hamas to disarm themselves, that's not happening. But we created a process and we hid behind the process. That's the most likely outcome here, that we create a process, we hide behind the process. We slowly pull some of the ships out of the area, but we remain in a heightened state of awareness. There are flare ups on a periodic basis and, you know, it's managed as we go now, by the way, also over the weekend, both Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump at different times said there are things that suggest that fighting will continue. And so I just think what we're going to end up with is a very sloppy situation and Trump will come up with some way to tone it down a little bit, I think. By the way, here's another. This is just one of my own little. It's not quite a conspiracy theory. It's just a theory. Okay. But I've been talking to some people around town and people are like the Daily Beast, other people that write articles. Well, Marco Rubio's on the way up and JD Vance is on the way down. And that does seem to be true. But the question is whether that's a prize for Marco. Because I think what happens is Trump says, okay, Marco, you are our Iran man. No. Which, by the way, if you're the Secretary of State and the national security advisor, as he is, that's what it should be. But what I'm saying is I think Trump will push the responsibility down. That's another thing that he does. Might he start a war with Cuba? Sure. There are reports now of activity in and around Cuba, intelligence gathering activity by the US that is absolutely identical to the activity that preceded us going into Venezuela. So go to China, go to Cuba, do a tax cut, have a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House, have a big birthday party when Trump turns 80.
- [27:17]
D
Read some UFO files.
- [27:20]
C
Yeah, by the way. Yeah, I didn't. I mean, that was a nothing burger, but nothing burger. Right. But every single. But why was it released? Why was, you know, I mean, you know, release an Epstein file every two days. I don't know, have Melania make another movie. They will come up with stuff to try to distract from this because. And this is really what we should lose sight of it's one of the biggest fuck ups ever by a president. It's not the biggest. The Iraq war. There were 600,000 people who were killed in the Iraq war and that shouldn't have happened. Vietnam was pretty bad. We've had our share of screw ups, but just in terms of the recklessness and, and mismanagement of this, it's epic. I mean, it is really a clown show and they're not able to get out of it because there's nobody competent involved. And Trump's expectations are completely unrealistic.
- [28:27]
D
It's so interesting being in Europe because people keep saying to me, oh, thank goodness for Marco Rubio, because Marco Rubio, the only standard they have for him is that he can say, speak fluently. So they understand that Donald Trump is sort of challenged and goes off on his weave and he's 80 and he's got chronic venous insufficiency and his hands are swollen and his feet are swollen and everything about him is swollen. But they assume that somehow Marco Rubio.
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C
Not everything, but go on.
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D
But they assume that Marco Rubio is somehow running the show because he's coherent and can string a sentence together. They believe that J.D. vance is a puppet of Peter Thiel and the sort of crazy, right, Catholic Silicon Valley guys. But Marco Rubio is a guy. They feel, they recognize that he seems to speak normally. He's a neocon. They understand that, obviously because of the Bush era. And I keep saying, I think to your point, Donald Trump is setting him up for failure in the way that he's setting J.D. vance up for failure because he doesn't want anybody to follow him. And certainly he's sort of suggesting that Cuba will be Marco Rubio's next move. Right.
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C
Well, I'm sure Marco Rubio is pushing for that, but I do think your point is a really essential point. Right. Marco Rubio talks a smooth game. He was a senator for a while, but in the course of being in the Trump administration, he's given up every value he had, including thinking Trump was a danger to the republic when he was running for president against him. But now, I mean, he has done thing after thing after thing, which is Trumpian and dangerous. And so he may talk a smooth game, but this is the guy who shut down USAID. And the Lancet has predicted that 14 million people will die as a result of it, not be inconvenience willed die between now and the end of this decade as a result of this thing that Marco Rubio has overseen. Marco Rubio is gutting the State Department in the middle of this war. They have shut down the parts of the State Department that manage nuclear issues. They have gutted parts of the State department. They fired 200 diplomats last week. He backs Trump on all of Trump's craziness. And I think Europeans of all people ought to be able to understand that being able to speak in coherent sentences is often a cover for people with really malignant intentions or incompetence. I mean, you're in the UK right now. Keir Starmer can speak in sentences, right? But he's a terrible prime minister and the country just gave him a big kick in the butt.
- [31:32]
E
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- [31:54]
D
of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required Rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com yeah, it's interesting. I mean, Keir Starmer, it's a little bit like watching someone being bullied in the playground. I mean, he got a landslide victory for labor after 14 years of conservative rule and yet it was called the loveless landslide because nobody likes him. As we're recording this, he's actually addressing his party to see whether or not he will have their continued support for the next three years.
- [32:29]
C
He's a small prime minister and he may not be Churchill, but you know, neither was Churchill. Right. He got turfed out as soon as the war was over. True. And you know, he had made plenty of patches of not being super successful. The British populace is fickle. But I think there's something bigger going on there which is super interesting to should be to Americans and that is that there have been these political parties in the UK for 150 years. The Tories and the Labour Party ultimately became known as. And in the most recent round of elections, who dominated it? The Reform Party, the Green Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the two traditional parties fell behind like they did in France. And I think that there is a question about what is the shelf life of traditional political parties if they don't adapt? And why is that relevant to Americans? Well, duh, you know, I mean the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, the Republicans threw in with maga. This bunch of lunatics. And once Trump goes, I don't know that there's gonna be anything left there. There's no real leadership. And the Democrats have not been particularly great in their response to that. And so I think there is a yearning, and I don't know if it's going to come outside of these parties or new factions within these parties, but there sure is a yearning for change in the United States and just new blood, new voices, new ideas. And I suspect that's going to come from somewhere in the center left this time around, and I certainly hope that it does. But we have the same hunger, Europe has this same hunger, that we need political leaders to start talking about the future, start talking about a world being remade by AI, start talking about a world in which China is a leader, start talking about a world in which the jobs we thought we would have for the rest of our lives, we won't have, or the university educations we thought would benefit our kids are not going to benefit our kids. And, you know, they want people to deal with these real issues. And right now, political parties everywhere are falling real short.
- [34:56]
D
Well, and I think also it's fair to say one of the lessons from the British election is that people want politicians who don't talk in jargon. They want people who talk in theory, as it is, which we know is one of the reasons that Trump, especially first time around, was so popular, that in theory, he just said the stuff that a lot of people were thinking but didn't dare say. And Nigel Farage, who's the Trump Light character here, has that ability to speak as if he's standing next to you in the pub. And I was looking through some of the comments that he's made recently because we were describing him in another podcast as a drinker. And in fact, someone had said to me, is he a drinker? Because he's always photographed with a pint of beer in his hand, as if he's down at the pub and you just want to go up and have a beer with him. Which, of course, we remember people saying they felt they wanted to do with George Bush. And he said, I'm a boozer, but I'm not an alcoholic. And just the word boozer sort of makes you feel like, oh, he's a guy that likes a couple of beers. I like a couple of beers. Why not? Anyway, he's got some alarming policies. He's very much Trump light. He spent a lot of time with Donald Trump. He just got five million pounds that was given to him in A sort of Trump like move from one of his supporters. That was, in theory for his security and it was a gift, so he doesn't have to pay tax on it, which has caused people some raised eyebrows. But it didn't stop them voting for him. It feels very Trumpian. Anyway, let's figure out.
- [36:29]
C
It is very Trumpy. And the amazing thing is that Farage was behind Brexit, which was the stupidest collective decision that any country has made in the past 50 years other than electing Donald Trump. And somehow he has still managed to stick around with, by the way, the help of some Russian oligarchs. A little bit of a nudge here because the Russians like to do this, as they did with Marie Le Pen in France and as they've done with some of these other parties, they did with former Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary. And isn't it nice because Peter Magyar was inaugurated over the weekend that we can say former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. And as they're trying to do here
- [37:18]
D
in the US despite his help from JD Vance at that rally the week of the election, Viktor Orban, oddly enough.
- [37:26]
C
Oddly enough, J.D. vance is the kiss of death politically.
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D
The Pope, he was the kiss of death for the Pope who died the day after meeting him. And now Victor Orban, he does not have the touch of, of luck about him. He is not an Irish leprechaun.
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C
JD Vance is political hantavirus.
- [37:49]
D
He is a political hunter virus. That's brilliant. That's exactly what J.T. vance is. You're just like, no, no, keep him away from it.
- [37:57]
C
Vice president is coming.
- [37:58]
D
No, no.
- [38:01]
C
By the way, I don't know if you do sometimes manage to get to watch SNL while you're over there. And this weekend, Matt Damon was us. It was pretty good. But in Weekend Update, there was a scene where they had Donald Trump on camera saying, don't worry about hantavirus. There's only one or two Americans affected. We have it under control. And then they cut brilliantly to the exact same statement from Trump in 2020, in March of 2020 or February 2020, saying, don't worry about COVID There's only one person who is a victim. We have it under control. Almost the exact same words. And it was absolutely chilling. And it was, you know, to me, it was a good reminder, you know, this Trump, a billion people died under Trump because he mismanaged it all. The estimates are that 2, 3, 400,000 of those people wouldn't have died if Donald Trump had managed this thing properly. And somehow we forget that. And I'm afraid the way we're gonna be reminded is, you know, pandemic number two.
- [39:08]
D
Last week you talked about the fact that you thought we'd been in a collective sort of almost depression for the last 10 years because we went from Trump to Covid to Joe Biden.
- [39:18]
C
Yeah, it's true. It's true.
- [39:19]
D
Right. And back to Trump. We also talked last week about it being this sort of reality show and him going round his cabinet table and each character seem worse than the last. And now, of course, we discover Sean Duffy, the Transport Secretary, former Fox News host, has been making his own reality show. And I can't help wondering, David, if that is gonna put him in the crosshairs with Donald Trump. This is a man with nine children. He's taken two of them and his wife on a cross country tour, and this is what he's been doing. And there was an incredible quote that said, yeah, I've doing this show, but I've managed to find some hours during the day to do some work. Hello, you're the Transport Secretary. You are the Transport Secretary.
- [40:14]
C
That's just. I mean, this is. It's such a clown show. And it's easy to get distracted by it because it is like the cast of a reality show. And the only thing is, like, you know, this is like, you know, a Jersey Shore, and you're trying to figure out which one of them is Snooki, which one of them is the Situation. And Kash Patel has his branded bottles of bourbon. And you can't even believe this craziness that he's a guy who's known as a partier. He's handing out these things. And you've got Pete Hegseth meeting with his pastor, talking about how only white men can solve problems. And. And Trump was put here by God. And you've got, one by one, each one of these people, J.D. vance is killing Popes. And the Education Secretary is trying to shut the Education Department down. And the Health Secretary is cutting the penis off of raccoons. And it's like, who's writing this script?
- [41:26]
D
Well, the Labor Secretary, who. And I think we might have mentioned this last time, but it's. To me, it's just such a sort of warning of why you would never want to work for Donald Trump that you're forced to fawn over him in the most humiliating and depressing way. And still you get fired. Laurie Chavez Durima, who says, oh, Mr. President, in a cabinet, you know, in the televised cabinet meeting. I do hope you like the banner of your beautiful face on the outside of the Department of Labor, because I think she was the first to do it.
- [42:03]
C
Scott Besant, who's his whole tone of voice is let them eat cake, although he comes up with these absurd statements like, I mean, whenever he speaks, I see a guy with a monocle and saying, well, perhaps you can't afford black caviar, but you could have salmon roe instead. And. And you had Kevin Hassett, the president's chief economic advisor, on television a couple of days ago going, well, the economy's great because people are spending more on their credit cards right now. And you're like, what? That's great. They're building up debt. But literally everywhere you look in this cabinet is a character from a dark comedy. I mean, I think if you had Armando Iannucci, who invented Veep and in the loop and death of Stalin, if you had him in the United States right now, he'd have a nervous breakdown. There's just too much satire to deal with.
- [43:08]
D
Well, David, on that note, too much satire to deal with. We've actually got, the UK has got its own snl. It started about a month ago and it's proving very popular. So I'm very curious, Final question to you, because next time we'll be speaking on Monday, we can review and post mortem the trip to China. Will there be an extensive parade that Donald will want to replicate for his own birthday parade? We remember last year when he reamed out Pete Hegseth for the somewhat shambolic birthday parade where, you know, soldiers were sort of jogging past Trump, various people sitting with Trump were yawning, a couple were photographed asleep. It wasn't quite the goose stepping that I think he'd envisaged in D.C. do we think they will give him tips for how to have a big birthday parade?
- [44:06]
C
I don't know if they will. I'm afraid he'll pay attention to other things like that. Last week they condemned two defense ministers to death. They did give them suspended sentences, but Trump is going to go, oh, yeah, I like that idea. I could put former cabinet members, current cabinet members, into jail or condemned them to death. He loves that stuff. He loved that with Kim Jong Un in North Korea. And I'm sure he will be sitting there taking pointers from Xi Jinping. It's just not, it's not the kind of stuff we may want him to be taking pointers on.
- [44:47]
D
Well, we can leave Todd Blanche to carry out those orders.
- [44:53]
C
Exactly, David.
- [44:55]
D
We will discuss the China Trip next Monday. Thank you very much for your insight as ever. I know you spent a lot of time with people thinking about China, and your column is really worth reading and sobering in terms of how Donald Trump has just handed over on a platter so much to the Chinese, all while talking up a big game which is full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
- [45:23]
C
Ooh, nice. Nice.
- [45:25]
D
It's Macbeth.
- [45:27]
C
It is Macbeth. Life is a tale full of sound and fury. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
- [45:37]
D
And actually one of the best characters of all. A character who just killed and killed and killed to support his own ambition. Supported a pass by.
- [45:48]
C
Actually, his wife encouraged him because he was, like, on the fence and his wife encouraged him to do the killing. I saw a great production of Macbeth here in Washington. Rafe Fiends. Oh, yes, it was really, really good just a year or two ago.
- [46:07]
D
Well, there you go. There you go. Well, it's always the wife's fault, isn't it? It's always the wife's fault.
- [46:13]
C
Well, in the case of Macbeth, in the case of Macbeth, it is the wife's fault. In my case, as I do this analysis of China, my wife speaks Chinese. She goes to China four times a year. She runs a cultural exchange program with the Chinese. And I benefit immensely from the knowledge she gives me about China. So I will help, you know, it'll help inform whatever I write for you and what we talk about next week.
- [46:41]
D
Excellent. All right, well, I will look forward to discussing the China trip with you next week. David Rothkopf, many thanks thanks to you. So there you have it. J.D. vance as political hunter virus. Marco Rubio running around, but is he being set up for a fall by Donald Trump? What comes after Iran? Is it Cuba? Well, we'll be back next week with David to debrief on the China trip. And let's keep an eye on who Trump takes with him. Does he take his family with him? Does he take Jared and Steve Wicked? Does he take Marco Rubio? Does he take J.D. vance? I can't wait to see. I'll be back tomorrow with Inside Trump's Head. So the good news is we have so many Beast Tier members now, there are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team. Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.