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- [00:00]
David Rothkopf
Buckle up, Everybody. The next 90 days are going to be a weird and wild ride. Iran is going to interfere in our elections for the next 90 days. Russia is going to interfere in our elections for the next 90 days. And Trump is going to try to use that to his advantage. Did you see the poll results he's getting in the past few days? The worst poll ratings not just of his career, but of any president of the modern era. Nothing he says or does is working anymore. Donald Trump is drowning in failure, and we are going to pay the price as he tries to keep his head above water.
- [00:40]
Joanna Coles
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. If it's Monday, it must be David Rothkopf. And we have. Well, we have almost an entire UFC lineup for you today as the fighting in the Republican Party just gets worse and worse. We've got Max Miller and Bernie Moreno, son in law and senator father with a strange media circus in his own background going on. We've got Mitch McConnell versus Andy Beshear. We've got Dana Bash versus RFK Junior and we've got Todd Blanche versus John Cornyn and Thom Tillis. Before we get into it, just a reminder, please subscribe to the Daily Beast. You can just press the button below the program description and hop aboard the Beast Community. David Rothkof, you've interrupted me. I'm just writing a check for $100,000 a month to Donald Trump's Truth Social.
- [01:42]
David Rothkopf
That's a great investment, Joanna, because he will tell you when he's going to move markets. Do you know this is an interesting fact that the United States government, since Trump has taken over this second time around, has bought shares in third or gotten shares in 30 different companies. I mean, this is communism writ large. And so, you know, we are all now invested in these Trumpy companies. And meanwhile, Trump is on a regular basis buying and selling stocks that have to do with the policies he's making. So the best way to cash in on this, you go to Truth social, you pay 100,000 bucks, and you'll get a month. A month. Well, but for the upside, for what you're gonna make, think of the house in the Hamptons. You're gonna be able to buy off of the insider information you're gonna get from Donald Trump.
- [02:39]
Joanna Coles
You know what? I'm not going to enable him monetizing the presidency. David. I'm ripping the check up. I'm ripping it up.
- [02:46]
David Rothkopf
I was so hoping you would, like, pass along some tips to me.
- [02:50]
Joanna Coles
It's just astonishing, isn't it? That he's actually monetizing the presidential statements,
- [02:57]
David Rothkopf
but he's doing it five different ways. He's like, first you can buy this, then you can buy the stocks, then you can buy the crypto, then invest in my kids companies, then, you know, and if you, if you like, do like the multiplay parlay, like the Trump
- [03:17]
Joanna Coles
factor, you know, the Trump factor is very good.
- [03:23]
David Rothkopf
You can make money 10 different ways on, on, on Trump corruption.
- [03:29]
Joanna Coles
I wish he'd bring back Trump steaks and Trump champagne and Trump water and we could just all live on a diet of, of Trumpiness, more Trumpiness.
- [03:38]
David Rothkopf
But Joanna, he doesn't care about water anymore, as we know, because the Iranians trapped, attack water supplies or somebody. But we think it may be the Iranians in 10 different states. And Trump, who's currently at war with Iran, which he seems to have forgotten, said it's probably not the Iranians, I think it's the Democrats. They're doing it. Minnesota, it's the, it's the people in Minnesota who are to blame. It's mind blowing. But you know, here is the reason he's not in Trump water because, you know, he's carved that off and said, iran, you can do Trump water from now on.
- [04:13]
Joanna Coles
That is an amazing story, isn't it? We should just dwell on it for a moment. Ten states have had part of their water systems interfered with. Do you think Tim Waltz rues the day that he agreed to be Carmela's vice presidential candidate? Because ever since then, a man that we barely heard from has really just become the target of so much.
- [04:41]
David Rothkopf
I mean, well, first of all, once he became the vice presidential candidate and some of those geniuses around Kamala, who are actually ex Biden geniuses, said, hey, Tim, you know all that straight talk that we love from you, Lay off. I mean, it was a mistake to go in, but I don't think Tim Waltz is the sole reason Trump has got Minnesota on the brain. I think another big reason is Ilhan Omar. He hates Ilhan Omar. He hates the Somalis. He thinks it's a great place to go and target his message that foreigners are coming and destroying this country. And so it's not just Tim Waltz.
- [05:25]
Joanna Coles
Isn't he also somehow, I mean, we had the two ICE killings there of Alex Pretty and Renee Nicole Goode. That must also play into it too, isn't it? Almost like as we're often saying, he doubles down.
- [05:40]
David Rothkopf
Yeah, I think that that's true. But you know, I do think the bigger story is this. Over the course of the past 18 months, Donald Trump has dismantled the parts of the US government that protect us from foreign election interference, that protect us from foreign spying, whether it's in the FBI, where we've moved people out of those things into, you know, editing the Epstein documents or doing whatever vindictive prosecutions
- [06:06]
Joanna Coles
he wants, or flying around with Kash Patel to make sure he gets to his girlfriend's concerts on time.
- [06:12]
David Rothkopf
Right. Or, you know, Bill Pulte as the Director of National Intelligence. Why is he still doing that job? By the way, they confirmed his successor, and Bill Pulte has said, no, I want to stay around for a while. Well, what do you think he's doing? Something good for America. No, he's not. He's doing Trump's dirty work. And they shut down in the Department of Homeland Security, the group that tracked Russian interference. Why do I bring all this up? Because Iran is going to interfere in our elections for the next 90 days. Russia is going to interfere in our elections for the next 90 days, and Trump is going to try to use that to his advantage. So, you know, buckle up, Everybody. The next 90 days are going to be a weird and wild ride because the president and I think this is really important and tied to all of these stories. Did you see the poll results he's getting in the past few days?
- [07:07]
Joanna Coles
Catastrophic.
- [07:08]
David Rothkopf
Donald Trump has on inflation, on his war, on his overall approval, on his approval with independence, on his the worst poll ratings not just of his career, but of any president of the modern era. Donald Trump is drowning in failure. Nothing he says or does is working anymore. And so he's gotta try these wild schemes to distract from it, to get attention, to hope it disrupts something. But the main headline of the week for me was when I look at these polls and when I look at thing after thing, whether it's failures in the courts or failures in Iran or failures overseas or problems in the economy is Donald Trump is drowning in failure and we are going to pay the price as he tries to keep his head above water.
- [08:06]
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- [08:56]
Joanna Coles
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- [08:57]
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- [09:22]
Joanna Coles
goodness. All right, so we got to it much quicker than I was expecting, and I was planning to ask you if you'd had a nice weekend, because we're recording this on Monday morning and I was going to ask you if you'd managed to get to fancy farms in Kentucky.
- [09:36]
David Rothkopf
Well, first of all, I wish I had, because, Joanna, we talk about everything that's important here, and I want us to tell you it was a shitty weekend in Washington. It was rainy and disgusting. Now, I did send, by the way, everybody who's listening, I sent a note to Joanna and I said, the weekend is awful here. She said, no, it's fine. She said, I'm having a good beer. That was really cruel. But in any event, I could have gone to Kentucky, where on the 1st of August of every month, they have this big political barbecue where they have roast pork and beef. And for the past, I don't know, 150 years, since the Civil War, the main attraction has been Mitch McConnell, right? Because he's been going since Robert E. Lee or whoever started this dinner, and he wasn't there. And the big subject of attention was that he wasn't there.
- [10:29]
Dana Bash
But.
- [10:29]
David Rothkopf
But I thought the weirdest thing was that the Republicans started making jokes. They would say, well, Andy Beshear, the governor's not here. Maybe we need a proof of life from him. And I was reading some Kentucky newspaper and somebody else was like, well, I don't care about the proof of life. I just hope that Mitch is good with God, that he's good with Jesus, because we know he's going to be in heaven soon and I just want him to have a good afterlife. And I was like, what?
- [10:57]
Joanna Coles
I think he's going to that mar a lago in the sky, perhaps to join his friend Lindsey Graham, with Lindsey
- [11:05]
David Rothkopf
Graham, and soon enough with his big orange friend, actually, he hates him. If Mitch McConnell died and opened up his eyes and he looked across the room and there was a bed for a roommate, and they said, oh, that's for Trump. He's going to be your roommate for eternity, he would know he was in hell because McConnell hates Trump. Remember how quickly his wife, Elaine Chao, ditched the Trump administration after January 6th? She was the first one out the door.
- [11:38]
Joanna Coles
All right, well, I want to read Andy Bashir's posts in response to the teasing that he missed. Fancy Farm. He said, sorry to Miss Fancy Farm today, but let me get in on the fun. Rand Paul apparently said I'd been neutered by my legislature. Rich, coming from a guy who's never had a pair of balls, and if he did, they'd be held by Trump. This isn't the kind of language I was expecting from Andy Beshear, who looks. Well, he just looks like a choir boy, really, doesn't he? And then.
- [12:09]
David Rothkopf
No, no, but this is great for Andy Beshear. They don't realize what they're doing. They're taking a guy who, on paper is a great Democratic presidential candidate, but who has one problem. What's Andy Beshear's problem? He's boring. And they are deborifying him. You know what I'm saying?
- [12:28]
Joanna Coles
Deborify.
- [12:29]
David Rothkopf
They are making him interesting. They've got him using the word balls in a tweet. You know, that's. All of a sudden, it's like, oh, my God, who woke up Andy Beshear? That's problems for the Republicans.
- [12:42]
Joanna Coles
Okay, so we've then got two more that I'm gonna reach out. I'm told Andy Barr also spoke. We aren't the same. Yes, same first name, hometown, and high school, but I don't run racist ads. Yes. Steve's my dad. His dad was also a politician, but Trump's his daddy. Thought that was very good. And then he comes in with the kicker. Funny how the Republicans are all mad I missed one political event to watch my son play baseball. But no outrage that Mitch McConnell has been nowhere to be seen for. For 50 days. Ooh. Ooh.
- [13:21]
David Rothkopf
Well, he's been great at the Mitch McConnell thing. He's like the one who started the proof of life thing. He's been pushing on it. He's been challenging McConnell because I think they know the game they're playing. The game that everybody at least fears McConnell is playing is that he drags this out a little longer to the point where he can't be replaced prior to the election, and he was not going to run again anyway. This is a ploy to allow the seat to remain open and not to let Bashir or anybody else put in place a replacement. And then what do they do? Then they say, oh, well, Mitch can't come back. Oh, that's too bad. But, sorry, you can't replace him. And so it is a kind of a weird high stakes game. You would think in the United States there would be a law, right? If you were in the Congress and you don't show up for work for a month or two, then you lose your seat because you really need to show up because that's what you're being hired to do. But there's no such law. So you could be dead, or you could be like Tom Kaine, the representative from New Jersey who just disappeared, Judge Craitor style. And, you know, he, he, he remained, he, he remained in office and then he popped back up when he wanted to and said, hey, I'm back.
- [14:50]
Joanna Coles
Or you could be like Kay Granger, the congresswoman in Texas who moved into a residential home because she was suffering from dementia, but she didn't give up her seat. In fact, today I saw the news
- [15:00]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
that she had died.
- [15:01]
Joanna Coles
All right, next year, let's go together.
- [15:04]
David Rothkopf
Oh, that'd be.
- [15:04]
Joanna Coles
Don't you think we should do that? It would be so much fun. I wish there were more events like that in New York City.
- [15:09]
David Rothkopf
Actually, if they keep Bashir, you know, as interesting as they're making him, it's gonna be a big deal.
- [15:16]
Joanna Coles
It does sound fun. It sounds like a very good family event. But of course, not a good family event for the Millers. Can we just discuss the Millers? Because they turn out to be kind of possibly the least happy, most dysfunctional family in America right now. Can you just fill us in? Because I know you've been following this story.
- [15:38]
David Rothkopf
Well, I have been following the story. I mean, this guy, Max Miller is a congressman and he is running for reelection as congressmen always do. He is super Trumpy. He was a Trump aide. He was there on January 6. He has the most odious kind of policies, and he was in a plus 5 district for Republicans. So it looked like he was going to win reelection. But he has this problem. He has a history of abusing women, including his wife, who wants a divorce. And, you know, she has been going after him. And so he all of a sudden came out the other day and said, this is untrue. My, you know, I didn't beat my wife. If I had beaten my wife, why would she have cooked me dinner six days late? Why would she, you know, let me see my kids. Why would. You know. And it was one of those things, you know, there's some advisor he's got who's like, no, You've got to go on TV now. You've got to make your case. And the advisor doesn't realize that if you are a disgusting asshole and you appear on television, you will be reminding everybody what a disgusting asshole you are. And that's what Max Miller did. Now, there are two weird twists in this story. One is the inevitable Trump twist where over the weekend Trump said, well, we have to see how this plays out. In other words, he minimized the fact that this guy was a spouse, alleged spouse abuser and had a bad history with women.
- [17:06]
Joanna Coles
Well, and an allegation that he'd actually broken his daughter's shoulder. His two year old daughter's shoulder.
- [17:12]
David Rothkopf
Right, right. I mean, he's as bad as they come. He should be out, of course.
- [17:18]
Joanna Coles
Well, there's shades of Graham Platner here, which, you know, Graham Platner was pretty much in and out of that main faster than you can say lobster Roll.
- [17:27]
David Rothkopf
Well, but that's the thing. When Mike Johnson, the alleged speaker of the House, was asked about this, he says, well, we're investigating. That's how it works in the Congress for Republicans and Democrats. That's not how it worked for Graham Platner and it's not how it worked for Eric Swalwell, and it's not how it worked for a lot of other Democrats. It's how it works for Republicans because you have a president who's been accused many times of this. And I don't know, did you see this poll over the weekend where somebody asked MAGA supporters if they would be willing to support Trump or their candidate if they were accused of sex abuse or they were accused of corruption or they were accused of some other crime? And all of these MAGA voters said, yeah, I don't care. By all of them, I mean, the majority of them said that they don't particularly care about this. And proof of that is that the person that Miller is married to is the daughter of the US Senator from Ohio, Bernie Moreno. And Moreno, until this blew up over the weekend, had been quiet as a church mouse on this. He didn't push for the guy who his daughter is saying abused her to get out of the Congress until this weekend when he had no choice because he had to do it. But that's the Republican Party for you. A father ignoring the alleged abuse of his daughter and granddaughter in order to be a good Republican.
- [19:06]
Joanna Coles
Right. And granddaughter.
- [19:10]
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- [20:25]
Joanna Coles
So we've been covering this story at the Daily Beast for the last couple of years, actually, because the divorce has been ongoing. Fascinating that Bernie Moreno has finally come out and said something this weekend. Miller responded to him by saying, you know this isn't true and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus. Miller didn't specify what the media circus was, but happily we hide.
- [20:55]
David Rothkopf
But you will.
- [20:56]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, we will. We will. So Miller won't specify, but at the Daily Beast, we are unafraid to specify that Moreno was himself embroiled Natchez, in a politically career threatening scandal during his run for his Senate seat in Ohio. And of course he staunchly, and you know where this is going, he is staunchly anti LGBTQ and yet he was linked to a 2008 online profile seeking men for one on one sex on the hookup website Adult Friend Finder. Adult Friend Finder.
- [21:39]
David Rothkopf
That's beautiful. There's nothing, there's not that. There's not that there's anything wrong with that, except when you're anti LGBTQ and you're a hypocrite. And you know, but it goes back to this poll. Why does maga? Why do MAGA voters apparently show willingness to support people who committed all sorts of crimes? Because if they didn't, there would be no MAGA politicians to support every single one of them. Where do you look? Where do you find a MAGA politician who does not have something in his, some kind of luggage, some Kind of baggage. Some kind of bad story in his past?
- [22:20]
Joanna Coles
Well, the profile that was created looking for men on men's sex on Adult Friend Finder said that the user was looking for young guys to have fun with while traveling. I'm sure Mrs. Moreno would be thrilled to find that. And it was. The account was created, incredibly, by someone with access to Moreno's work email. No one could confirm if he actually created it. A former intern for him later claimed that he'd created it as an aborted prank.
- [22:55]
David Rothkopf
As a prank.
- [22:56]
Joanna Coles
As a prank.
- [22:56]
David Rothkopf
Because that's the kind of thing. That's the kind of prank you pull because it's a felony and you could end up going to jail for it. But all I can say is Thanksgiving dinner is gonna be fantastic.
- [23:08]
Joanna Coles
Can you imagine being at the Millers? Can you imagine being at the Millers for Thanksgiving dinner? I mean, almost as much fun as being at Mitch McConnell's for dinner.
- [23:20]
David Rothkopf
Well, yeah, but that's gonna be awake. The thing about the Miller.
- [23:24]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Mean.
- [23:24]
Joanna Coles
Yeah. Inappropriate, somehow. Inappropriate and yet.
- [23:29]
David Rothkopf
And somehow. Yet so appropriate. But I gotta tell you, by. Thanks.
- [23:32]
Joanna Coles
50 days missing and when the Daily Beast called up to find out if Mitch had actually signed a document this week, his team were evasive.
- [23:44]
David Rothkopf
Well, right, because there was some talk that it was auto pen, which we hate. I do know at the Fancy Farm event, I think Andy Barr said he had just spoken to Mitch.
- [23:58]
Joanna Coles
Well, they all say they've just spoken to him. What they don't say is whether or not Mitch has spoken back.
- [24:05]
David Rothkopf
Well, they don't say that they used a Ouija board to speak to him.
- [24:09]
Joanna Coles
Oh, dear. Too much fun. Too much fun on a Monday? David, it's not good. Okay, so you know who wasn't having fun yesterday? Who looked almost as desperate as I thought Trump looked when he broadcast his press conference from Camp David on Friday? Was RFK Jr yesterday under the withering. The withering look of Dana Bash on cnn. We've got some clips here, actually. Let's play the first one.
- [24:38]
Dana Bash
We're being marginalized and vilified and.
- [24:41]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Because, again, I really want to move on. But you were saying.
- [24:46]
Dana Bash
Because you were part of the problem.
- [24:48]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
No, I wasn't part of the problem.
- [24:49]
Dana Bash
It was absolutely press malpractice. We're allowing your.
- [24:54]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Mr. Secretary.
- [24:55]
Dana Bash
Your job. Your job is a fierce skepticism court authority, and you aren't doing that. You. My job is also dissenting.
- [25:04]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
No. Okay. Are you going to. You want to sit here and attack me, or do you want to have conversations? I'm not attacking you. I'm asking questions about how to.
- [25:13]
Dana Bash
The next question.
- [25:14]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I'll tell you, that's what I'm trying to do.
- [25:17]
Joanna Coles
I mean, that's our Secretary of Health and Human Services, under whom measles is. Now we've got as many cases of measles in the first six months of this year as we have in the first 24 years of this. Of this millennium.
- [25:32]
David Rothkopf
I guess we have to remind everybody that this guy who is in charge of America's health system is a former heroin addict with a worm that has eaten his brain, who said that he's not afraid of germs because he snorted so much cocaine off of toilet seats.
- [25:48]
Joanna Coles
It's awful.
- [25:50]
David Rothkopf
You know, and so, you know, and he picks up roadkill, brings it home with his family. You know, he's. I think the roadkill included not just a little baby dead bear, but a raccoon penis at one point. And this guy is in charge of our health care system. And the problem was yesterday on cnn, whenever he was challenged, he would just do that Trumpian thing of going back after the person asking the questions and accused her of not being a scientist, to which she responded, I thought, pretty sharply, well, you're not a scientist either.
- [26:24]
Joanna Coles
He's the opposite of a scientist. Right.
- [26:26]
David Rothkopf
He'll believe anything. That's right. But I frankly think, to be honest with you, she should have just said, okay, this interview is over. Because he was not being responsive and he was being purely combative, and he was playing to that audience of one in the White House. And it obscures something. These attacks on Fauci obscure something. More Americans died per capitol of COVID than the inhabitants of any other developed country and almost any other country in the world under Trump. According to medical scientists who studied the numbers, several hundred thousand people died who needn't have died. But Trump suppressed responses, didn't respond because he was concerned about things like how it would make him look. Remember when he kept that boat out at sea because he didn't want any more people coming into the country because it would make the numbers go up? And remember when he said, you should maybe consider injecting Clorox into your veins? And when his appointees after Fauci came in and then they quit because they knew the numbers were being suppressed? This is a scandal of a scale that I don't think we've ever seen in the United States. A million Americans died of COVID Hundreds of thousands of them died needlessly. Many of them died as a direct result of policies initiated by Donald Trump. It had nothing to do with Fauci. And you have these crackpots like RFK Jr and Rand Paul who are too closely associated with the policies that caused the deaths, saying, no, let's go after Dr. Fauci, one of the most distinguished medical scientist doctors in our history as a country. And I know Tony Fauci. This is a very good man who at age 85, 86, 80, whatever he is, is being forced to defend himself against baseless attacks because these people have no shame whatsoever and continue to promote ideas that became obsolescent in the 18th century when we actually started using vaccines. And it's just the heroin addict, cocaine snorter with the brain worm is in charge, and the doctors are running for the hills. And so God help us if there's ever a pandemic in this country, another one, I mean, while these people are in charge. Because it won't be just like measles, it'll be hundreds of thousands of people dying because of the policies that caused hundreds of thousands of people to die before.
- [29:25]
Joanna Coles
Okay, we have another clip from that interview. Let's. Let's play it now.
- [29:29]
David Rothkopf
I'm not triggered enough?
- [29:31]
Joanna Coles
No, this is very good.
- [29:32]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And you are talking about things that lead to vaccine hesitancy in this country, and it is something that causes problems for people where there is not anything.
- [29:47]
Dana Bash
Let me ask you something. Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesitancy, or do you see your job as telling the truth to the American?
- [29:56]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I see my job as telling the truth. And the truth is that there is. Is study after study after study. It's one of the most studied things out there in science, and it is like a parrot.
- [30:08]
Dana Bash
You're repeating like a parrot. So I've actually read the science.
- [30:13]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Let's.
- [30:13]
David Rothkopf
You don't want to.
- [30:14]
Dana Bash
You don't want to hear and debate
- [30:15]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
this, so I'm not debating this.
- [30:17]
Dana Bash
Of course you.
- [30:18]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
No, because I'm not.
- [30:20]
Dana Bash
All you had to do is repeat things that people told you and say, trust the experts. That's what you do.
- [30:25]
Joanna Coles
During COVID one of the problems also is that his own voice, which I know is due to. I think it's a hereditary or genetic illness, also just makes him sound even crazier than. Than what?
- [30:41]
David Rothkopf
Yeah, but so does being a fucking idiot, you know? And I mean, you know, we gotta cut through this, right? If you were to go and say, well, there's 350 million or so many Americans, and I'd like to make a list of who should be in charge of our healthcare system. And when you got down to the bottom of the list of the least qualified people and you were down at number 349,000,999, that's where you get Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This guy has no business. A guy who is peddling supplements, a guy who was famously swimming in a Washington river full of sewage. A guy who, you know, is, Is. Is an absolute crackpot in charge of this. And why? Because Trump decided he was going to run on this anti vax position because somebody told him that MAGA had a lot of people in it that were anti vax and they didn't like the government telling them that their kids had to stay home from school because they would actually have to take care of their fucking kids. But guess what? Donald Trump has taken the COVID vaccination and boosters every six months because Donald Trump actually believes in vaccines.
- [31:59]
Joanna Coles
Yep. And his grandchildren have all been vaccinated, too. The thing I don't really understand is that actually one of the good things that Donald Trump did was speed up the vaccine or allow, you know, operation warp speed. Seemed like a very smart thing to do. And then the minute it starts working, he starts distancing himself from it.
- [32:18]
David Rothkopf
That's exactly right. There are very, very few positive stories in the Trump history of both terms or frankly, of his entire life. That's one of them. And because he thinks that it makes him look bad when people study the rest of the science, he's decided to throw out all science everywhere. And that, by the way, it's not just RFK Jr. It's Pete Hegseth and so forth. Although, you know, when I watched this RFK junior Thing, I thought, he's making a case again that he is the least competent member of this cabinet. And I was thinking, Pete Hegstaff, you know, must be breathing a sigh of relief because he's like, mismanaging a war, mismanaging the Department of Defense, making America at greater risk than ever, you know, is a mockery because of his whole testosterone obsession. And yet RFK Jr is actually worse than him. And I don't know. I don't. I don't. Do you think RFK Jr. Is in the lead now?
- [33:19]
Joanna Coles
Well, it's a good question because it sort of depends what happens with the Attorney General, doesn't it?
- [33:26]
David Rothkopf
That's a really good point.
- [33:31]
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- [34:54]
Joanna Coles
what is this rescinding? We're recording this on a Monday morning and we woke up to news that there was some sort of official rescinding of the $1.8 billion slush fund. You know, as we know, two Republican senators, both of whom are leaving the Senate, have said that they won't vote to confirm him, which means he won't get through the confirmation process because he won't officially rescind it. Now, he appears to have done. Will this have any impact whatsoever? Does this mean that Todd Blanche will be confirmed?
- [35:27]
David Rothkopf
It probably does mean that he'll be confirmed. It will have a huge impact. It'll have a huge negative impact on the United States. And I'll get to that one second. But I do think by framing it this way, you raise something really interesting, which is when you look at the Trump cabinet and ask yourself, who is the worst, who are the most dangerous? You have a choice between the incompetent people like Hegseth and RFK Jr. And Secretary of Education, Secretary of Energy, or Secretary of Transportation. Or you have the ones who are kind of more competent, have functioning brains, but doing really evil, terrible shit like Todd Blanche, like Pam Bondi, like Scott Besant, like Marco Rubio. So which are the worst, the incompetents or the competent ones who are doing bad things? I don't know. You don't want to have anything like this. In the case of this Todd Blanche
- [36:24]
Dana Bash
thing, though,
- [36:27]
David Rothkopf
what the deal says is not that he's not going to award US Government money to people who have committed crimes against the country, people that Trump wants to prop up. He said he's just going to rescind a statement saying that we are going to create this fund. It doesn't mean it can't be reinstated. And as many people have pointed out, including here on Daily Beast podcast, they're already giving out money in individual cases, and they can go on giving out money in individual cases. They don't need a slush fund. They could give out $10 billion case by case, and it's the equivalent of a slush fund. They just won't call it a slush fund. But, and this is what's really important here, he has not addressed Trump's craven plea for tax immunity, which was one of the things that Cornyn objected to and sought some narrowing of. And that's the most corrupt single act by US president ever. And by the way, the top 1000 most corrupt acts are all by Trump. But this idea that somehow he could say, I'm going to instruct the US Government, which works for me, to enter into an agreement to me never to audit my taxes now or in the future, or my family's taxes or my company's taxes, so I can be a tax cheat with impunity forever. And that's also staying now the next Democratic president. That better inked right. That'll end then. If the Democrats take over the House and the Senate and they have any chutzpah, then what they'll do is they will stop funding the IRS until they renounce this deal. But it'll end sooner or later. But for now, you've got Todd Blanche likely to get confirmed by a bunch of spineless Republicans. And he will then do what he is doing, attack the president's enemies, use this Justice Department as an obstruction of justice tool to protect Trump from Epstein accusations and other accusations, and debase the entire justice system of the United States. And that's what we're going to end up with. And this sort of kabuki theater of Cornyn is going to be apparent to historians for what it was, which is just a sham, just a fig leaf. So Cornyn can feel like he had one last moment of character and masculinity before he left the Senate. But in the end, the result will be that Todd Blanche will become Attorney general, and he will do innumerable bad things on the part of the President of the United States.
- [39:29]
Joanna Coles
It does feel. I mean, that was a brilliant summation of what's going on. And it does feel a bit like one of those questions that you imagine you might get at law school. Where someone says, okay, the deal is you get to be Attorney General. If you give the president, and it's a hypothetical situation, complete tax immunity in his past, in his future, and that of all his family, would you take the job? And you feel like it's one of those jobs that are, it's one of those questions that a law student would immediately say, no, of course not. And the law professor would say, well, sometimes you get, you know, you get put in positions where you have to check your own values. And this is one where Todd Blanche, Todd Blanche makes Macbeth look unambitious. I mean, he's so craven for that brass ring. And you're right, it's to the detriment of America. The person you left out, of course, when you were going through your list of cabinet ministers is J.D. vance. Now, J.D. vance this weekend was warned by Laura Loomer, Trump's special advisor, who's just changed
- [40:46]
David Rothkopf
her mind on Ukraine, one of Trump's many work wives. This is possibly a chance for you to promote your work wife show.
- [40:52]
Joanna Coles
Yes, that's true. In August. Thank you for that opportunity, David. In August, we're going to spend a second series of podcasts looking at Trump's women. This is work that Nelle Scovell and I have been working on. And we've got a four part series on Trump's women, which you are going to be contributing to when we talk about political work wives and their roles in it. But Tucker Carlson this weekend announced there was going to be a new party. Marjorie Taylor Greene linked arms with him. And Laura Loomer is warning JD Vance that he has to dump his friend Tucker Carl, otherwise he won't stand any chance of, of replacing Donald Trump.
- [41:36]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
And I get along very well with the Vice President of the United States, but I think his biggest political liability and the biggest detriment to social cohesion within the MAGA movement and cohesion within the GOP as we head into these perilous midterm elections, is making sure that you don't have, have this albatross around the party's neck. And I'm talking about Tucker Carlson. I think that J.D. vance has a bright political future, but he, you know, is allowing his friendship with Tucker Carlson to drag him down. And we need to have moral clarity and we need to reject certain people from our party who are, you know, hell bent on destroying, you know, what it, what it means to be an American and what it means to be a member of the MAGA movement.
- [42:21]
Joanna Coles
Cuff Carlson there. What did you think of that?
- [42:25]
David Rothkopf
Yeah, Because Donald Trump isn't compromised by any of his international ties, including to Cutter.
- [42:31]
Joanna Coles
Well, including the $400 million grift force one that he's now.
- [42:37]
David Rothkopf
Well, exactly. Except it's more than that because we'd probably spent more than that upgrading it out of our.
- [42:42]
Joanna Coles
And it's still not safe.
- [42:44]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah.
- [42:45]
David Rothkopf
Now, when Fran Drescher plays her in the Armando Iannucci movie, it's going to be, you know, it'll just capture the degree to which I can barely listen to this woman. But, you know, she has gotten to the point, if you follow Laura Loomer, and you know we do, so you don't have to. Everything is personal with her. And it's all, do I like this person? Do I not like this person? Are they on my team? Are they on the other team? And it's a very kind of vindictive, low grade kind of politics that's then followed by fatuous generalizations like, well, he's ruining what it is to be an American. What does that mean? And how is Donald Trump not doing that? And how is MAGA movement not doing that? And maybe you should be talking about the fact that right now, for the first time ever, we're starting to see people defect from maga, saying, Trump has let me down, Trump has hurt my family, Trump has hurt my bank account, Trump has destroyed my community. She's trying to, I don't know, set the last table on the Titanic before it disappears underneath the water. And if she wants to do the seating arrangements for that table, good luck to her. I got bad news for you, JD Laura doesn't hold the secret here. You don't stand any chance of replacing Donald Trump. Nobody likes you. You're one of the least liked people in this administration. Nobody trusts you. You've taken issues on either side or every side of every issue. I'm possibly at some level, I don't think your wife likes you that much since you're a incredible white supremacist racist and she comes from immigrant origins. I suspect your kids, as they get to know you a little better, won't like you that much. The people of Appalachia, who you lifted up in your hillbilly elegy book, hate you because you have betrayed them and fucked them over 16 ways to Sunday because you're actually a Yale guy who's a Peter Thiel guy, who's a Wall street guy. There's just another scam artist who's looking for some kind of patter to get into power. But the reality is this jdv, not only does everybody hate you and do large factions emerging across the Republican Party to defeat you, but Donald Trump is tanking. You hitched your wagon to the wrong star. You're just too closely associated with it. It is Trump, Vance. You cannot get beyond Trump fans. I think Marco Rubio is going to suffer the same kind of problem. So, you know, take Laura Loomer's advice. Don't take Laura Loomer's advice. You think Tucker Carlson's going to have a big movement you know, here? I don't think the only way Tucker Carl is going to. Tucker Carlson is going to have a big moment is if he eats a lot of lettuce because.
- [45:53]
Dana Bash
Sorry.
- [45:53]
David Rothkopf
I'm sorry.
- [45:54]
Joanna Coles
Well, 10,000 cases. 10,000 cases in Michigan of the explosive food poisoning. Well, I was going to say explosive food poisoning. I mean, 10,000 cases.
- [46:08]
David Rothkopf
No.
- [46:08]
Dana Bash
Yeah.
- [46:09]
David Rothkopf
No. Thanks, by the way, Department of Agriculture for not having inspectors out there. But getting back to a different kind of movement, although also one that smells the same, which is Tucker Carlson's movement. The reality is what he is doing is fragmenting the right. Fragmenting the Republican Party. Democrats hear this kind of stuff and it sounds like Mozart to them. It's like, this is fantastic. More of it. Why don't you attack each other and tear each other apart?
- [46:39]
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- [46:41]
Joanna Coles
It's a donation.
- [46:43]
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- [47:53]
Joanna Coles
David, what are you hearing from your sources in the intelligence community about what's actually happening with Iran right now? I mean, J.D. vance is supposed to be the man in charge of sorting out diplomatic relations. Are we actually talking to them?
- [48:10]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Who are we talking to?
- [48:12]
Joanna Coles
What's happened? I mean, we're told that the Iranians.
- [48:15]
David Rothkopf
Well, it's not just the intelligence community. You know, people that I talk to, whether I talk to diplomats or I talk to people in the military, or I talk to journalists who are covering this. The reality is that the single defining feature of the conflict in Iran right now is that they don't know what the hell to do. And you saw that there was a CNN story today that the commanding officer of centcom, which is the regional command there, sent out a memo to a bunch of people saying, hey, if you've got any ideas of things we could do to rip. Hurt Iran, send them up the chain. You know, I mean, it was the most public plea or most public confession that you could have that they don't know what to do, that you can imagine. Meanwhile, Trump is doing this, you know, this Groundhog Day thing where it's like, we're. We're going to attack. We're not going to attack because the markets are going to open again. Everything's going to be great. We have a new deal. And over the weekend and yesterday said, okay, you know, or Friday or Saturday, we're going to do the biggest attack ever. They've never seen this. There's never been an attack like this in history. It's going to be huge. And then yesterday, okay, we've got movement. We're going to have an agreement, oddly, just before the markets reopen. But the Iranians, as they do every time, came out and said, no, there's no agreement. We're not making progress on this. And so this is when I talk about Trump drowning and failure, this is the place where it's most obvious he started this. He doesn't know how to get out of it. It is slowly spreading across the region. It is making the world a more dangerous place. We are losing the control that we had over the free flow of goods and services and cargo through the Strait of Hormuz, maybe through the Red Sea. The United States, in a desperate attempt to keep everybody on site, is doing things like offering nuclear deals to the Saudis, which may trigger more nuclear ambition among the Iranians, and in any case will be destabilizing given the terms that Trump's Department of Energy offered the Saudis. You've got the Houthi involvement leading to a spread of this into a new part of that part of the world, but possibly a spread into the Horn of Africa. You had these Ukrainians attacking an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, which is a spread of it in that respect. So this thing that he shouldn't have started, where everything was actually fine with Obama's deal, which he pulled out of a long time ago, but ever since then, he's just made it worse with every move. It's like quicksand. Every time he's moved, he sinks more deeply into the mess that he's in. And now we're in this situation where literally nobody in the Trump administration has any idea of how to get out of this, even though it's obvious how you get out of it, which is you get out of it, you just pull out. You want to issue a press release saying it was successful, fine. But what you've got to do is you've just got to get out of this thing because it's not doing anybody any good. And, you know, again, I talked about the polls earlier. Two thirds to three quarters of Americans think this war is a terrible idea. It is the least popular war in American history.
- [51:43]
Joanna Coles
But, David, you say you just have to pull out and you can say, we won or whatever. But actually, isn't it also up to the Iranians? And the Iranians won't let Donald Trump pull out because they're going to control the Strait of Hormuz.
- [52:00]
David Rothkopf
They are, but there are other, you know, there are other countries that have border on the Strait of Hormuz, and there will ultimately be an international discussion of how that gets resolved. And there are other options, by the way, with regard to getting oil out of the Strait of Hormuz that are actively being explored right now. Getting oil into the Gulf of Oman directly by a pipeline, getting oil into the Red Sea and so forth. And so I'm not saying that it would be easy to do that, but what I'm saying is it's the only option, because if we continue to fight, we deplete our munitions resources in ways that over the weekend, we've started hearing from military leaders who are saying, hey, look, if you start saying, oh, they're attacking Israel, we have to help defend Israel, I'm going to tell you, we can't because we are so low in munitions that we have to keep these to protect ourselves.
- [52:59]
Joanna Coles
So what's also happening with munitions support for the Ukraine? Because that's also been up for debate this weekend.
- [53:07]
David Rothkopf
Well, that's right. And the reality is that the United States has not. I mean, first of all, Trump stopped giving the kind of support Ukraine was getting from the Biden administration as soon as he got in, he has been leaving them out to dry, you know, saying, oh, Steve Witkoff will take care of this and, and really squeezing the Ukrainians. Then a couple weeks ago he said, well, you know what we're going to do? We're going to give Ukraine a license to produce its own Patriot missiles because we're running out. So that was his big idea on that. But last week, at the end of the week, he said, I don't know if we can do that. First of all, he doesn't have the power to give the license. That's Raytheon and Lockheed. Secondly, he said, well, what if we give them the license and they use them in a way that we don't want to use them? I'm not so sure we can do that. Thirdly, even if he did give them the license, which he's not going to do because it was yet another sort of bullshit offer from him, it would take years for it to have any benefit for Ukraine. The observers I know who are looking at Ukraine are saying the following. First of all, they praise the Ukrainians for their industry and courage and ingenuity and Zelensky for the way he's worked the international system. And the fact is Ukrainians are actually gaining ground. But as far as the US Relationship with Ukraine goes, Trump has hung them out to dry. He is not helping them. Nothing that he has said, or even his newfound admiration for Zelenskyy is, or Laura Loomer's admiration for Zelensky is helping Ukraine. Probably the only thing the United States is doing for Ukraine that's actually of some value, which doesn't get discussed, is providing intelligence to the Ukrainians to help them target the Russians. But you know, as Zelensky pointed out, you know, that's a two way street because he believes the Russians are providing intelligence to the Iranians to target American facilities in the Middle East. So, you know, these wars are connected. The lack of munitions has an effect. There are connections between the Ukrainians and the Iranians. As we've seen in conflict, when the price of oil goes up, one of the reasons it's going up, particularly when it comes to diesel, is the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries. And when the price of food goes up, when you look at Ukraine and Russia as principal providers of things like grain to the world, and you combine that with the costs of fuel and fertilizer going up as a result of what's going on in Iran, these things connect in ways that squeeze the entire global economy. And I think that's the point. And other people have said this, but I think we have to keep it in mind. The consequences of Trump's idiotic and illegal entry into this war with Iran are getting worse every day. And that's why he's got to stop it, because he depletes the munitions, he makes the global economy worse, he makes our position in multiple geostrategic situations, wars. And there is no path where you can suddenly make that better, because the Iranians have a different point of view. I talked on one of our podcasts. We have a podcast called need to Know. And I talked last week to Yegana Torbati, who's the New York Times Iran correspondent, and she said, the Iranians can wait this out. They don't have elections. They can wait till fall elections. They can squeeze Trump every single day. Every. And they know it.
- [57:05]
Joanna Coles
Right. And they know it. Yes, that seems clear. They know the midterms are looming. They understand this war is incredibly unpopular with the American population and that this is very bad for Donald Trump, and they're enjoying playing with him, and they
- [57:22]
David Rothkopf
are toying with him. I don't know if you have been watching all the Lego videos, which are. They're fantastic. And, you know, I mean, this is a. There will be, I don't know, you know, in some propaganda show at the Museum of Modern Art someday. They will have screens showing these things. But here's the weird thing. There are these people making propaganda videos on behalf of one of the most brutal and awful governments that the world has known in the modern era. And those videos regularly contain more truth than a White House press release. And we have. This is another area where we've lost this war. When Trump says, I have a deal with Iran, people respond by saying, we gotta go talk to the Iranians. That was never the case. They're huge liars. They're awful people. It's an awful government. And yet Donald Trump's credibility is so low that he makes the Iranians look relatively more credible, even via Lego videos.
- [58:34]
Joanna Coles
I've got some social media posts that he put out to counteract the Lego videos. Here is one. So we have George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and, oh, Donald Trump. And then I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to represent. I mean, obviously he's trying to. This is himself as Elvis Presley.
- [58:57]
David Rothkopf
Yeah. But I think he made a mistake because that's definitely a fat Elvis costume. And I think Trump is definitely in his fat Elvis state.
- [59:05]
Joanna Coles
He's in his fat Elvis state where
- [59:07]
David Rothkopf
everybody is waiting for him to die on the toilet as a result of whatever is getting pumped into his hand. But, you know, I mean, he's got a weird fascination with appearing sort of virile and manly. Part of his AI Slop Gallery from the weekend was a picture of him staring lovingly at himself in his military Academy uniform. And then the headline was, he has even more energy today, even as stories are coming out of the White House about how they can't let him do more than a couple of hours a day because he can't stay awake for it, which we've all seen. And he also had a picture in the AI Slop gallery of this weekend of him holding a golden statuette of Jesus and kissing it.
- [60:05]
Joanna Coles
Oh, I missed that one.
- [60:07]
David Rothkopf
Yeah, no, it's.
- [60:09]
Joanna Coles
David, are you secretly paying $100,000 to get your Truth Socials ahead of me? A month. A month.
- [60:16]
David Rothkopf
As I said at the beginning, I think it's an excellent investment. It's a great. Just. Look, you can either fight the corruption or you can go with the corruption.
- [60:24]
Joanna Coles
David Rothkop. How is that possible?
- [60:29]
David Rothkopf
But if corruption is running the US Government, and therefore the US Economy, then you've got to figure out how to stay ahead of the corruption. And there is no way to stay ahead of the corruption than by getting the word of the most corrupt guy on the planet via Truth Social.
- [60:45]
Joanna Coles
So you may have had a bit of a miserable weekend. Cause the weather wasn't great. Donald Trump had a great weekend because he got the winning shot in the Bedminster Club Championship. I'm just going to read you his Truth Social. For those who haven't started paying you $100,000 a month yet, I'm just gonna read this Truth Social post for you. The winning shot in the Bedminster Club Championship. Exclamation point. Goodness, I sound like RFK Jr this morning.
- [61:20]
David Rothkopf
Actually, you always sound like Helen Mirren to me.
- [61:22]
Joanna Coles
Do I? I love Helen Mirren, so I'll take it. Thank you very much to all of those who participated. I won with a score of 70, and I'm so honored in that, unlike the rest of the field, I'm given very little time to practice because I'm focused on many other things. It's called talent, and I have it and they don't. President Donald J. Trump.
- [61:45]
David Rothkopf
What an asshole. I mean, seriously, we cannot, on this podcast, doing an hour a week, even if we did it live in real time, which I sometimes think we almost have to do these days, convey, as often as it needs to be conveyed, that as Corrupt as Donald Trump is, as evil as Donald Trump is, as stupid as Donald Trump is, he's also the biggest asshole in the history of the world. And the idea that he thinks he can go out, that anybody believes that he won this, and there are immediately a million stories about how he cheated to win this thing. It literally puts him in the same category as Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who apparently went on a golf course once and they said, oh, he hit holes in one or some kind of insane made up nonsense, and that's what Trump is doing. But, and here's the point, not only is he doing it the way Kim Jong Un did it, but you think Kim Jong Un then went and insulted everybody he competed against and had to say that he was better than and had more talent. Even Kim Jong Un compared to Donald Trump, has more dignity and more decency than this guy who cheats to win a local golf tournament at his own golf club, brags about it, and then uses it to kick the people he supposedly beat down. And it's just, how weird is it? But the other question is, who else was in this tournament? Who was putting up with this shit? I mean, if Mitch McConnell was in this tournament, I could understand possibly how Trump could win. But what about the dignity of all these other people? Are they just so thrilled that they're on the same golf course with Donald Trump that they're willing to let him make a mockery of the sport and of them? Are they just all members of the U.S. senate and House who are Republicans, who've had their spines removed, who goes along with this?
- [63:58]
Joanna Coles
Don't you think it's odd when you look back over history and you think, how did people get away with this? How did Stalin get away with it? How did Hitler and going back over time and then you sort of see in real time how Donald Trump is getting away with so much of this and that his obsequious cabinet sitting like little dogs around him at Camp David on Friday, where they went for their off site, their corporate off site, you just saw him looking ever more desperate. And it really did seem like that movie the Death of Stalin, where they're all just sitting around him, nodding at everything he says. And you just think, this is.
- [64:38]
David Rothkopf
No one understands politics better than Armando Iannucci, the guy who produced that, who created Veep, who did in the Loop,
- [64:46]
Joanna Coles
all great, one of my favorite films, but also the brilliant the Thick of It, which is a British comedy about politics there, but it's so transferable, highly recommended. The Thick of It I'd highly.
- [65:01]
David Rothkopf
You'll get more insight into politics from looking at the work of Armando Iannucci than getting a political science degree from Harvard. Guarantee, for sure.
- [65:10]
Joanna Coles
And you know, the other show that we should recommend about politics, which is also, I mean, the great thing about YouTube and Netflix and everything is you can now find these shoes is yes Minister and yes Prime Minister, which were the precursors to Veep and the thicker and again about the British system, but utterly reflective of how people use power.
- [65:31]
David Rothkopf
No question about it. And watch Borgen, the Danish.
- [65:35]
Joanna Coles
The Danish series.
- [65:36]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yes.
- [65:36]
Joanna Coles
Who's got a female prime minister, which is nice for a change.
- [65:40]
David Rothkopf
Nice. And who faces a Greenland crisis? Anyway, we're getting sideways.
- [65:45]
Joanna Coles
But it's always fun to recommend things because sometimes you learn as much from fiction.
- [65:50]
David Rothkopf
Well, and the reality is this, I don't know if this were presented to me as fiction, as if I would find it believable. And part of it is when you go back to your question about, well, how did Stalin and Hitler did the same kind of thing? Well, Stalin, Hitler, Kim Jong Un, they do some similar things. But here's the difference. When Kim Jong Un had an uncle or a cousin who spoke out against him, he allegedly targeted him. He made him stand in front of an anti aircraft gun and he blew a big hole in him. Stalin killed tens of millions of people. Hitler killed tens of millions of people. The way they got people to do stuff was at the point of a gun. Somehow Donald Trump, aging, decrepit lame duck, declining in power, declining in the polls. Somehow Donald Trump has all of these people in his party, in the Senate, in the House, in districts across America, kissing his ass. Even I don't get it. There is an act of complicity with Trump within the MAGA movement and within the Republican Party that makes this particular kind of dysfunctional government different from almost any other kind that we've seen. It's more like, I don't know, some outbreak of dancing disease that occurred in France in the 18th century when everybody ran in the street and had to compulsively dance or.
- [67:37]
Joanna Coles
I know about dancing disease.
- [67:39]
David Rothkopf
Yeah, no, that's one of those things that happened. They go through in France. They went through a lot of weird stuff. Remember there was at one point they decided that cats channeled witches and so they put a bunch of cats on an island and they killed the cats. These things happen. But periodically there are bursts of communal madness that happen in societies and take them in these weird directions. And somehow in the United States, I think our burst of communal madness came from the fact that for much of our history, but certainly for the past 40 or 50 years, the single guiding principle for so many Americans became greed, that they were like, okay, look, if this guy puts a dollar more in my wallet, I'll take all the bad stuff. And that's our madness. Our madness is the degree to which American greed has led to this outbreak of corruption and hate and nationalism and destruction of democracy. Because people just want a few dollars more in their wallet. And I'm not talking about poor people. I could get it from them. It's billionaires who just want more billions that I find just repugnant. And frankly, I look forward to read. I hope Armando Iannucci right now is listening to this podcast and is going, you know, I gotta do something new on this because nothing I've ever done captures this.
- [69:23]
Joanna Coles
I talked to a billionaire over the weekend, actually, who said he thought Trump should be in jail. I was asking him if he was going to pay the $100,000 a month for access to Truth Social, and he said Donald Trump should be in jail. But of course, he won't say that publicly. David Rothkop, what better way to start the week than to talk to you?
- [69:42]
David Rothkopf
Same with you, Joanna. I love starting the week this way. It's a little bit like purging yourself after a big meal.
- [69:51]
Joanna Coles
Well, I hope that we will be back next Monday. Who knows? The world will have turned on its axis, and who knows what we'll be discussing then. Probably an entirely new roster of subjects, David, but I suspect the Miller family. The Miller family will still be at odds with each other, and the Trump
- [70:13]
David Rothkopf
family will still be fascinating despite their vacuousness.
- [70:18]
Joanna Coles
And I'm sure they'll be considerably richer by the time we talk to them this time next week.
- [70:23]
David Rothkopf
And Mitch McConnell, as Chevy Chase used to say on Saturday Night Live about Generalissimo Francisco Franco, will still be dead.
- [70:35]
Joanna Coles
David, see you next Monday.
- [70:38]
David Rothkopf
Bye.
- [70:43]
Joanna Coles
American Greed. Well, that's David Rothkop's analysis of what's going on right now. I think he's probably right, but what do you think? Leave us a comment and tell us what you think. We love to read your comments, and as you know, we frequently incorporate them into the podcast. If you have been. Thank you for joining us. And a big thank you to our production team, John Romero, Ryan Murray, Rachel Pasar, Heather Pizarro, Neil Rosenhaus, and I'll be back tomorrow with Michael Wolff, where we'll be going inside Trump's Head. So the good news is we have so many beebeast Tier members now there are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.
- [71:25]
David Rothkopf
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile now. I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back.
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So I thought it would be fun
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David Rothkopf
if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch upfront payment
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David Rothkopf
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