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- [00:01]
Fox News Announcer
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- [00:31]
John Stamos
Hey, there, it's me, John Stamos, in partnership with Cologuard. And a little birdie told me you're over 45. Listen, that's not old. It's really not. But it's an important age. If you're at average risk, that's when you start screening for colon cancer. And look, it's okay to be nervous, but it's not okay to ignore your own health. It's time to see if the Cologuard test can be an option for you to get screened. All right, I'm glad we had this little chat.
- [00:52]
Joanna Coles
Says that he had a brain worm eat half his brain, but that's ideal for Trump. Trump has a bowl full of nuts in his cabinet because then he's not threatened.
- [01:02]
David Rothkopf
He's got a bowl full of brain warts in his house. And he's like, you want to be in my cabinet? Here, hold this up to your ear. You know, you have a secretary of education who thinks AI is a kind of steak sauce. Everywhere you look, they're idiots. As far as the eye can see, he is the world's best funded graffiti artist. He is trying to tag everything with the name Trump before his cankles or his swollen hand or whatever it is that ultimately gets him. Gets it. There is no graffiti artist in America who is doing more to deface this country than the President of the United States.
- [01:38]
Joanna Coles
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Welcome. And today's guest is, every Monday, David Rothkopf, the ultimate Washington insider who speaks to people at the State Department. He speaks to people in the intelligence services and has a bead of what's going on amid all the spin. But before we open David's microphone, just a reminder to please subscribe to the Daily Beast. We are independent media. Not many of us left these days, so we appreciate your support and also always feel free to leave a comment about what you think. But no time to waste. Let's get into it. David Rothkopf, the author of American Resistance. I'm pretty sure you were out there for. For no Kings Day. Let's get into it. David. David. Or as I like to think of you, our Eminem of the Swamp. Yeah, I know you're wearing A hoodie. You could put the hood up.
- [02:35]
David Rothkopf
Yeah, I could put the hoodie up.
- [02:37]
Joanna Coles
Yeah. There. There we go. That's a much better way to start a Monday. I expect that you spent all day yesterday recovering from protesting at no Kings, correct?
- [02:48]
David Rothkopf
Oh, of course. Look, you know, I mean, we can make fun of it. Actually. One of the weird things about the protest this weekend is how, frankly, I think kind of lukewarm the coverage was after the protest. This was the largest public demonstration in the United States in our history.
- [03:11]
Joanna Coles
So that's 8 million people on the streets, right?
- [03:14]
David Rothkopf
8 million. It could be. There were some. It was 8 million, and then there were a few more. So it could be approaching 9 million people. Two and a half percent of the population, a number of which they pick kind of carefully because political scientists say once you get about 2 1/2% of the population out into the streets, that's a tipping point. That's a sign that regimes, like authoritarian regimes, can start to fail. And. And that's where we were. 3,000 demonstrations, demonstrations on every continent. And they were wild. Not just because you had dancing brigades of pigs and lizards in inflatable costumes and all sorts of placards. But it's gotten to the point where there were the people there to protest for democracy, there were the people there to protest against ice, There were the people there to protest against the war. In other words, it's kind of an agglomeration because there's so many things to protest. But the big point is people are getting up and getting out. And I wrote a column for you yesterday in which I quoted Timothy Snyder, the professor who has said, democracy is not a noun, it's a verb. And the point is, you have to work at it. And we stopped working at it in this country. We got complacent. And it's brought us to the brink of or beyond the brink of authoritarianism. And now, at least there is this stirring where people are saying, no more. We have to work at it. We have to fight. We have to restore it. And that, you know, I mean, it's a good way. It's Monday morning. It's a good way to start us off with a little bit of hope that there are enough people who care that they actually spend their weekends doing that. Where you were probably at a spa.
- [05:05]
Joanna Coles
I was not at a spa.
- [05:06]
David Rothkopf
I was at a spa getting a seaweed wrap.
- [05:08]
Joanna Coles
What? Outrageous. Outrageous. David Rothkopf and sexist, if I may make so bold. I hate spas. Cause I hate the music. I can't Bear that kind of music, it's not sexist.
- [05:20]
David Rothkopf
I've been to a spa. I've never had a seaweed wrap, but I've been to a spa.
- [05:23]
Joanna Coles
I can send you some seaweed wraps in the post if you like, from our local sushi. Thank you. You can wrap yourself and then you can eat yourself at the end of it. But I loved the big papier mache effigies of Trump and his cabinet, which were going around in dc. I thought they were fantastic. I suppose one of the issues is that if it's a little bit like the entire country went to marriage counseling, isn't it? I mean, democracy is a little bit like marriage. You take it for granted until you hit a rough spot. And when you said that, Timothy Snyder said that democracy isn't a noun, it's a verb. I thought being married is a bit like that, too.
- [06:07]
David Rothkopf
That is exactly right. You know, I had a friend once, and she, when she did college, she went and lived with a couple in England, sort of lower middle class couple.
- [06:16]
Joanna Coles
Okay, this is. This is not super depressing.
- [06:21]
David Rothkopf
No, it's not that depressing. Every morning before he went off to work in the colliery or wherever he was working.
- [06:28]
Joanna Coles
He would be working class if he was working in a colliery. Unless he was running the colliery. Just pointing out.
- [06:33]
David Rothkopf
Okay, look, just go with the story. Okay.
- [06:36]
Joanna Coles
You know, it's Monday morning. I'm feeling hope, David. Two and a half percent of people.
- [06:40]
David Rothkopf
Well, I'm gonna give you an uplifting story. The guy, every single morning of his marriage, went downstairs before his wife got up and he set the table for breakfast. And when he set the table underneath her cup, which was turned over, he left her a note every day of the marriage, just a note to start her day.
- [07:01]
Joanna Coles
What kind of a note? Like, please pick up the dry cleaning.
- [07:05]
David Rothkopf
God, you are a very cynical person. I don't want to know how you were scarred this way. The point is, he was making an effort, you know, every single day of the marriage. And I thought it was a great manifestation of what you were just saying. And you have to do the same thing in democracy. You can't just sit there. You don't just have a democracy, you work at a democracy. Because there are all these forces, people accumulating power and wanting everything for themselves that unless they are constrained, pushed back against, laws are passed, the right people are put in office, they ultimately gain the upper hand. And in the past 40, 50 years in the United States, you've seen big companies, big, you know, groups of rich people Certain subgroups that have taken advantage of their support by those people take control of this country in a way that was never intended. And so these people, they're turning up. On Saturday, they were turning up, they're saying, no seaweed wrapped for me today. I'm going to the street, I'm going to make a paper mache effigy of Trump or Hegseth or any of the other criminals who are running this administration. And it's good. It's a big deal. And all you have to do to know that it was the right thing to do is read the rest of the news.
- [08:33]
Joanna Coles
So the founding fathers, I don't think, anticipated, it's fair to say, Truth Social. You say that over the last 40 years, big companies have managed to elbow the rest of us out of the way so they get what they want. But arguably Donald Trump has elbowed the big companies out of the way to get what he wants, which is inordinate amounts of attention. And currently he's focused on is he or isn't he going to put boots on the ground in Iran? We woke up this morning to another Truth Social post, which of course we know there's nobody on Truth Social. That's the other irony. His own social network. There's nobody on it. But of course, we all have to pay attention to it and the media covers it. What is your prediction of what's going on here? He will take any notice whatsoever of no Kings. Do you think he thinks no Kings is all about him? So it's great because he just wants attention. And do you think he has any idea of what he's thinking of doing next with Iran?
- [09:33]
David Rothkopf
Well, let me break that statement in a couple of parts. First of all, the Profounding fathers may not have known about Truth Social, but they did know about the core idea under it. And you know that because Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who hated each other, went into the first government of the United States and both of them took money and hired propagandists. Thomas Jefferson as secretary of State, hired a guy, put him in the State Department to write anti Alexander Hamilton pamphlets. And Alexander Hamilton did the same with another pamphleteer of his own. So they were using the technology of the day to fight the same kind of battles that Trump is fighting.
- [10:12]
Joanna Coles
And of course, that's a great perspective, actually. I mean, the trouble is they traveled. The pamphlets traveled more slowly and there were fewer of them. But I guess it was a smaller population, too.
- [10:24]
David Rothkopf
It was a much smaller population. You know, the majority of people in the United States saw One pamphlet, the big bestseller of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which they would get in their house and they'd read it out loud and it said, you know, that this is the case for revolution. And this one pamphlet actually made a difference. Truth Social obviously has not risen to that level. And Common Sense has essentially nothing to do with Truth Social, but because it is the rantings of a mad king, everybody in the country goes and they repost it, and people know what it is. And he is using it to pass laws, announce public policy. And you're right, over the weekend, he's using it to say, this is what I'm going to do next in Iran. And from an operational security perspective, that's not great, as they call it in Washington. Opsec. OPSEC has never been a strong suit of this administration. They were on social media chains talking about battle plans in the middle of a battle, as we recall from Signalgate.
- [11:39]
Joanna Coles
But.
- [11:40]
David Rothkopf
But in this particular case, he's saying, if you don't do what we want, we will attack your power plates. Other people are leaking into the media that we will go and we will send boots on the ground to grab their enriched uranium. This, by the way, is one of the most insane ideas that has ever been floated. Not just because it's being floated, which is bad enough, because the Iranians, they know about Truth Social, right? They're watching Truth Social. They're making fun of Donald Trump in their. The public spokesperson is making fun of Trump's public Persona on a daily basis. But they're watching this, and they know that most of this uranium, at least was in the middle of a city is fine. And it's gonna be very hard to get to it. It's buried underground. There are lots of people around it. Sending troops in to get it will produce many, many deaths on our side. But these are canisters of radioactive gas in some cases, to not just like little hunks of uranium. And they're vulnerable and they could fall into the wrong hands easily. The Iranians have every reason now to disperse them across the country. Bad idea. Makes them all less secure.
- [13:13]
Joanna Coles
But, David, let me just push back for a second. Surely they would know that the Americans would want the enriched uranium. So it's not as if that's a surprise to them. I mean, Trump putting out there on Truth Social that we're coming after the enriched uranium can't be a surprise. They know that that's what the Americans want.
- [13:33]
David Rothkopf
They know it's an option. The question is, to many people, it seemed like an unreasonable option, such an unreasonable option that it would be considered an unlikely option. But as we sink deeper into the quicksand of this incredibly stupid war, this incredibly dumb decision to go in and launch a war against Iran, the options available to Trump become worse and worse. And they involve things like going after the uranium or going after Carg island or sending boots on the ground, or trying to take the point at the Strait of Hormuz where they have some control over what's going through. And Trump has thought throughout that the Iranians will collapse at these threats. And the message the Israelians are saying is, no, this is existential for us. We are willing to fight it out. We are willing to take the punishment. We know that we have time on our side. Just like the Afghans did in a 20 year war. Just like ISIS and Al Qaeda did in a 20 year war.
- [14:47]
Joanna Coles
Well. And just like they did over eight years with the Iraq war.
- [14:51]
David Rothkopf
Well, yes, except. Right. And some of the division that was dealt with in that war continues to foster, to fester. So the point is, Trump is using a weapon, a cudgel, a threat that has historically proven to be ineffective in these kinds of conflicts. And he doesn't know it because he doesn't have advisors, because he doesn't listen to anybody, because he doesn't know anything about history, because it's all about him and how he's perceived and whether he's, in his own mind, perceived as somebody who's being powerful, not even effective, but powerful. And it's leading to one bad decision after another. Now, I have to say, the people I talk to in Washington, the people who cover the Department of Defense, people who are senior military people, people in the defense and in the diplomatic communities, they're sort of hunkering down, expecting that there is another shoe to drop here, that the Iranians will not give in to Trump's demands, and that at some point in the not too distant future, there will be American troops on the ground getting shot at in Iran, and that none of the boots on the ground scenarios turn out very well for the United States. And, you know, just to go back to a point we made, I think it was a week ago. You know, Iran is 92 million people. It's three or four times the size of Vietnam. When we went into Vietnam to fight a long war There, we had 500,000 troops. And we lost. We had hundreds of thousands of troops in the Middle east for the wars of the prior part of this century. And we lost having military strength, running successful Military operations does not ensure a successful outcome. And when somebody says, well, look, our fighters are doing these amazing things and our bombers are doing these amazing things, and our Navy is doing these amazing things. Yes, maybe we've done this before. We've run good operations before. It doesn't change the political situation on the ground. It doesn't change what people believe. It doesn't change the motivations of the people that we are fighting in these cases. And that's why we keep losing. We've been losing wars of this kind since the 1960s.
- [17:33]
Joanna Coles
David, aren't you underestimating our not so secret weapon that we didn't have in Vietnam or in the Iraq war? And that is the deal making team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
- [17:48]
David Rothkopf
Yeah. No, you're so right. These are two great geniuses. They are a little distracted.
- [17:55]
Joanna Coles
Come on.
- [17:56]
David Rothkopf
The deal guys, they're deal guys. And I think that when the history of this period is written, they will have gotten a lot of good deals out of it. As it happens, none of them will be good for the U.S. but Witkoff's kid, Kushner's fund, Lutnick's kids, they're all writing deals all the time while they're going and negotiating these things. And Lord knows what crypto flows are coming from what oligarch in the Russian government into the bank accounts of our leaders. And there's a time when saying something like that would be considered wild calumny. And how could you say that? Every single listener on this podcast believes Trump is getting crypto flows. Trump is getting flows of illicit dark money. Wyckoff is, Kushner is. They believe to the marrow of their bone that our president is completely corrupt. But it's not just that. Witkoff and Jared are doing good deals while they do bad deals for the US because they have no experience. Right. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. We have another secret weapon, and I'm surprised you haven't brought them up yet.
- [19:13]
Joanna Coles
Go on. I would just say, why haven't we done? And I think there's a lack of imagination here. But possibly, I would suggest for the negotiations, they think of a Supreme Leader coin. I mean, that would be useful for the Iranians.
- [19:27]
David Rothkopf
You mean like a meme coin for the Iranians?
- [19:30]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, of course, for Khomeini that we haven't seen yet. Son of the Ayatollah who was. I mean, you could have an Ayatollah coin. I mean, this could be a way of them coming out of the Darkness, the sanctions darkness and Trading over Borders.
- [19:48]
David Rothkopf
And wait till you do the Ayatollah biopic with.
- [19:53]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, that's a great idea. Jeff Bezos could give them a good $40 million deal. I mean, then they're suddenly coming out of the sanctions darkness and competing.
- [20:04]
David Rothkopf
It's true. And Melania can do the opening. Hello, my friend. Hello, my friend. The idol.
- [20:11]
Joanna Coles
Yeah. Even though we haven't seen him, I'm very curious to know who we're supposed to be negotiating with. But you said I'd overlooked another secret weapon. Who is it?
- [20:20]
David Rothkopf
Well, first of all, Trump in his truth social this morning said that we are negotiating with a new group of reasonable Iranians, which obviously means we're not. We read this, it's a complete lie. And the irgc, the Revolutionary Guard, believes that it is constantly refuting Trump's assertions in this regard, and I think getting some pleasure out of refuting it. Now, the person I was referring to is your favorite in the administration, which is, you know, our frat boy in the Pentagon.
- [20:55]
Joanna Coles
Oh, yes. Kegsbrough or Kegseth, which is the best nickname for any of them. Donald Trump is so good at nicknames for people, but Kegsbreath is very good
- [21:06]
David Rothkopf
for p. But, you know, as laughable as this hair gelled American doll.
- [21:15]
Joanna Coles
He's an American Girl doll. An American Boy doll.
- [21:19]
David Rothkopf
Right. He's Lethality Kent. Right. You know, he's a Ken doll, but he's with tattoos. But as laughable as he is because he's so incompetent and he gets on the. I mean, the snl, you know, poor performance of him by Colin Jost is pretty funny because it's so true. Because he's just angry. You know, you're getting this story wrong. He did this again over the weekend. You know, the press is getting this story wrong. But remember, every time you get the story wrong, there's a war fighter out there who's gonna pay the price, you know, but all he has is anger and.
- [21:59]
Joanna Coles
And prayer, David. He has prayer.
- [22:02]
David Rothkopf
Well, that's what I was getting at. Because this guy is the white Christian nationalist to end all white Christian nationalists. And in the past week, what have we seen? He's bumping from promotionless black men and women because he's a white supremacist. He is holding a prayer breakfast. He just held a prayer breakfast where he asked God to give us the ability to be as lethal as possible to kill as many Iranians as possible. And we might shrug that off, but, you know, who didn't shrug it off in his palm Sunday remarks, the Pope.
- [22:47]
Joanna Coles
Yep.
- [22:48]
David Rothkopf
The Pope said, praying for the deaths of people, your prayers will not be answered. You have blood on your hands. You know, Pete Hegseth is being slammed down by a Pope from Chicago because what he is calling for is so so repugnant. He's eliminating different types of religions from having the ability to worship within the military.
- [23:12]
Joanna Coles
Well, the whole, you know, the whole first amendment is the separation of church and state. And Pete Hegseth is dragging the church back into this.
- [23:21]
David Rothkopf
But you know, he's got these big tattoos of crusader crosses on his supermanly chest, hairless, manly chest. And you know, he is trying to turn this war into a crusade. He is describing our enemies as being enemies of God. He is describing our strength as being doing the work of God which permits us to do anything. And one of the weird perversions of his fucked up tiny mind. One of the things that Pete Hegseth is constantly getting at is the idea that because God's on our side, we can commit war crimes. Right. Because God is on our side, we can do whatever it takes to kill people. And that's why it's okay to blow up speedboats in the Caribbean. And that's why it's okay to kill thousands of innocent Iranians, which this is an illegal war and we have already killed thousands of innocent Iranians. That's murder. And Pete Hegseth is saying, yeah, but it's the will of God. But we've never seen anything like in any other administration in American history. If somebody rolled out this white supremacist, Christian nationalist stump, they would be out the door in seconds.
- [24:48]
Joanna Coles
Well, and without Congress signing off on this extraordinary use of money to fund this war too, which we know is the complete opposite of what Donald Trump actually campaigned on. Although to expect logic from Donald Trump is perhaps too high a bar. But one thing, I'm reading Jeffrey Sonnenberg's book at the moment, or is it Jeffrey Sonnenfeld's book?
- [25:12]
David Rothkopf
Sonnenfeld?
- [25:13]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, I'm reading Jeffrey Sonnenfeld's book about Trump at the moment called the Trump 10 commandments. And one of the commandments that these are sort of. He's being ironic, but sort of leadership rules that Trump has is to constantly promote, promote very under qualified people into jobs so that he doesn't have to deal with a threatening power base from someone else. And Sonnenfeldt uses Hegseth as the ultimate example because he was a major promoted to run the Department of Defense. And I wonder what it's like for Dan Kane, who himself was promoted, who was a third star general, now in charge of some four star generals. So that, that's also an interesting sort of over promotion. But I wonder what it's like for Raisin Cain as he's known to take orders from Pete Hegseth. I mean, it's such a peculiar, it's such a peculiar inversion of military power. And the point of the military is it's hierarchical and there are layers and it's experience led.
- [26:15]
David Rothkopf
Well, first of all, it's civilian led, typically. And so the person he's ultimately taking directions from is a five time draft dodger, Donald Trump.
- [26:28]
Joanna Coles
Right, okay, fair, fair.
- [26:30]
David Rothkopf
It's even more grotesque than you described. But before we get into Jeff Sonnenfeld's book and I would like to. I'm sort of stuck on your Jeff Sonnenberg and I have to tell you an old Jewish joke.
- [26:43]
Joanna Coles
Oh God, I was gonna cut that out. I was gonna edit it out.
- [26:48]
David Rothkopf
No, no, you're gonna wanna have this joke. And the old Jewish joke is a Jewish guy and a Chinese guy getting along really well. And the Jewish guy goes, I'm really pleased that we're getting along so well. And I'm surprised. And the Chinese goes, why are you surprised? And he goes, well, you know, Pearl Harbor. And the Chinese guy goes, pearl harbor, you know, you know, I'm Chinese, I'm not Japanese, I didn't do Pearl Harbor. It's the Jewish guy's. Well, you know, it's all the same. And the Chinese guy goes, well, you know, I'm really surprised. We're getting along so well too. And the Jewish guy goes, oh yeah, why? And he goes, well, the Titanic. And the Jewish guy goes, the Titanic, what are you talking about? And he says, well, Goldberg, Greenberg, iceberg, it's all the same.
- [27:46]
Joanna Coles
Okay, so, all right, I'm gonna leave that in now. I was going to cut it out cause it was a genuine mistake, but that's worth having in there on a Monday. We all need jokes.
- [27:57]
David Rothkopf
Jeff Sonderfeld is a friend of mine. He's a good guy. He's written a book which I think I have some real problems with because although he likes to think it's kind of this balanced assessment of, you know, how Trump has gotten ahead. You know, it's gotten, you know, some people, you know, here's the endorsement, for example, of the head partner or the former Brad cop.
- [28:23]
Joanna Coles
Yeah.
- [28:24]
David Rothkopf
Paul Weiss. On the outside of it. There are a bunch of sort of Trump bootlickers who are saying this is. Okay. And what I find is that in doing a management analysis of a guy like Trump, you attribute to Trump strategic powers, capabilities, thoughts, skills that he doesn't have. And the reality is Donald Trump, the thing that distinguishes Donald Trump is that he is actually an irrational actor, that he is actually nuts, that he is actually dangerous, that he is fundamentally evil. And that even if he is picked up in his brief time at the Wharton School and over the course of a career in business, a few little business activities, and because he was in business, we tend to excuse him and say, well, this is how business people operate. It's not true. This is a malevolent force in our lives. And suggesting that somehow there's something to learn from how Trump behaves, it's like suggesting that we ought to take a study for our next management course, Caligula.
- [29:41]
Joanna Coles
Well, also, six of his companies have gone bankrupt. So would you invest in this person? No, of course not. And look what JP Morgan did. They debanked him after January 6th, which, of course, Trump is fighting and will probably lose. But to hold him up, as any kind of leadership example, is, I think, really bizarre. Plus, the fact that he was floated by his father, so started with an enormous advantage, which he managed to fritter away.
- [30:13]
David Rothkopf
Not only he was floated, and then he was bailing. You know, one of my favorite scenes in the Trump story is he is literally losing money in the casino business, which nobody does. Right. You can't lose money.
- [30:25]
Joanna Coles
Right. The house always wins.
- [30:27]
David Rothkopf
Right. In a rigged business, to the point that his dad had to go to Atlantic city and buy $3.5 million worth of chips as his way of pumping cash into his son's failing casino.
- [30:45]
Joanna Coles
Where he was hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein.
- [30:48]
David Rothkopf
Well, exactly. But this guy. I mean, to suggest that there is anything businesslike about Donald Trump other than his rapaciousness or his corruption, is to misunderstand Donald Trump. Every business he has had has been a con. And it's been a con that is wrapped in bad business practices and alienated partners inside a kind of twisted view of the entire world.
- [31:19]
Joanna Coles
Okay, so let's just go back on track for a second. Cause I led us.
- [31:24]
David Rothkopf
Is this off track? I had no idea that we were off track when I started talking about the Titanic.
- [31:30]
Joanna Coles
But, yeah, well, I wanted to pull you back because another of the incompetents that's in a job of enormous importance and should have someone of competence running it is, of course, the FBI. And Kash Patel. Kash Patel got his own private Gmail emails, hacked by the Iranians. Again, another humiliation. And strangely, the ones at least I read were all kind of dull. I was hoping for something a bit more interesting, but why would I expect that?
- [32:01]
David Rothkopf
He's such an idiot. I mean, he's such an idiot, you know, I mean, and so is he. These are guys who you could be in a room with a thousand people, and you could say, let's pick somebody for the U.S. government. And they would be number 999 and number one. And I don't care who the other thousand people are. You know, they're kind of drunk party boys who literally do not understand what they're doing or where. You know, we have the image of Kash Patel on his plane flying around his fake country and western star girlfriend giving her FBI protection, going off to the Olympics. And he has done so many things that would get anybody else fired, it's ridiculous. But he has looked like an imbecile doing it. And now the Iranians, who presumably did this hack, have come up with his secret files, which, again, Hegseth was the one who was out there on social media and Signalgate sending secrets to the world. And here you have Kash Patel vulnerable because of the way he uses his various computers and devices and so forth. And what do we learn? We learn that Kash Patel's an idiot. Interestingly, with the way this administration is set up, when you began and said, well, there's one idiot we haven't talked about here, I immediately thought, oh, well, she's about to go to Michael wolf's comments about RFK Jr. Even Trump is now apparently calling, according to Michael Wolf, calling around and saying, do you think this guy's nuts? Because he's nuts. But who would have known he was nuts? He fucking eats roadkill off of the street and takes saunas with his jeans
- [34:00]
Joanna Coles
on and says that he had a brain worm eat half his brain brain. But that's ideal for Trump. Trump has a bowl full of nuts in his cabinet, because then he's not threatened, right? He makes the decisions here.
- [34:14]
David Rothkopf
He's got a bowl full of brainworms in his house, and he's like, you want to be in my cabinet? Here, hold this up to your ear, because otherwise, how do you do you know, you have a secretary of education who thinks AI is a kind of steak sauce, who is trying to destroy.
- [34:29]
Joanna Coles
They say you're referring to Linda McMahon, referring to AI as a one.
- [34:34]
David Rothkopf
Yes, that is exactly right. Of course, we have the late, lamented Kristi Noem, who's like, flying around in a waterbed on her plane with Corey Lewandowski, who's, like, cutting deals for her while she is producing $100 million videos of her doing cosplay.
- [34:51]
Joanna Coles
200, 200, David. It was quarter of a billion dollars, that ad campaign. And who knows where the commission went, right?
- [34:58]
David Rothkopf
Meanwhile, you know, J.D. vance, ridiculous Marco Rubio, the sane one in his giant clown shoes, who's going around saying to our allies over the weekend, well, you know, we may not get control of the Strait Hormuz. But, I mean, he went to Europe and he said, we may have to be used to the idea that we don't control the Strait of Hormuz. Think about what it. Every day, 120 ships would go through the Strait of Hormuz. It was a vital waterway, 20% of the world's oil supply. And we are now saying, well, sorry, guys, but we may fuck this up so bad that the Iranians henceforth run it like a toll booth. And Trump, meanwhile, is celebrating. Well, you know, the Iranians gave me a gift. Oh, what was the gift, Don? Well, and he asked Witkoff, can I tell him? Witkoff says, you can do anything you want, Mr. President, during his last cabinet meeting. And then Trump says, well, they have let us let eight ships through. And you're like, wait, that's the benefit? That's the big payoff. We had 120 ships going through, and now we have 9% of that going through. And you're considering that a big win. I mean, literally, there are idiots everywhere you look, and we're not even talking to the Secretary of Transportation, the Secretary of Energy, the idiots over at EPA who are literally attacking the environment. They think their job. Lee Zeldin at the Environmental Protection Agency thinks that he works for the Environmental Destruction Agency. And everywhere you look, they're idiots as far as the eye can see.
- [36:38]
Joanna Coles
But you know who aren't idiots and who I was very moved by last week. I was traveling and I had to go through Newark Airport, and then I had to come back via Bozeman Airport. And the TSA staff working without pay, who've been working for a month without pay, could not have been more polite. And I said to all of them, thank you so much for working. I know you're not getting paid. I'm sorry the government's so dysfunctional. And by a man and by a woman, they were all like, thank you so much. Please don't worry. We will eventually get paid. It's not your fault. They were unfailingly polite. I had a 10 minute wait at Newark, not, thank God, the sort of scenes that you see Atlanta or at Houston. And I had no weight at all at Bozeman. There's no snow in Bozeman, so I think it's been a slow season for them. But, you know, out there in the country, there are people dealing with the real consequences of this extraordinarily incompetent government. Is my point.
- [37:36]
David Rothkopf
First of all, I mean, you're absolutely right and it's a nice point to make. But the way you did that inside this I am an oligarch. Flex of saying you were in Bozeman. Cause who goes to Bozeman, Montana, except people who are out there in that part of the world hanging out with oligarchs, doing skiing, leading a Joanna Coles kind of light. And the fact that you sort of wove that in there while the rest of us are like in shithole airports across America.
- [38:02]
Joanna Coles
David Rothkoff, can I tell people what car you drive? Can I tell people where you once did a podcast? I was like, where are you, David? And you were like, I'm at my auto dealers. And I'm like, you were at your auto dealers? You were at a Porsche dealer. Enough with the Joanna Coles lifestyle. I can hear people switching off. We sound horrifying. My only point was there are really good people out there working hard and not being paid for it because of the dysfunction of this government.
- [38:30]
David Rothkopf
Well, that's right. But the dysfunction of this government was revealed when, last week, when the Congress couldn't come to a deal, even though all the Republicans in the Senate had signed on to this deal, which would have essentially said, let's fund the department, let's fund tsa. We'll deal with ICE Later. Trump calls up his little elf in the House, Mike Johnson, and says, no, kill the deal. And so they kill the deal. Then they leave town for Easter Passover break or whatever. They're on. And the country is dealing with these hours long lines in many of these airports. I'm sure the line at Bozeman Airport was out right out to all the Rolls Royce.
- [39:11]
Joanna Coles
You know how you know that I don't have an oligarch lifestyle, David? Because I was flying commercial. I was flying commercial, my friend.
- [39:19]
David Rothkopf
The crocodile tears that will show up in the comments to this because you had to fly commercial. Anyway, the point is that then when it was all going awry, what did Trump do? Trump said, I'm gonna sign an executive order ordering them to be paid because
- [39:38]
Joanna Coles
he knows it's bad.
- [39:39]
David Rothkopf
But why didn't you do it six weeks ago, Don? If you could do that. Now, he probably can't do it, right? It's probably as illegal as many of his other executive orders. But if he thought he could do it, if he cared about the travelers, if he cared about the TSA workers, he could have at least tried to do it when this thing started, but he didn't. He realizes right now it's a political liability because look at the country, look around us, all joking aside, at everybody's life. Whatever kind of car you have, you pull in the gas station down the street from me, and it's $5 and something a gallon. The price of everything is going up. If you are a farmer out there in Bozeman, Montana, the price of fertilizer has doubled, which means the price of food is going up. The Congress can't pass anything. The budget deficit is exploding. There's a story today about how governments around the world have stopped buying US Treasuries. And it looks like they may start selling US Treasuries, which will hammer the dollar, but it also hammers one of the main levers of American power in the world. Our allies are out there warning right now that, you know, the United States, if we don't get the weapons to Ukraine, is gonna lose the war in Ukraine, that the war in the Middle east could go on for months or years or more. And the countries that are closest to us are saying, please get a diplomatic solution. Let's stop this thing. Wherever you look. And this is an extension of their idiots as far as the eye can see, wherever you look. Economics, politics, national security, health services, environmental services, the functioning of the government. There's a story that tens of thousands of scientists in the US Government have quit because this is an anti science government. We don't do research and development. I heard a Jensen Huang interview over the weekend. The head of Nvidia saying nine of the 10 best AI schools in the world are in China. The majority of the best AI scientists in the world now are in China, where the cutting edge of the next state of development, of the United States, of the world economy is coming, is coming out of China. And so we joke and so forth, but we're in a moment of real dire straits for the United States because Trump is serially destroying the sources of our strength in ways that help our adversaries and hurt average American people. And he's doing it because he still has the approval of a bunch of billionaires around him who are saying, well, you give me my tax Cut you take away the regulations, I'm going to make more money. And because I'm a billionaire and I live in a billionaire bubble, and I don't even know what you mean by flying commercial, I will never be touched by this stuff. They live on another planet. Trump's base, his core audience does not live on the planet Earth. And that is a huge calamity for all the rest of us who are forced to.
- [43:06]
Joanna Coles
Well, his own MAGA base may now have the opportunity to reassess that he's gone against one of the most important parts of maga, American first by starting a war. But let me just take you to, I think, perhaps a final point for the day, which is the metaphor. It's both a metaphor and obviously a real thing. The East Wing. The east wing, which he's planning to. It will be three times the size of the existing White House. Donald Trump's obsession with size, with having his name on things with gold, with this colonnaded ballroom. And the New York Times yesterday did a piece which triggered the White House in the Beast. We had a very good report that Carolyn Leavitt had sort of lost her mind over this and was just exploding. What are your thoughts on this? And also the fact that Trump then said what had been exposed was something they'd been trying to hide, which was a sort of military bunker underneath the new East Wing, which, of course, you know, Melania has been pushed out. We know Melania wasn't there anyway, but there's no bigger signal. She's really been pushed out. Then they literally demolished the space she was supposed to sit in. No place for me now. I moved back to New York. I moved to New York, back to Trump Tower for no place. Me, West. East wing. What wing? I'm not there. That's just how she was processing it.
- [44:46]
David Rothkopf
Look, let's again break this down. First of all, as you're describing all this, I think, how much nicer did his mother and father have to be with him that we wouldn't have to deal with him compensating for it for the rest of his life? Or I thought, how much bigger should certain of his body parts have been that we didn't have to deal with it, compensating for it? Like, I mean, what is it, an inch, two inches? We wouldn't have had to deal with this crap.
- [45:09]
Joanna Coles
It's 90,000ft. The new ballroom. 90,000ft.
- [45:14]
David Rothkopf
Size does matter to this guy. But no matter what the size of it, you know, you read the New York Times article about this, and it's just clear that the East Wing is in many respects the least wing because the architectural design behind this, which reveals, according to Trump and Caroline Levitt, his genius, it is a metaphor for Trump. Right. There's a grand stairway at the front of it that leads to nothing because the entrance is on the side of the building. There are multiple stairways that lead nowhere. There's all sorts, sorts of design flaws in this entire thing because it hasn't been reviewed by anybody with any sense of judgment. I mean, Trump is famously a guy with the worst taste in America. He doesn't know it, but it is being manifest. And this is becoming a monument to bad taste, excessive spending, and they think they're off the hook when they say it didn't cost the tax, but it's
- [46:25]
Joanna Coles
being privately funded by all these companies that you talk about that are headed by billionaires.
- [46:30]
David Rothkopf
Right. Which that's a double edged sword that doesn't help us. Either way, it cuts because on the one hand, what are the billionaires who are funding this thing doing that for patriotism or are they doing it to get regulatory outcomes that they want sweetheart deals with the US Government?
- [46:50]
Joanna Coles
So, David, out of interest, do you think if there is a new president in 2028 and it's a Democrat, that they will demolish it? Would you do that?
- [47:00]
David Rothkopf
No, personally, if it's built, if it is up, I think that the cost of demolishing it would be an obstacle to doing it. Will they repurpose it? Will they make it not a big gilded ballroom for billionaires? Will they try to make it a place where actual work can get done that supports the White House, supports the government, supports the people, maybe, from which vital social services functions are performed? I would think so. Certainly a Democrat in office would do that. Will there be a big, huge party in Washington come on down the day that Trump ceases to be President of the United States? States where the gilding is torn out of the Oval Office, the word Trump is torn off of the Kennedy center, the word Trump is torn off of the US Institute of Peace. The words Trump and the defacing that's gone on in the White House and in the colonnade along the side of the White House where all that stuff is torn down and thrown into a nice big bonfire of Trump garbage to erase his name, every place he's put it. Yeah, it's going to be a fantastic party. And one of the weirdest things about living in the moment that we live in right now is if you talk to anybody and I Tell you, every listener, go out and talk to your friends. Every single one of them has fantasized about what they will do the day Trump goes. Whether it's a party, they go to Washington, whether they're in the street, whether they're sending out fireworks. This. I mean, America is waiting for this event. And in Washington, it's gonna involve a lot of revision. Cause he is like, he is the world's best funded graffiti artist, where he is trying to tag everything with the name Trump before his cankles or his swollen hand or whatever it is that ultimately gets him. Gets him. But he is. There is no graffiti artist in America who is doing more to deface this country than the President of the United States.
- [49:11]
Joanna Coles
Okay, Well, I think we should invite listeners and viewers to go on our comments and tell us what they're going to do when that day comes. How will you celebrate the moving of Donald Trump, either legitimately or. Well, who knows when he. Or how he leaves the White House. But this is a good moment for people to take tell us how they plan to note that moment. David, as always, extremely provocative talking to you. And I wanted to give a shout out, actually. We have someone called Beth Winnot, who's a viewer and a listener from Australia. Her husband reworded a famous Bob Dylan song. Hey, Mr. Tangerine man don't play your games for me I'm not sleepy and to your places I'm not going to hey, Mr. Tangerine man don't play your games for me in the mumble jumble of your mind I'm not following you. I thought that was actually a pretty good attempt at harnessing an old favorite, Bob Dylan, and attaching it to the crazy orange man in the White House.
- [50:22]
David Rothkopf
I think it's good. And the other thing that I would add, when people write in the comments, we read them real closely. We talk about them.
- [50:30]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, we do. And I will tell people. I called David. The first time we did this together, I called David and I said, you need to read the comments. And he was like, I'm never gonna read the comments. Comments. Why would I do that? I'm not subjecting myself to such hatred. But in fact, we love the comments. They're not hatred at all. And we swap them back and forth. And they're highly intelligent. I mentioned the guy at YouTube told us they were among the most intelligent, articulate, engaged comments that anybody has. Because we all care about this stuff. It's important. And as you say, quoting Timothy Snyder, the historian, democracy is not a noun. It's a verb, and everybody is beginning to practice it.
- [51:09]
David Rothkopf
Honestly, if I can compliment you here, one of the great things you're doing is.
- [51:13]
Joanna Coles
Stop. Stop. You can't compliment me. You've already insulted me.
- [51:16]
David Rothkopf
This podcast, well, okay, it'll balance out. But one of the great things that you're doing here is you're building not just a good platform or good content, you're building a community. And I get the vibe when I do this podcast and I hear from people and stuff. This is a community and it's really engaged and all these issues really matter to them. And fortunately and weirdly and wonderfully, they haven't lost their sense of humor about it all yet. So I'm definitely here for this big, growing Daily Beast community you've built.
- [51:55]
Joanna Coles
Well, I should say that we've decided to do this regularly on a Monday now because your conversations are so popular. You bring such energy and anger, I think, to what's going on through a filter of humor. Because otherwise, what else is there? And for regular listeners, they should know that David Rothkopf is. Well, for new listeners, I should say, people should know that. David Rothkopf is our global affairs columnist. He writes biting analysis of what's going on right now from a place of great experience. So, David, thank you. I will see you back here, God willing, next Monday. And onwards, to who knows what holds. The war could have accelerated by next week, or it could be over. And the Iranians have admitted unconditional surrender, which is what Donald Trump told us they would do before they started bombing their neighbors.
- [52:48]
David Rothkopf
Don't hold your breath, but I'll be here. I'll be here.
- [52:51]
Joanna Coles
Good. All right, David, I will see you next Monday, people. Don't forget to leave us a comment if you have been. Thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast Also, we're independent media, so we appreciate your support. 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, Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.