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See full terms@mintmobile.com his getting twisted around his own axle. And I think he's a deeply frustrated man right now. Cause for most of his life he's been able to talk his way out of his problems. And right now it's just, they're piling up and piling up and he's just. He's lost that old magic. He got nothing. In addition to that, he looked impotent, right? He looked weak. The subtext of this meeting was America losing stature. And the image that goes along with that is the President losing stature. He is looking smaller and smaller relative to the President of China in every way possible. You know, optically, but also metaphorically.
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Welcome to the Daily Beast Podcast. I'm Hugh Doherty. I'm executive editor of the Daily Beast. I'm privileged to be in this chair today for the great Joanna Coles. We have a brilliant guest coming up, our indispensable chief Global affairs columnist, David Rothkopf. Before we get into the show, please take a moment share this podcast with your friends. Invite them to subscribe to The Daily Beast YouTube channel. We are closing in on 700,000 subscribers and with your help, we can get to a million. And it's thanks to everyone who has subscribed that we have such amazing guests. So please help us spread the word. Now, David Rothkoff really needs no introduction, but I will just say he has written a brilliant column which nails everything you need to know about Donald Trump's trip, trip to China and why it shows he is literally shrinking on the world stage and dangerously, why the US is too. David Rothkoff, welcome. Thank you for making a special appearance on the Daily Beast podcast.
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B
I'm happy to be here and I'm happy to see you.
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Oh, that's very kind and thank you. Thank you for. Well, thank you for. Obviously, thank you for joining me. But thank you as well for being tolerant of my Scottish accent, which some people are finding hard to understand. So I will be very, very slow and very crisp and clear.
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B
Have you thought about subtitles for these podcasts?
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A
There are some questions about the reliability of these subtitles. I have noticed. It seems that YouTube and the strange AI overlords have not been to Glasgow.
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B
Everybody should watch Trainspotting a few times. Then it becomes very easy to understand my people.
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A
David, you have written a must read column for the Daily Beast about, well, the biggest flop possibly imaginable, Donald Trump's trip to China. We are recording this while Air Force One is still in the air. But we know, we have seen what happened on Air Force One and we have seen what happened in China. Tell us your summary of just was this the great, historic, biggest summit in the world ever? That we were promised.
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B
But not only were we promised, but as it was happening, Trump was like, well, I don't think anybody's ever seen anything like this. And of course he says that about everything. And I can only imagine how that figures in his personal life. But in terms of what we saw in Beijing, it was certainly not. In fact, the main takeaway from this was none of the ones that Trump might have hoped it was. He wanted to change the subject from Iran. Didn't really do that. He wanted to make himself look like he was a powerful world leader. He didn't really do that. In fact, from the very beginning, Xi Jinping set the tone, set the tenor, and actually set the narrative. And early on, he made this reference to what is known as the Thucydides trap, which is this idea popularized by a Harvard professor, Graham Allison, that conflict is likely between rising powers and. And established powers that they are supplanting. Well, of course, the subtext of that is China's the rising power and we are the established or declining power. And he started with that. And then Trump a little bit later when Somebody explained to him what was going on, wrote a true social post, and he said, oh, don't worry about that. What he really meant was, we were declining under Joe Biden, but now things are great. So he didn't take umbrage. He tried to deflect it, but in every part of the meeting, it was the Americans asking for things, the Chinese not giving them or not giving commitments to them, controlling the narrative and lecturing the United States periodically saying, you can't do this on Taiwan. That's our world. Don't mess in it. And in fact, what you got was the United States going, yeah, okay. Trump on the plane back was like, well, we talked about that. And he said, will you defend Taiwan? And I said, I don't talk about that. And Trump may have thought he was being very deft there, but what he was really saying was he gave Xi Jinping that wink and a nod like, yeah, okay, okay, don't worry about it. And I could give you 10 other examples. But the point is, coming back, Trump looked less, the United States looked less. And I'm not even talking about him falling asleep at meetings or not being able to stand up straight.
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A
Well, I was going to talk about Taiwan, because this whole situation that Trump walked into in China, first of all, I was going to say, who had to explain to him what the Thucydides trap is and how on earth did they even.
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B
I'm sure it wasn't Pete Hegseth.
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A
It was not Pete Hegseth. Did they say, well, there's this Gerald Butler movie, and maybe we should watch that first. But I have to say, a Scottish star.
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B
But Gerald Butler is great.
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He is absolutely great.
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He has never made a bad movie. And I will stand, but that's a hill. I will die.
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A
I think he's died in a few hills in some of his movies. Trump kind of walked into a trap himself, though, didn't he? You called this. I'm just going to say you were on with Joanna earlier in the week, and you predicted exactly what was going to happen, that Trump was going to bow to Xi. And that's really. That's the story here, isn't it?
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B
Yeah, look, it's a long story, right? As I said when I was talking to Joanna and in the column I did earlier in the week, for thousands of years, people would come to the emperor in China and they would kowtow. The emperor would give them some gifts. But it was very clear that China was the Middle Kingdom, right? It was the center of the world, and people were Coming to the center of the world to pay their respects. That's what it felt like with Trump going there. And Trump heaped praise on Xi. And look, I'm glad Trump didn't start World War iii. And frankly, I'm glad that Trump is not a China hawk like some of the crazy China hawks who want to take everything that China does and turn it into a threat to the United States. But having said that, Trump didn't feel like he was a peer to Xi. You know, Trump was asking for things, not getting what he wanted. Xi was setting the tone of everything, as I said earlier. And, you know, at the end of the day, Trump, I think, was sort of going home, you know, with his tail between his legs. I mean, he may think everything's going great, you know, but there are tells that he didn't. One of them was that on this plane flight back, he blew up at everybody around him. You know, my friend David Sanger is a New York Times reporter, was on the plane, asked the question about Iran, and Trump went nuts.
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And in fact, we have a clip.
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Total victory, except by people like you that don't write the truth. You know, you should write. I actually think it's sort of some treasonous what you write, but you and the New York Times and cnn, I would say, are the worst. It's pretty crazy what that he's calling the New York Times treasonous for not reporting the news the way he wants it. I mean, what he was saying was that the New York Times was not giving him credit for military victory in Iran, and that that was treason. And in any other case, if any other president ever said this kind of thing, people would be going, oh, my God. Treason's pretty strong language. And Trump has all theory of the case, because treason is aiding and abetting an enemy, and he believes this is aiding and abetting Iran. And this is all part of his effort to intimidate and shut down and end free press and free speech in the United States. But there was also a personal side of this thing where the president is not able to control himself. He blows up at people. He attacks reporters for doing their jobs. He looks like an idiot if you look at the clip. Sanger, when he starts going off, starts looking like he's gonna break into laughter because Trump is trying to be intimidating, but he's also kind of clownish when he does this. But this colored this whole trip back. He was in a lousy mood, and that manifested himself and his responses to questions, both in terms of the mood, but also they would say, well, what did you get done on AI? And he was like, well, we agreed to talk about guardrails in the future. Or what did you get done on agriculture? And he ends up defending this super anti maga idea that China should come in and buy up farmland in the United States. And everywhere he goes he's getting twisted around his own axle. And I think he's a deeply frustrated man right now. Cause for most of his life he's been able to talk his way out of his problems. And right now it's just they're piling up and piling up and he's lost that old magic.
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Right. I'm going to risk both of us being accused of treason here. But pointing out Kankles is not, I believe, treason so far.
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B
Well, also his mother is Scottish, isn't it?
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That is actually true. Yes.
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Congratulations, by the way. That's something to make out of.
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Yes.
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He's half between that and Mel Gibson and Braveheart. I don't know. I mean, you guys ought to be ashamed.
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Well, yeah. I mean, when I say he's lost his magic, I'm Being a little facetious about the magic, but he's always been able to talk his way out of whatever his screw ups are, right? Or have his lawyers talk his way out of it. He doesn't know how to get out of this Iran thing. And the issue in the Strait of Hormuz is a problem. And he's just gone to everybody, he's gone to the Europeans, they're not going to help him out of this thing. He realizes that the biggest power, because they're getting some of their oil through the Strait, is China. But China has been very clear. China vetoed the UN Resolution calling for collective action to reopen the strait. And China has actually been supplying components of arms to the Iranians to help them sustain themselves. Trump, that actually came up too. Trump said, would you not supply them with arms? And he then said Xi promised he wouldn't, but the Chinese didn't actually say that. And the Chinese have only been providing components, and it looks like they will continue to provide components. So here he was kowtowing to a guy who is actually actively helping the enemy in this Iran war and helping them in ways that could actually lead to casualties, to US Troops and sailors. And that doesn't give Trump any pause. And he was not tough on Xi on any of that. And they didn't agree to help with the Strait, so he got nothing. But in addition to that, he looked impotent, right? He looked weak.
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That's what I was hoping we would want to talk about is the body language of all this, the feeling. And unusually, we've actually got a direct side by side because he went to China nine years ago now and stood with Xi. So we can see, we can see the physical change in Trump.
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B
In his prior visits, Trump was tall. In fact, Trump sells himself as being 6:3. Now, we know, we've seen all the pictures side by side of him and Chris Hemsworth or him and whatever six three guy who's got the body fat, he said, and it's obviously a lot. But xi Jinping is 5 foot 11 and Trump standing next to him is the same size. And so I use this as a sort of maybe a cheap device or obvious device in the column by saying, you know, the subtext of this meeting was America losing stature. And the image that goes along with that is the president losing stature. He is looking smaller and smaller relative to the president of China in every way possible, you know, optically, but also metaphorically.
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A
And he was presented by Xi with the grandeur of China, with history that goes back hundreds and obviously the Chinese idea of the unitary state goes back well into 16, 1700 years before the common era. But Trump's reaction was to say, this justifies my ballroom. It just seems like a very diminished view of the world.
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B
Well, I think it's diminished mental capacity, really. I mean, if we're going to be honest about the whole thing, this guy's obsession with this ballroom is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And you know, he uses, literally, I don't know that there's been a meeting that lasted more than 15 minutes where he hasn't brought up the ballroom during the course of the meeting. And he knows the ballroom is hugely unpopular. He also knows he may not get it paid for. One of the little bits of news that flow floated around in the past 24 hours is that there was this reconciliation package passing through the Congress to allocate a lot of money that the President wanted to the Defense Department to DHS and so forth. But part of it was a billion dollars for the ballroom, the sort of subterranean security elements of the ballroom. And it didn't get the votes. It's unclear that the Congress is actually gonna allocate the money he needs even as he's having this fight over the ballroom. But does he give up? Does he drop the subject cuz it's really, really unimportant? No. He says in China they have really big ballrooms and we need to have ballrooms because their ballrooms are like, remember the missile gap between the US and the Soviet Union. Now we have a ballroom gap.
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A
Even if he gets the money, he's been presented with thousands of years of Chinese history and he's got a bit of gold. He also, on the subject of gold, got on the plane and was truth socialing about his admiration for the gold statue. And I say gold in very, very inverted commas. It's actually gold plated statue. On one of his golf courses down in Florida,
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B
he did a whole post saying people loved the statue, which was put there by some patriots who love him. And it's kind of weird, but there's another gold subtext to this whole story because you recall and you guys have written about it. Earlier this week it was discovered that he hadn't actually produced any of his gold plated television.
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A
Indeed.
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B
And, and that there's sort of $59 million that had kind of disappeared from people who put a deposit on the phone and they looked like they were trying to weasel their way out of it. But in a subtext that has to do with this trip, it looks like what they've done is buy a lot of cheap Chinese telephones, not the current model, the last model from a secondary manufacturer, and are gonna go and send those out, maybe with a gold sticker on them or something like that. And so here was Trump, the Made in America MAGA president in China, while his team was like, hey, let's buy a bunch of crappy Chinese phones.
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A
And Eric Trump, who is one of the two executives running Trump Mobile, along with his brother Don Jr. Well known Mobile phone executives, was on this trip.
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B
Yeah. Remember when they were complaining that Hunter Biden was trying to cash in on his relationship with his dad. And here we have on this trip, Eric and I think his wife.
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A
Yeah, Pilara was there.
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B
And they're like riding along and obviously they're in the lobby, they're having meetings. And the Chinese know that with Trump, you know, it starts and ends with grift. And we know that in 2017, when he went, what proceeded the trip, trademarks for Ivanka's company. And Lord knows what kind of deals were being struck on the side of this meeting between Eric and others. We know this week that Trump Real Estate Enterprises, also run by Eric and Donald, is like building a new tower in Georgia, is doing it in collaboration with some oligarch. They're trying to cash in as much as they can, as fast as they can around the world, because this is their moment. It's gonna be a lot harder to take advantage of the Trump name when dad's doing five to 20 at Danbury Federal Penitentiary. Well, okay, that will never happen.
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A
Let's just get back to Taiwan, particularly. Right. Taiwan. You've been involved in foreign relations for a very long time, and Taiwan has always been at the center of a question of is independent, would America come to its assistance. And I think to the best of our knowledge, this is never something that has been directly asked by the leader of China of a previous American president.
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B
Well, it always comes up, and there is a longstanding principle based on something called the Shanghai Communique about the One China policy and that the United States would always refer to the People's Republic of China as the One China, and always came up with ways of referring to Taiwan. Even though we supported Taiwan as democracy and we provided some munitions to Taiwan and so forth, we always came up with a different way of referring to it than as a full country. In fact, we didn't have an embassy there, we didn't send an ambassador there, and so forth. And it was all a workaround. It was one of these Diplomatic fictions. But there was always this kind of assumption that because Taiwan was democratic and because it was vitally important, particularly in recent decades as a producer of semiconductors, that the US Would act to defend it. And in recent years, there have been even some statements by democratic politicians, by leaders, even on both parties, saying that we would have to do that. Well, Trump is clearly backing away from that. And although he would say he is not that China. We hope China doesn't attack Taiwan prior to these meetings. I think on the plane on the way over there, or while they were over there, Marco Rubio did an interview in which he said, well, the Chinese are hoping that reunification can be peaceful, and obviously that would be a better outcome, and we certainly don't want it to be the other kind of outcome. But that was not a strong statement. And Trump's statement that he didn't confront Xi on this and he wouldn't tell Xi whether he would defend Taiwan or not was certainly not a strong statement. And it goes with something broader, which is that Trump has embraced this kind of sphere of influence theory of foreign policy, which is, we should be able to do whatever we want in our hemisphere. Russia should be able to do whatever it wants near Russia, and China, by extension, should be able to do whatever China wants near China. And all these things have made the Taiwanese nervous. And then that has been compounded by the fact that the US Is scrambling to create chip fabs so that it can create our own chips and we don't need them, and that the Chinese have had an explosion in their ability to create chips, and that they, too, are not going to be dependent on Taiwanese chips. And I have to say, the minute that Taiwan does not control the advanced chip manufacturing of the world is the minute that Taiwan is in the most jeopardy. And that's just coming. I mean, sooner or later, the world doesn't want to be as dependent as it is on Taiwan for the vast majority of all the advanced chips which are needed for AI. And that's just going to reduce its leverage. And ultimately, there is going to have to be some kind of confrontation on this, whether it's violent, diplomatic, involves arm twisting, involves blockades like we've seen in the Strait of Hormuz or like we're currently seeing around Cuba, who knows? But this is going to remain an issue that's very thorny for years to come.
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A
The other thing that hangs over this is Trump's kind of broken promises. We talked about farmland and how that was a real MAGA thing of not allowing the Chinese to buy up US Farmland and particularly to buy near American military sites. But Trump went on Sean Hannity, who was part of the official delegation, apparently, as you would expect. But Trump went on Sean Hannity and kind of surprised even Sean Hannity by saying he's kind of okay with this now. And in fact, we have the clip.
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B
I would assume I'm in Beijing if I wanted to buy property near one of their military installations.
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A
I don't think President Xi.
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B
Look, it's not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop, you want to see farmers lose a lot of money, just take that out of the market.
- [27:19]
A
He's willing to dump what had seemed to be core. Core issues for his voters. And similarly, there had been this very aggressive language about Taiwan that's been dumped. There were supposed to be soybean sales. They don't seem to quite have happened, which is going to be of concern, I would imagine, to the farmers, particularly, for example, Iowa. He's really flexible here about his MAGA principles.
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B
First of all, he said there'd be swaying sales. The Chinese didn't confirm it. He said there'd be Boeing sales. The Chinese didn't confirm it.
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A
And in fact, I should say he kept going on the Boeing sales on the plane and said we'd started with 200. Analysts, had hoped for 300. Boeing stock price went down. And on the plane, I presume, cognizant of the stock price, he said, well, it might be as many as 750. The Chinese haven't confirmed any.
- [28:14]
B
That's such baloney. It's such baloney. But look, I know as a journalist, you're supposed to approach these things with a certain degree of decorum and objectivity when framing a question like this. But let's be honest, Donald Trump has no principles. When has Donald Trump had a principle that he would just not bend on? Right? I mean, not pertaining to marriage, not pertaining to his business partners, not pertaining to the oath he took to the Constitution of the United States, not pertaining to loyalty to allies or loyalty to friends. Throughout his life, he has betrayed his friends. He's betrayed his family. He has no principles. He's just in it for Donald at the moment. What's good for me right now, what makes me feel feel good right now, what can put more money in my pocket right now, what's gonna get me out of the problem that is dogging me right at the moment. That's what Donald Trump is about. And so is he gonna sell out Maga for sure? He sold out Maga. 100 times this week, we discovered that 10 million Americans are gonna not get the subsidies they need, so they're gonna have to drop their healthcare. Well, you think those are all Democrats?
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A
If.
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B
Of course they're not. And lots of money that would have gone to MAGA States isn't going to go to MAGA State. And he's screwing them. I mean, Rudy Giuliani was going through hell. He told him to cut him loose. Donald Trump's entire life is an encyclopedia, a chronicle of violating oaths, vows, commitments and principles. And I don't think we should be surprised here in the declining days of Donald Trump to see him as that. He is a figure without any values or ethical standards, because that's who he is.
- [30:24]
A
It's also kind of revelatory of the moment of. We have significant questions now over his mental state. Right. And its ability, his cognition. And one of the things about this trip is the mask. I was going to say the mask is off. Maybe the mask is the wrong phrase. But Trump appears increasingly disinhibited. He appears more willing to just say
- [30:46]
B
these things, which is an early sign of dementia. I'm not a psychotherapy or a neuroscientist, but I've read enough of these articles, which is something that runs in his family. He can't stay awake. He can't stay on topic. He doesn't seem to understand a lot of what is going on around him. He constantly needs people guiding him in the right direction. He's losing it. And I know it's a running thing at the Daily beast. Donald Trump, 79.
- [31:22]
A
It will run out on June 14th.
- [31:24]
B
Just set your diary well, exactly. And starting on June 14th, it's going to be Donald Trump, 80. And you can't be blamed for being 80. Although there is this kind of dark irony because he went after Joe Biden for being old and suffering the decline that comes with age. And it is, if anything, happening to Donald Trump earlier, faster and to a greater degree than it has happened to Joe Biden.
- [31:59]
A
And he also went after him for China. China Joel was one of the nicknames in the past as well. And yet.
- [32:05]
B
Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, they went after Obama because when Obama got to China, he wasn't greeted by the president. Well, Donald Trump wasn't greeted by the president. You know, I mean, the hypocrisy is another dimension of this clown show that is just, you know, with us in every day, in every instance that we see them. Fox News is now streaming live on Fox 1. When news breaks, we don't just report it. We go beyond the headlines to get the full story. Get live coverage in depth, analysis and perspectives from the voices you trust all in one place. Whether you're at home or on the go, stay connected to the stories shaping our world stream. Fox News on Fox 1 download today.
- [33:01]
A
Your analysis of it, I think is, is is one that's worth just dwelling on for a second. You describe them rightly as low energy, an elderly visitor being tended to by his more vigorous host. But it does seem like there's something of a break here, that we're beginning to see that this is not, that the Trump moment is definitely over, that we are on the downward slope of this presidency, it seems.
- [33:33]
B
I'm so glad you're saying it because there are too many people. I live in Washington and so I encounter people all the time and they're still caught up in Trump from 10 years ago when he had a lot of momentum within American politics or he was a force to be reckoned with or whatever for all the wrong reasons, but he was there. Trump's the lame duck. He's not going to run for office again. He is declining. He's not up to holding the office right at this point. And even though we saw recently in interim elections that some people in Indiana or someplace are still being loyal to him, this guy is on his way out. I think the big story in American politics really ought to be what's next? Who is going to be dealing with these challenges that we face as a country next. And Trump's just not going to be part of that. And I think to some extent it may explain his insane mania for putting his name on everything, building statues, building arches, building ballrooms, having airports named after him, et cetera, et cetera. He is behaving like a guy who is aware of his own mortality.
- [35:04]
A
Well, David, we could not ask for finer chronicler of the years after Trump, never mind the years of Trump. There's so many questions to be asked about what happens next. Cannot wait to discuss those with you. Thank you for joining us.
- [35:22]
B
Well, I can't wait for those years after Trump.
- [35:24]
A
I'm sure that you are not alone in this.
- [35:29]
B
It's going to be tough for the media because Trump's like this colorful figure and we will undoubtedly get somebody who's less colorful, God willing. But we could do with a little boredom. I could do with it. Neither you nor I are getting any younger. I could do at the period where things are just in the zip code of normal.
- [35:50]
A
Isn't the proverbial Chinese curse, which I'm sure is totally apocryphal. Please, if, if you know that it's apocryphal, I'm not saying it's true, but people always said, oh, may you live in interesting times.
- [36:02]
B
Yeah, well, I think though in the direct translation is may you live in the times of Donald Trump.
- [36:07]
A
Ah, well, I'm glad that the ancient Chinese seers saw our moment so effectively. David, you're a much more up to the moment seer and thank you for bringing your insights.
- [36:21]
B
It's always good to talk to you here.
- [36:27]
A
David, thank you for joining us. Once again, you can read David's absolutely must read verdict on Trump's amazing shrinking trip and his amazing shrinking presidency@thedailybeast.com I just want to say a big personal thank you to the many, many people who have sent messages of support for Joanna. She is absolutely aware of them and very grateful. I'll be in the comments later to hear what you've got to say about Trump in China, about Trump's mental state and all the other issues that this podcast has raised. And finally, thank you to our production team, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, and our legal eagle, Neil Rosenhaus. 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.