These Goons Prove How Trump's Presidency is Doomed

And there are a bunch of people in the White House right now who are waiting for the night of the long knives that is undoubtedly going to follow this election. If you're Cash Patel, Pete Hegsett, or you're RFK Junior, or you're Suzy Wiles, you're probably thinking, "How much longer do I have?" The problem is, Trump doesn't sort of trade up. The longer he gets into his term, he trades down. Election Day is going to be interesting, but between the challenges to the election, and then the changes in the Trump administration and the fact that the day after the election is over, campaign 2028 begins and that the Democrats are going to be jamming into the doorways to get attention and become believe it, the next few months are going to be crazy. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. It's Monday, so it must be David Rothcop. What are we going to be talking about? Well, we're going to be talking about the fact that President Obama is back. He's back on the campaign trail and he is provoking Donald Trump. We will look at Donald Trump's reaction to his former nemesis being back on the political stage. We look at elections around the world and what the defeat of the far right means for Donald Trump as he gears up for next Tuesday's midter terms. Don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. Please wherever you get your podcast. We are independent media. There aren't that many of us left, but we bring you conversations you cannot get anywhere else. Don't forget to tune in to YouTube on election night because Michael Wolfenay will be live with inside Trump's head and some cocktails who knows where it will go, but who knows where the election will go and who knows where the election in Israel will go tomorrow. We're going to get into it now with David Rothcop. David Rothcop, welcome to Monday. Joanna Coles, it's one week before the election. So exciting. Which election are you talking about, David? There have been hundreds elections. There, no, this is a week of elections. So it's one day after Brazil and Serbia. It's a day before Israel. It's a couple of days before the UN General Assembly, the Secretary General Election, and then you've got the US election. And if you like election, you know, the time of year. Yeah, this is your week. This is your Super Bowl. Certainly our Super Bowl, David. Well, well, come on and talk about all those election results and what they mean. Well, we won't know what the election result of Israel yet is, but you have a prediction. And we've also got some pretty odd candidates standing for Secretary General of the UN. But before we get to that, I just want to remind people that I will be live on election night with Michael Wolfe. So please watch us as we go inside Trump's head. It'll be a special episode for us. And David, I'm sure we'll be doing a lot next Monday to predicting what's going to happen in the election. But let's start with a supercut. No one does these supercuts better than our friends at Midas. Let's start with a supercut they did of Obama. Obama backed finally on the campaign trail and a wonderful juxtaposition of him and Donald Trump. So second time, I'll be in second time that everybody will be able to feel what change is in there. The reason I took the governor it. You get a chance to say enough, we are voting for change right here in Ohio. You're the president of the ring. Change the will finish the job we started with the affordable card and guaranteed quality of affordable health care to every single American. He's a very handsome guy. He's so handsome that I'd rather not have I just rather talking about Audi. I'd rather not have him up here. He's too good looking. Imagine the power duo of I'm doing the lesson. You've got a Muslim man. You got a Jewish woman waiting for you in the United States Senate. He might not be able to read the ballot bill as much. Maybe he doesn't know every single passage in the Bible like so many other people do. It's just also these strange noises that Donald Trump has been making on the campaign trail. I mean, what are those? I don't know. I don't know. We were talking about it on my podcast this morning. We're also talking about the fact that he just can't stop talking about the bodies of Republican candidates. And one of my colleagues, one of my Zoomer Gen Z colleagues said, no, I think he has gay dementia. He has gay dementia. I mean, Anthony Skaramucci said he thought he was bi-curious on on our podcast on on Sunday. Yeah, no. You guys you guys need to dive a little deeper into that. The only woman he seems to be interested in other than Natalie, of course, is Nicki Minaj. It was like at these things. And he's like, oh, talking about Nicki. And she's so fantastic. And I got to say that the other side of this is Barack Obama. Man, shoot that into my veins. This guy is so fantastic. And it's all of a sudden it's like, oh, my God, they got the Beatles back together. He like comes out on the stage. And he's got energy. And he is, it must be driving Trump crazy because Obama drove Trump crazy, right? But Obama's so good and Trump is so bad. And Obama's so energetic. And Trump is like, incoherent. And Obama's got like, he is like zeroed in. You know, it's so interesting. If you listen from the political perspective to what Obama was saying, because Obama was not there with some establishment Democrat, let's meet them in the middle bullshit. Obama was there with the L Syed message, right? We are going to fight corruption. We are going to have Medicare for all. We are going to get the money out of politics. We are going to go after, and it was like holy crap. He is guy getting it. This sort of new perspective. And I wrote about this by the way in a column that's up, I think today, at Daily Beast, Harvard did a youth poll last week. And the agenda that he was talking about, it's the 18 to 29 agenda. And the reason that's so important is that's the group that's going to be the majority in the 2028 election. And so you've got this change going on. It's dynamic. It's about the future. And it's fantastic. And meanwhile, Trump is like drooling and talking about John Husted's ass and making weird noises. And it was just such an incredible, I mean, that's why the super cut was so great is because you go from Obama, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and Trump going, and it was just, I mean, it's, you know, couldn't be clearer what we're facing here. Well, when you see it as well, for those who are watching it on YouTube, you can see the reaction of the audience standing behind both President Obama and President Trump. And the reaction of the audience is markedly different. I mean, there are a couple of people in the Trump audience. And they look down when he makes the noises, they look down, they look embarrassed for him. They're sort of cringing on his behalf. And when Obama uses, you know, corruption that the crowd sort of goes wild, it's also interesting when you just listen to Obama. He has that sort of newsreel quality about him. It already feels historic to hear him talking, but you're completely right that he gets under Donald Trump's skin. And of course, the minute Obama was back out on the trail, Donald Trump was back on truth social as he calls it. And we should just pause a moment and say truth social. What a cynical name for his social media network that just spews nonsense. Anyway, I'm just going to read the first couple of lines. Obama was a grossly competent president. He paid off his rub with billions and he gave them a road to a nuclear weapon. He said the crooked Hillary was going to win. He kept paid hard for her and she lost in all directions and ways. He then kept paid full out for Carbola. And likewise, she lost. He does have a point there that Obama has campaign for two women for president, both of whom lost. But what do you give? I'll say Ed's chances at this point. I think I'll say it's chances are pretty good. These races are all fairly close. A lot of it depends on turnout. The early voting turnout numbers we're seeing are pretty good. I saw some of the numbers out of Texas. And the early voting shows a big surge among Democrats, among Blacks, Hispanics, and young voters in particular. And that's a very good sign for the Democrats, particularly if that continues across the country. And that's the only hard data that you can really look at right now is early voting. But it's there. It's quite positive. And the reality is you're talking about people reacting cringing to Trump. Well, the polling data shows that's where people are. They don't like his policies when he says, oh, Obama paid Iran million. Everybody knows Obama struck a deal to get Iran to contain its nuclear program that was working and Trump threw it out and that led to this crazy war which led to the crazy high gas prices and the crazy high inflation and so forth. They know Trump is lying and that's part of the thing now. When I was watching football over the weekend, there were a lot of political ads in it and you noted that they weren't running on any accomplishment of Trump. They were either running on racism or they were running on saying, well, Democrats are communists and they're going to come and be communists all over the place and they just don't have a message right now. And, you know, typically that's something that works to the favor of people who do have a message and it was also interesting, you know, El Sayed and Obama, they kind of worked together pretty well. Who would have had, by the way, just because I got a Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. When Trump's argument that he trounced her in every possible way, it's wrong, Kamala Harris almost won. These were close selections and frankly, people tend to vote for change. And so Kamala Harris did not differentiate herself from Joe Biden enough. He didn't have a good enough response to Daza or good enough response to the Biden, you know, in error inflation, which is actually inherited Trump error inflation. And so she lost. But, you know, this was not all about Trump. Trump was riding the reaction to these things and he was fortunate to be in the place that he was. But right now, that's the mood in this country. People want change, you know, in that Harvard poll that I mentioned two minutes ago, 9% of the 18 to 29 year olds they pulled thought that the country was headed in a good direction. 9%. David, what do you think about Donald Trump's sort of ravings on the campaign trail that he's made trillions of dollars for America and that yes, he knows that gas prices are up, but it's a small price to pay for Iran not having a nuclear weapon. Do you think that's a message that is going to resonate with people? Well, I think it will, but not in the way that he wants it to. I mean, you know, when he goes up there and he says, well, gas prices are up, but as he did over the weekend, we're getting really, really rich. People don't think that the country is getting rich. They don't see the country getting rich. They think he means he's getting rich. Of course, every day there's a new story about billions of dollars flowing to Trump, flowing to the Trump family, Trump family cutting deals here, the Trump family cutting deals there. And so people see him as profiting, but not them as profiting. And I think that's the core problem. They see Trump doing well, they see tech oligarchs doing well, and they see everybody else struggling. And this argument that somehow he has made the Middle East safer with this war, well, that's ridiculous. It's ridiculous because we had the Obama agreement. We then had an attack a year ago, over a year ago, which they said ended the nuclear thing and didn't. We had another attack in which they said ended the nuclear threat, didn't. And so people know that what he's saying is nonsense. If a genie gave me three wishes, I would use all my wishes to wish for my cats to live forever. But since genies don't exist, I feed my cats smalls. Smalls is fresh, human-grade cat food that does so much more than just feed your cat. It helps them live a full, healthy, bouncy life. Most cat food out there is made with meat byproducts, cheap fillers and artificial ingredients. Basically stuff that isn't great for your cat. 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So student revolution in Serbia, which surprised the incumbent and in Brazil, well, at the moment, the Bolsonaro is refusing to concede. So it's unclear. And I'm sure that he's got Trump on the end of the phone saying, "Don't concede. Don't concede. Make this difficult." What's your interpretation of how Trump will be reading this? Well, I mean, how Trump will be reading it is, but the world should be reading it is that over the course of this 10-day period, I call it world anti-fascism week, because the world is having referenda on four different continents about whether or not you want fascist candidates to be running the country. Vuxich was running Serbia for the past almost 10 years since 2017. And he was thought to be sort of immovable, but the student movement, the student list in Serbia, took to the streets, got organized, and defeated him. And that's a big deal, because he was one of Putin's two biggest supporters in Europe, along with Viktor Orbán, and they're both now gone. It's also a big deal for Trump, and there is a subtext in all of this, because Trump's family and Trump's friends, Trump's administration was doing all sorts of deals with Vuxich. They were talking about hotels, they were talking about monuments, they were doing, Jared was doing deals, there was all sorts of stuff going on. And just as in Hungary, one of the big messages was anti-corruption, one of the big student messages in Serbia's anti-corruption, with a new government, they may help investigations that could end up on Trump's doorstep. So he's got to be aware of that as well. In Brazil, people were not sure that Lula was going to be able to come back in just two weeks in this runoff election, but the people of Brazil have seen authoritarian government before. And they said, oh no, we're not going there again. They also saw, by the way, at the beginning of Election Day yesterday, Bolsonaro had allies across particularly southern parts of Brazil, who were stopping bus service into parts of cities that were likely to be supportive of Lula. They were trying to cheat, and the election hours got extended because they were trying to cheat. And ultimately, I think that what's going to undercut Bolsonaro's whole complaint that the election was unfair, is that the only things that were unfair in the election, as far as Brazilian observers can see, were things that were done by Bolsonaro. And the people of Brazil said, you know, we've seen this movie before. This is Flavio Bolsonaro, we saw Yair Bolsonaro, we saw he was a lousy president. We saw he was corrupt, we saw he was trying to undercut democracy. We saw he led an insurrection to try to maintain power. We also saw that he got convicted. And one of the things that Flavio Bolsonaro was expected to do immediately was pardon his father. And the people of Brazil said, heck no, I think the margin is three and a half percent at this point, Lula's victory is going to stand up. Yeah, Lula's an old man, this is his fourth term. It's going to be tough for him to have particularly successful presidency. But in terms of the immediate impact, here is a Trumpist who was supported by Trump, who was also supported by the way by Trump's favorite oligarchs, you know, Mark Zuckerberg with Meta, you know, ran the algorithm in Brazil in order to play out Bolsonaro and to play down Lula. They tried to cheat in the way they tried to cheat. Musk was supporting him, Javier Millet and Argentino supporting, you know, and he, by the way, has also not acknowledged the election results yet. And so once again, it's a blow to the individual candidate, Flavio Bolsonaro, but it's also blow to this global, ethno nationalist fascist would call it what you will hate driven movement on the right that's led by Putin, but includes Trump, included Orban, included Vuxich, includes Nurendra Modi, includes BBC. Netanyahu includes Erdogan, includes Millay. And so, you know, that movement is a bit on the ropes, and that's good news. And I've been speaking to Israel at least overnight, I've looked at Israeli polls. It looks extremely unlikely, based on the polling, that Netanyahu is going to win another term as Prime Minister, and it looks unlikely that he's going to be able to form a coalition after this, which means there will be a new government in Israel, and while I don't expect it to reverse policies that need to be reversed with regard to Gaza and the West Bank, I do expect, as one of my Israeli friends said to me this morning, that whatever they do, they'll be doing without the fascism, the fascism of Netanyahu, and of course, Netanyahu and Trump could not be nuzzled together more closely in bed, and you know, they're politically spooning with one another. And if all of a sudden, BB disappears, and anti-BB forces then prosecute BB, which he's you know, up for being prosecuted for corruption in Israel, or the ICC goes after BB, this is going to be real bad news for Trump, because he's losing friends on the international stage left and right. And so as he looks forward to next week, all of this must look like, you know, premonitions, you know, ghosts of election days, future coming to haunt him, and it's going to be a bad week. We're going to see a lot of Trump craziness all week long, because he just, he doesn't have an answer, and I think he can see the writing on the wall. So, David, if Netanyahu loses tomorrow, what does this mean for the war? What does this mean for Pete Higgseth? What does this mean for Donald Trump, as they wrestle with trying to prize open the state of hall mues, which Iran still has control over? And how does this, I mean, who becomes their ally in the Iranian war? Well, I think you raised a good question, because while a lot of people are focused on, you know, Netanyahu's ongoing crimes in Gaza, or the West Bank, and the UN has just issued another report saying genocide is continuing in those places, you're not going to get a new Israeli government talking about a two-state solution or moving effectively towards some kind of Palestinian governance mechanism, that's going to be a problem for the future. But, you know, one of the subtexts, one of the things that may make it different, is that you've got from former prime ministers, from the Israeli military, from the Israeli intelligence community, a bunch of people speaking out saying, "This, what's going on in Iran, can't continue its craziness." And if Israelis stop being the agitator with regard to Iran, you know, I mean, it was Netanyahu, the coaxed and pulled and tugged Trump into this, and if they start pulling back, you know, Trump is going to feel a little bit left out there to dry. And I think again, you know, ultimately, you know, what Trump does when his schemes fail is he complains, he lies about them, he goes to court about them and then he walks away. And one way or another, I think you're going to see Trump walking away. With Hegseth, there's an interesting story emerging that's been in the press today and yesterday, which is that, I guess, Marsha Blackburn is running for governor of her state, and if she wins, Hegseth is lobbying her allegedly to make him a senator from that state as a way of keeping him from being able to be impeached. So Hegseth is a little bit running scared and looking for some kind of political ruse that will protect him from a two-year tenure that so far is the worst of any Secretary of Defense in our history by a lot, right? And so, you know, I think you're going to see a lot of retrenchment, a lot of change strategies that will come in the wake of all of this. And you've got all sorts of stories coming out of the White House about people trying to leave and people worried about the president going crazy. And also, you know, there were stories over the weekend that the White House is planning to pardon junior staffers who were involved in their things and on and on and on. So I think what's going on right now among those people is planning for the works. Every day, your personal information is exposed somewhere online. Your email address, financial details, even your health information. It's not about being careful anymore, it's about the hundreds of data brokers who collect and sell your data without your consent. They can't harm you, however, if they can't find you. And that's where incogni comes in. Incogni automatically sends removal requests and follows up across more than 420 harmful sites, helping get your personal information removed from places you may not even know exists. Incogni can find where your information appears online and recurring removals help keep it from coming back. You can also track your progress, get monthly risk assessments and reach 24/7 live chat support. To get an exclusive 60% off an annual incogni plan, go to incogni.com/beast or click the link in the episode description. That's incogni.com/beast. I mentioned intelligence there, the Dutch intelligence has come under scrutiny over the last week with this new book. And I wanted to know if you'd come across it, princes and thieves, there was an excerpt of it in Vanity Fair, it's by an investigative reporter called Matthew Cole. And it puts Jared Kushner at the centre of, well, frankly, enormous payments to him from the UAE and from Saudi Arabia. Kushner himself has denied it and said this is the most outlandish insane story. We denied it to the publisher Simon & Schuster, they didn't show us any details, but apparently at the heart of it is that Dutch intelligence discovered that Russian intelligence had hacked into Jared Kushner's phone and the Dutch intelligence were able to take snapshots or screen grabs of some of Jared Kushner's transactions. And it's alleged that a lot of this money was for him personally. I hadn't come across Dutch intelligence as a sort of factor in international relations, though that may just be my shortcoming. But I was curious to know if you knew anything about this and had any insight, because I know you have fantastic sources in the intelligence world. Well, first of all, I read the story in Vanity Fair and that's what I know of the story and the story looks pretty well-sourced. All countries, significant countries, have intelligence services of some size Dutch intelligence is small, but European intelligence services work together in the story that they had hacked into the Russians and seen that the Russians had hacked into this phone is plausible and indeed raises some bigger issues about the vulnerabilities of Kushner's phone. We know Whitgoth was traveling in and out of Russia with his personal phone and so forth. So I suspect one of the messages is that intelligence services, no more of what they were doing than what they were doing. And before I make a comment here about the flows of money, I do want to say, as I say, in our disclaimer at the Daily Beast, I have a company that does podcasts and one of the podcasts is sponsored by the Embassy of the UAE here. And so I always want to be full disclosure on that kind of thing. They don't require that we maintain a view of any particular sort and you'll see that in a minute. But full disclosure is important. I think with regard to these intelligence flows and the idea that the Saudis and some Emirates were pumping money through an Azerbaijan bank or through the Israeli Central Bank into accounts that could then be accessed by Kushner, where Kushner was the signatory on the accounts, which allegedly were used for sort of off the books diplomacy, you know, paying off people to achieve their goals diplomatically, does not sound inconsistent with what we've heard about in the past. Now, how much of this money ended up in Kushner's pocket? Or how many of these schemes were there that are not reported in this? And how much dark money flowing out of that part of the world, but also flowing out of Russia or elsewhere via crypto, as well as via accounts like this, are part of the sort of sea of money. that is sort of driving the rise of the Trump family, the Whitcuff family, the Lutnik family, Don Jr. Eric and so forth. I don't know, but when I read it, I thought, this is like a canary in the coma. And more of these stories are gonna come out over the course of the next several years. And we will see more and more examples of different foreign governments recognizing that the Trump administration had hung a forensic sign on the White House and they're essentially saying, we're transactional and grease our palms and we can work with you on different kinds of things. And so, I guess the short story is, the story sounded plausible and it seems to me to be indicative of some bigger issues. And already, I mean, this morning in Washington, there are half a dozen stories about if the Democrats take the House, there will be major investigations. - Yeah, I was going to ask you, if you were Jared Kushner, who, as we say, has denied these allegations, would you be anxious about an investigatory committee being set up to look into all his business dealings and how they've basically privatized American diplomacy and he has, you know, constantly said, actually, if you do business deals with people, that's the best way to get around the table. That's the best way to get people focused. It's easiest way to create peace. - I look, here is Jared, who is, you know, an arrogant, rich kid got in Harvard when he should have gotten in Harvard because his dad paid for it, who married into this family, who became one of the most powerful people in the world despite having no qualifications to be one of the most powerful people, got his father appointed to be the ambassador to France, you know, side-step criminal cases involving his father, you know, never ran a big fund before, but after the last administration came out with a couple of billion dollars from the Saudis and whatever, and, you know, became a very wealthy, influential, you know, financial figure, not based on any knowledge or accomplishment, but based on who he married. I think if you're Jared Kushner and you've been leading this kind of charmed life, you may be expecting it's going to continue, but at some level, somebody is saying to you, buddy, stand by, because, you know, he may think he has certain kinds of protections, you know, that he is a government official acting at the best of the president, but he hasn't fulfilled a lot of the responsibilities of being a government official, like providing his financial disclosure and other kinds of things, and the Democrats are calling for that right now, and they're calling for a clarification of his role. And, you know, he's operating in many different jurisdictions, and so there are many different potential legal avenues to go after him, and even if he is pardoned by his father-in-law, you know, if I were Jared, or Eric, or Don Jr, or Ivanka, or any of the others involved in the corrupt enterprises of the Trump administration, I'd be real concerned that people are going to find a way to get to you and to hold you accountable for these things, and at the very least, they're going to reveal the nature of your wealth and what kind of deals you cut to do this. You know, having said that, anybody who's transactionally approached anybody as in the Trump inter-circle, from any government, anywhere in the world, from any company, anywhere in the world, the worms about to start turning. - The worm is about to start turning. I mean, is there any incentive for people not to be on the take here if they assume that Donald Trump is going to pardon them? I mean, if I were working for Donald Trump, I mean, you know, surely you would just think, you know, what I'm going to invest in everything that I possibly can because I'm going to get a pardon. - I look, I think that that's the assumption of a lot of these people. There is a question as to whether the president's pardon power extends as far as he thinks it does. There are obviously state and other jurisdictions that can pursue these things where the pardon doesn't apply. But I, you know, if you're looking to next Tuesday and the results turn out the way people think they're going to turn out and Trump's not going to be able to do anything with the Congress and it's going to be harder for him to do things and they're going to be more investigations. I think, you know, you're going to see the flood gates open with all of these people saying, okay, I'm going to cash in. Yeah, you know, I'm going to get my money. I'm going to get my bag as they say, you know, in the NFL and I'm going to go and, you know, they may hate me for the rest of my life, but I'm going to have millions or hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and that will be comfort to me in my isolation. And so I, you know, as corrupt as Trump has been in the first half of this term, I think you will see a quantum leap in the levels of corruption that we see in the second half. The only question is whether foreign governments and companies who see their diminishing power think it's worth their while to continue paying them all? Wow, what a, what a depiction. So you think even if the Dems win the house and possibly win the Senate that Trump will become only more corrupt that he will see the next two years as his sort of supermarket sweep that he'll be running down those aisles just filling his basket with everything he can because the clock is ticking. I think there's every reason to believe that. He was much more corrupt in the first two years of this term than he was in his entire last term. Why? Well, because we had this case in Supreme Court June prior to his election, in which they said he had immunity as president. And I think he saw that as the green flag dropping and the race starting to get as much money out of the presidency as he could. And I think that that's likely to continue. And there are a lot of ways that they can make money. There are big stories right now about them selling pardons for $50 million here and there. There are stories about forcing defense contracts in the direction of companies owned by Eric or owned by Don and that, of course, pushes up the stock prices of these firms and they can cash in on that. Even if foreign governments aren't playing the game, Trump has the whole sort of government acquisition mechanism that he can use to direct funds in ways that could enrich people in his inner service. There's even this great story, a great story, I mean, a horrible story, but gives you a sense of how the corruption works just the past couple of days coming from an infighting between Richard Grinnell and I think Alina Habath about the Kennedy Center. And apparently what happened was they went after foreign donors to the Kennedy Center and said, hey, put this money in a company that Richard Grinnell designates and then some money will go from that company into the Kennedy Center and then they'll get invited to all sorts of things and they'll have access to the president. And apparently this kind of thing was working and that's how people at multiple levels of the administration are selling access. Who's selling pardons? What lawyers are selling pardons? What's Corey Lewandowski or some of these other characters who are out there trying to do their own griff? What are they doing? We don't know. And I do think that one thing that'll happen if Democrats get control of the House of the Senate is we're going to start seeing investigation after investigation and revelation after revelation, even as these guys do what you call, I think accurately, they're kind of super market sweet and try to fill up their cards with as much as they can before they get kicked out of the store. You referenced Alina Habath. I think you mean David Alina Milton, who's newly embraced her much younger, good for you, Alina, husband's name. She just recently married. Husband number three, Terhan Milton, who is a Turkish businessman. I think he's a Turkish billionaire. And they had a big fancy wedding at the Waldorf hotel here that newly refurbished Waldorf hotel. And incredibly, she appears to have gotten a job from a new company called Concord Enterprise as well as she's been paid $10 million a year. And perhaps, well, coincidentally, the father of the woman who sat the company up, Julio Herrera, has been given a pardon. Alina Milton insists it was nothing to do with her, but it happened shortly after she took the new job. Yeah, the world is full of these amazing connections and coincidences. But I do think, by the way, as the heat gets turned up, Alina may find herself living. in Turkey. You know, you know, Jared may find himself living someplace else. Oh, you think they'll all go to Bahrain or Dubai? I don't know whether where they'll go. I think, you know, Jared had his sights set on coastal Albania. You know, I mean, you know, they're global and they're comfortable, you know, in, you know, in a kind of global environment, where they're sort of above and beyond the laws of individual nation states. And I, you know, I, I think we're going to see a lot of these people sort of back their way to the door, you know, like that, you know, image of Homer Simpson backing into the shrub and trying to get out of there. Right. So they'll become members of this kind of stateless oligarchy that float around from country to country. Yeah, and all those people, all those oligarchs, you know, which includes some of our favorite oligarchs, you know, the Elons and the Bezosism, the Zuckerbergs and so forth. They have more in common with other oligarchs than they do with us. They're certainly not loyal to us. They're certainly not loyal to US values or even the future of the US. Look at Peter Teal. Where's Peter Teal hanging out these days? Argentina, you know, I mean, who else went to Argentina after their plots didn't work out? But I think, you know, there's, there's a lot of that going around, you know, they're saying, well, I'm, I'm, I'm effective. If the US is, you know, open for business and I can make money, they're great. And if the US is going to be a hostile environment, I'm a citizen of the world. David, one person we haven't heard anything from, at least in the last week or so, is Kash Patel. Where is he? And what is he doing? You miss him. You miss him. I do miss him. I do miss him. I wonder if he's being grounded because of the prices of, of, of Avgas. And he's no longer using the FBI plane as much as he used to. What to take his girlfriend or whatever. Yeah, that's possible. As possible. Suzy Wiles has like, you know, this happens in election time where Suzy Wiles is sort of put out a list and said, hey, Kash, keep your head down. You know, like two bunch of people don't get out there too far in front of things because they don't think the result is going to be positive. But I also think Kash has gone through a pretty bad spell. Because even typically in most administrations, sort of halfway through, you get some turnover. But if you're Kash Patel or you're Pete Hegsett or you're RFK Jr. or you're Suzy Wiles or you're some of these other characters who are out there, you're probably thinking, how much longer do I have? What's my next job? And, you know, that may be what's on his mind right now. And frankly, you know, all that would be a good thing because these are good people to get rid of. The problem is, as we have seen, Trump doesn't sort of trade up. And we get, you know, the less good version of Kash Patel, the less sane version of RFK Jr. The more demented version of Pete Hegsett. And, you know, Yuck. Is there a more demented version of Pete Hegsett? I don't know. I mean, you don't know. Maybe he'll make his preacher friend who's given him all these big ideas that the military shouldn't have women in it or people of color. Maybe he can become the Secretary of Defense. Free tea for everybody, David. Free tea for everybody. Yeah. Yeah, you're on it. You're on to something there. Anyway, you know, there's going to be so much churn that I've just advised everybody, keep your powder dry. Election day is going to be interesting, but between the challenges to the election and then the changes in the Trump administration and the fact that the day after the election is over campaign 2028 begins and that the Democrats are going to be jamming into the doorways to get attention and to become the leader get it. The next few months are going to be crazy. Melania is being best in Oleschi or she's, I mean, she hasn't gotten there, but she claims to have been sole reason why there's been a temporary ceasefire in a particular town in Ukraine, which has been sort of cut off from the rest of the world and it's largely elderly population have been unable to get food, unable to get gas, electricity, they're living in a sort of hellish landscape at the moment. And Melania insists despite the fact the Pope actually raised Oleschi is a problem several weeks ago. Melania now declares that she is the person that is going to rescue Oleschi. And what are your thoughts on this? And is she going to make as much money as her as her stepson's? First of all, who believes this nonsense? Nobody believes it. David, she issued, she issued a press statement. How can you say that? How can you sound so cynical? No, it's true, but there is the fact that Melania has never achieved anything in her life. Oh, it's not true. I achieved first lady status and be best, be bestie. And we all know exactly how that happened, but Melania doesn't have, you know, the diplomatic staff. She doesn't have people who can go out and work on this thing. We know the Pope did this. The story of Oleschi is a horrible story where the Russians have isolated this village and people have literally been eating grass to survive. And the fact that she would cynically land on that and say, oh, I've helped strike a ceasefire in this place, trying to capitalize in the suffering of these people without explaining anything about how she did it without ever having had a track record of doing this before while trying to elbow out the Pope, the recently out of the hospital with lung cancer, Pope in the middle of all of this is so disgusting. I only hope that the next several years brings a rethinking about Melania and just how corrupt and complicit and repulsive she has been at every phase of her life saying Jeffrey Epstein doesn't bother me. I'll hang out there if it advances my agenda. Donald Trump doesn't bother me. Serial sex accusations against my husband doesn't bother me. So long as I get my cash, will she get as much cash as Don Jr. or Eric or, you know, any any any the other character? I don't know, but you want to know something. I think she's doing okay. I think she already has thanks to her deals with Don more money than she will ever be able to spend in her lifetime. And, you know, I think what she's trying to do now is to somehow come up with, you know, an identity that isn't quite as repugnant as her reality. And it's not working. And I, you know, I saw her spokesperson talking about this on cable news over the weekend and he said, well, she says it so and therefore it's so and it was just so uncredible. And, and it's an embarrassment. She's an embarrassment. The stories and embarrassment. It's, you know, it's shameful for the president. And I just I wonder who thinks this is a good idea in and around Trump or whether, you know, you guys talk about this on your other show more. Whether they're even communicating with each other, she seems like she's on her own agenda these days and not really supporting White House agenda. Well, Michael Wolf's theory is this is all content for her reality show that she's got coming out courtesy of Amazon. Well, that'll be great if it's in Slovenia and she doesn't speak English. I mean, your impression of her, you know, is more articulate than she is. But, you know, okay, fine, whatever, whatever, she's, she's going to fade into the woodwork. She's going to be like, and, you know, whether, and whether she's, you know, ultimately divorced or whether she's a widow, she's going to be like one of these women that we see throughout history who are the ex-wives of failed dictator plutocrats who, you know, go to Geneva and son themselves while wearing three layers of black veils because they don't want to be recognized. My husband is Ornifyer, he is Ornifyer. So, another similar cynical ploy was used by Vivek Ramaswamy this week who is frantically trying to get elected as the governor of Ohio. You will remember him as a former partner to Elon Musk when Doge first began and then he quickly got chainsawed out of the way by Elon who I think had no time for him. But Republicans and Democrats alike have come out against his campaign ad which included his opponent's mother speaking against her. And this I think he thought would perhaps seal the deal for him. But instead, it's opened now six days worth of conversation about what an appallingly bad taste ad it was. and also it's a strange woman for him to coalesce around because she looks even crazier than he sounds. Well, she's a vile woman. Her daughter, according to court papers, was raped by her stepfather and this woman, her mother, then sided with the rapist stepfather and abandoned the daughter, became a strange from the daughter. And so, Ramaswami's people said, "Oh yeah, let's let's run an ad with her." And needless to say, got a lot of backlash because it was so cynical and disgusting and, you know, they're on the wrong side of sex abuse again. And then the response of Trump and the Republican Party was, "We will stand by him," you know, Trump always loves to defend, you know, sex abuse in any form and JD Vance will do anything to prove just how cynical he is. And you know, even the people who were speaking out against him like Ohio Governor Mike DeWine who said he shouldn't be running this ad, and DeWine's a Republican, and his term limited out, said, "Well, I'm going to continue to support the ticket." Just saying, you know, the Republican Party has absolutely no values whatsoever. And as a result, Amy Akten, who's running against Ramaswami, has a shot at becoming the governor in Ohio and Sherrod Brown, who's running for the Senate there, has a better shot of winning the Senate seat in Ohio. And at, you know, it's part of a pattern here, which I find personally kind of flabbergasting, which is at every single turn during this election season. Trump, MAGA, Republicans, have made the wrong decision, have shot themselves in the foot with prices, with trade policies, with Iran policies, with the way the candidates they embrace, choosing the worst possible candidates, with their embrace and defense of those candidates, and so forth. They haven't done anything. You haven't seen a story recently saying, Trump struck an herb and has recently done something great in his rallies. People aren't shelling up to his rallies. You know, the response at his rallies is now, as you said earlier, awkward and dead. And, you know, guys like Ramaswami, he's terrible candidate. There was a great story a couple of days ago about, you know, people who knew him in college and saw him as this, you know, the guy would say anything, do anything to get ahead and who was cringe 100% of the time. Ramaswami may be one of the most cringe candidates ever in history. And this episode is not going to, you know, help him in undoing that perception. There's yet another election this week, and that's for Secretary General of the UN. There's no clear candidate ahead. Suddenly America has put forward Viktor Orbán, who is resoundingly beaten in the Hungarian elections earlier this year. What do you make of this? And how important even is the UN at this point? Well, first of all, I mean, you know, putting forth this idea of Viktor Orbán, you know, is so tone deaf to where the rest of the world is on Viktor Orbán, that it's pathetic. Maybe they thought the Russians would like it, or the Chinese would like it. Well, they probably would like it, wouldn't they? And those two together are a powerful block. Well, they are a powerful block, but the way it works is, you know, there are certain nations with veto, and I'm not sure that the other nations with veto power would go for it. And also, if a couple of other, you know, you need to have a certain minimum number of nations to support you in order to get ahead for this. And I'm not sure that he could get the majority there. And the reaction in Europe has been, you know, dismissive of President Poland today, and when asked about it, just ridiculed the idea. Obviously, he knows better than anybody else, but an odious character, Orbán is. But, you know, it shows two things. One, that inside the White House, they still think it's a few years ago, and that they have this kind of impunity and power, and they figured out the nature of global power. And, you know, and two, that they don't really care about the UN. And that's really the critical point. Whoever is the Secretary General of the United Nations ultimately, and their candidates from different continents, and you know, they're mying at the moment, whoever is the Secretary General is going to have a rough couple of years, because the UN has to have the active support of the US. US will not support the UN. It would be less likely to support the UN over the next couple of years for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is we're going to be likely in a kind of a gridlock in DC, and money is not going to get released, and Trump's going to block certain kinds of money. And so, you know, the big job of whoever this next Secretary General is going to be is working to maintain whatever functionality exists within the institution. And then should there be a change in US leadership, should there be a change in leadership from around the world, working to restore the UN as an organization that's got some kind of relevance. And, and, and you know, that's that's going to be a real heavy lift. Is it important? Yeah, do we need global governance to deal with global threats and and global challenges? We definitely do. But people like Trump and people like the Israelis and periodically, people like the Russians and others have been working to undermine the power of the UN for so many years that it's really a shell of what it used to be. I mean, I'm assuming that America has a lot of persuasive powers still to force other countries to vote for Victor Urban. Who are the countries that have the veto? Britain has a veto. France has the veto. Who are the other countries, David? US, Russia, China. So, so if the US, China, and Russia are all aligned about having Victor Urban, does that come down to France and the UK saying no, if one of them gives a veto, because you know, I think you need a certain size boat of security council and, you know, you know, you have to get a certain percentage vote. So, if certain percentage doesn't vote for you, then that won't work. Okay. So, so you're not optimistic about Victor Urban's chances? Zero chance. Zero chance. Okay. And I heard that, um, Keir Starmer was also hoping to be included in the shortlist. But I guess he's left it a bit late now given that it's this, this, it seems to be a tie between the UAE and Costa Rica at this moment, right, which would both of whom are fielding female candidates and the UN has not yet been run by a woman. The UN hasn't been run by a woman, I think, you know, it's high time the US has run by a woman. And the, initially the candidate from Central America was the lead candidate. The UAE candidate, Lana Nusaba, has come in late. She may be, you know, can get the support of the US and others as well. But again, it's a kind of an arcane process. And there's a little bit of a be careful what you wish for here because the job of being Secretary General is very tough. Mm hmm. Okay. Well, David, the job of being a daily beast podcast, regular guest is also very tough. But once again, you have, you've educated us, you've entertained us and you've given us some hope, David. You've given us some hope. So if you would, if you were a betting man, what would your, uh, what would the outcome of the Israeli election tomorrow be? If I'm a betting man, I think that Netanyahu will be out as Prime Minister ultimately, Eisenhower will be in, he'll form a new coalition. Then the new coalition will be not as strong as it could be. There will be a lot of tension with the far right. The Arab parties will not be brought into it as they should be. And, uh, and so you're going to get a change in the tone of Israeli leadership. You're going to dial back the arrogance. You're going to have a rough time ahead for Netanyahu. But in some of the issues that are most core for the world, uh, Israel is going to continue to be seen as a rogue state and a, and a state that is, uh, on the outside of international law. And, and so it's going to be a kind of a mixed result in that, in that regard, at least that's the way it looks right now. Okay. Well, I'm sure Donald Trump will be calling, uh, his friend with all sorts of advice. Oh, I'm sure it will be saying it's, it's a sham and they'll try to challenge it. Netanyahu try to put together his own coalition and, uh, you know, it'll be an ugly mess. And then, you know, when his prosecution resumes, that'll be an ugly mess. And, you know, that's what we've got to to expect here in the United States, you know? Trump is pursuing this kind of preemptive election interference in Alaska, in California. Todd Blanche, the Attorney General has said they're going to try and do it in other places. They're pushing forward in the courts. So even if you have an election result next Tuesday in which Democrats appear to win back a majority in one or both houses of the Congress, I suspect you're going to have several months of court cases, challenges, lies. I mean, after all, Trump has been lying about election results throughout his presidency. Underlining American faith in our elections has been a central tenet of Trump. Even when there have been few other central tenets, it's Trump should get rich. Trump is a great guy, and our elections don't work. And so I think we're going to be in a kind of swirl of denialism and lies and court cases for a while yet to come even after next week's elections. Okay, David Rothkoff, we'll be back on Monday, the eve of the election to see what has happened in the in the previous week and to get your much valued analysis. Thank you so much for joining us, and I will see you again next Monday. And David, you're coming up to New York this weekend, so I'm very much hoping to see you in person. Yes, I hope I can do next week's pre-election show live from the Daily Beast election headquarters. That would be fantastic. We much rather have you in the studio and then remotely, so let's make that happen. And also, I notice, and I know that regular viewers of this podcast will notice that you are not wearing your princess layer headphones. I'm not, because, you know, I've been doing a lot of stuff in different places, MS now. And they said, well, I have a speaker and I have a microphone and everything else, and there's no feedback, so I don't need it. And then you get to see my beautiful hair. My beautiful hairstyle and my dainty ears, and it just, it makes me look just that much more like a human bit. It does. It does. I'm longing to get that in our studio too, although I will say there are days when I'm very grateful for their headphones when I'm having a bad headache. But David, always good to see you look forward to seeing you in the studio next week, and there will be on the, it'll be 24 hours until the election, the midterm elections. Are you excited? I love David's assumption, there will be a night of the long knives. Will Pete Heggseth go, will R.F.K. Junior go, will, Tash Patel go, will Susie Wiles go, who would you like to see go first? Why don't you put it in rank order? Let's do a rank order. Who would you like to see leave first from Trump's cabinet? If you have been thank you for joining us, don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast, wherever you get your podcast, share it with a friend, share it with a friend of me, share it with a colleague at work that person you never have anything to talk about. We will be back tomorrow with Inside Trump's head and a big thank you to our production team today, led by John Romero, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passe, Heather Pasaro, and Neil Rosenhouse. 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