This Is Telling Sign Trump, 80, Is In Deep Decline

He is one of the greatest megalomaniacs of history and he's been given the most powerful office in the world and there's no one around him who will stop him or say no to him and he's drunk on it. I think Trump has affected the culture profoundly. I think we are a different country and I think that potty mouth is his liberation and his temptation. He's not as sharp as he used to be on the stump. You know, the rallies of 2016 were among the great improvisatory performances I've ever seen. And now he's grown and they're listening. I think as a replacement he's just cursing at him and that'll get it charged, you know, to say the F word or whatever. I'm Joanna Coles, this is the Daily Beast podcast and this is a little bit upside down today because we actually recorded this conversation with Terry Moran and we talk about all sorts of things including the White House press secretary Terry was chief political correspondent for ABC News for a long period and he sat in that briefing room in the White House and has experienced many press secretaries but we really got into how he thought Katie Zachariah was doing in her first week. And of course, just as we've finished recording the podcast, the one that you're watching now, Katie Zachariah was let go shall we say kindly by the president who said, well, he'd said to her, did you really want to do this? Was it really worth her while? And she was told there was a consolation prize of a dinner with JD events, which happened on Friday night. And she told everybody it was a pretty bruising week and looks like she's heading back to California where at least she has four children to welcome her home and as we all know children are pretty leveling when you get in the door. I'm sure she'll forget all about her experience at the White House, but I just wanted to give you that context with which to understand the conversation and the viewpoint that Terry has about how she was doing in her four days in the job. [MUSIC PLAYING] Terry Moran is back with us. Terry Moran, the former ABC correspondent who has been crisscrossing the country as an independent journalist. You can look at his real patriotism channel on YouTube and on the sub-stack. Terry, last spotted you were in Maine. What did you come away from? What did you learn in Maine about what's going on there? Well, Maine is a purple state for a reason and you could feel it. You go to some states and there's vitriol in the air. And there was some of that. But mayners are a kind of a flinty and reserved bunch and you don't get a lot of that screaming. And what you do get is two things. First, you get that sense-- and that's one of the reasons that Susan Collins is hanging in there in a terrible year for Republicans-- that they don't like too much craziness and extremity in their politicians. They like them straight in the middle and pragmatic. And she is selling that and they know her for 30 years. She's a well-known quality. So you definitely get that sense of-- I don't want to say even tempered because plenty of people are furious at her and vice versa. But what you do get is a proper civic debate in a way that I don't think you see elsewhere. The other thing-- and this is why the Democrats, I don't think, can be totally happy by even with the polls as they are-- is people are angry at everyone in power. People are on the edge of despair about how they are going to get ahead, how they're going to maintain what they have. Young people-- I talked to a young person. I said, you know, when I was coming out of college, looking at a career, I knew it was going to be steep, but I had hard work, but I'd get there. I thought, you know, with a few breaks here and there. And this young person said to me, he said, I'm looking at a blank wall, just a blank wall. In that sense that this system isn't working for anyone, but people who've already won is-- and in fact, is hard to maintain a decent lifestyle for even people who've had success in their lives. I think that I've felt right through every state I've been. And people are not saying, oh, the Democrats have the answer. They're saying, again, we've got to try again. Throw the bombs out, see if we can get anyone decent. Well, so Terry, for those who don't follow politics quite as closely as we do, explain a little bit more the tension in Maine between Susan Collins, the old-time Senate Republican, and the Democrat candidate that she's up against, because he hasn't had very long to run for office, has he? He's been a state senator, but he was bumped into the Senate seat when the initial choice, Graham Platner, kind of-- well, got scandled out of there by several ex-girlfriends saying that he'd sexually assaulted them. Right, right. And that left the Democrats in a bind. And Troy Jackson was the one who came forward, and he had already run in the primary for governor and lost. He'd run previously for the Congress and lost. He was in the state Senate for a long time, and the state Senate majority leader, for a while. And I kind of think he felt his political career was over. And here he is. He's a fifth generation, a fifth generation Maine logger, from way up, not just way up near the Canadian border, but deep, deep, deep in the woods. He's from Alligash, Maine. Look it up. And he has a very rough authenticity and eloquence. I saw the Charlie Cook, who is one of the real mavens of politics in America. The Cook Political Report has been for generations. He was talking about this race. He said the Democrats' problem is candidate quality. He was talking about Troy Jackson, that he's rough around the edges. He is not gifted with a traditional eloquence. He does know his brief, however. Susan Collins is a pro. She's been in the Senate for 30 years. This would be her sixth term. And one of her strengths, perhaps her main strength, primary strength, I should say, in Maine. And everybody knows it. It seems like I would say half the people you bump into have benefited personally from an intervention that Susan Collins made on behalf of rock salt, getting rock salt off the tariffs for the people up, where both of them are from, way up in the north of Maine, to lobstermen who were confronted in the Biden administration with regulations to try to protect the 600 right whales, which are still in those waters. And she stepped forward and they are absolutely stapled to her politically. And there's countless other instances of constituent service. And she plays the game in Washington very well, infuriatingly well to people, to Democrats and liberals, because she voted for Brett Gavinau. You'd think that that would disqualify her as any kind of, with any person with any kind of appeal to anyone sleeping slightly liberal. And yet, she manages to stand up to Trump sometimes, not very much. But what she really is is adept. She knows politics. Before becoming a senator, she was a Senate staffer. She's been in this game her whole life. What you have is somebody who can deliver the goods from Washington, that's her cell. And it pans out if you talk to manors. Against someone who is voicing with authentic life experience, the populist frustration and even fury. I went to a food bank with Troy Jackson. They said that they have seen vast increases in the number of people with jobs who come to that food bank. It was free food Thursday. They line up at midnight in their cars. - Wow. - And because the food bank will give to anyone on Thursday, on the other days of the week, they you sign up and you qualify. But on Thursday is free food Thursday. And the executive director said that I've seen school teachers. I've seen people with law enforcement badges. I've seen people with good jobs in this food bank. And Troy Jackson talked about his childhood, getting, as he called it, stringy, string beans and pasta and things from the food bank where he lived. He speaks of the problem with personal experience and profound frustration. And so that's the race and it's neck and neck. - And do you think that, I mean, you mentioned that he tried for Congress and failed to get elected. He tried for governor and failed to get elected? Does he have, I understand you saying he's able to express in authentic terms the frustration of people? Does he need polish to beat Susan Collins or is he one of those candidates that will forever be a candidate at a local level but can't make it to the biggest stage? - Well, that's a great question. I personally, part of your job as a reporter is you listen to people and you find whatever their wavelength is without judgment in the first instance and you connect. And you can see that a lot of people who are rough around the edges are real smart or they're real good. Or that, you know what I mean? I like to say that our tech overlords, we've entrusted the future of humanity to some of the world. least humane people on the planet. I trust the lady who puts the flowers on the altar every Sunday with the future of humanity ever more than any of those guys. And Troy Jackson has a little bit of that quality. He's not deeply steeped in policy, in the debates that had four debates. She's a better debater, but he's true blue for himself and his beliefs. And he's not without policy. He has embraced a lot of the Bernie agenda on Bernie Sanders agenda, on healthcare in particular, which is just killing people. I mean, not actually literally, when they can't get insurance, but also crushing people financially across the country. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to in Maine who are profoundly concerned about healthcare, about their own healthcare, and certainly that are kids. And he voices that. But does he have the polish? Do you need polish this time? I think not. I think people are so, so deeply dissatisfied and even disgusted with the way our system is working. Both sides, that I think they're looking for somebody closer to their own experience. You know? So Donald Trump famously doesn't have polish. He has the sort of flash, but I wouldn't argue that he had polish. And something that you pointed out in one of your videos, which I thought was a useful thing to note is his, his potty mouth. You called it Trump's potty mouth, the president's potty mouth. And it's becoming more pronounced. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because you've watched Trump for the last 30 years. You've been in the media a long time. He's been in the media a long time. It's becoming more pronounced, isn't it? His potty mouth. It is. And I think there's a discussion to be had about it. There's there's there are people who see it as further evidence of a kind of mental deterioration or organic mental decline. Some form of dementia. I don't have the qualifications to judge it. I'm open to the possibility. But there's another one. He's uninhibited. He is one of the greatest megalomaniacs of history. And he's been given the most powerful office in the world. And there's no one around him who will stop him or say no to him. And he's drunk on it. And his particular genius as a politician, his particular gift as a demagogue is that he manages through vicious mirth, and expiating his haste, hatreds, not expediting, expressing his hatreds. He gives permission to people to liberate themselves from the strictures of decency, to become the worst version of themselves. And I think, I mean, I don't think we're going to come back from it for a while. How many people just use the N word now, casually? How many people are, I mean, you know, you go to kids ball games. I'm shocked at what would have been shameful conduct. I mean, sports parents have always been a problem. But now there's a there's a defiant degradation in it, spitting your face. I'm not literally, but kind of go, yeah, go ahead and stop me from calling the kid on the, on the court and word or, you know, you can, I think Trump has affected the culture profoundly. I think we are a different country. And I think that potty mouth is his liberation and his temptation because the thing about Trump is him. And this is why it's going to be difficult. Once you've bought in, it's hard to get out. Once you've accepted, this is the standard of our politics of your own standard as a citizen. To say you're wrong is very, very difficult. And that's one of the reasons I'm convinced that the Republicans, it's a secondary reason, but that the Republicans are still doing very well in a lot of places, despite the bad poll numbers and the bad economic numbers and the struggles that people are having is because you have to admit you're wrong. You were wrong. And you do see Trumpies. So some people voted for him three times saying this, not many. And the dominant issues are, you know, what you hear most from Republicans is the Democrats have gone crazy. And they mean cultural issues. They mean trans issues. They mean all kinds of things. And that's the primary motivator. They're different from us in ways that threaten our values and our communities. But I think there's also a sense that they've bought in to being this kind of a citizen and things that they would have been ashamed of 15 years ago. I think it's sad. I think it's a real problem. And the president's party mouth is both in his own liberation, right? We've all seen him evolve over time. He had a almost carnivorous sense of where the vulnerabilities and the excitement in the crowd was and he'd riff, riff them up. And now he drones. And they, you know, they're listening. And as a, I think as a replacement, he's just cursing at him and that'll get a charge to say the F word or whatever. Well, you say you're not qualified, but you seem to have given a very good analysis there of what you think is happening. I loved, I'm going to repeat back a couple of phrases you used, his vicious, and his defiant degradation. And actually, I loved your description there of his carnivorous sense of how to play to the crowd. I sometimes think you can see him. He leans his head to the side almost as if he's listening so intently like a giant bird and then sort of feeding back or off the energy he gets. So from your trip to Iowa and your trip to Maine and just passing what you think is going on, do you have a sense of what you think will happen in the midterms? If you were a betting man, which way do you think Maine would go? If Troy Jackson, Susan Collins, if you had to put money on it, Terry. Well, I don't, because I'm usually wrong. I'm often wrong. Never end out often wrong. Wasn't that Churchill said that? I think all British people say that. I think that was our family motto growing up, actually, never end out frequently wrong. That's it. But I think I would have to say at this point, it feels like Susan Collins is still, because voting for her, you can feel less Trump. You don't feel Trump. Oh, that's good. That's a good point. You can't feel in Iowa. Yes. You can cast about for Susan Collins, although many people would say, it's hypocritical. You know, she signed on to the whole nine yards, but she really hasn't. She really hasn't. In the most important issues she has, and she's empowered Trump to do awful things. And Brett Gavin on the Supreme Court is one to many, many, many liberals and centrists, even, because of a, he's the least qualified member of the Supreme Court and B, he's clearly the, it was the key vote in overturning rowers. It's way, but I'd say she just has that connection still. It is a change here, and people are looking for change. Troy Jackson, as I said, not to me, but to many people, it doesn't seem quite big enough, a figure, you know, sharp enough a figure. I don't find him that way, but I can see how others would. And there's one wild card though. How cold does it get over the next few weeks? Heating oil is out of control, expensive. And if it really starts getting cold up there, which it does, Maine has the largest dependence of home heating on heating oil. And every year, it's a, it's a problem, and this year it could be, it could be quite bad. So I, you know, if I, if I were a betting man, I'd say it feels to me just spidey sense that, that Susan Collins can pull it out again, but it's such a bad year for Republicans. And that wave, it feels like keeps growing. But just down the ground, it felt like a lot of people, even people who criticize Trump, who criticize her, you know, they're like, you know, she gets us on with her. Also, when you've been in office for 30 years, as she has, you've met a lot of people in Maine, and somewhat like the Royal Family in Britain, at one point, there was a figure that one in six people in the UK had met a member of the Royal Family, a senior member of the Royal Family, and actually just that meeting had a disproportionate impact on their thoughts about the future of the Royal Family. And I'm sure that's true with politicians. If you've met, if you live in Maine and you've met your senator, you feel more committed to them because they are a real thing. And then that's always harder for people who aren't the incumbent. It's the incumbent advantage, right? Yes, it is. And in the longer it seems to kind of hang on to. And she's, she, however, in recent years, has been harder to find around Maine. I was told, we reached that to her, and followed up, and went to the party headquarters, knocked on the door. And never heard back, she tends to pick and choose where she goes, where she's kind of guaranteed a more or less friendly environment. But people know that this road, or this clinic, or this action for the this industry is because of her. And she focuses on that, laser focus on getting, bringing the goods back home. And I kind of feel that kind of politician whereas as opposed to like Roger Marshall in Kansas who's kind of an empty magasuit, I think he's gonna have a lot more problems. - You've been to Iowa too. What, it's a month or so since you were there, what's your feeling about which way Iowa's gonna go? The center of the country? - Yeah, I mean, Iowa is still a bit of a reach. In Iowa, Ashley Henson, who's running for Senate against Josh Turek, former Paralympian, you've probably seen his commercials with Barack Obama. He's a three time gold medalist. I mean, an amazing story. And Ashley Henson, who's got the Republican nomination for Senate, she's former TV anchor and she has that kind of polish and presentation. And she swore loyalty to Donald Trump. She said at the beginning of this campaign, when it looked like Republicans, we're gonna do very well in Iowa that she would be Donald Trump's greatest ally in the Senate. Well, she's kind of backpedaling from that. She, along with a few other endangered Republicans, signed a please, pretty please, Mr. President, stopped this war thing, which is just killing farmers. The tariffs first and now the price of diesel is just wrecking. I mean, no farmers are gonna all take a loss this year unless they've got very clever accountants because the costs of the inputs are just exceeding the cost of the crops. And nevertheless, she was familiar. It was for Iowa, big market, Cedar Rapids. So people would know her. They're comfortable with her demeanor on screen. She's adept and glib, like TV people can be. I don't know what you mean, Terry. And I think Iowa is still, once again, distrusts the Democratic National Democratic Party. The candidate for governor in Iowa, and this is interesting. The candidate for governor in Iowa is Rob Sand. He says he doesn't think he should have to belong to a party to run. He thinks that independent should be able to vote in, in primaries, things that's unfair that they can't. And he disclares himself much more middle of the road. And he never took up some of the more aggressive cultural issues. He's a bread and butter guy. He was the state auditor where he made a name from self-finding waste fraud and abuse in the Iowa State government. Josh Tureck, the Paralympian great story made it to the state house in Iowa and did sign on to some of the-- What the more progressive cultural issues, including the-- I don't want to say boys and girls sports, but kids who are born male, participating in girls sports. And so he's kind of on the back foot on that. But once again, the facts of people's lives are determinative. I'm more confident in Josh Tureck in Iowa than I am in Troy Jackson in Maine. And Iowa would be a flip as would Maine, of course. So if it's a true blue wave, we're going to see people win in Nebraska and strange places, South Carolina. But I think what we have right now is not quite an embrace of the Democratic Party. That's interesting. So let me ask you something. You were a chief white house correspondent at ABC for six years, I think, from 1999 to 2005. I think I've got that right. Yeah. And you dealt with several press secretaries. Katie Zachariah made her first appearance this prior week. What did you think of it? Well, I felt what everybody else thought, which is that that person is not ready to be behind the podium. Trump likes to talk about fake news. She's a fake press secretary. And she declared that to the world. She has no clue, it seems, what the job is, which is basically to prepare, to prepare yourself in detail to answer the questions of the press. Not because the press sets the agenda, but because they often, not always, are after issues that Americans are concerned about. It's the American people who set the agenda because they determine what goes on the air by their ratings and other things like that. So your job as press secretary is twofold. Prepare, know the issues, know the administration's position, all that in one basket. And the second thing that in order to do that, even before you get to the preparation, you have to know a damn thing. And it's pretty clear that she is demonstrating the distance between popping off on a podcast mic and actually standing behind the podium in the White House, talking about the policies of the president. With a room of people who, for the most part, are pretty well informed because they have to write about it day after day after day. Yes. And that room can get very contentious. I always thought that there were too many reporters in there who showed up every morning and their job was, how am I going to take a pound of flesh out of the president today? And you don't really have to do that. I mean, although in this administration, they may have earned that. But I think they're going to come after a press secretary about what Americans are worried about, about the big stories of the day. And if you can't answer that, now, cut her some slack. Although my wife got mad when I said this. I said, cut her some slack. She's clearly not prepared. She was very nervous. Maybe she can grow into this. And my wife was like, (snorts) because she all she really has is the look, right? She's got the Trumpian woman's executive-- Fox News, the sort of Fox News look. Which is obviously what she wants to go on and do because she probably doesn't want to stand and be shouted at by the press for the next few months. She wants to segue into a nice role behind a microphone at Fox News with someone to do a hair every day who wouldn't want that? Not at Fox News, not at Fox News. But that does sound more fun than having to stand up. And then be yelled at by the president when you walk off stage and go into the back room of the briefing room. Well, that's the-- I always thought that the thing that was most important to me to the press secretaries that I covered, which I guess, Joe Lockhart, and who was Trump's first-- I had no Trump Bush's first-- Ari Fleischer and Scott McLellan. And I did a little bit in the Obama administration. I was over at the Trump White House several times during the Carolyn Leveder. I kind of got into it with her a couple of times. But to me, I thought the most important thing, because you know they aren't going to be straight in any party. They'll try and shape the coverage. The Trump people lie outright in order to cheerlead for the president. And that, as with so many other institutions, is that they touch is a way to destroy all credibility. Nevertheless, there's value if the press secretary has some proximity to the actual players. You want them in the room. At the best examples are press secretaries who are close to the president, not that they're in the situation room or in the Oval Office all the time. But the president understands what their job is and helps. And even if they never say a word of what happened in the Oval Office or in the chief of staff's office or whatever in national security meetings, in our security council meetings, you can feel it. You can read between the lines and get a sense of what the administration is doing or trying to do. And Katie Zachariah, she can be one of those who just sits in the big office. Although she apparently didn't even get that. Stephen Chung has the big press secretary's office. She slid away a small one and just waits for the briefing book to be handed to her and kind of highlights it. You need to be in and about the White House so that when you speak, even just a little bit of a different adjective here or there, you know, or an unexpected hint. And you can sense, okay, they're in the room. And then in the off-the-record conversations that you have, you'll feel that as well. Sarah, how could be Sanders was another example of a press secretary who was in the room, which Trump, when it mattered? - I mean, to be fair, to Katie Zachariah, it appears that she got, I think, 24 hours notice that she was gonna get the job and that she was gonna have her first press interaction. So she didn't have very long to prepare, but she certainly didn't give the impression that she was steeped in the issue, did she? - No, and that's why most of the people who do that job at the White House have had a similar job either on the campaign or in a congressional office or governor's office because it's a hard job. You really need to know a full field of issues. And then what your boss believes and is trying to accomplish when it comes to those issues, and then you've got to spin it in this administration, just lie about it or cheerlead for it all together in ways that violate the hatch act even, but you still have to know a damn thing. And I, maybe I'm wrong 'cause I listen to a little bit of her podcast. She, I think she's kinda kooky. She buys it up. - No, she's got lots of conspiracy theories. - You know, you have to be credible. Maybe you don't in Trump's White House, he doesn't. But the world listens to me. the American people listen, they need, they need you to know. Yes, it's a contest in there, right? As I say, some reporters just out there to dunk on the press like they perform. I never like that. But you do have to get answers and you have to be persistent. And if she's got no place to go, but President Trump is the greatest thing since ever. She's a waste of time. Did you see her answering Donald Trump's question about where she took the bar exam? They were standing outside. So as we know, she only took three questions when she was at the famous podium. She then says, she cuts it short after 14 minutes, which is very short for a White House briefing. Takes, well, they're going to Alaska. So there's more opportunity to ask the President questions outside with the worrying of the helicopter in the background. And then someone asks Donald Trump about her. He says she's an attorney. And then he says to her, where did you take your bar exam? Right. And she says when I moved to China, I mean, she may have some legal issues here. So I don't, I don't know this. But from what I have read into this issue a little bit, you know, she graduated from Peppardine Law School. You can call yourself a lawyer, but you have to pass the bar, to call yourself an attorney, or to perform the functions of an attorney. And it's criminal offense instead of California. If you do that with, and you don't have, you haven't passed the bar, she, she did not pass the bar in the first instance and then moved to China. So that's what she was talking about. With in her pocket, the President of Peppardine's assurance that she could refer to herself as a lawyer. For she left, she, she did identify herself. I think as General Counselor of Council, and she did so as well in China. Now, those are positions that only licensed attorneys can hold in America. She got no right to practice law in China. It's a ludicrous claim. But what she said was when she moved there, she basically had a paralegal position. It sounds like that she is now claimed that she claimed was much more important. I think she might be in some trouble. If in fact, it does come out that she held herself out in some public and commercial FAF way, either in California or in China for California clients as an attorney, or someone who would perform the functions of an attorney, then she's got a real problem. Then she's got a legal problem. So it's more than just exaggerating her resume. Yes. Yes. She did go to law school and good honor. Now, young people might point it, I'll say Ed who calls himself Dr. and wears a lab coat in his commercials and he's a public health medical grad medical school graduate. But I think this is worse because he's not performing any operation. He's not claiming he can perform operations. And if in fact that is what she did, then that's wrong and maybe criminal under the laws of California. So, but it indicates it's a grift. Why is it always a grift with these people? I mean, how many of them are caught with their hand in the kitty or taking a vacation on the government's plane or lying about their qualifications or it's all a grift? Well, and it's an incompetent grift, right? I mean, it's just that nobody gave her a background check is what's clear from this, right? That actually the most serious of this in a way is she worked in China. We know that she hasn't passed her bar exam but she's passing herself off as a lawyer slash attorney. And certainly the president is saying that she's an attorney. So he's wrong. So she's making him look foolish. But what's clear is that nobody's done a proper background check. And that's incompetent. She's working at the White House. She's supposed to be going in there every single day. You know, she's traveling with the president. Yeah, confidence, not the hallmark of, well, strike that. They've gotten a lot done with a very aggressive agenda, policy agenda that in many areas is unconstitutional and exceeds the authority of the president. They've won some ruling on the Supreme Court and lost a bunch, lost a ton at the lower court level. But they are pushing an agenda effectively. What they aren't doing, you know, it seems chaotic. He's chaos. Covering the White House was like covering a small business. And, you know, although, you know, the president is ahead of the entire executive branch, the nerve centers, the White House, aren't that many people, that many employees. And like every small business, sort of like every institution, it takes its tone and tenor from the guy at the top, from the person at the top. Bill Clinton would call reporters, not me, but at two in the morning. He was late constantly. He was a skimmer, right? And therefore, and his staff had a similar kind of smart and a little edgy. Think of Ramameno. They'd leak. You can just call up anybody, they'd leak and kind of stab in the back of the stab each other in the back. There's a lot of that. The Bush administration, even before 9/11, was run like, you know, the one thing that George Bush had ever run, everybody was on time in the morning. They did not stay late, which was kind of a shock. It was very difficult to get them to leak even before 9/11, where everybody then shut down for a little while. It felt, and they were very disciplined and un-message. You know, Obama, they're very nice people. They didn't really tell you that much, though. So in this White House, you have a figure of chaos and license in the Oval Office. And you got people doing crazy stuff, both in terms of policy, but also in terms of the kind of things that Cash Patel is doing with his girlfriend and flying to hockey games and, you know, bolting beers in the locker room. It's a picture. It's a reflection of the personality of the president. And, you know, the one calm in the storm is Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, who's a very competent person, believes in Trump's agenda, wants him, wants to see him executed effectively and does her best. And she wasn't told. He went behind her back. And she promptly put that out. That was everywhere within an hour of that first press conference. The 14-minute, actually, five minute of taking questions after she talked about herself. And all of a sudden, you saw everywhere, people in the White House want everyone to know, this is on the boss. We had nothing to do with this. So interesting. And of course, Susie Wiles herself was the subject of a story in Politico last week. And certainly Michael Wolfe, who's my co-host on Inside Trump's head, another podcast that comes out of the Daily Beast, has always maintained that Susie Wiles will go in November. And now Trump is doing that thing that he does where he calls around people and he asks them what they think of someone. So he's like, "Hey, what do you think about Susie? How Susie doing?" Hey, have you talked to Susie recently, which suggests that, certainly according to the police in Politico, that Susie Wiles is not long for this life. Does that seem normal in the scheme of things? I mean, Rahm Immanuel, who you referenced earlier, I think he lost his job after Obama got shell-act as he called it in them in terms. So not entirely surprising that the chief of staff might move on after two years. No. Rahm is a precedent and so are others. It's a hard job. It's an all-consuming job. It's the most important job in some ways after the president and the executive branch because even the secretaries of the cabinet departments, even the most powerful senators and members of Congress, although there aren't any anymore since basically we don't have a Congress. They've just all decided to let Trump run the show. But they have trouble getting through if they don't go through the chief of staff and she exercises power with great deftness. She's apparently much as tremendous affection for her in the West Wing and tremendous respect and even fear because she will. She's very good operator in that system. But it's an exhausting job. I wouldn't be surprised if not only Trump was thinking, "Okay, we got to go in a different direction." But if she thought, "I've done my bit," you know, the enormous rush of policies that came out in the first part of last year and into this year, all of the immigration policies and now the foreign policies that are changing the nature of the United States and the world and in our own country. She was big in making sure that the policy process was disciplined and executed. She partnered with Stephen Miller very effectively. And all this is in regime change, which is one of the best Washington books, Maggie Haverman and Jonathan Swann's books. I generally don't read Washington books, but this gives you a real sense of this administration, the most consequential probably in my lifetime and it's she was right at the center of it is, but I could see her stepping away. Or being asked to step away. Yes. So you mentioned there the changing world that we live in, that it's these policies have had enormous consequence, even if they've been incompetently executed. And that they've changed the global world order, something Mark Carney referred to in in Davos, the Canadian Prime Minister. You've spent quite a lot of time in Ukraine. Last week Trump made an astonishing decision to break the sanctions against Russia by Russian diesel imported to America to bring down the price of American diesel, which has been inflated because of his war in Iran. He also appears this week, somehow stopped signals getting through. When you think about the Ukraine that you visited, and I know you were there in 2014 right at the beginning of Russian incursions, what do you think now? Where does this go for the Ukrainians? It's utterly heartbreaking as someone who was there and no matter what you think of the whether what how the United States should be involved, the intent here is to ally ourselves with Russia in the destruction of a country because that I don't just mean the physical destruction. I mean Putin wants a settlement or a tear off a big part of Ukraine, make it a non-functioning state, just like he's done with other states, a constant, you know, when I was there in 2014, just when the when it's when the little green men as they called them took over Crimea, but then the larger war already began there out in the in the eastern part, which is more Russian speaking. It was clear that what they wanted was the old Soviet tyranny over that part of the world. And Zelensky is right when he says, you know, if Russia starts fighting, the war ends, if we stop fighting, there's no more Ukraine, independent Ukraine. And I think what we're seeing is in the final partnering with Putin to accomplish that. I think it it not just besmirches our our standing in the world. I think it changes who we are as a nation. Think of what Israel has done under Netanyahu. I grew up in Israel was, you know, kind of the underdog country. They were attacked every several years by many nations around them. It is now an outcast. People sensed that not just its leadership, but the values of its people have embraced evil in Gaza, certainly a justified war that became something evil. Both sides are evil there. And I kind of think that how do we get back to a sense that for all our mistakes and all our blunderings that we believed we had a a mission in the world from our declaration on that we would champion freedom. Now there are plenty that we didn't do that, right? The Cold War has is full of lessons to Philippines and Chile and all kinds of places where we've backed the Saudi Arabia where, you know, we've backed for our own pecuniary or national interests. But this is just spitting on the ideal itself. This is just trashing as foolish. Only losers and suckers would believe in the idealism of trying to help a free and independent country defend itself from one of the worst regimes in the world. And I find it heartbreaking. Yeah. And also to not understand that if Ukraine falls then there's nothing to stop Russia going further into Europe. We're put in to do that. Well, it just seems remarkably short-sighted. And as you say, not what America was set up to do. No, we have our alliances are based on mutual economic interest, but also values. And Trump does not, you know, the leader of the free world today is Mark Karni, Prime Minister of Canada. When he speaks, he's talking about the values that the United States once had as does Canada. And he lays it out. We don't stand for that anymore. And a lot of Americans would agree with that. Yeah, well, they're, they're loser values. But we've abandoned allies not just because our interests diverge, but because there's this cartoon version in the minds of Maga about alliances, about Europe, that bears very little relationship to the long and deep connections that we've had, connection that we've had, because we believe in kind of the same things. We hold the same ideals. We pursue them as best we can being fallen creatures all. And this is just Trump saying no more. That's, that's for losers and suckers. You know, there's only one motto that he has, which is, the world is divided and the people get screwed and people do the screwing. And Putin's on one side and Trump wants to be on that side too. Goodness me. Well, what is, what is Sunday? What is Sunday with Terry Moran? Welcome to Sunday with Terry Moran. Well, Terry, you've got to come back after the mid-times and we'll see if your prediction about Susan Collins, squeezing through over Troy Jackson is right. And similarly, whether or not Josh Torek makes it in Iowa. Thank you very much. Always a pleasure to talk to you and to get your perspective on things. It's great to see you, John. I loved Terry's expression there that he would trust with the future of humanity, the woman who put the flowers on the altar of presumably his local church. Then he would any of the tech oligarchs sitting over there, AI. But I'd love to know what you found the most interesting part of the conversation. Was it about Ukraine and America's terrible betrayal there? Was it about his opinion about what's going to happen in Maine? Who do you think is going to win Susan Collins or Troy Jackson? Anyway, leave us a comment. You know we love to read them. I answer as many as I can and we try and hop on live whenever we can. David Rothkoff now hopping on on Mondays and we'll be back with David Rothkoff tomorrow on Monday and inside Trump's head on Tuesday. If you have been big thanks for joining, don't forget to subscribe, share this with a friend and a big thank you to our production team. Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passa, Heather Pasaro and Neil Rosenhouse. So the good news is we have so many B beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.