Why Trump's Worst Scandal Is About to Haunt Him

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If your work depends on conversations, check it out at plaud.ai/beast and use code beast for 10% off. That's plaud.ai/beast and use the code beast for 10% off. U.S. voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabroad.org and click Request My ballot, as to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Votefromabroad.org. Trump is the most dependably pro-sexual abuse president of America's ever. Here's this Cornell case where a bunch of privileged Cornell students got off writing an essay as a way of getting out of attacking and abusing women. Trump actually believes that men should be able to abuse women. That's the natural order of things. He believes that people in power should be able to take whatever they want. 28 days ago, it is going to be a wild ride. We have a kind of unhinged president who is only going to get more unhinged. There's going to be a lot of fighting about the outcome of the election. Because remember what happened in 2020. Buckle up and be prepared to fight for what you believe. Because this is going to be a midterm election. Unlike any we have ever seen in American history. David Rothkoff. Joe Anna Cole. I don't even know where to begin except that this is the Daily Beast podcast. And David Rothkoff is our chief global correspondent in DC. Yeah, not just DC, not just DC. Global. Global. You've got the global. Yeah. But you're living in DC where it turns out local tour guides are saying that visitors to DC are down 50% some of them are saying their business is down 50% because DC is such a mess now that Trump who is a builder and he's just he does it out of his back pocket. He says, um, his buildings aren't working. Anyway, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Natalie Harp getting the president very confused with India and Brazil. Yes, they both have a lot of people. That's probably about all they have in common. Uh, we're very lucky he has the highest IQ. How do we know? Because he told us we'll also be looking at his aspirin protocol. He'll be examining the most powerful women in Washington. Of course, first lady snubbed by not having a picture of herself on it. Meanwhile, Natalie Harp gets an enormous picture. What your Pentagon sources are saying about Pete and his state of the nation speech last week, the state of the force and Laura Loomers back David. I have been missing her a bit like the first lady I have been missing her. Laura Loomers is back and well, it's just it's endless and there could be a plague coming out of Russia. So it's Monday morning and it's all good. It's all good in America. God, there's a plague in Russia. The elections in 28 days, remember the movie 28 days later. This is the movie 28 days before and we could have a plague and we could have a plague and RFK junior will be there to protect us all. Oh, that's so good. When he's not making his cooking videos, yeah, well, from pneumonic plague, he also made a nice little video about his anniversary with his wife. Oh, that's sweet. I mean, a nice little clip. It was very, it's very, it's very, very sweet. So there's a lot going on in Washington, you know, it's like 28 days to go, oh my God, oh my God, you know, and I'm going to lose my job. My friend's going to lose their job. We're going to be in power. We're not going to be in power. Everybody, you know, you may think, oh, they're looking at it from the perspective of the future of America. They're not. Everybody in Washington is, am I going to be employed? Am I going to be in power? Am I going to have to work on case straight and go and be a lobbyist? You know, is Trump going to go berserk? It's, you know, so they're, it's, it's, it's very fraught here, even if it's a little bit calmer out there across America. And Marco Rubio is telling people he's not going to run because he's got four children. He's been in politics for 15 years, and he needs to make some money. The boy needs to make some money. Well, Marco, you're in the right place, although it turns out your boss has made what is it? 2.2 billion since he's been in office. So what have you been doing? Sleeping at the wheel. Hey, boss. Bear. I think Baron has made a hundred and fifty million. And he's still in college. You're sleeping, Marco. Just off of crypto. Yeah. But Marco will make a little bit of, a little bit of money for it. And what, what did he have to give up for that? His soul. Just it. The old Faustian pack. Oh, yeah. So before we go any further, let me just remind people, please subscribe to the DailyBeast podcast. Like this podcast. Share it with your friends. Share it with your colleagues. Share it with frenemies. Share it. You know, what you could do. You could send it to people an hour before you all have dinner together and then you've got something to talk about. Anyway, we're independent media, so we appreciate your support. We rely on your support on one of the ways of expressing your support. It's to like or share our podcast. Now, the good news about having Donald J. Trump for president, which David and I are always saying is that he does have the highest IQ. How do we know that because he's out there rallying for Republicans who don't really want him there, but he's there anyway. And he told us he had the highest IQ. Let's play the clip. I said, "Wow, nobody saw it, but me, I'm very proud of it, it's very intelligent, I'm a higher IQ person, unlike some other people I can tell you about, among the highest IQs anywhere in the world, 1775." And I said, "You know if we can scrap up one dollar more, we'll be at 1776, so that's where we live." What is he talking about? I mean, 1775 is not an IQ score. What is he talking about? Well, it is for Donald Trump. If you're the smartest person out there and your uncle went to MIT, you could have any score you want. No, you can't actually, to be specific, you can't have an IQ score above 160. The tests don't actually go above 160, so this is more than 10 times that. It's just insanity. It is insanity. And frankly, you know what the 1775 reference is to remember they sent a check to people in the military for 1776 dollars. And it was his idea. He said, "Instead of sending them 1775, we'll add a dollar, it'll be 1776." But you know, nothing, all the synapses in his brain, they know connectomal. And so, you know, what you've got is a guy who between his ears has like a bubbling cauldron of Campbell's, you know, of Campbell's cream of idiot soup. And you never know what it's going to bubble up, right? And so he's like out there saying he's super intelligent. By the way, he is the guy who gave us the term superintelligence. We're now obligated, well, we're not. But the government is obligated to call AI superintelligence. And that's another one of his great schemes, right? Here is AI. Everybody doesn't like AI. And he knows that, you know, when people stop buying cereal, they say new and improved cereal. And so he says, "Wait a minute, why don't we call it superintelligence?" He should have said super locale, super delicious, no sugar added intelligence, because that's what, you know, he views everything as a branding challenge. And nothing is actually a governing challenge. And that's a problem, of course, because, you know, he does run the government. So the other thing he gave us insight into, which we've had before, but he's back on it. So he's obviously thinking about it is his aspirin protocol. Let's hear that again, too, because the old ones are the good ones as he goes out on a rally. He is like that old cat skills comedian just trying material and falling back on the old ones when they serve him. Let's hear that clip. They make it speeches. There. He sounds as incredulous as we are that he's still here making speeches. Yeah, but he's also like ensuring his brain is going there. Wait, Natalie, buy 1,000 shares of beer. Yeah, you know, it's like he's out there promoting another stock. And of course, he's talking about getting a dose of this aspirin, which is too much above work. Well, I think it's four times above the recommended dose, right? Yeah, but you know, if that's what he's doing, I'm saying like more power to you, but I'm saying double the dose, double the dose. He takes, take as much as you want. Yeah, he's only taking one. He's only taking one. He should take the bottle. Why doesn't he take the bottle? What kind of man is he? Take the bottle. People have done that before. If he were, if you were a manly man, if he were a high T, Pete Hegseth man, he'd take the whole bottle. But, you know, the other thing about it is that he sounds a little bit like a really bad AI bot, right? He's just hallucinating. It's just like, it goes from one thing to another. It could be true. It might not be true. I think that's why he takes to the AI people so well. You know, and they think, well, this must be intelligence where in Vannegut sounds a lot like the president because it's chaotic. It makes no sense. And, you know, he does that at these rallies. He stands up and he just rifts and rifts and rifts. It goes on and goes on. Although interestingly, people start leaving, no get applause. It's not the only rally gaff over the weekend, by the way. I don't know if you saw the pick. Do you see Vivek Ramas Plamy trying to pick up a big kid at the rally? So you keep going, please explain. Well, he was at a rally. He's running for Governor of Ohio. He is, of course, a big Trump fan. And he thought, well, you know, I'm running for office. I'm going to pick up a kid. If your accountant said, I've never actually done taxes before, but I'm pretty good at math, you'd probably find someone who has done taxes because when something really matters, experience isn't a bonus. It's the whole point. That's why so many people turn to Morgan and Morgan, making it America's largest injury law firm. Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting for the people for over 35 years. With over 35 billion recovered for their clients, Morgan and Morgan knows a thing or two about fighting to get you the compensation you deserve. They've got more than 1,000 lawyers and a hundred offices nationwide. So if your car gets totalled, you get hurt at work. Or somebody else's bad decision becomes your very expensive problem. You can check out Morgan and Morgan. If you're ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan. Morgan and Morgan fights to get their clients the best results. And their fee is free unless they win. To see if you have a case, you can go to forthepople.com/dailybeast. Well, and shouldn't we remind people that he briefly ran Doge with Elon until Elon basically chained sort him off the stage? Yeah, exactly. But I'm sure this kid's parents wanted it. He picks up the kid. And then he can't hold it up. And he's like dropping the kid. And it's like one of the basic rules of politics. Don't drop a baby. And they're just not going. But so they're doing a lot. They're doing a lot out there on the campaign trail with this and with ads. And the Republicans are pumping tens of millions of dollars into campaign ads because they have terrible candidates. They have no record to run on. The president's saying horrible things. And so they think they can just buy it with this money that they're getting from all these billionaires and millionaires. Because that's worked for them in the past. The problem, honestly, if we're going to be serious for one fleeting moment, is that if the election doesn't go their way, they've got Plan B. And Plan B is going to be declaring the elections invalid, challenging the impounding voting machines, sending troops in, intimidating people. And the reason that they can do Plan B is that they did this once before January 6, 2021. And they got away with it. They attacked the US government. They tried to seize the system. They attacked police officers. And not only did they get away with it, some of them got rewarded. They got jobs in the government. They got cash payouts and so on. So they actually believe that intervening in an election in a way that's completely illegal is OK. And that's why everything's so fraught at the moment. And all the polls show Democrats way ahead. The early voting polls, I just was looking at a bunch of those just now. And early voting is an indication of where things are going. And there are more Democrats early voting than there were in 2024 and 2022. In 2020, there are more Democrats doing better in polls in more states. I think they just switched. I think 10 more states are now considered-- congressional races are now considered in play. So if you're a Democrat and you're looking at this, you're saying, hey, this looks pretty good. But if you're a Republican looking at this, you're saying, what can we do to stop this inevitable wave? And we'll throw money at it. But if the money doesn't work, what else is there? And everything else, there is frankly kind of illegal and is going to produce a lot of battles over the course of the next four weeks, probably, over the next several months because a lot of these things will be contested after the fact. Well, one of the secret-- or not so secret arrows in the Quiver is, of course, Elon Musk, bottomless pocketbook, and Twitter, or X, formerly known as Twitter. Is-- do you think he's going to be a factor in this election? I think he is, because I think he was more of a factor in the 2024 election than we know, right? I mean, you know, he was the one working with local groups coming up with these payoffs for voters that were legal, or were they not quite legal working. You know, he was the one telling people hours before the vote, what he thought the vote outcome would be. There's a lot of speculation about, you know, what kind of shenanigans he was up to. This got him in very good with Trump. And you remember, even though he had a falling out with Trump over Doge, last week, he was invited back in to be one of three people in charge of a panel in charge of deciding how the Pentagon will deploy autonomous weapon systems, you know, like the ones in the Terminator movies. And we have Elon and Newt Gingrich and a business partner of Don Jr., who are now in charge of what could be the next weapons of mass destruction. And so he's, you know, he's there more. He was at the dinner with the Chinese president. He's been in the White House plenty. And he's got the president's ear again. And I think that's primarily because the president thinks he was helpful in tipping the scales and the last election. - Well, he is, of course, heartbroken, David. So it's possible that he's not 100% right now. And I only mention this because Shivon Zillis, who's the mother of various of his children and some twins in that mix, posted herself. I mean, it used to be that when one followed high profile romances and they broke up or they had issues, you didn't hear from the candidates themselves, you didn't hear from them, you heard from their people or they just gave us sort of a way we weren't be talking about it. Please respect our privacy. Happily, Shivon does not want her privacy to be respected. So I'm going to read from her ex-post that she put out. It's hard. It's hard, David, to go from in love to let go in a week with no warning. But that's just how it is sometimes shruggy emoji. I feel happy that I got to show Elon how it feels to be deeply understood, nurtured and peacefully loved with stability and gentleness given the tumultuous nature of his early life his often tortured soul and how hard he fights for humanity. I wanted him to feel the deepest and most stable form of love this world can provide. My heart is full knowing I got to do that and I hope it leaves a lasting, a good effect. We were always his safe space. A place where all of us were overjoyed to see him and one that was always full of happiness and love not war in contrast to his otherwise militant existence. And he did break from the battlefield where he could recharge his heart and soul before heading back out. So, and then what I particularly liked. Well, there's a little bit more. She says I loved him more than life itself and he's taught me a hundred lifetimes of knowledge and made my cup overflow with life meaning. So there is a lot of loss, but luckily we created for beautiful little loves of my life for heart emojis. I'm so beyond grateful for our children and they make every single day the best day of my life. Um, then she says, I do hope and pray here and I can be great friends and co-parents. I'm just going to say that on the basis of what's gone before, especially with Grime, I don't think that's likely. Sorry, Shivon, I don't think that's likely, but what do I know? Oh! But then what I particularly love and I hope we can show a clip of this is her revealing the texts between Elon and herself and saying, I didn't realise that the she dinner included significant other, or I would have invited you. That's Elon. And then she goes, oh, that means so much to me. Thank you. Heart emoji. So there you go, David. There you go. I mean, he's not he's not top of his game. He's writing out to the battlefield without having any inner peace. Well, first of all, Ketamine provides loads of inner peace and I don't know that, you know, he's stopped with that, but secondly, you know, you are reading that as though we're a romantic nose or a coda on a longstanding relationship. To me, it sounded like a request for cash. And to me, it sounds like, here I am. I'm not going to fuck up your life. I'm going to follow the rules that we played by. I'm going to say nice things about you. You're going to treat me well because I can be public if I want to be public. And if you don't, then we're going to have problems. So please keep those checks, please keep those checks coming. Right. And I would have thought she would have signed an NDA at this point. Who knows what she signed? Who knows how much of that is true? I mean, she would, I mean, look, the woman was involved with Elon Musk and gave him four children. She's obviously out of her own eye. Everybody's giving him four children. Everybody gives two children. Well, well, yeah, that's why it's got a giant ranch in Florida, you know, full of, you know, herds of little Elon Musk, Musk bites. Yeah, Musk, Oxen, but the reality is that, you know, she's obviously a little cracked to have fallen for this bullshit anyway. So you think this is a public shake down? I think it's, I think the whole thing is transactional. You know, I think, you know, I mean, she obviously was being used as a kind of a brewed mayor by Elon. And she thought, well, okay, you know, if he's the richest guy in the world, I'm going to get something out of this. The kids will get something out of this. And maybe she persuaded herself that there was some real emotion there. But, you know, once you're out of the relationship or doing this kind of thing, you know, you have to ask really what their motives are in being public, as you were saying, you know, it's, you don't have to go public. She didn't have to write something. Why did she do it? There always has to be a reason. And, you know, as my old professor, Tommy, you know, question number one is follow the money. You know, where, what's the, what's the financial reason behind that? What is the financial reason behind it? Indeed. One skin is nothing like your typical skincare brand. And that's why I keep coming back to the most anti-aging skincare is built to react to smooth over lines and wrinkles after they show up. 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After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. And I've been using one skin for, I guess, four or five months now, you can tell yourself if you think I look any different. Another person who is one of the oddballs in Trump's core is of course Ken Paxton. And Ken Paxton has been caught making yet another humiliating confession. So last week, it turned out that he was mowning that Trump's Trump-apalooza had, in fact, hurt him and that the numbers had gone down since Trump-apalooza. Now he's made another confession that, in fact, he's not allowed to have any control over his Senate campaign. And he said he was caught on another hot mic. I've never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign. And like, what is shoes again to matter? Because it's all, you know, it's coming from DC. I don't control my message. Or what we're doing. I don't know if we should be relieved by that or not relieved by that. But Ken Paxton's just, you know, what is he at this point? He's a guy who's going to lose an election in four weeks. He's going to lose Texas for the Republicans for the first time in several decades. He's going to lose to James Talleriko, who Trump decided to attack over the weekend by saying, well, you know, he's a vegan. Actually, he's a vegan vegan. You know, I don't know what that means. But I think it means he just eats lettuce. Well, I hope it's not lettuce that has, you know, that gives you that explosive, whatever it was called. Well, you know, that, I mean, that Trump lettuce is what we call that. It was cyclospora. It was the summer of cyclospora. But James Talleriko is looking good on lettuce if that's all he's eating. Well, he's looking good. He's looking good in the polls. He's up, I think, 5% in the polls, he's in some of the polls, he's up just a couple, but he could win. He actually could win. This is not Beto O'Rourke. This is something where he could actually win. And part of it is because Paxen is the worst possible candidate impeached, corrupt, you know, the only person who seems to like Paxen despite all of his misdeeds of every sort, you can imagine is his wife, who made a statement over the weekend. Well, you know, sometimes you have to vote for somebody because you're voting for the team, even if they're not the best possible candidate, not really a resounding endorsement. And Donald Trump put him in that seat as retribution for John Corn in the right wing Republican who's represented Texas for the last few cycles. What did he do to piss off Trump? Can you remember? He, a couple of times he spoke out against Trump and that, you know, this is a rock-ribbed Republican who voted with Trump on almost every occasion, but occasionally he would show little signs of independence and Trump wants 100% loyalty. And just like, you know, Hitler used to fire generals because they wouldn't follow a particular order, even though they had done a good job for him, that, you know, Trump is doing this and he has pissed off the entire Republican party. And if you go and talk to sort of mainstream Republicans right now, they feel this is, you know, Trump's going to get his comeuppance. He, he invited this, Paxton's a terrible candidate. Cornen would have won this pretty easily. And it's, it's entirely on Trump because he thinks he's a mastermind because he has an IQ of 1775, which is the same IQ as 11 other human beings added up, right? It's just, it's too much. It's Monday and I don't know where we're going. I don't know where we're going. It's that we are going to the list of the 300, normally it's a list of 10, 300 powerful women in Washington. Melania obviously is on there as the first lady, but there's no picture of her. There is, however, a large photo of Natalie Harp, also one of the most powerful women in Washington, possibly the most powerful woman because she's the woman that dictates what Trump says on social media, what media he gets to respond to and what media he gets to read. Yeah, well, you know, maybe, maybe what's going on there's a little bit like that New New York Times horrible list of the 100 best television shows, which was stupid, I mean, just a stupid list, but you know, they, they did not include on the 100 best television shows of the past 25 years, the sopranos. And the reason they didn't was that it started in the 90s. And the reason Melania is not one of the 300 most powerful women in Washington or is just marginally on the list is because she's not in Washington. She doesn't live here. She doesn't live in the White House. I think when she's in the White House, she doesn't even live in the same floor as the president. And so, you know, she is very little influenced over him, whereas Natalie's with him all the time. And even if they have their little spats, there she is at his side, you know, and she's the one who feeds his delusions. And Trump is fed undilusion. Trump is like a locomotive where you need an engineer up in the [BLANK_AUDIO] from throwing coal into the engine. And the coal that keeps him going is bullshit. You know, it's like, oh yeah, you're doing great. Oh yeah, you look great. Oh yeah, everybody loves you. Oh yeah, and that's Natalie's job. She's scooping up the bullshit and shoveling it into the engine. And that is the most important job in Washington right now 'cause absence, his own delusions, what's Trump left with? Not a very pretty reality. And I don't think he could handle it. The one person he is left with, David, is, of course, his secretary of war. We haven't talked about the war. We've had a rather light-hearted start to the podcast. But Pete Hegseth made a remarkable speech, his state of the force. Well, I thought that global bubonic play, or a pneumonic play gap, that wasn't very light-hearted. But go on. Well, you're right. But you talk to people in the Pentagon all the time. You talk to people in the defense and the intelligence industries. What did they make of Pete Hegseth's speech? Well, I mean, you know, there are two kinds of reactions. And one is he's a joke, right? I mean, he comes out, he does this kind of free verse about no weirdos and no beardos and this and that. He talks about high T and so forth. And, you know, that's mockable because it's ridiculous. And then after that, it starts getting a little bit darker. You know, he starts saying, well, I'm gonna have the religious, you know, office of religious affairs of the Pentagon report directly to me and it's gonna, you know, and people start saying, well, this is his white Christian nationalist agenda and other people of other face, which by the way, make up the majority of the people in the military don't much like that. And then he's like, oh, gonna fire 20% of the existing generals and admirals. And you start to see that, you know, it's darker and darker because the Pentagon that he is creating is one where the United States is less ready, more vulnerable. There is less respect for the troops. There is less respect for the people in command. There is less respect for the truth. There is less respect for the press. There is less transparency. There is a ridiculous amount of money pouring into deals that don't have anything to do with our future. You know, $1.5 trillion so we can have Trump battleships, even though nobody thinks battleships are a value and they stopped thinking they were a value in roughly 1940 or the golden tone which no expert thinks can actually work. Or AI systems which are gonna be or drone systems which are gonna be provided by companies that are owned by Don Jr. And so I think, you know, when I talk to people and I talk to, in the past weeks, several people are former flag officers, generals and admirals and other people who've been in senior positions in the Pentagon, they see him as destroying America's military. They see that the damage he is doing is going to take years and years to recover from. They see this as being profoundly dangerous to U.S. national security. So while they laugh at Hegseth and they call him a frat boy and a drunk and all this other kind of stuff, they also see a consequence. And you know, I mean, you can see it in little actions over the weekend, it was announced that a third carrier battle group is being deployed to the Persian Gulf. We don't have carrier battle group where we used to have one in the Pacific because of this. So we are less prepared there. When a carrier battle group goes out for a matter of months, it then has to go into, you know, dry dock and be updated and replenished and that takes 18 months. So that means that the things he's doing now are gonna make us less able to meet global challenges for years and years to come, similarly the depletion of all of our munitions in this war, the same thing. But Trump is now making noises that he could escalate. He's now making noises like he's listening to BB Netanyahu and maybe this fly Dubai flight was the Iranians were behind it. And if the Iranians were behind it, we're gonna have to punish the Iranians. And Trump is saying, you know, this is gonna go on through the election. And you know, it's getting very close to the fact that, you know, this war was gonna come up on its first anniversary, pretty darn quick. And we are gonna be spending tens of billions according to the administration, hundreds of billions according to independent estimates. On a war, which has not made us any safer, has not reduced the risk of Iranian nuclear weapons, has not reduced Iran's control in the region, has actually restored Iran's influence over some proxy groups like the Houthis in Yemen, has made most of our allies real and comfortable with us and has done so in a way there if there's a upset anywhere else in the world, if there's a problem in Taiwan, if Putin makes a move on the Baltics, and then you know, we're gonna be less able to provide for that. But you know, you'd go back to Hegseth and what's his response? Let's take more troops out of Europe. I did a podcast on my own network last week with several national security experts. And they all think the likelihood that Putin might strike elsewhere in Europe, not just the hybrid war that he's doing now with sabotage and drones and so forth, but that he might go into the Baltics or that he might hit into Poland. It's higher now than it has been at any time in the recent past. Think about that, think about how we would have reacted for any point in the past 50 years if somebody said, it is more likely now than ever before that Russia will attack Europe, except that we're on the side of Russia, we're not on the side of the Europeans, we're on the side of the aggressor, not on the side of democracy, make it at harder for Ukraine, blaming Ukraine for higher diesel prices when Russia and Trump are responsible for them. We're at a moment where our national security situation is, and I don't think this is an exaggeration, and I talk to these people all the time, and this is what I write about mostly. We're in a national security crisis in the United States of America because of Trump, because of Pete Hakeseth, because of bad decisions, and it is going to take us years and years to undo the damage to our alliances, to replenish our stocks of weapons, to restore the priorities within the Pentagon, to get good leadership back in place, regardless of whether they're women or people of color, and to be what we were just a couple of years ago. I don't think, I would argue that more damage has been done to the United States, national security community, during Trump's time in office, than has been done to it in any war that we have ever fought. (upbeat music) - If healthier, looking hair and skin have been on your mind, this is the sign to stop putting it off. I received the Irish store Elite and Illumina face mask, and what I love is how easily they fit into your routine. 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There was one I thought possible ray of hope for Donald Trump in the New York Times yesterday, when there was a piece saying that the Iranian finance minister had said that the Iranian economy was on the verge of collapse. Did you see that? I did the Iranian economy has been in bad shape for a long time, but here's the thing. In the United States, when the economy is in bad shape, voters go to the polls and they say, let's get rid of the people who put it in bad shape. In Iran, when the economy goes in bad shape, there is no election. It's not a democracy. They have the leadership in Iran has been treating the people of Iran badly for a long time to come. Furthermore, Iran has benefactors in this world that can help it out in a pinch. The Russians can help it out in a pinch. The Chinese can help it out in a pinch. There are others who want access to Iranian oil and other products that can help them out in a pinch. And I think one of the reasons that he said this stuff is in order to put additional pressure, particularly on the Chinese, to be more helpful to them. And I think they're gonna get that. They're gonna survive. And that's the thing. The Iranians are in Iran. They're not leaving Iran. Donald Trump wants out of Iran. He doesn't want to stay there. This is what happens all the time in these wars. Even if there is. in pain, they can wait it out because they are where they live. And we, we will not be able to wait it out. And it's just a question before, of time before Donald Trump ultimately sort of pulls up stakes and goes home or settles in for a war that will continue throughout his presidency at a low grade level, which seems to be the thinking from people that I've talked to that he can't get out of it and that Pete Hexeth and Marco Rubio are just sort of accepting that they're going to be stuck in this quagua through 2028. Yeah, the interesting thing is that Marco Rubio thinks, well, I can't run for president then because I'm going to own this mess. Whereas Pete Hexeth is going and campaigning on it because he's such a boob that he thinks people believe his bullshit and that, you know, if the military has higher testosterone, that's what matters. And if it's more Christian, and if it's more like him, then that's what matters. And he seems to think that the illusion of strength is more important than actual strength. And, and, you know, I obviously, I mean, every morning I get up, I light a candle. I say, please let Pete Hexeth be the Republican candidate in 2020. This could be the best thing that would ever happen for America because the Democrat could win by nearly unanimous. Let me ask you about this panel. So, so his speech creates six new departments, one of which amazingly is called project adjunct or going back to the 1400s. But he's, you referred to the fact that he's put in Elon Musk. He's put in Palmer Lucky who started the Oculus, the VR glasses that met aboard. And now he founded a company that he's running called Anderl, which is a modern, you know, military tech company. And then the 84-year-old, I believe he's 84, Newt Gingrich, who's hitherto really been most recently famous for his sweaters that he wears with his wife, who is the ambassador in Switzerland. What is Newt Gingrich doing there? 84 helping. This is the department that's supposed to autonomous warfare. Well, I mean, he has no knowledge of how to deal with this thing. But Trump doesn't have an unlimited group of people who will blow smoke up his ass. And Newt Gingrich is still one of those people. And so Trump says, well, he was Speaker of the House. He's a statesman. That's good enough to me. That's, you know, that's like a brand name. I'll put him on this thing. Palmer Lucky is a business partner of Don Jr. Oh, isn't that a conflict of interest? Well, that doesn't really matter. It does it. Also a billion. Also a billion. Yeah, also a billion. And also a super weird dude. And, and, and you know, this is I think the phrase when you say super weird dude, I think what you mean is he's tizzle maxing. Wow. Wow. That's what I'm told it's referred to in the valley. Is it, is it your, you are following in the footsteps of clovicular ad not, well, he was looks, right? He was looks, right? He was looks. And then I think he was sexually assault maxing, which is what was going on now. Yeah, well, could the speak about Cornell for a second, child? We can't, but can we just finish with this, this group of people, Palmer Lucky, Elon Musk, and New Kindrich, who are supposed to reform America, the American military? Well, I mean, look, they're supposed to reform it, but they're supposed to do is, is, is, and, you know, help us enter the area of autonomous weapons. Autonomous weapons platforms for those of you who are not following this very closely are exactly what you saw in the terminator. There are little machines that fly around or crawl around in space, killing people on their own without human supervision, okay? That's the autonomous part. And there are now drone systems that do this. And, and the idea of the future of warfare is that you could have a war in which tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of drones and robots and other kinds of machines could go and attack a country and devastate its people, devastate its economy without putting human soldiers at risk. The problem with this, of course, is it makes war more likely, not less likely. Another problem is, of course, that autonomous systems do what their algorithms say they should do. And sometimes these things go haywire. Another problem with this is that they don't get a lot of morality built into them, particularly when people, like the characters you mentioned at Pete Hegseth, who, who essentially was saying to the AI community, hey, look, come in, but no holds barred. We want to be, our emphasis is on lethality, you know, and he doesn't care about international law. He doesn't care about what is right or moral or what strengthens the U.S. or what by extension puts U.S. troops at risk. And so, you know, they're, you know, involved in this project. But, you know, the Trump has got some AI bug in his brain and he thinks anything about AI is the future and he thinks untrambled AI is the best flavor of AI. And so he's also got, you know, other initiatives led by his director of national intelligence who doesn't know really anything about AI either to go and shape how we're going to use it, what are rules are going to be for it, and so forth. And it's all, you know, what is it at the end of the day? It's a something that Trump makes him feel like he's strong in doing something. And b is something that's going to produce giant contracts for companies owned by Trump Jr. Trump Jr's friends, Trump's friends, the companies that are donating to Trump. This is all about the cash at the end of the day. It's all about producing massive contracts, hundreds of billion dollar contracts to go and create these new systems without doing any of the thought about whether we need them or whether they're good, et cetera, et cetera. It's reckless, it's dangerous, but it's also profoundly corrupt and I don't think we should lose side of it. Okay. Well, the great news is that Laura Lumer is back to keep the president on the straight and narrow. She really didn't like him meeting with Mayor Mamdoni. She thought that was a bad sign. And she's traveling with him on Marine One and Trump said about her. She's a great Republican strategist, a great person, a killer, which is I agree at you. It's a very terrible situation. Laura Lumer, thank you, Laura. She's great. No one's ever seen anyone like her. Indeed, we have not. Indeed, we have not. Well, it wasn't, Laura Lumer, like his kind of his work wipe for a while. Well, she was busy flying around with him. But how does Natalie get along with Laura? I don't know. It's a very good question. I think that Laura Lumer is a friend of Natalie, which is how she got access to the White House in the first place. Because Natalie, you know, figures out who's coming in and out. And Laura Lumer got access through Natalie. Oh, that's interesting. Well, they all end up in a good place. You know, Caroline Levin's going to fuck. Caroline Levin is going to Fox News. Yes. That I think we called that. That was my prediction. Well, that's a brilliant. I thought so. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You really went out on a limb on that one. She's going to join Dana Perino. Dana Perino, of course, was also White House press secretary under George W. Bush. And she's on Fox News now. And PXF came from Fox News. So it's a revolving door there. It is a revolving door. And that's where all these people expect to end up. You know, I mean, they just, they just, I don't know if you saw this. There was story in the Guardian. This morning about they have a new assistant press secretary in the White House, who's coming in from some wacky right wing outfit that one run by this guy, Jack Pasobiac, who it turns out was seen in 2021 posing in a fuck Joe Biden t-shirt holding a rifle. And shit, this lovely woman is now part of the White House press. Oh, they must be very proud. Remind people who Jack Pasobiac is. He's just, it's just one of these crazy right wing voices that got us drunk, you know, who stirred things up. And, and, uh, who's, you know, track record is full of lies and deception and threats and so forth. And he's part of that right wing ecosystem of, of, of, of, of talking heads that persuaded, you know, an audience that was, I don't know what they were doing, you know, they were at the gym or the drive in a truck or in a bar or wherever they were listening to it, that, uh, you know, the Democrats were the Satan and that what we needed was, uh, uh, just, you know, somebody sent here by Jesus to save us. And that, of course, is Donald Trump IQ 1775. And as Pete Hexeth reminded people, our department is, as you might say, putting on the full armor of God, because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle, David, is spiritual. And then he said, is against, is against the, the Jew. And then he said God is maybe it's that's the Muslims it's against the Muslims. I know it's it's against that's what it's it's it's again Everybody I think and then he said God is good evil you might be surprised by this David This is what he said which is why I think AI helps him might his speech evil is bad evil is bad David evil is bad That's morality look that this dude has Crusader tattoos on his chest, right? He's got his his like guru in all of this stuff is some crazy right wing preacher who says women can't be in the military That's not their role And who thinks that our footing, you know, he mentioned Asian core well, you know, Asian core was relatively recent when you compare it to the footing He likes which is you know the crusades and you know, he he really feels that what we're engaged in is a global crusade against white Christian men And that he has to defend white Christian men and you know the reason he's wants to run for president is because there is a big group of people out there Some of them with money and so forth who think that the next president of the United States ought to be on the same wavelength And by the way, you know JD Vance and his affiliation with turning point which agrees the same thing is also part of this white Christian nationalist movement And I you know just as a parenthesis here the elections in a month let's assume for a moment that well the shenanigans they try They're not going to be able to undo the will of the American people completely and the Democrats take over the House or maybe the House in the Senate At that point Donald Trump becomes an even lame or lame duck and the entire conversation in the United States becomes who's going to be the candidate in 2028? Where are we going after this? And there are going to be two competing forces within the Republican Party One is the oligarchs the people who went to the sea dinner the people who Trump signed our new constitution about AI with the Bezos and Ellison and Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Mark and Dreson and Peter Teal crowd Who think well we're in charge now we've got the billions each one of us is worth what a medium sized country is worth And we can use the United States to serve our purposes and we'll just find somebody and put enough money behind them that they'll get elected and they think they'll be able to pick a candidate Meanwhile as a subset of the Republican Party you've also got this white Christian nationalist movement that thinks well hate worked for Trump it can work for us And you know we're getting closer and closer to 2043 the moment when the United States becomes a minority majority country and white people become the minority in the United States And we want to be the backlash against that and that's why JD Vance is going to be our candidate or whatever and that's the battle that is forming within the Republican Party right now And you know the story is going to change real damn fast from what does Donald Trump say or do to which one of these groups is going to win And which one of these groups is going to be you know vying in 20 in just a couple of years to take this country into its next chapter David doesn't JD Vance answer both groups they doesn't he provide an answer for both groups That's what he thinks right because he is the Peter Teal candidate and he thinks he you know he comes from that world he comes from the financial world And at the same time he thinks he you know is appealing to the white Christian nationalists And honestly who else you know I don't think Marco is going to be able to compete that way I mean the problem JD Vance has is that nobody likes him and nobody believes it and he goes out and he says horrible racist things all the time And so it's always possible that there will be some I don't know slightly sainer 10% more sane Republican candidate who comes along Who says we don't have to hate everybody and and and that may undermine vance And the other prop Vance has is he's the vice president to Donald Trump And Donald Trump is corrupt and there's also it's a corruption swirling around him and there's the Iran conflict And there's the destruction of democracy in America and the destruction of our institutions and so on And Vance kind of owns that right so he's he's got a leg up right now but you know I wouldn't say it's a shoe in A leg up but not a shoe in Trump came out over the weekend and said he felt sympathy for the seven young men involved in this in this gang A legit gang right? Yeah I just think you know Trump is the most dependably pro sexual abuse president America has ever had Every single time he has the opportunity to speak out on behalf of people accused of sexual abuse He does and you know here's this Cornell case where a bunch of privileged Cornell students you know sort of got off writing an essay As a way of getting out of attacking and abusing women And Trump's like oh well that's not fair because Trump actually as we've said here before believes that Men should be able to abuse women that that's the natural order of things he believes that people in power Should be able to take whatever they want that's the natural order of things And you know it is it's baked in his cake and you know I was thinking about it the other day because do you remember The Me Too movement remember when we were like oh yeah there's this big movement this is never going to happen again And the response to the Me Too movement was not no more sexual harassment The response of the United States of America to the Me Too movement was to elect Donald fucking Trump Again a second time this pro sexual abuse you know guy who's been found by a jury to be liable for violating You know a woman and it's been accused by dozens of others of other misdeeds Yeah multiple accused and only today the man who Melania says introduced her to Donald Trump has himself just been accused of allegedly drugging and raping a woman More than 20 years his junior palos ampoli is named in a lawsuit filed by tech entrepreneur Victoria Drake Who accuses him of sexually assaulting her as she lay unconscious at his New York townhouse three years ago And interestingly she used to hang out at Mar-a-Lago a lot with her then boyfriend, Ross Sheffitts He's a private equity guy but his father his billionaire father actually owns a condo in Chicago On the 87th floor of Trump Tower which is probably only the 77th floor because Donald Trump do that thing where he starts at the 10th floor So you automatically think you're higher then you actually are anyways sad to have the person who introduced you to your husband Be accused of allegedly drugging and raping someone 23 years their junior These really are the world's worst people though They're the worst Donald Trump the people Donald Trump hangs out with the people that hang out at Mar-a-Lago They're not marginal people they're not people we can look down on because we don't like what they do professionally These are disgusting human beings The most disgusting and it's like he's built a hive of disgusting human beings And each one of them has a crime and each one of them has skeletons in the closet and that allows them you know that was sort of the Epstein thing Everybody has skeletons in the closet so everybody keeps everybody else's secrets Do you think the Epstein files and Jeffrey Epstein himself will be a theme in the election as we get closer? I don't know that there will be a theme in the election to the extent to which they're not already In other words, I think there are a lot of people who see Trump as the leader or part of the Epstein class Sense the corruption sense the violations of norms and values and morality and are disgusted by it And I think you'll see many more women voters moving across and voting for Democrats, many people who are disgusted by this movie across and voting for Democrats But here's what I do think I think if the Democrats win and we start getting different kinds of investigations on Capitol Hill The Epstein files will come back with a vengeance during the two years between now in the 2028 election And I think revelations and things that we don't know about Epstein and the Epstein group and Trump and the Epstein group We'll be much, much bigger stories than they are now and we'll be stories in the future in 2028. And otherwise, why would the president have made, as Attorney General, somebody whose primary job is to protect him from the Epstein files? And with that, we get to a certain place, where maybe it is appropriate to end, which is all of this connects to Epstein. Donald Trump's defense of the Cornell kids is because the accusations against him sound like the accusations against Trump that have been made in multiple cases, but there are particularly still out there associated with the Epstein files. And no matter what Todd Blanch does to try to hide all this, no matter what Donald Trump tries to do, he can't turn the page in his own mind. He knows it's out there. He knows it will always be out there. He knows there are victims out there that are gonna someday testify in front of Congress in one situation or another. He knows that these accusations are gonna come out again. He knows that he and Melania were part of a demimond in the world of Jeffrey Epstein, which is repugnant to most Americans. And anytime he has a chance to say, well, this is really a political thing, or this is unfair, or this is people abusing the law. He does it because he's laying the groundwork for his own ongoing defense in this Epstein thing, which will be at the center of everything. - David, thank you for analyzing the week for us. I guess what can one say 28 days to go? 28 days to go. - 28 days to go. It is gonna be a wild ride. I think we have a kind of unhinged president who is only gonna get more unhinged. We've got an apparatus around him that will do it every says, which is gonna put a lot of our laws at risk. And then after the election, there's gonna be a lot of fighting about the outcome of the election, 'cause remember what happened in 2020. And so my main advice to everybody is listening to this is buckle up and be prepared to fight for what you believe. Because this is gonna be a midterm election unlike any we have ever seen in American history. - Well, and Donald Trump said he's recommending that people cheat like hell. We get a lot of comments on this podcast, particularly from your fans are all like, we love David, we love David. - They're so smart. - That we get a lot from people living in Australia, people living in Europe who cannot believe what's going on in America. They just cannot believe. - I don't know if listeners have the same reaction, but I wake up day isn't. It's like Donald Trump is really the president. This guy who's saying this crazy stuff who thinks his IQ is 1775 is really the president of the United States who's caught up in every form of crime and corruption we've ever seen. And still has the ongoing support of people as the president of the United States. And then you think this happens all the time throughout history. Look at Brazil, they had an election over the weekend and they put in the first place, it was a first-ground election, the son of a guy who tried to destroy democracy in their country. Their memory extended back exactly like two years. And it's like no, and the whole south of Brazil voted for this guy. And it happens time and time again. It's just for some reason, I don't know, people aren't paying attention, they're caught up in their own. I don't know what it is, I just can't believe they were going through all this stuff and over and over again. It rattles my sense of what is real and what is not. - Well, we'll be back rattling that sense next Monday, David, God willing, with the armor of God around us. Leave your comments for David. Are you also rattled by what's happening in America? Let us know how rattled you are. - Yeah, and when you comment on the YouTube, we comment back, we get engaged with you. - Yeah, we do, it's so interesting. - If you've got questions, you've got comments, you are rattled by something else, we're missing the point, we're getting the point, share it with us because we live in the age of interactive media and it's much better to be involved in a conversation with you guys than just one another. So, please join us for that. - David, I'll see you next Monday. - See you next Monday. - Stay rattled. - Count on that. - Many thanks if you have been for joining us and a big thanks to our production team, John Romero, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passe, Heather Pessaro 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.