This is What Trump is Really Planning for America

The New Abnormal

The Daily Beast

News & Politics

4.6 • 7.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joanna Coles welcomes back David Rothkopf, the seasoned national security expert and former Clinton official, for a no-holds-barred analysis of the Democrats' curious case of Trump envy. Rothkopf breaks it down into two camps: the mild, who admire Trump’s decisiveness (however impulsive), and the dangerous, who want to emulate his ruthless authoritarian swagger wholesale. He warns that Democrats risk losing their identity—and their base—by chasing "neoliberal" Wall Street donors and selling their authenticity to the top bidder. Rothkopf also weighs in on Gavin Newsom’s podcast pivot and why being “Trump-lite” might just be the fastest way to burn out in both politics and entertainment. Follow @djrothkopf for his latest bold takes.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	To mix a perfect mojito this summer, all you need is some ice, some rum, and then top up with zesty, refreshing, fever tree mojita mixer.
0:14.3	Finish with a splash of sunshine and some good friends and enjoy.
0:21.0	Mmm, maybe you don't need the sunshine.
0:24.6	Vivetri Mahita Mixer.
0:26.7	Mix with the best.
0:28.4	Please enjoy responsibly.
0:35.7	I'm Joanna Coles.
0:37.1	This is the Daily Beast podcast.
0:38.3	I'm the chief content officer of The Daily Beast and today we're talking to my favourite political columnist, David Roscock.
0:45.3	He's got a brilliant column this week about how Democrats are suffering from what he calls Trump envy, which is their envy of how he uses power and their envy, obviously, of actual
0:57.5	power. So let's get straight into it. Before we do, I want to remind you that David was the
1:02.6	former editor of foreign policy and he was also a senior official in the Clinton administration,
1:08.5	so he spends a lot of time talking to dominant Democrats.
1:15.2	David, you've written two excellent pieces for The Beast in the last week. One was about the
1:20.5	enormous number of words we need to describe. I think what you described as the shit show in
1:27.3	D.C. And in the way that Eskimos have many
1:30.3	words for Snow, we now need a lot of words for what's happening in D.C. But you also wrote a very
1:36.3	interesting column. Spilling a secret that is being discussed in D.C., can you reveal what it is,
1:44.0	please? I think among a lot of Democrats,
1:46.2	even Democrats who are extremely alienated by Trump's, you know, extra legal and worse behavior,
1:53.3	there is a little bit of Trump envy. And one of the reasons is that politics is about winning.
1:58.8	And he won the last time around. But there's two kinds of
	...

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