Why Fading Trump, 79, Just Keeps Losing: Rothkopf

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

News & Politics

4.6 • 7.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Daily Beast's unmissable columnist David Rothkopf joins Joanna Coles to dive into what he calls one of Donald Trump’s most chaotic weeks yet. The 79-year-old president has been jeered at by protesters across a dining table, faced mounting health concerns, dealt with the assassination of his acolyte, Charlie Kirk, while abroad, his foreign policy has stumbled. Rothkopf, CEO of TRG Media and a foreign policy expert, argues Trump looks increasingly fragile, physically and politically, as allies squirm with embarrassment and rivals like Putin and Xi Jinping test his weakness. Coles and Rothkopf examine America’s rising tide of political violence, driven by alienated young men and a culture awash in guns, and note Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s surprising emergence as a voice of civility. With Trump leaning on inept advisers, losing grip on his narrative, and facing international mistrust, Rothkopf asks whether we are witnessing not just the decline of a president, but the slow unraveling of Trumpism itself.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This Tuesday, Amazon brings the unmissable UAFA Champions League match.
0:05.1	Unbelievable.
0:07.3	Tottenham versus Villarreal.
0:10.4	And it's touched goal at one straight.
0:14.8	The UEFA Champions League, Tuesday from 6.30 p.m.
0:19.0	It's on Prime.
0:22.1	Donald Trump right now has precisely zero wins since he's become president again.
0:31.1	I mean, you can say the big, beautiful bill, but the reaction of the public to the bill has been terrible. It's hugely unpopular. And so I think
0:44.6	all this is weighing on him and his own mortality is weighing on him and the Epstein thing
0:51.0	is weighing on him. And he just looks like he can't handle it.
0:56.7	I'm Joanna Coles.
0:58.0	This is the Daily Beast podcast.
0:59.8	And what a terrible week for Michael Wolfe and myself to both be traveling.
1:04.6	Michael is in London.
1:05.8	I'm in Los Angeles.
1:07.5	And we skipped a podcast or two because we thought no one would notice, but in fact, what an extraordinary week it's been.
1:15.3	The emergence of Governor Cox this morning with his press conference.
1:22.0	And of course, a terrible week for President Donald Trump, who's emerged with a strange droopy mouth, terrible job
1:30.9	numbers, heckled at a restaurant the first time he steps outside the White House. And of course,
1:38.2	the awful, untimely deaths of Charlie Kirk, the young conservative. What a week in America's life. And of course,
1:47.0	the strange Russian incursion into Polish airspace and the ever looming Ukraine and Russia war,
1:55.9	which despite Donald Trump's promise that he would end it on his first day in office, has continued
	...

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