Why World Leaders Think Trump's an Idiot: Rothkopf

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

News

4.6 • 8.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2026

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David Rothkopf, The Daily Beast’s unmissable columnist, joins Joanna Coles to unpack Donald Trump’s disastrous return to Davos and why it may mark a genuine rupture in the world order. What was once a gathering fueled by prestige and pretense becomes, this year, a summit driven by fear—of Trump’s bullying, his ignorance, his threats on trade, NATO, Greenland, and allies who once trusted the United States. Rothkopf explains why European leaders walked out, why markets rattled, why the EU froze trade talks, and why figures like Mark Carney are now openly warning that this is not a transition but a break. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	And then Trump showed up today in Davos, and he gave a speech, was so offensive to the crowd.
0:07.2	Europe does not trust us anymore.
0:09.7	Europe does not trust the U.S. and NATO.
0:12.3	Americans need to remember.
0:13.9	Europe's the same size as us as an economy.
0:17.0	But also, Europe has the ability to focus on China, to focus on others in the world in a way that really changes the equation for the United States.
0:26.5	So it was a fiasco. It was a mess. Trump was embarrassing. Trump was offensive. Trump was a boor. Trump was an idiot.
0:35.7	I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast and what on earth is happening
0:42.0	amid the boiling vats of fondue in that tiny little town in Switzerland where I have never been.
0:49.7	The president descended somewhat gingerly from Air Force One and delivered a humdinger of a speech where
0:57.9	he was basically equal opportunity insulting everybody he could think of. Who knows if anybody
1:03.8	wrote that speech or if it was just one of his weaves. But we have David Rothkopf here to dissect
1:10.4	it and debrief on it for us.
1:13.3	Who better. David was the editor of Foreign Policy magazine. He worked for the Commerce Department.
1:19.0	So let's get into it.
1:21.3	David Rothkopf, what are we doing here in the States?
1:26.4	We should be in Davos eating bubbling cauldrons of fondue.
1:31.7	Okay, first of all, fondue sucks. And I used to host a fondue dinner in Davos every year.
1:40.0	You did?
1:40.6	And every year. And there's this one little shop there that's a restaurant that's the big Davos restaurant,
1:48.6	the big, you know, place to go.
1:50.6	And I would get the back room and I would host this dinner there.
	...

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