As questions continue to swirl around Donald Trump’s health, political analyst David Rothkopf believes the president is preparing to shift power to one of his most loyal sycophants.
Appearing on The Daily Beast Podcast, Rothkopf argued that one of the president’s most trusted aides—not Vice President JD Vance—could take charge of the White House if Trump can no longer handle the job; he identified that person as Stephen Miller.
“This is an 80-year-old guy who is obviously not physically or mentally healthy or up to the job he’s got,” the political analyst told host Joanna Coles. “Trump’s schedule is so micromanaged these days, and he does a couple of hours a day, he doesn’t appear on TV, he does fewer of these open press things than he used to do, and it’s because people are sort of easing him away.”
“This happened with Biden, by the way, where they just sort of don’t put you center stage. And it does raise a question, which is: If he declines further, if he is less capable of handling the job, who’s going to handle it for him?” he added.
Rothkopf said that Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, could be the one who steps up to “handle it.”
Miller, 40, has worked closely with Trump since the 2016 campaign and has remained a key influence throughout his return to the White House, where he is widely seen as the architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policies.
The president’s angriest attack dog has been quieter since the disastrous rollout of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota earlier this year, where two U.S. citizens—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—were fatally shot by federal immigration agents. But Miller has remained in close proximity to Trump as a trusted adviser.
Rothkopf said Miller taking charge like that wouldn’t be unprecedented, explaining that similar situations occurred during the Reagan and Nixon administrations.
“We have had multiple times in our history—after Eisenhower’s heart attacks, when FDR was in his declining health at the end of his term, when Woodrow Wilson was bedridden after a stroke—where other people did the job of president,” he continued.
“And I’ve got to tell you, you look at Donald Trump, you look at the bruises, you look at his behavior, you look at his age, you look at his family history, and we could be heading for one of these periods where somebody other than Trump is actually, behind the scenes, the acting president.”
Reached for comment, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle shared a partially recycled statement with the Daily Beast: “David Rothkopf is a far-left loser who clearly suffers from a severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome that has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain. President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the last administration when Democrats and the legacy media intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people. President Trump is the sharpest and most accessible President in American history who is working nonstop to solve problems and deliver on his promises.”
Though Vice President JD Vance would become president if Trump were to resign or die in office, Rothkopf said that’s not exactly how it works in the White House.
“Power flows from the president, from the people closest to the president, from the people who control his schedule, from the people who send out his statements,” he explained, saying that Vance is not involved in any of that.
“If [Trump] were incapacitated and they had to invoke the 25th Amendment, that would be another story,” Rothkopf said. “But that’s not what I think is going to happen here. I think, you know, you may have a slow decline, and you may just have more memos or more decisions going to Stephen Miller, or going to somebody else who’s sitting outside the Oval Office.”
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