President Donald Trump got a taste of what awaits him in the months ahead when a heckler pierced his carefully insulated world over the weekend, a political expert says.
By and large, the 80-year-old president “doesn’t get exposed to the real world very much,” David Rothkopf told The Daily Beast Podcast. “He’s got a bubble of people around him, you know, who sort of keep him at a distance from real human beings.”
So Trump’s appearance Sunday at the Presidents Cup in Medinah, Illinois, began as the kind of outing he is accustomed to, with the MAGA-friendly crowd welcoming him with cheers. Then a heckler punctured the bubble.
“You’re a f---ing pedophile, Donald!” the man shouted, and other spectators responded with a round of whooping.
Trump stared ahead without acknowledging the commotion, but co-host Joanna Coles suggested the moment may have “disconcerted” the president, pointing to a hot-mic moment later in the day when he was caught saying, “I’d like to go home.”
Rothkopf argued the moment shows that Trump’s past friendship with child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein—and his efforts to prevent the full release of the Epstein files—remain in the public consciousness, reflecting a broader disillusionment with the president ahead of the midterms.
“I think, you know, for a lot of MAGA world, they were like, yeah, well, nobody’s perfect, but if my taxes come down, if we don’t have to fight any more long wars in the Middle East, if he, you know, gets rid of all that woke stuff that I don’t like, then it’s worth it,” Rothkopf told Coles.
But Trump has “broken his promises,” he argued. “The economy is going in the wrong direction. That war is going in the wrong direction. The price of energy is going in the wrong direction. The services that are being offered to America are being cut back. The popularity of his programs is plummeting.”
“So, you know, who wouldn’t want to be back, you know, in the womb of the Oval Office, being hand-fed Big Macs and quarter-pounders by Natalie while she’s whispering all the flattering coverage from the... Mr. Pillow TV network into his ear,” he continued. “And you know, that’s the point. Trump is living in a bubble, and he doesn’t like leaving the bubble because it reminds him of just what an incredible failure this second term has been.”
But the midterms, now just over a month away, will be the ultimate rupture in Trump’s bubble, the author and former Foreign Policy editor-in-chief argued.
“People are gonna show up,” he predicted. “It may not be corruption. It may be the fact that it costs $137 to fill your pickup truck with diesel fuel so that you can go and do your job. It may be that food costs more. It may be that he’s closing down your school, or it may be that he’s taken away your healthcare or taken away the subsidies that allowed you to support healthcare. It may be that he is waging an endless war in the Middle East when he said he wouldn’t, or it may be that he’s supporting a genocidal government in Israel.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. White House spokesman Davis Ingle previously told the Daily Beast: “David Rothkopf is a far-left loser who clearly suffers from a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
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