Foreign policy analyst David Rothkopf believes President Donald Trump will end the United States’ position as the most powerful nation on earth.
In a blistering deep-dive into Trump’s high-stakes Alaska summit slated for Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rothkopf details to The Daily Beast Podcast how Trump’s insecurities and ambitions may shape the fate of nations—and cripple U.S. global supremacy.
“No president in our history has weakened us more at home,” Rothkopf told host Joanna Coles. “And I think, ultimately, this is going to be how he is judged in a geopolitical sense. When Donald Trump leaves office, the United States will not be the most powerful nation on earth.”
Rothkopf, a Clinton administration official and Daily Beast columnist, warned that Trump has already decimated America’s soft power in his first six-and-a-half months back in the White House. He said Trump’s closed-door, one-on-one meeting with Putin threatens to further accelerate the country’s decline.
“We’re killing what we do in scientific research,” he said. “[We] are turning away tourists. We’re turning away people who study in our schools. We’re turning away the best minds. We are weakening the alliances that gave us a lot of strength in the past. We’re weakening our economy with crazy, inflationary, self-destructive tariffs.”
He continued, “[Trump] is doing the work of our enemies here at home by making America a much, much weaker country.”
Coles theorized that Trump—like he admitted to doing ahead of a 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki—will travel to Alaska without properly preparing. Rothkopf added that Trump is particularly susceptible to KGB-style manipulation tactics, which Putin excels at. He said this could lead to Putin tricking Trump into backing his wishes.
“We know that Donald Trump is super susceptible to flattery,” Rothkopf says. “That’s why every foreign leader who goes in and says, ‘Mr. Trump, your hair looks fantastic. Have you lost weight?’ Because they know that is the way to get on his good side. ‘I heard you won your golf tournament recently. You must be a great athlete.’ ... That’s how you get to this guy. And then you establish a rapport and say, ‘Well, we’re kind of on the same side here, aren’t we?’”
Even worse, Rothkopf says that Trump has given little indication that he is not on Putin’s side.
“Trump has shown no signs that he isn’t actually on the same side as Putin. You know, he’s talked a little bit, ‘I’m a little disappointed in Vlad,’ but the reality is, Trump has cut back aid to Ukraine dramatically,” Rothkopf said. “He’s making the Europeans pay us for whatever actually gets to Ukraine. So he’s hurt Ukraine’s position. He’s attacked Zelensky publicly. He’s already agreed over and over that Crimea is part of Russia, that Eastern Ukraine is part of Russia, and that they want to be part of Russia. And he regularly says, and has said as recently as this week, that both sides are responsible for this war.
“They’re not. Russia invaded Ukraine first in 2014 and then escalated it a few years ago. You know, the Ukrainians are the victims here. It’s not, you know, both sides are responsible. Trump hasn’t changed his view on any of those things.”
The White House declined to comment on Rothkopf’s remarks when reached by the Daily Beast.
