President Donald Trump is not the smart and savvy political prodigy some believe him to be; rather, he is quite the opposite, one political analyst argues.
Appearing on The Daily Beast Podcast, foreign policy expert David Rothkopf told host Joanna Coles that the idea of Trump’s numerous antics throughout his second presidency signaling some secret distress call to remove him is not at all likely.
“That suggests that there is a healthy impulse somewhere in Trump that I just don’t believe exists,” Rothkopf, the Daily Beast’s chief global affairs columnist, said.
“In fact, all of these theories, you know, ‘Trump is a mastermind, and he’s playing us, and he knows what he’s doing, and this is one distraction after another, and it’s all part of his 4D chess.’ This is bulls--t,” he added.
“This is a decaying, 79-year-old, addled, ignorant man who is also losing his marbles. And what we’re getting here is the incoherence of an incoherent brain,” he continued. “I wrote a piece for you guys over the weekend in which I assert, and I will defend this, that Donald Trump is the most powerful idiot in history.”
As Rothkopf pointed out in his Sunday column, some of Trump’s decisions as the leader of the free world defy any semblance of logic or reason.
“Both his idiocy and his power are unparalleled,” he wrote. “On the latter point, his position as president and commander-in-chief of the most dominant, potent nation confirms that no idiot since the beginning of time has ever been in a position to do so much damage to so many people as a consequence of his idiocy.”
The political guru started with how the president’s eyebrow-furrowing escalations in Iran, including Sunday’s decision to “blockade a blockade” and his threats to destroy Iranian civilization, have put millions of lives in danger.
“Which is saying something since the unnecessary, illegal war has already caused the loss of over 3,000 lives in Iran, more than 1,000 in Lebanon, the dislocation of over 1 million people in the latter country, injuries and suffering for countless thousands, death to 13 members of the U.S. military, tens of billions of dollars of needless expense, the destabilization of the Middle East, the weakening of the NATO alliance, the undermining of our ability to support key allies like Ukraine, a massive distraction from the significant domestic problems faced here in the U.S. and untold damage to the standing of the United States in the world," Rothkopf wrote.
Despite all of that, the foreign policy expert argued that none of those choices spurred meaningful progress toward achieving American objectives in the region.
“A hardline regime remains in place, Iran retains all of its enriched uranium, it still has massive stocks of missiles and drones and, with the help of China and others is replenishing them, and its regional proxies are now more rather than less active,” he wrote.
“Entering the war was idiotic. Seeking to change the regime with air power alone was idiotic. Not having a clear rationale or even a rational one was idiotic. Doing it without global support was idiotic. Doing it by circumventing the law in the U.S. was idiotic. Leaving the management of the military to an idiot like Pete Hegseth was double idiotic,” he added.
“I go back to my earlier point: Trump is an idiot,” Rothkopf said on the podcast Monday. “Trump doesn’t take advice. Trump had people around him, including, reportedly, JD Vance, who very quickly was out there leaking stories about how he was against this whole thing, saying, ‘Don’t do this.’
“Even, apparently, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, ‘Razin’ Caine, was advising caution,” he continued. “And Trump said, ‘No, I understand this better, and I’m going to ignore all the evidence.’”
Adding insult to injury, Trump’s half-baked attempt to broker peace with Tehran via Vice President JD Vance, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and real estate developer-turned diplomat Steve Witkoff coincided with his attendance at a UFC event in Miami alongside his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio.
The 21-hour negotiations over the weekend resulted in no agreement, but Trump said he didn’t care anyway.
“Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me,” Trump told reporters on Saturday.
“It is hard to imagine a more idiotic place or a president and his top national security advisor to be at a moment of national crisis,” Rothkopf wrote. “But, idiots will idiot. That should be clear by now.”
Trump’s actions have hurt Americans at home, despite his efforts to argue the contrary. Since the conflict began on Feb. 28, the average price per gallon of gas has skyrocketed as high as $4.16—over a dollar above its pre-war level.
Much of that is due to Iran’s closure and tight control over the Strait of Hormuz, which, as of Monday, has now been additionally blockaded by U.S. ships.
“We need to be honest about it,” Rothkopf said on The Daily Beast Podcast. “It was Bibi Netanyahu, because Bibi has gone to every president for the past 25 years and said, ‘Let’s attack Iran.’ Every single president, Republican and Democrat, has said, ‘No, I’m not that stupid, Bibi.’”
“But Trump fell for it because he’s a mark,” he continued. “Trump is the sucker. He’s not the master dealmaker. There are not lessons to learn from watching Donald Trump except what not to do.”
Among his other bizarre decisions throughout his second presidency, including his public spat with the pope and his surprise operation to extradite Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro just days after the New Year, Trump even told a Fox News reporter on Sunday that he was strongly considering renaming the Persian Gulf as “the Gulf of Trump.”
“Which is surpassingly foolish,” Rothkopf wrote. “Because, as one keen-eyed observer suggested to me on social media this morning, prior events have already conclusively demonstrated that the name is taken.”
“The real Gulf of Trump is ‘that giant empty space between’ our president’s ears.”
Reached for comment, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast in a statement: “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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