President Donald Trump is rapidly becoming even more of a punchline on the world stage, according to foreign policy expert David Rothkopf, who appeared on Friday’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast to deliver a scathing assessment of Trump’s global irrelevance.
“I would argue he may be the most impotent president of the United States that we’ve seen in our lifetimes,” Rothkopf told host Joanna Coles. “He’s alienated our allies, undermined our economy, attacked the international system—and he hasn’t made a single deal.”
The former Clinton administration official and regular Daily Beast contributor painted a picture of a leader increasingly out of his depth. The latest example of Trump’s ineptitude? His seemingly impulsive decision to claim credit for Friday’s Israeli air strikes on Iran—even after his own Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied prior knowledge and said Israel had acted “unilaterally.” Both Trump and the Israelis then scrambled to make the attack look like a joint effort.
“Trump wants to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral,” Rothkopf quipped, mocking the president’s need to put himself at the center of every news story.
It’s far from the only instance. Rothkopf criticized the president’s self-proclaimed deal-making prowess, which has yet to yield any actual deals. “It’s just not the same as cutting a real estate deal in New York City with your cronies,” Rothkopf said.
Rothkopf also ripped into Trump’s gutted National Security Council, his refusal to sit for intelligence briefings, and his obsession with optics over outcomes. “Tulsi Gabbard is trying to make intelligence briefings look like a Fox News show because that’s the only thing Trump will watch,” he said.
International leaders aren’t buying the act either, according to Rothkopf. “People are making fun of Trump publicly on stage,” he said. “They just don’t think he’s a serious character.”
While the international order appears increasingly fragmented, Trump is sending in both the National Guard and the military against protests described by the administration as an “insurrection.” There could not be a worse time to have someone as incompetent as Trump in charge of the country, Rothkopf argues.
“People around the world look at it and they say the U.S. is collapsing.”
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