A prominent foreign policy analyst is sounding the alarm about what he sees as a president increasingly trapped by his own limitations — and abandoned by his once-loyal base.
David Rothkopf, former editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, argued on Monday’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast that President Donald Trump is running out of options as pressure mounts from multiple directions. Speaking with host Joanna Coles, Rothkopf painted a stark picture of a leader whose signature moves — charming adversaries, leaning on allies for bailouts, or simply bluffing his way through — are no longer delivering results.
“He’s cornered, and nothing he’s doing is working,” Rothkopf said. “All his old tricks … He doesn’t know what to do. And on top of it all, he’s dying. He is old. He is infirm. He disappears for three days at a time. He doesn’t have what he used to.”
The comments came as Rothkopf assessed Trump’s ongoing struggle to find a resolution to the war in Ukraine — an issue that has exposed the limits of his reputation as a dealmaker on the world stage.
But the challenges aren’t only coming from abroad. Rothkopf pointed to a growing number of cracks within Trump’s own political coalition, citing figures like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Thune (R-SD) as examples of MAGA-aligned lawmakers who appear to be reading the political winds and quietly distancing themselves from the president.
Trump’s legislative struggles are adding to the sense of a weakening grip on power. His failure to push through signature proposals like the SAVE Act, Rothkopf argued, is a telling sign that his influence on Capitol Hill is eroding.
“These are cracks,” he said. “Each one of these are cracks at what you might call not the glass ceiling, but the MAGA floor. And the more cracks, the sooner it is that he falls through the bottom.”
Whether those cracks widen into something more consequential remains to be seen — but for Rothkopf, the trajectory is already becoming hard to ignore.
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