Try QUO for free and get 20% off your first 6 months at https://www.quo.com/BEAST David Rothkopf joins Joanna Coles for a breakdown of a surreal and unsettling weekend in Washington, where what should have been a glittering White House Correspondents’ Dinner spiraled into something far darker—and far more revealing about Donald Trump. As details emerge about the attempted attack and the security lapses surrounding it, Rothkopf argues the real “lone wolf” isn’t the would-be assailant but Trump himself, a president who thrives on chaos, weaponizes crisis, and immediately turned the moment into political theater—complete with a self-mythologizing press conference and renewed distractions from mounting crises abroad, including a deadly and destabilizing conflict in the Middle East. With insiders rattled, conspiracy theories spreading, and Trump’s poll numbers slipping, is this just another fleeting spectacle—or a revealing prism into a presidency defined by performance, paranoia, and power at any cost? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.