U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as he hosts 16-year-old lifeguard Ryder Williams, who saved a child off the coast of Santa Cruz, California, last month, Nathaniel Rai, the child saved by Williams, and Nathaniel's family members in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 17, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
A foreign policy expert warned on Monday that President Donald Trump is inching closer to making the one mistake that would end his presidency.
Over the last week, reports indicate that conditions for U.S. sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been at sea for more than nine months, have become so bad that at least one sailor has jumped overboard. The reports have raised significant questions about troop morale at a time when Trump and his advisers seem to be contemplating launching a ground offensive in Iran as negotiations have stalled, David Rothkopf, global affairs columnist for The Daily Beast and an international trade official during the Clinton administration, said during a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast."
Rothkopf warned that if Trump ordered that ground offensive, it would likely spell the end of his presidency.
“This war is illegal. It has been mishandled. It has been bungled. It is going terribly," Rothkopf declared. "And if Donald Trump were to get on TV tomorrow night and say, ‘I believe that we should put troops on the ground and we will lose thousands of Americans,’ the country would go wild."
“No Republicans would win in November," he added. "It would be the end, and he knows it. He knows he’s got no wiggle room here.”