The Apotheosis of Donald Trump? Peter Wehner on Madness, Mayhem and How Trump Eludes Shakespearean Tragedy

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody, it's Sunday, June the 28th, 2026 Two weeks ago, of course, Donald Trump turned 80 What to make of it? We've done lots of shows about old age recently. Did one with Samuel Moyn, the historian at Yale, about gerontocracy in America. He has an important new book out, which is appropriately called How The Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth and What To Do About It, entitled Gerontocracy in America.
Not all old people, of course, are hoarding power and wealth. We had Sally Quinn on the show a few days ago, the great Washington writer, hostess, social butterfly. She seems anything but 80 I saw Bob Dylan a couple of weeks ago as well in Berkeley, and he was remarkably spry for 85 years old. But America's leader is less spry, and one of his most critical but persistent observers, Peter Wehner, who's been on the show many times, had a piece out to mark, I wouldn't say celebrate, but certainly mark the president's 80th birthday, entitled The Apotheosis of Donald Trump. Pete is joining us from Washington, DC. Pete, is Trump, do you think, exhibit A in what Moyn calls gerontocracy in America?

**Peter Wehner** (2:06)
Yeah, I do.
I think that there has been a visible decline in him physically and mentally. And I think it's a reminder of why you shouldn't elect leaders who were in their 80s. We saw that with Joe Biden. We're seeing it in a different way with Donald Trump. He brought his own problems that are intrinsic to who he is as a human being, elements and qualities that are not new. But I think what's happened is there's now an added complexity to it, an added layer to it. And that added layer is the decomposition that we're witnessing mentally in him. I think it's visible in all sorts of ways. And I think it's problematic even beyond where we've been.

**Andrew Keen** (2:53)
You put it politely, decomposition. I think that's a nice euphemism. In your Atlantic piece, you talk about the clear signs of his advancing age. Is this something that we should...
I mean, most of us, I think, are critics. I don't think many people will be watching this. Certainly in our community, you're great fans of Donald Trump. Is this something to celebrate or be concerned with, Pete?

**Peter Wehner** (3:20)
I think it's something to be concerned with, because it's not leading to his removal from office. He doesn't seem inclined to walk away from this. And so I think what's happening is these problems that have existed with Trump. Many of them are getting worse, the disinhibition, the impulsivity. He's more easily triggered. I think he's a more dangerous figure than he's been in the past. And I think we're seeing that if you compare Trump 2 to Trump 1.0, it is in all sorts of ways a more dangerous and unstable administration. And Trump 1 wasn't a walk in the park exactly. So it's not anything to celebrate. I think it's something to notice. I think we need to be alert to it. I think it's true to reality, true to the facts. We have to name that.
But it's really worrisome.

**Andrew Keen** (4:17)
More than worrisome, I guess, in many ways. You've been following Trump as closely as anyone. You warned us about him many years ago. You're a former operative within the Republican Party. So you're certainly not a man of the left. Do you see an arc in this narrative? There's a, almost certainly in your Atlantic piece, there's a Shakespearean quality. I'm not sure quality is the right word. There's a Shakespearean narrative to what you call this apotheosis, this decline, this madness. It could come out of a Shakespeare play.

**Peter Wehner** (4:53)
Yeah, it could. I do think that there's an arc to it. And there's a drama to this unfolding that it's hard to miss. It's interesting, you know, when I wrote the end of the essay, and there's an allusion to King Lear, which is hard to miss. But part of me was a little hesitant to use it because I don't think Trump is a kind of tragic figure in the Shakespearean sense that Lear was. I mean, Lear was a complicated figure and one you could have some empathy with.
And in the end, he saw certain things that he didn't see earlier in his life, which created some of the empathy.
Donald Trump actually is not like that. He's a person, as best I can tell, with no redeeming qualities. If he has them, he hasn't shown them. And he just seems to be a malicious, corrupt person from head to toe, a man of borderless corruption and no real complexity either. Of course, that's what makes Shakespeare characters great, many of them, which is that kind of complexity to them. I don't see that in Trump. He's a much flatter figure in that sense. Having said that, it's a human life. And it's not simply the arc of an individual human life, but it's what is happening to a country and to a people, and even in some respects to the world, because of the arc and the journey that he's on, and because of the dissent that he's now experiencing. His dissent is in a sense our dissent.