How Trump Lost Asia

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube In this episode of The David Frum Show , The Atlantic ’s David Frum opens with a discussion of how Donald Trump has enriched himself and his family during his presidencies.

David discusses how these ill-gotten gains bring up difficult questions about the future of American democracy.

Then David is joined by former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to discuss the impact of the Trump presidency on America’s allies, its reputation around the world, and the politics in the Pacific.

Finally, David ends the episode with a discussion of Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity , by Frank Dikötter.

The following is a transcript of the episode: Malcolm Turnbull: T he United States—not by accident or circumstance, but by design—has become a less dependable ally. [ Music ] David Frum: Hello, and welcome to The David Frum Show .

I’m David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic.

My guest this week will be former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and we will discuss the deterioration of the position, the strategic and economic position, of the Western democracies in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean in the presidencies of Donald Trump.

The book this week will be Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity .

But before either the dialogue with Malcolm Turnbull or the book discussion, some opening thoughts about the question of President Trump’s wealth and what is to happen to it after he leaves office.

I wrote about this subject in The Atlantic this past weekend, and you can see my thoughts there in much more elaborated form.

But there’s some major themes that I think really need to be stressed again in a very direct way, and I’d like to do that here with you now.

President Trump entered office in January 2025 as a wealthy man, as he has been almost all of his life: thanks to the great inheritance from his father, thanks to his earnings from The Apprentice and other TV programs, and thanks to some of his own business achievements.

But his own business career has been one of sharp ups and downs, punctuated by bankruptcies of the businesses that he’s owned, losses to his investors.

But there’s no question that he and his family are very, very wealthy today, with a fortune numbered in the multiple billions of dollars, accumulated in an astonishingly short time.