Political commentator David Rothkopf has branded President Donald Trump's desperate bid to reverse his diesel price crisis a "traitorous" betrayal, saying the move reflects a "diseased mind" and a "pathological desire to please his daddy."

Trump has spent recent weeks scrambling for a solution to soaring diesel costs, a crisis tied to his conflict with Iran. The inflation trend has hit his supporters in the agricultural sector and sent shockwaves through the entire economy as transportation costs shoot up. Diesel is the workhorse fuel behind freight trucking, rail, and farm machinery, which is why sustained price increases ripple quickly into the cost of food and consumer goods — and why the squeeze is politically sensitive for a president whose supporters in the agricultural sector are among those absorbing it. Last week, he made the controversial decision to buy millions of barrels of oil from Russia, despite past sanctions on the country's imports imposed in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and prolific political commentator, addressed the situation on the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, where host Joanna Coles pressed him for a reaction to the fallout from Trump's Russia deal. He argued there was no point in searching for a coherent strategy behind the decision.

"Why are you looking for strategy? This is the product of a diseased mind, OK?" Rothkopf said in response to Coles' question. "He doesn't know what is going on. He may even believe this thing that he goes around telling everybody, which is the reason diesel prices are high is because Ukraine is waging a war against Russia."

He added: "First of all, Russia's the one waging the war against Ukraine. And secondly, the primary reason that oil and fuel prices are high in the world is Donald Trump's illegal, reckless war with Iran."

Rothkopf called the attempt to strike an oil deal with Russia "crazy" and voiced outrage that no one in Trump's Cabinet — above all his energy or defense secretaries — had told him not to do it.

"You would think that his Secretary of Energy [Chris Wright] would have said, 'You know, Mr. President, why don't we buy the oil from somebody else, from Canada, from India, from somebody else who produces more diesel, and not the Russians where it's illegal?'" he said. "But nobody said that to him. Or his Secretary of Defense [Pete Hegseth] would have said to him, 'You know, Mr. President, probably not a good idea to be aiding and abetting our enemy in the middle of a shooting war when the next time a U.S. ship is hit or a U.S. person is hit, people are going to say, rightly, that was partially funded by your tax dollars.'"

He concluded: "People would call it treason, except we haven't actually declared war on these two enemies. So technically, legally, it's not treason. But it's certainly traitorous... The reality is, this is one of the most demented, disloyal betrayals of the United States of America ever by a U.S. official, much less a president."

Whether the purchase eases the diesel price pressure that triggered it — the crisis at the center of Rothkopf's broadside — remains to be seen.