The Fifth Column

How Jamie ended up writing about Armie Hammer

So what *is* the Hammer story anyway?

How the motivated reasoning media ignores inconvenient inconsistencies

Is there a path back from an utterly destroyed reputation?

How Jamie’s book Secret City informed his reporting

Heroes and homophobia

So is it true what they say about James Webb?

The Lavender Scare and Joe McCarthy

Who was worse, JFK or RFK?

Would anyone care about Larry Craig in 2023?

Why was Moynihan at a political event in Florida?

SMDH at the FUBAR SOTU

A bit about those Twitter hearings...

And so much more!

Rejecting twelve hours with the commoners in coach, Kmele remains stateside while Moynihan and Welch make goyish aliyah in Israel. Wandering from the Egyptian border in the South all the way up to Trump Heights in the North, the lads are introduced to one of Israel’s most famous journalists and big thinkers, Nadav Eyal, author of Revolt: The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization. Eyal graciously joined the Fifth at a recording studio in Tel Aviv for a very deep, very nerdy chat about whether or not the world is collapsing and if the midterms are a harbinger of a changing culture, desperate to move beyond the national populist moment.

As we wind down, Eyal gives his verdict on the Energizer bunny of Israeli politics, incoming Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and the worrying rise of his racist nutbag coalition partner Itamar Ben-Gvir. After Eyal frees himself from the Fifth’s clutches, Welch and Moynihan stick for a few extra minutes to talk about Jewish girls with guns and why Dave Chapelle thinks they might control Hollywood.

Ozempic Joe

The Juice has expired

Revisiting the “Trial of the Century”

The double murderer who “abandoned his race”

In defense of Marcia Clark

Dementia dads

Matt Lauer emerges

Nutty MTG, drunky Boebert

Arizona abortions

Operation Bubble Wrap

Poor guy in a ski mask shoots at cops

Group condemnations and the “IDW”

Kmele is flying

Dude has four parents. Not one isn’t a terrorist

The decline and fall of San Francisco, Part I

Fiona Dourif’s piece on how California fails the mentally ill

A sexy retweet

Ilya Shapiro quits Georgetown. He stops by to tell us why

Ilya apologized. Should he have?

He mentioned it, we’ll link to it: the paperback edition of Supreme Disorder

Shapiro: Cato abandoned me

Dave Weigel gets suspended because of his colleague and “close friend,” Sammy “the Bull” Sonmez,” rats him out

Another editors note re: the TikTok lady

A St. Louis Cardinal tweeted bad words when he was 14

Everything is dumb

CNN retools, but all the tools still work there

If you ask the question “should I have kids on account of climate change,” you probably shouldn’t have kids

A primetime January 6th hearing, produced by Busby Berkeley

Breaking: Chesa the Chavista needs a new job

The decline and fall of San Francisco, Part II

NOTE: This dispatch was beleaguered by technical and logistical challenges. The audio actually turned out pretty good (all things considered), but the entire thing was very nearly scrapped. Those challenges contributed to a delayed-release — and because the world has gone quite mad —the news cycle is evolving rapidly.

All the same, still lots of very relevant (even prophetic) stuff in this dispatch, but it was recorded before the Breonna Taylor Grand Jury announcement that inspired a night of protests, riots, and violence.

• Home Improvement
• Latinx, Things You Must Know About The Cuban
• Trust the Process
• Debate Preview
• RBG
• Hypocrisy and Norm Evisceration
• Who to Blame
• A Loss of Faith, A Looming Election Hellscape
• About that TikTok Deal
• We Choose Violence
• 1619 Lies, Bullshit, Stealth Edits, Motivated Reasoning
• If The Schools Already Suck, Can 1619 Make Them Worse (or better)
• National Patriotism Curriculum
• All My Critics Are Racist, Which Is Terribly Convenient for Me

Recorded Sept 20, 2020

Published Sept 24, 2020

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