The Fifth Column

-Matt Welch’s Caribbean identity crisis at Da Pig Beach
-The State of the Union aka a two-hour hostage note
-A greatest hits, lowest lights compilation for President Camacho
-The futility of “speeching” your way through a math-defying approval rating
-You can’t talk your way through a 38% approval rating
-Let the hockey boys drink
-Dan Crenshaw is allowed to be mad
-The RNC’s new guard of real fucking bozos and sycophantic dick-tots
-JD Vance as anti-corruption czar and populist beard for the crypto-regime
-Tariffs and The Gilded Age corruption engine, now with “ballroom fund” exclusions
-Drug prices are down 600%,….so do you owe me money?
-Moynihan screaming drug questions at his glitching phone
-Marxist Republicans and the gobbledygook of corporate housing bans
-Maybe let’s just abolish the State of the Union
-Dispatches from the Purple State: An interview with Senator Elissa Slotkin
-Stop kicking allies in the teeth to play grab-ass with dictators
-Walking out on Lindsey Graham’s Danish disdain
-AI thinks Moynihan is a neo-folk neo-Nazi
-Four years of war and Ukraine gets a one-sentence hand wave
-Anthropic vs. Hegseth: Code is speech until the Pentagon wants a frictionless kill-switch
-We tried collectivism once. Everyone starved. The end.
-Gemini identifies the mystery caller as Friedrich Nietzsche, chimney sweep
-About that BBC BAFTA N-Word Drama….
-“You’re acting like Israel” is the ultimate Park Slope breakup trump card
Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel NOW.
The Fifth Column (A Podcast) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Follow The Fifth Column
YouTube: @wethefifthInstagram: @we.the.fifthX: @wethefifthTikTok: @wethefifthFacebook: @thefifthcolumn


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

Kash chugs it back with the toothless champions
Trump and his locker room talk with the boys
State of the Union and the Six Year Itch
A uniquely conspiratorial moment in an already conspiratorial nation
PizzaGate nostalgia hour
Fact checking dies in public
A laundry list of made up shit that’s not even close to being true
Baby-eating melodrama meets Beetlejuic…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

* Damon Root’s book Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court
* Basic civics, reintroduced
* Root’s mood in five words
* What becomes of this useless Congress?
* Why not 9–0? Root on the three dissenters
* The “major questions doctrine” translated
* Profiles in inconsistenty
* Doesn’t matter! Trump will “destroy your country” either way!
* The hangover
* Gorsu…

-The dork Star Wars cantina of famous biographers
-Jefferson’s hypocrisy and the impossibility of paragon standards
-Lincoln was not an abolitionist
-The Howard Zinnification of American history
-Ambiguity as the ideological propagandist’s mortal enemy
-The true (New Testament) saint of America
-George H.W. Bush’s blunt admission
-This president would cut your throat for a vote, then be the first to call 911
-Exhaustion as a strategy, and the establishment’s failure to meet the moment
-Autocratic narcissism and the turn toward political sadism
-Despair is a sin
-Political loss as seasonal, not existential
-What will the next side do with inherited expanded executive power?
-14th Amendment redemption clauses as high-level nerd porn
-Amusing ourselves to death in a visual-media politics
-Katie Britt’s private doubt, and the ecosystem that manufactured it
-Lincoln couldn’t write a bad sentence; Reagan could land the line
Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.
Buy Jon Meacham’s anthology, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union (Bookshop | Amazon)
Thanks for reading/watching The Fifth Column (A Podcast)! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Follow The Fifth Column
YouTube: @wethefifthInstagram: @we.the.fifthX: @wethefifthTikTok: @wethefifthFacebook: @thefifthcolumn


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

-Please say hello to our new Sunset Park neighbor
-The American Chávez
-The Nobel Prize Grudge
-The Dictatorship That Remained
-Political Pilgrims and Failed Experiments
-Maria the Maid and the, “Gay Marriage Lady” slur
-A Masterclass in Macro-Failure
-The Media Pioneer
-The Illusion of Democracy
-Economic Voodoo
-The “Police” StrategyGet William’s book, Things …