58 Comments
Aug 13, 2022Liked by Matt Welch

Sticking with the theme of dictator retail stores, how about one called Pol Pottery Barn, where everything comes in one color, Khmer Rouge?

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If there is a civil war over this, Trump will need a name for his realm with a good acronym. Not great but I will offer: Southern Territories Under Peoples Independent Democracy (STUPID).

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45 minutes in and Eli Lake sounds like a raving lunatic. TS/SCI documents aren't just lying around to be accidentally stuffed in a box during a hurried move out. He speaks as though he's the impartial authority on these. He's just pretending his right wing tinted glasses are somehow the middle of the road and rational viewpoint. The first thing he brought up when discussing the Trump warrant was Hillary's emails. Aside from comparing apples to watermelons, it's a lazy response.

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Aug 13, 2022Liked by Matt Welch

Just want Welch to know that even if his brilliant Rusty Kuntz reference was lost on his co-hosts, it wasn’t lost on the baseball fans of fifthdom.

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YESSSS! Eli stan! Loved his extended Re-Education episode with Nick Gillespie on punk.

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Progress: Today, every bar is a singles bar.

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Aug 13, 2022·edited Aug 13, 2022

Perhaps Trump had Jeffery Epstein's client list (with pics), which would fetch a far higher price and be far more dangerous, then actual nuclear weapons.

My default position is this is huge FBI overreach, directed by a horrifically politized DOJ.

To be clear, the only thing worse than Trumps election in 2016, is the ongoing Democratic party response. Failing to ask the most basic questions; Why did HRC & democrats lose so badly in 2016 (it wasn't just the WH, they got destroyed in state and federal races all over the USA) ensures the Democrats are never held responsible for terrible candidates and policies.

While Democrats have the House, Senate and WH they should just make "being Donald Trump" a capital crime. That would be a far more honest approach. The current approach is destroying the legitimacy of the American intelligence community and the credibility of all federal government institutions.

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Kevin Williamson and Jonah Goldberg had conversation that dovetails nicely with what Eli was talking about. Kevin made the point that political leaders and people in power should be punished more severally then regular people. Yet, our system seems to do the opposite. Jonah added that we would have less of a populism, if what Kevin advocated for were the case. To Eli’s point, our politics would probably be less toxic, if each side were punished equally (or not at all). I’d add that if each side came down hard on its own worst actors, it would be trusted by more people. Instead, each group focuses all its attention on the other side, while ignoring the sins of its own people.

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The anti-racist take on white terrorist is that they are culturally appropriating from BIPOC terrorist. Get your own form of extremism.

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Banana Republic - a capitalist ode to colonialism. Loving this episode, recorded before the stabbing of Rushdie?

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Aug 14, 2022·edited Aug 14, 2022

“And then the West entered its latest period of crisis, lurching from Late Capitalism to Early Capitalisation...”

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Trump’s only hope is to get Giuliani to defend him.

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Hey guys, Substack is great but is it also possible to download the podcasts? If it is possible, I don’t know how. That was better with Patreon

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Aug 16, 2022·edited Aug 16, 2022

Hate to be harsh but I thought this was one of the weakest showings by a guest I've heard in a long time. The speculation was out of control. Eli might end up being correct on everything but we just don't have enough info at this point to be making such strong claims. He sounded just as irresponsible as the other outlets he criticized

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Prob an odd comment, the mention of Jeremy Scahill made me wonder about the column’s opinion of his work?

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Don't really disagree with Eli's take on the FBI raid of Trump, but am unpersuaded by his argument that the FBI is anti-GOP. His argument is to list a series of recent examples that he thinks demonstrates a double standard. But here are his examples: the sweetheart deal that Petraeus got (Petraeus is an independent, but previously was a Republican, and it was as a GOP candidate that his name was being floated), Hunter Biden (actually currently under investigation by DOJ, so....), Clinton (FBI announced they are reopening investigation a few weeks before election, likely costing her the election). He contrasts this with Navarro being arrested in public and perp-walked. Okay? There's nothing here.

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