Join David Waldman and KITM Worldwide as we celebrate International Falafel Day! Normally Greg Dworkin would be here singing falafel carols with us, but apparently his special appearance on Friday’s KITM took it out of him and he’s out today. Get well soon!

I was out the last time that Donald Trump was indicted! Either I need more days off, or Trump needs more indictments. Read the full text of the latest Trump indictment in the classified documents case. Are you not entertained? Trump has never been associated with subtlety and nuance and this will definitely not be the beginning.

If you think this case is open and shut now, just wait until you hear the rest of what Jack Smith has to tell you… and the considered and rational Republican response… and their follow-up.

Of course, Judge Aileen Cannon could see this all differently, as she is wont to do.

Scottland’s former leader, Nicola Sturgeon, has also been arrested, and also says she’s innocent of any wrongdoing, but with less caps.

Donald Trump’s spiritual bunga bunga, Silvio Berlusconi, is bunga bunga no more.

Like Silvio and Donald, Russia has a few ardent supporters, and some who aren't. One way or another, their supporters are dropping like flies.

It’s already an unusual thing to do a Friday show that feels like a Thursday. After all, it’s not the first time that circumstances have warranted a special Friday appearance from Greg Dworkin. But this is, I think, our first Friday that felt like a Thursday that came following a Thursday that felt like a Friday.

The top news of the day, of course, was that SCOTUS had ruled in favor of Jack Daniel’s, against its poop-themed dog toy-producing tormentors.

No, wait. It was that the Austin real estate developer involved in the Ken Paxton bribery had been arrested.

No, wait. That’s just what the Dallas Morning News thought.

It was actually that TFG had been indicted — under the Espionage Act, among other statutes — just as expected.

So naturally, Republicans everywhere began continued losing their minds.

The transcript of TFG’s Bedminster confession was kind of interesting, too. Both for what it made overt, and for the deeper meaning.

James Watt is dead! Tip of the hat for the introduction to the term, “f**k-eulogy.”

You’ll never believe it, but the “Cyber Ninjas” were a fraud! This, revealed by the release of a cache of 30,000+ emails, ironically enough — if that sounds familiar.

TFG also raided the Treasury for a million bucks, it turns out. In case that, too, sounds familiar.

Just so you’ll know for the weekend: George Santos’ lawyer was in the January 6 mob.

And for Friday esoterica, a theory on why food prices rise in general, and so much of late in particular. Plus a sort-of-related story about how “the system” tried to hand us a single, crappy apple, when we now know there was so much more and better available.

Today’s show felt so complete that by the end, I thought it was Friday!

It was the end of the week for Pat Robertson, though. And another day of under the cloud of a mass fire, as well.

But Greg Dworkin had other things on his mind. First, the wingnut temper tantrum in the House that has their own messaging bill agenda languishing in limbo, and “leadership” pointing fingers at one another. Hey, OK! Next, they can start killing rules for appropriations bills, if they want.

A little later, we moved on to the original orange blob menacing the country in multiple jurisdictions, this time with his espionage. For some context, here’s the story of a guy who just got sentenced to three years in the clink for this. At least Mike Pence won’t have to vote for that guy, though.

If you haven’t heard enough about what a problem Chris Licht types are, Perry Bacon has more.

Hairdo Alex Jones is already getting sued by Fox.

And in the “things to consider for the weekend, even though it’s not the weekend yet” section:

• Are pro golfers who spoke out publicly against the Saud regime going to be safe playing in the PGA, now that the Sauds own half of it?
• Is “peer-reviewed publication” the next big college admissions scam? They’re not the only ones to blame for diminishing the value of academic research.

David Waldman and Greg Dworkin arrive at the middle of the week to deliver the KITM, but the smoke is so thick it’s hard to read the house numbers...

Canadian wildfires have given 100 million Americans incentive to wear their COVID masks this morning.

No Schoolhouse Rock can explain this. The MAGA wing of the House, so screwball that Marjorie Traitor Greene is not screwball enough for them anymore, scuttled their own screwball bills, from enshrining gas stoves to defending the cherished accessorizing of firearms.

Foreign nationals are kidnapped, and smuggled across state borders, while the perpetrator flees to the border. Why doesn’t the news report on this? Because they are too busy calling terrorists “emboldened shoppers”. Fair and balanced paste eater Chris Licht’s work at CNN seems to have ended before he could set up another Trump town hall.

Donald Trump, who did not rape a woman that one time, might still face some lingering legal hurdles. A Florida grand jury will be hearing testimony from an assortment of MAGA Mar-a-Lago henchmen, lackies and homework-eating dogs.

Saudi Arabia attempts to improve their public image by trashing professional golf’s. They got it half right.

Luckily for all of us today, David Waldman and Joan McCarter do make house calls. 

Temu-Palin Lauren Boebert may not be certain where babies come from, but even Maury Povich could have told her which member of WWE tag team Midnight Express was not her father.

Donald Trump hopes to stop the second E. Jean Caroll defamation case.  Trump hopes to stop special counsel Jack Smith from indicting him on his Mar-a-Lago crimes. Trump hopes to stop that other Federal grand jury in Florida from indicting him on his Mar-a-Lago crimes. If Trump had a dog, his diet would be 100% evidence by now.

Who has it worse, Musk or Trump lawyers? At least for now Musk lawyers are being paid to admit the truth. 

Eric Jensen found that he could receive attention and validation for being a lunatic, simply by choosing to act out at school board meetings. Marjorie Traitor Greene gets all that and even paid to act bananas in the House. Unfortunately for Marge, she is no longer cuckoo enough for MAGA, especially once they saw her holding Kevin McCarthy’s ChapStick. The Freedom Caucus just wishes they got used lip-gloss out of their budget deal. Better luck next time!

It’s quiet… too quiet. David Waldman and Greg Dworkin are here to fill the gap between not enough and too much news.

CEOs must be smarter than their idiot employees, because if not, how could they explain their position? Those at the head of media companies must be the most brilliant, but also the most impartial and nonpartisan to succeed. CNN CEO Chris Licht believes he is just that person, although word around his shop indicates that Chris Licht eats paste.

President Joe Biden knows the art of the deal, by separating those who wanted to deal from the MAGA. There’s now time to figure out the 14th Amendment and get back to work on all the other upcoming disasters in the 24 workdays between now and Labor Day.

Donald Trump’s lawyers are over at the DOJ this morning fueling rumors Donald might… flip on himself? Maybe they’re just returning those Iran attack plans they found blowing down the fairway at Bedminster. A return to taking espionage seriously just might make America great again.

I missed you guys! I was only gone three days, but I’m not sure how anybody could take that.

David Waldman is still here, right where I left him, thankfully. 

On Monday it looked as if we might default this week. Now it looks like we will instead default in two years, that is if the Freedom Caucus is still around then.

The US adds a big 339,000 jobs in May, exceeding estimates month after month just like President Joe Biden.

Donald Trump, the Mona Lisa of persecuted White Christianity, is hoping to avoid those annoying prerequisites of achieving sainthood/dictatorship. Moral exemplar Roger Stone wants to lead the Christian Trumpists onward to… wherever they want to go to take whatever they want, a pretty traditional objective really. But first they’ll need to take on the forces of evil woke mermaids.

It’s not sex nor money. The best way to get an idiot to spill information is to challenge their intelligence.  Donald Trump proved his intellect and judgment to a pair of randos with just some classified documents on Iran. Periodically, the smartest remaining Trump lawyer resigns, thus moving the peak of the bell curve over a few notches.

It turns out that arranging to quickly kill the highest number of people wasn’t the best COVID health plan.

James Comer might be on shaky legal ground on his investigation on Joe Biden, but all that legal stuff would just get in his and Chuck Grassley’s way.

Join us as Greg Dworkin assesses the guesses on how The Deal would go down in the House. (Spoiler: mostly correct!) And, of course, how the media did in covering it. (Spoiler: mostly incorrect!) But that’s more or less how the game is played.

So, was there a deal between the party leaders to get this through? Depends who you ask! In fact, if you ask just the right questions, you’ll start to wonder whether the Gop even had a deal with itself.

And since we’re not quite done with the debt ceiling just yet, here’s yet another good point about doing away with it.

Meawhile, there’s some unrest afoot in Florida. Even in “conservative” areas. To no one’s surprise, DeSantis’ fascism just isn’t sitting well with everyone. And it seems the formula doesn’t always translate well when exported.

There’s other news breaking in Florida, too. We’ll have to wait and see what else breaks along with it.

In the surprise of the century, George Santos’ office is involved in some unethical, and possibly illegal, weirdness.

Does today end in a Y? Yes? Well, in that case, here’s TFG confessing once again, on tape.

Today’s the day we all thought we’d be waiting for! The day Greg Dworkin had his first crack at the news of the week!

Only it turns out we didn’t have to wait at all. And that the news was pretty much as Greg and Joan had predicted. In the end, it was mostly standard Gop budget fare.

Nancy Mace got the attention she was craving, but only by feeding the narrative that Republicans are losers. That in turn fed counter-narratives that Biden had rolled ‘em. And, of course, that the whole thing was a terrible idea from the start.

Then, the news turned weird. Tara Reade defected to Russia, which I didn’t know was still a thing.

This fertility doc’s scheme was bound to fall apart. And so was his hand-made airplane, it turns out.

No one would believe it, but that Florida mom trying to ban Amanda Gorman’s poem is mixed up in both anti-Semitism and with the Proud Boys!

Things James Comer is losing: 1) witnesses; 2) marbles.

In MAGA’s “good old days,” people knew to fight fascism, even when it was disguised as MAGA.

Longtime listeners know that it’s the daily rhythms of KITM World Headquarters that dominate the first few minutes of most shows. And today, it’s the end of an era, as we call a wrap on secondary education for the auxiliary production staff!

But some cycles of life (and death) continue unabated. For instance, the ever-present Cloud of a Mass Shooting.™ And, of course, developments in Ukraine. Or more specifically, in Russia, as the battlefield is expanded, if not the battle itself.

And we lean heavily on the APR today, even though Greg wasn’t here, and Greg didn’t even write Tuesday’s APR — so thanks to Chitown Kev for his unwitting contribution to the show! Naturally, the debt ceiling deal, including Manchin’s pipeline gambit and its attendant issues, followed by procedural developments in the Paxton impeachment. And, something we didn’t cover in yesterday’s abbreviated show: stuff from overseas lands where names are hard to pronounce. For today, that was Türkiye.

The only possibly enjoyable angle on Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid: he’ll eventually have to attack Trump. Though it’s still possible that he’ll also fall down the stairs like Gerald Ford, too.

For something completely different, and yet hearkening back to vague themes from episodes past, noted fist-pump-and-run enthusiast Josh Hawley is the latest to try to address the “crisis” of “masculinity” not with solutions, but with an eye toward exploitation.

Joan McCarter once again defies the early West coast timeline and the crush of East coast job demands to join us for an update on the putative debt ceiling deal and to set up the mystery/cliff-hanger/dud of today’s House Rules committee meeting.