With high profile congressional inquests into shadowy conspiracies, media panics, and boring White House events turning into embarrassing fodder for late night comedians — the stage was set for an almost banal week in Washington DC — but a brazen attack on Republican congressmen in Alexandria, Virginia, changed all that. While most members of Congress quickly rallied around their colleagues, plenty of citizens and a good number of media types were soon leveraging the tragedy to support their own philosophical convictions.

Plus: The necessity of confronting awful people and ideas in public, and a brief glance at Jeff Sessions' congressional testimony.

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Episode 060

Recorded June 10th 2017

Corbyn Surprises his labour party rival (and just about everyone else). Comey testifies before Congress, Trump is quite about it until he isn’t. And Bill Maher said ‘Nigga’, or was it ‘Nigger’.

Shout out to Dan Spragens for the delicious and effective bottle of "State of Jefferson" rum

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[Special Dispatch #2]

A rangy and Moynihan-heavy exchange w/ Timothy Snyder, Yale University Professor of History and author of numerous books including (the magisterial) “Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin” (2010) and his latest best-selling “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” (2017)

Fascism, Nazis, Stalinists, Trump, The Road to Serfdom, 'the square root of 69 is eight-something', and the Cavaliers are very unlikely to take the series in seven games (the last two items have almost nothing to do with this dispatch, but they're demonstrably true).

w/ Kmele Foster (Freethink), Michael Moynihan (Vice News Tonight on HBO)

Recorded: June 8th, 2017wethefifth.comtwitter.com/wethefifthfb.com/wethefifth

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- Pulling out of the Pairs Climate Deal

- Roiling the EU

- Surveying the Russian investigation

- Lamenting w/ LeBron (and not about that horrific game one)

(Recorded 6/1/2017)

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"If they're buying off this president, they're really not getting their money's worth." - Michael Moynihan

Do terrorists hate us for our freedom? Are the Saudis just "guided by the beauty of our weapons"? Will Welch start drinking before 11 am? The answers may surprise you. All this and more on a new Fifth Column.

Plus: Commemorative drug paraphernalia. The Moynihans convert to Judaism (but just for the holidays). And The Fifth Column is *probably* expanding to SiriusXM!

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Is former FBI boss James Comey's unexpected and unceremonious termination a Nixonesque attempt to bury the Russian narrative once and for all... Is it just the latest salvo from a calculating monster with totalitarian asperations... Or maybe the Trump regime is just about as inept as it seems...

PLUS:- Clapper: "You ain't no got'damn journalist, Julian!" Assange: "You's a liar!" - What's this about Sea World!? Sounds Gross. - And Comey may be out, but we'll always have James Taylor (FTW)

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Moynihan is late; Matt went to a cocktail party; Kmele needs a date for Guardians of the Galaxy; and Jamie Kirchick (author, “The End of Europe”) drops by with dire predictions about the fate of the European Project.

Meanwhile, Obamacare is dead (long live Obamacare).

Plus: Spurious allegations, police shootings, and "the N-word."

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A record-breaking, kiloton-length new release with all the kinetic energy of [ABRUPTLY CUTS OFF EXPLOSIVES METAPHPOR]...

Eat some chocolate cake with Xi, flatten a section of Afghanistan, (check-in with Vladimir), rattle saber at North Korea (glare menacingly in the direction of everyone else in the room, intermittently clapping your hands and screaming as loud as you can... )... and try to assure everyone that you know exactly what you're doing. Everything is fine. This is fine.

Bannon is out (-ish). NATO is great (again?). And Brian Williams can't be the only journalist in America who LOVES a great fireworks display. What kind of asshole dosen't like fireworks? Also... PUTIN!

Michael Weiss (Senior Editor at The Daily Beast, co-author of the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror), stops by to help sort out the mess.... opportunity? No, it's kind of a mess.

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