The Fifth Column

We’ve promised this one for a very long time. But now that Trump is returning to the White House—the mercantilist maniac who recently said “the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff’”—we finally followed through. By popular demand, we called upon Scott Lincicome, senior visiting lecturer at Duke University Law School and vice president of general economics and Cato's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, to answer all of your questions on protectionism, tariffs, and trade.

Don’t care about such things!? Well, this episode is a double feature! After Scott’s masterclass on free trade, the lads stick around to discuss Trump’s appointments (ummm….this was a day before the Gaetz-Gabbard selections), “neocons,” and the WNBA.

And for you subscribers: we will drop Moynihan’s conversation with Bard College historian Sean McMeekin in the next few days. For you non-subscribers…what are you waiting for??

Our first post-election Second Sunday Zoom call! If you missed it, shame on you for choosing to spend time with your family or choosing not to pony up. But it’s all here. All three hours of it. Yes, it’s the “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” of election analysis. But to be clear, we also discuss Emperor Hirohito, Kentucky politics, Australians, New York …

Welch and Moynihan are back in the studio, three days after the end of democracy, counting the days before they get the midnight knock from Trump’s NKVD. So what does one do? Engage in some anticipatory obedience, obviously. But can anything save them? Subscribe to find out!

Note: Matt came across this amazing video only after recording this episode. So …

The Fifth did a bit of processing today with our Trump-supporting friend at her Connecticut studio. Hungover, exhausted, bedraggled, the lads then returned to the scene of last night’s Fifth-Free Press-Reason party and recorded this episode. They enjoyed it. And they suspect you will too.

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* Kmele on his appearance in Thomas Chatterton Williams new Atlantic piece

* The end of America!

* If you don’t vote like me, you should be ashamed of yourself!

* We’re not “heterodox”

* On never talking policy

* Authoritarianism in America

* Boyz in the Hood redux

* A whole lot of final election thoughts

* A listener from Utah teaches us about TBCK syndrome

* Kemi Badenoch on uneq…

* A Thomas Jefferson freak off

* The tree of liberty…

* “Election integrity”

* What’s happening with those Pennsylvania ballots?

* Editorial page endorsements are worthless

* Why won’t you resign, lady?

* A slaughter at MSG

* These people have lost their minds

* And Bezos is correct: they don’t trust you

* The end of the NYT sports page actually said something important…

* The bubble

* An absurd boycott

* What would a Kamala victory mean for Israel?

* Finally a good Downfall meme…

* To promote his Substack conversation with Moynihan (live today at 5pm ET only on the Substack app!), Josh Szeps calls in from the car and talks Aussie stuff for 20 minutes.

* Banning that lady from your country (“Does anything ride on this?")

* Baghdad Bob on Australia

* The Times and the truth

* People who disappear

* They are making me talk about this fascism shit

* …

* How to be a Navy Seal

* Losing an eye in Afghanistan

* Dan can’t find his glasses / “I can’t see shit”

* Lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan

* A case study in intelligence failure and confirmation bias

* On leaving the Taliban in power

* Has Trump been good on foreign policy?

* The Republican Party post-Trump

* Tucker "is best friends with Hunter Biden!”

* Why are you even in Congress?

* On the mechanics of Congress

* Maybe a hundred normal congressmen

* What has Dan accomplished for Texas?

* Is populism winning?

* On banning TikTok

* Dave in the Hall

* Dead in the garden

* All the dictators

* His kampf

* McDonalds troofer

* Can Trump be funny?

* People don’t care about what we care about

* A friend attacks

* BHO was a great candidate

* Wham-O, Sandusky, and the kids Freak Off

* On “Neighborhood Bully”

* Never say “grande”

* What plagiarism counts

* Old wine, old bottles

* Bret Baier v. Kamala

* He finally asked Matt’s question. Or was it Kmele’s question?

* On not answering questions

* The wisdom of Bill Clinton

* Back to the politics of the 90s

* We always come back to it: late night is awful

* Weed reparations

* We always come back to it: fascism

* Please come back, archive.org

* Shutting down CBS?

* Why the media being stupid is actually really important

* Ted v Colin

* Micklewaithe v. Trump