So I broke into the Palace with a sponge and a rusty spanner

With the Right Honorable Matt Welch ensconced in a posh Beverly Hills hotel, prepping to shock and sicken America with yet another appearance on Real Time, Kmele and Moynihan got on the horn to discuss the death of corgi-loving colonialist Queen Elizabeth II, moronic “anti-colonialist” Twitter, Bannon’s perp strut, Moynihan’s unwitting mentor, phantom racist volleyball fans, and an unarmed man shot in the back who wasn’t unarmed or shot in the back.

Against a blood-red backdrop, President Biden gives an urgent campaign speech, warning that America is becoming semi-Nazi Germany, Donald Trump is partial Hitler, and our almost democracy is on the precipice of kinda revolution. The lads watch the speech and say lots of really smart things. But before they discuss the end of America, Kmele forces a conversation about Michael Jackson’s Thriller. He has a theory. Moynihan and Welch are…skeptical.

* Zuck Talks w/ Rogan

* Student Loan Forgiveness

* Who Cares if It’s Democratic

* WashPo: “It’s Regressive!”

* The Redbox Test

* Student Debt is immoral

* Moynihan in an elevator w/ Harry Styles

* Oh, my god, they fired Brian (You bastards!)

* The Jim Jones of Journalism

* NBC “News”

* The Many Papers of Donald Trump

* That NPR Voice

* Ben Shapiro Goes to a Conference (Hilarity Ensues)

A few weeks ago, with Matt Welch bleeding out of his ears and supposedly forbidden from flying, Kmele and Moynihan hopped a plane to a post-apocalyptic hellscape called “San Francisco” to kibizt with their new benevolent overlords at Substack. Unlike the boring prigs at Patreon (whose “Trust and Safety” commissars never even returned our calls), Substack rather generously hosted the Fifth crew for drinks, drinks, some more drinks, and a live show at company HQ.

In Matt’s stead, the lads called up FOTF (Friend of the Fifth - ed.) Lara “Che” Bazelon, a local law professor and communist revolutionary, and Substack co-founder* Hamish McKenzie, a reactionary publisher of fake news. They discuss San Francisco, the state of the media, the future of free speech, and much, much more. Enjoy.*Note: We previously referred to Hamish as CEO of Substack. He is, we are reliably informed, the "chief writing officer," which sounds to us like a fake job. As such, we now have significant doubts he even works at Substack and suspect he's never even been to New Zealand (which he told us “is the country where Kyle Minogue and Yahoo Serious are from”).

Many urgent matters loom large in this dispatch.

How did boxes full of TOP SECRET documents turn up a Trump’s Mar-a-lago compound?!Could be an honest mistake… Few moving labels get mixed up; nuclear secrets turn up in a Florida man’s safe. Maybe a box full of Melania’s bawdiest intimates gets serendipitously misdirected to the National Archives.Could America be so lucky?Could Trump be selling state secrets to the highest bidder?Could the “Deep State” be up to no good?Is there a clearance sale at the Banana Republic?We’ve got margaritas, Sativa, a burning desire to sort this 💩 out — and Eli Lake is a responsible adult whose laptop definitely won’t run out of power mid-podcast.Recorded: Aug 11, 2022Published: NOW

It's among the most unusual and noteworthy congressional primary races of 2022. For a surprisingly long stretch, Michigan's third district has been home to a uniquely independent brand of republican congresspersons. But after Peter Meijer (R) narrowly lost his primary race this week, MI-3's respectability streak is no more.

Congressman Meijer's party largely abandoned him. The former President still really hates him. And Democrats spent $435,000 to help boost his MAGA-loving opponent's sparse media profile. Meijer joined us to break down the race, spill a little tea about his soon-to-be-former-colleagues, and share some high/lowlights from his all-too-brief time in office.Recorded: Aug 3, 2022Published: Aug 4, 2022

w/ John McWhorter and Glenn Loury

- No Moynihan, No Welch
- Progress or Pesmissim
- Campus Culture
- Culture Warriors
- Gaslighting + Reactionaries
- DEI Obstacles
- Overstatement and Bravery
- Dignity + Individualism
- Race as Ethnicity
- All in Bounds
- Pride, Honor, Shame
- “Tolstoy is Mine. Dickens is Mine.”
- Everything is permissible to me

Recorded: 6/14/22
Published: 7/24/22

with David French contributing writer @ The Atlantic and senior editor @ The Dispatch.

James GD Webb
Cleaning Your Room
Playing to the Crowd
The Great CRT Ban Kurfuffl
Reconsidering that Roe decision
The Capacity for Pregnancy
Corroboration, Prosecution, and Restraint
Trump v DeSantis
World Level Experts
Darker Woods Beyond
Anarchapulco

* Matt breaks an eardrum

* Boris breaks British politics (Ed note: Boris renounced his American citizenship in 2017. We sort of regret the error)

* Would Putin free LeBron?

* Remember Macy Gray? Well, whoever she is, she’s very sorry

* Tim Hardaway, self-proclaimed homophobe

* The end of interventionism

* Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe is shot

* Andrew Schultz goes the way of Louis CK

* 2022 Freedom Bowl: California v. Florida

* Gavin Newsom: Slightly Better than Beto

* Covid and culture wars: What will matter in 2024

We love all of our freeloading listeners. But we’d love you a whole lot more if you subscribed and reaped all the benefits of being a dues-paying member of the Fifdom. So click the button below. Now. It would make us very happy.

“Tear it down. Start over again. We can make a brand new start.” - Blue Mafic

* A Bad Omen

* Judicial Superfluity

* Beyond Roe

* unenumerated, natural, ipse dixit

* Carry Concealed

* Conservative Excesss, Judicial Restraint

* Europe is Always Better

* “Sand in every damn gear…”

* Antidemocratic AF

* Release the Transcripts

Recorded: June 25th, 2022Published: June 26th, 2022