The Fifth Column

* Former Rep. Justin Amash was on the floor during the leadership fight??

* Brian Lamb question: What does the speaker actually do?

* And what do the Gang of Twenty actually want?

* Rep. Amash: Kevin McCarthy “isn’t that bright” and “will do whatever it takes to maintain power”

* Why the system is broken and how it got that way

* Congress is becoming more European

* Reminder: Amash created (and named) the Freedom Caucus

* Are you really putting yourself forward to be speaker?

* The whole system is broken. And all the other speaker options are reflections of this brokenness

* The NYT and “ultraconservatives”

* The Ukraine objection exception

* A qualified defense of the execrable Skip Bayless

* Idiots deciding who gets to speak

* Subway Protocol

* Lying, Liar

* Flooding the Zone

* Modest Proposal

* The Real Corn Pop

* Domestic Disturbance 

* Buffalo Electronics

* Trump Tapes

* Moynihan is cold

* Welch isn’t paying attention

* Kmele coins a good one (for the third time)

* Dank Meme Party

* After Trump

* Read This. Read That.

Recorded: 12/29/22Published: 12/30/22

* Sweet Baby Jesus

* Ted Cruz 🖤’s Striper

* Dress for the Job You Want

* Defensive Capabilities + Fiscal Profligacy

* The Worst Possible Scenario

* Criminalish Betrayal

* Worse than Watergate?

* Presidential Travel Rewards

* The Stanford Grammer Experiment

* Demanding or Entitled BIPOCs

Recorded: 12.21.22Published: 12.22.22

* Irish Israeli

* France vs Morocco

* That Marriage Act

* Biden Told The Truth That Time

* What Republicans Won’t Do, But Ought to

* They’re Actievly Trying to Kill us

* Leaving Twitter (Because I’m Oblivious, For the Children)

* Doxxing*** Elon’s Plane?

* MTG (Would have won!)

* Jan 6th Prosecutions

* Maced

Recorded 12.14.22Published: 12.15.22

Recorded on Sunday afternoon, this now-vintage episode was consider lost forever, after a certain Fifth Columnist discovered that he still doesn’t understand how computers, cameras, and microphones work. Well….lost until we (i.e. Moynihan) found a weird backup copy of the episode on the Twitch servers! So…a few days late, of variable quality, and now available for download:

* Back to the “Twitter files,” reluctantly

* Everyone loves Joe McCarthy

* Yet another James/Jim Baker

* The pointlessness of trying to control speech

* The Times pickets

* The Times returns, writes an absurd article about Cuba

* A Michael Jackson hagiography on Broadway

* Yes, we have to talk about Kanye West Ye Kardashian again

* Verdict: The man is not well. And is an anti-Semite

* Kmele is sad. Matt is not.

* Wild guess: Ye is unfamiliar with Theodor Herzl

* Note: some people with bad views used to have not so bad views

* Remember “slavery was a choice?” That was pretty dumb

* Is Kanye making people '“unsafe”?

* Matt Taibbi releases internal Twitter comms on the Biden laptop

* Journalists: this is the wrong type of journalism

* These numbers seem pretty fake

* Too many people are interested in politics

* Hakeem “the Dream” Jeffries

with/ Ethan Straus of House of Strauss (on Substack)

* Does the NBA Have an Antisemitism Problem?

* They control the media, our podcast, and the NBA!?

* Wait, who isn’t Jewish?

* “Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Hitler”

* Baseball + The John Birch Society

* Stolen (Jewish) Valor

* “More than an Athlete” / Lebron “gettin’ that Jewish money” James

* Divide & Sponsor

* Was (Is) Twitter Pushing Hysteria

* But is it antisemitism? (Does it even matter)

* Identitarianism, Judaism, and antisemitism (real and imagined)

* How to Talk about “Jewish Supremacy”

* The Truth about Black Hebrew Israelites

* Threat Inflation (and What if they’re right)

* THE NHL(GBTQIA2S+)

* Why the NBA 🖤 Crypto

* The World Cup

* Why Can’t You All Be As Brave as Ben Collins!?

* An Actual Hero

Recorded 11.22.22Published 11.23.22

Rejecting twelve hours with the commoners in coach, Kmele remains stateside while Moynihan and Welch make goyish aliyah in Israel. Wandering from the Egyptian border in the South all the way up to Trump Heights in the North, the lads are introduced to one of Israel’s most famous journalists and big thinkers, Nadav Eyal, author of Revolt: The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization. Eyal graciously joined the Fifth at a recording studio in Tel Aviv for a very deep, very nerdy chat about whether or not the world is collapsing and if the midterms are a harbinger of a changing culture, desperate to move beyond the national populist moment.

As we wind down, Eyal gives his verdict on the Energizer bunny of Israeli politics, incoming Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and the worrying rise of his racist nutbag coalition partner Itamar Ben-Gvir. After Eyal frees himself from the Fifth’s clutches, Welch and Moynihan stick for a few extra minutes to talk about Jewish girls with guns and why Dave Chapelle thinks they might control Hollywood.

No Red Wave. No Blue Wave. No Fascist Takeover. No Democracy Dying in Darkness. The 2022 midterm elections came; they’ll take almost a month to sort out (including a runoff in Georgia) — but things are generally about as bad (and good) as they were before the election.

Moynihan returns from the field, where he was covering the race in Florida.

Welch and his family are momentarily clear of any exigent health emergencies.

And Kmele taps in from Austin, Texas.

* The Libertarian Moment?

* To Start A War

* Weapons of Mass Delusion

* Pelosi Attack

* Definitely Not Bothsidesing

* Voting For Anyone Else Is a Vote Against Democracy

* The Gravity of Things

* Reddit profiling

* A Few Parting Thoughts

Recorded: 11.2.22

Published: 11.3.22