Eliot returns from overseas travel and brings back the jackassery of the week segment with him. He and Eric discuss the President's reliance on totally fraudulent evidence while ambushing the President of South Africa with a video alleging genocide against whites in his country, the President's bizarre commencement address at the "Army Acadmey," the disembowling of the national security council staff, and the continued sniping in the immediate office of the Secretary of Defense. Eliot also reports on the "strategic ghosts" haunting the chanceries of Europe and his visits to Edinburgh, London, Tallinn, Stockholm and Warsaw. They discuss the UK Strategic Defense Review and Britain's post-imperial overstretch, Eliot's attendance at the Lennert Meri Conference in Estonia and that country's memories of absorption into the Soviet Union and its fears of Russian revanchism, Russian gray zone activity in the Baltic Sea, Russian troop movements in the north and the threat to the Nordics, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's unpublished threatening letter to the Swedes in 2021, Sweden's "armed neutrality" during the Cold War, the nuclear question that hangs over Poland as well as Polish resentments at past betrayals, Russia's evolution into a perpetual warfare state, and European efforts to both rearm, assist Ukraine and influence Trump (and their chances of success on the latter front).

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.