The Fifth Column

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**The Fifth Column**

Your weekly rhetorical assault on the on the news cycle, the people who make it, and occasionally ourselves. Kmele Foster (Freethink), Michael Moynihan (Vice), and Matt Welch (Reason) talk and laugh and drink their way to at least quasi-sanity in a world gone mad, often with the aid of clean and articulate guests. Weekly Members Only subscription edition often comes with listener mail and professional-quality (if inappropriate) singing. Analysis. Commentary. Sedition.

wethefifth.substack.com

Latest Episodes:

#494 - State of Delusion Mar 05, 2025

Show notes

* A very long SOTU

* Al Green meets Buju Banton, Tripadvisor objects

* The most beautiful, terrifying word in the English language

* The “deficit” you shouldn’t care about

* The forgotten Foxconn boondoggle

* The hopeless Democrats

* Maybe look at, say, Dean Phillips and ignore the Squad

* Asian finger cuffs

* Two cheers for parliamentary democracy

* Poor lil’ Marco

* Who killed Gene Hackman’s dog?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

Members Only #250 - Twitter Is Now Real Life Mar 03, 2025

Show notes

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

There’s some discussion of parenting. A tiny bit about the Oscars. And a bunch about the triumph of conspiracy culture. But this is mostly a subscriber-only episode about the Zelensky debacle and the ongoing U.S. foreign policy realignment. So why bother with bullet points?’

#493 - Fifth Extra: John Bolton on Trump 2.0 Mar 02, 2025

Show notes

* Trump’s maturity

* Trump’s deal making

* Trump and NATO

* Trump vs. Europe

* Trump and Taiwan

* A price on Bolton’s head

* Is he a neocon?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

#492 - How Deep Is Your State Feb 28, 2025

Show notes

* The traffickers of the Fifth Column

* The genius of Bill Belichick

* Those Boston boys aren’t so terrible after all

* Nick v. Stewart

* Democracy died in the light!

* The WaPo freakout

* The press pool freakout

* No one believes in anything, part 387

* The “Epstein files” will contain nothing of interest

* A “Roman” salute that no one noticed

* MSNBC is apparently racist

* A live event in NYC!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

Members Only #249 - Killing Us Softly Feb 25, 2025

Show notes

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

* RIP Roberta

* What’s the “woke right?” No idea.

* MAGA Brooklyn

* Reform Party 2000!

* Nadia didn’t pay, so…

* But does it vindicate the collusion narrative?

* Eli Lake’s “Framed and Guilty”

* The Great Negotiator

* The rise of AfD…and the end of Europe?

* Kmele and Kanye (“He’s a NAZI, Kmele, a NAZI…”)

* Moynihan’s memory

* Drinking with Team Uterus

#491 - The Last Globalist Feb 21, 2025

Show notes

* Matt vs. the Gremlins

* He lasts about 20 minutes

* Subscribe to the pod so he can stay at normal hotels that don’t use Compuserve

* Two minutes of Kayne and the Yahud

* Everything is a lie

* Free speech king goes Russiagate

* Trump’s Ukraine disgrace

* Allies and Axis 2.0

* Here DOGEy DOGEy DOGEy

* Misunderstanding democracy

* The animals of Hamas

* Inhumanity makes one inarticulate

* 😡🐰🥚

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

Members Only #248 - Marvin, Mugshots, and Migrants Feb 17, 2025

Show notes

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

* If this plane crashes, it’ll just be ‘Steve Wozniak, Allen Iverson, and some other people’

* Murder motel in Huntington Beach

* Marvin Gaye's confession

* A shot, a beer, and Paddington 3

* Brexit, bananas, and robber outfits

* Not their best. But sort of.

* The New York Times’s dumb report from Europe

* Does Vance have a point?

* Ukraine negotiations without Ukraine

* A bunch m…

#490 - Among the Bullshitters Feb 16, 2025

Show notes

So we took a few days off. We deserved it. Sort of. And after all, there were pilots to filmed, kids to be cared for, conferences to attend. Indeed, on Friday we gave a talk at a wonderful University of Florida conference on America’s love of bullshit. But we begged off from the proceedings for an hour to record an episode. Because we love you guys. And because we needed to discuss Pete Hegseth, beer bongs and Goldschlager luges, Elon’s weird kids, the future of DOGE, the future of Ukraine, Islamism, and Serena Williams. And a few other things besides…

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

#489 - Neocon Don and Sandals Gaza Feb 06, 2025

Show notes

* The hockey plumber

* A very brief return to tariffs

* Let’s fight the drug war again! Yay!

* Neocon Don wants to make Gaza great…for the first time

* This is a very, very bad idea

* Like…an extraordinarily bad idea

* The 80-20 issue

* Lia’s standup special

* 60 Minutes in the docket

* “Restoring freedom of speech”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

Members Only #247 - The Dumbest War Begins Feb 03, 2025

Show notes

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

We asked ChatGPT to give us some titles for this episode. Turned out to be a pretty decent précis of the discussion…and the last one is particularly good:

"Tariffs, TikTok, and Toe-Kneading Terror"

"Mary Poppins: Feminist Propaganda & Economic Illiteracy"

"Avocados vs. American Fish: The Dumbest Trade Debate Ever"

"Trump’s Tariff Tantrum: The Art of the Du…

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