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.

www.wethefifth.com

Latest Episodes:

#414 - Clarifications, Curried Goats, Cocaine Capers Jul 09, 2023

Show notes

* Taking back a “clarification”

* Underhoused. Overhoused. Differently housed.

* Mayor Adams yells at a Holocaust surviving slave master

* Drinking coffee with pictures of dead cops

* Who lost the cocaine?

* Kamala speechwriter video

* The worst person in America is…

* That interesting piece about Kevin Kruze’s not interesting book

* The Fifth Column agrees: the 4th is pretty great…

* Immigration in Europe vs. immigration in the US

* Harvard and affirmative action

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 #172 - We're Literally Shaking / RFK Redux Jul 04, 2023

Show notes

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

* A sick podcast

* Revisiting Coleman and RFK

* Listeners yelling at Moynihan

* Some nice stuff about Moynihan

* A clarification from Moynihan

* (All of this is re: RFK)

* BTW, Sirhan Sirhan was really anti-Semitic

* The conspiratorial mind

* Are Birchers libertarians on meth?

* Taking photos of yourself smoking crack

* Matt tells a story about…something

* Etc, etc, etc

#413 - So Many Idiots (w/ Damon Root) Jul 02, 2023

Show notes

Our old pal Damon Root, author of Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court, stops by to explain why the world is ending and racism won and all new websites will be homophobic and paying your debts is fascism or something.

So yeah, the lads discuss the court, affirmative action, student loans and how to eat your gay website cake. Enjoy.

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

#412 - An RFK Intervention (w/ Coleman Hughes) Jun 24, 2023

Show notes

The great Coleman Hughes sent a pained email. Like many Americans angry about various stupid and sinister government Covid policies, he was now feeling the gravitational pull of a warbly-voiced political outsider from a family of consummate political insiders. He was, of course, starting to fall for Mr. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To be clear, this wasn’t a full-throated endorsement of Kennedy but, Coleman averred, an understanding where his ever-expanding legion of supporters were coming from. And after all, Kennedy was making some good points, no?

With Matt Welch having left to join the Wagner Group, Moynihan and Kmele sent a flurry of furious messages and extended an invitation. Dear Coleman: be this week’s guest co-host! Because if we acted now, perhaps we could at least slow any potential descent into...no, no, no. We couldn’t sit idly by as another friend joined the Kult of Kennedy. We invited…he accepted. It was time for an intervention…

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 #171 - Bobby, Cormac, and Geddy Jun 19, 2023

Show notes

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

Another live Zoom for our handsome, brilliant, and generous subscribers (hence all the weird asides responding to a fast-moving live chat). A few topics covered:

* Kmele on Juneteenth

* Rush and nerds and whites and wizards

* RFK and Rogan and debate

* Being brave and calling….

* RIP Cormac McCarthy

* James Randi “platforming” Uri Geller

* Vivek’s Russia stuff

* Yalta and …

#411 - A Conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy Jun 14, 2023

Show notes

Fresh from his campaign stop in front of a Miami courthouse, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy stops by the Fifth’s Chinatown studio to very politely argue with Welch and Moynihan about a whole bunch of stuff. Including:

* The donor class

* What kind of conservative is Vivek?

* Populism and free trade

* A peace plan for China and Ukraine

* The Trump indictment

* Would Vivek take a position in a Trump

* Vivek leaves, the lads have a tipple

* Not many randos this time

* Matt and Moyn on the Trump indictment

* Wait, did Moynihan just say…free Assange?? (He did!)

* More 2024 nonsense

* Chris Christie is serving his purpose

* Moynihan tries to decode an ever more complex flag

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

#410 - The Tightening Noose Jun 10, 2023

Show notes

Matt, Moynihan, and Kmele assemble in Chinatown to mull over another Trump indictment. No need for bullet points for this one because beside the predictable digressions into muscle-bound gay birders and homophobic Blue Jays, it’s a lotta Donald. So without further ado…

And don’t forget: for the price of one very large coffee, you can help feed the children. Specifically our children. Who are very sad. And very malnourished. And very disappointed in your cheapskatery. For shame.

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 #170 - Ukraine Calling (w/ Tim Mak) Jun 09, 2023

Show notes

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

Despite being in a car in the city of Dnipro, journalist Tim Mak joins Michael Moynihan to talk about leaving NPR, moving to Kiev, and starting The Counteroffensive, his new Substack dedicated to reporting the Ukraine War. A few of the topics covered:

* Tim arrived in Kiev the night the war started

* Going back to Ukraine—and going independent

* Why so many on t…

Members Only #169 - Loving the Alien, Shooting Matt in His Little Legs Jun 07, 2023

Show notes

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

* Ground control to Tucker C.

* Episode one of the Bonkers Conspiracy Files

* Also, we know what happened to that dam in Ukraine

* But back to the white supremacist aliens…

* Did the California senate pass on of the dumbest bills of all time?

* Root causes and robbing Walgreens

* Moynihan loves rooftop Koreans, thinks baby Matt should have been shot in his adorable littl…

#409 - Pride Wars, Dumb Tupac, and POC Jim Jun 02, 2023

Show notes

* Kmele is moving to a place where everything is free

* ChatGPT is a fabulist

* Moynihan’s new Orwell piece

* Wikipedia v. AI chatbots

* The assassination of (our) Kennedy

* Random gossip columnist: Jamie Foxx was murdered by Pfizer

* A better America: when Rick James met Linda Blair

* BTW: Tupac Shakur was very dumb. And very violent.

* Keeping people with dumb politics out of the various halls of fame…

* Pride warz….

* Root causes and Bud Light and Target and….

* Inconsistent baseball atheism

* But you like these old skool book bans

* The debt ceiling deal

* Biden meets a sandbag

* Kamala wages war on…racist home appraisers

* Congrats, you ridiculous failures!

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

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