The Fifth Column

Latest Episodes:

053 w/ Michael Weiss “The MOAB Doctrine: Technically, Bombing Stuff is A Strategy” - The Fifth Column Apr 14, 2017

Show notes

A record-breaking, kiloton-length new release with all the kinetic energy of [ABRUPTLY CUTS OFF EXPLOSIVES METAPHPOR]...

Eat some chocolate cake with Xi, flatten a section of Afghanistan, (check-in with Vladimir), rattle saber at North Korea (glare menacingly in the direction of everyone else in the room, intermittently clapping your hands and screaming as loud as you can... )... and try to assure everyone that you know exactly what you're doing. Everything is fine. This is fine.

Bannon is out (-ish). NATO is great (again?). And Brian Williams can't be the only journalist in America who LOVES a great fireworks display. What kind of asshole dosen't like fireworks? Also... PUTIN!

Michael Weiss (Senior Editor at The Daily Beast, co-author of the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror), stops by to help sort out the mess.... opportunity? No, it's kind of a mess.

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052 w/ Eli Lake “Kinda Bombing the Sh*t Out of 'Em Right Now, Something About Susan Rice ” - The Fifth Column Apr 07, 2017

Show notes

We knew things were heating up in Syria, but it was still a bit of a shock when Tomahawk missiles started flying all over the place. Fortunately for all involved, Eli Lake was on hand to explain the inner workings of Multi-dimensional Hungry Hungry Hippos (it'll make sense, honest)... and to provide a bit more context for that ‘Susan Rice Unmasking’ story he kinda* broke… And it’s our birthday!

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051 w/ Rep Thomas Massie “Trump Care Postmortem, Protesting Putin, Two Painful Years in Yemen” - The Fifth Column Mar 29, 2017

Show notes

Rep Thomas Massie swings by to provide a first person account of the failed Ryan/Trump health care bill. Plus: The prospects for Trump's Tax reform agenda and the intersections of 'economic nationalism' and libertarianism. Protesting Putin. And the two year anniversary of America's adventure in Yemen.

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050 "Health Care Pileup, Burn All The Paintings, Donna Brazile's Kinda Sorry" - The Fifth Column Mar 25, 2017

Show notes

Health Care Reform, Trump’s Long Game, New York Real Estate Woes & Casual Racism, Burning All the Paintings, Multiple Beers and A Tall Bottle of Johnny Walker Black. Fifty episodes in (sort of) and this is what it's come to. We couldn’t be more proud.

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049 "Is GCHQ Wiretapping the Hell Outta That Thang?, Maddow's ManBearPig Exclusive" - The Fifth Column Mar 18, 2017

Show notes

Did the Brits actually wiretap his building? And look, he’s ‘good people’, but we’re gonna have to talk about this, ‘sources say’ stuff…

Whoa — she's got his tax returns! BUT, before we get to that crucial story, take a look at this Oort Cloud of speculative rambling: Did those planes just HAPPEN to be on the same runway? Well, what about those Yachts? They’re both on the ocean… they’re both in front of a Caribbean island… How do you explain that? How does that just happen? And how about that house in Florida!? Did you know he bought it at a low price and sold it for a higher price… to a Russian!? And if I just keep asking questions in a suspicious tone, do you think anyone will notice how lame a scoop a pair of pages from Trump’s tax return is?

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048 "Ok, We Need to Talk About Russia, Worse Than Iraq, Non-troversies" - The Fifth Column Mar 10, 2017

Show notes

It's an active week in Washington as the Trump administration takes a few mulligans. The Travel/Muslim Ban is revealed, Congress debates the deeply unpopular health care reform-reform proposal, and the administration teases a new trillion dollar infrastructure slush fund. The steady diet of (real and imagined) scandal, controversy, and leaks hasn't let up either. And while the national press is outraged over one ridiculous conspiracy theory and infatuated with another, almost no one is paying attention to the slow-motion cataclysm in the middle east... a situation that could get very bad, very fast.

Kmele's a misogynist. Moynihan is in the building. And Welch is in the back of a cab (then the airport terminal)... and Katie Halper stops by, but it's complicated.

(Recorded: March 7st, 2017)

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XXX w/ Dr Henry Louis Gates, Dr George Yancy “Race, History, and Identity” - The Fifth Column [Special Dispatch] Mar 05, 2017

Show notes

[Special Dispatch]

"Two Conversations About Race, History, and Identity”

Kmele hijacks the podcast stream for a pair of conversations about race, philosophy, what history and filmmaking have in common, why he hates when people call his wife a 'beautiful black woman and his beef with Black History Month.

WITH:Dr. Henry Louis Gates Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University"Africa’s Great Civilizations” (PBS) 2017, "Finding Your Roots" (PBS)

Dr. George YancyProfessor of Philosophy at Emory UniversityContributor to "The Stone" - (The New York Times)https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/opinion/its-black-history-month-look-in-the-mirror.htmlhttps://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/dear-white-america/

Kmele on Race and Related Topics in Various Other Contexts:

“Oscars So Black”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TizdjF5DJX0

“Reparations”: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/point-taken/should-us-pay-reparations-black-americans/

Kmele on “Race Pride”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rX3gy3SkSIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg79E0f_b6g

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047 "Trump's Not State of the Union, Patriots & Anecdotes, The End of Ideology" - The Fifth Column Mar 02, 2017

Show notes

"Presidential." "His Best Speech Yet." "Hey, What Happened To His Entirely-Too-Long Red Tie!?" ---- It's an all new Donald Trump. He's calm, composed, occasionally optimistic and his standard complement of half-truths, exaggerations, outright lies and impossible promises have been better calibrated and tightly scripted for maximum impact. In other words; could be he's finally getting the hang of this whole POTUS thing. Plus: 'How Code Pink Progressives Fell in Love With The War On Terror' --- 'Remembering Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens' --- 'Are You Seriously Gonna Talk Shit About HBCUs, Kmele!?' (Recorded: March 1st 2017)

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046 "Flynn Gets Fired, Incompetent Totalitarians, He Totally Called It" - The Fifth Column Feb 16, 2017

Show notes

The cascade of failures, missteps, scandal and controversy otherwise known as the Trump Administration has stammered into its fourth week of governance*. Michael Flynn -- Former National Security Adviser.... the man Previously responsible for reading, condensing and perhaps remixing POTUS's top-secret security briefings, has been kinda-sorta-shitcanned. There was high drama, people shouted and Kellyanne Conway, and there could* be huge* national security ramifications too. But there's something so much more important than all of that...

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045 w/ Damon Root "When Everything's a Crisis and Everyone's a Nazi..." - The Fifth Column Feb 11, 2017

Show notes

POTUS is at war with the courts, with the press, and on account of it's leaking like a sieve, he's kinda at war with his own administration. Reason's resident legal aficionado Damon Root stop by to expound on the legal wrangling over the immigration ban, the tension between the executive and judicial branch, and there's some stuff about Waco, Devos, Black History Month and Axel Rose too.

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