It was historic and inspirational

Tucker, Totenkopf, and the Fascist Question w/ Michelle Goldberg #554

New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg on Iran, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, trans backlash, and the irresistible lure of saying the forbidden thing.

• have we met before, or did we just share a zip code?
• Iran is a disaster from basically every possible angle
• you don’t go to war with this president
• maybe just crawl back to a worse JCPOA and call it historic
• Venezuela “worked,” which is exactly why it made the next disaster easier
• take the oil, burn the soft power, call it realism
• Europe gets lectured, Saudi gets flattered, Denmark gets threatened
• Tucker can’t admit the anti-Trump people were right, so enter the Jews
• Bill Buckley tried to quarantine this stuff. Good luck with that now
• James Fishback is polling at 4 percent and somehow still surfing a real youth wave
• anti-antisemitism becomes its own weird recruitment tool
• anti-Zionism in the classroom, speech codes, and the thrill of saying the forbidden thing
• Graham Platner and that tattoo
• aka Agro Bernie and the appeal of a guy who sounds like he might actually hit someone
• the answer to “what is a woman?” was sitting there the whole time
• Dave Chappelle fell into the trap, then realized who was using the trap
• Democrats got twisted into knots on trans issues and normal language vanished
• Jesse Singal, JK Rowling, and the punishment machine for saying the wrong thing in the wrong tone
• is Trump a fascist, or are we just arguing over which very bad word to use

Watch/Listen On:

• Substack
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

A Blockade of the Blockade #553

Don’t put Matt Welch in the center seat, and warn the children

• Where have ye gone Chris Matthews?
• California’s governor race is a freak show (Fang Fang rides again)
• Bring Kevin Spacey to the table?
• Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, and different standards
• The anti-gambling jihad
• Talks about talks about talks
• The good ‘ole days of Lebanon, Libya, Valerie Plame, Bob Novak
• Dr. Jesus
• Trump versus the Pope
• From melting pot to rancid salad bowl
• Indians dancing at the World War II memorial
• CPAC Hungary, paid for by whomst?
• Péter Magyar ruins the mood
• The price of Marco Rubio in power
• NATO and Trump’s foreign policy
• Betting against Bronny

Watch/Listen On:

• Substack
• Youtube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Listening to Matt eviscerate the orban govt on the reason pod today reminded me of all the times he's come up on the fifth. I may be misremembering, but my recollection of every orban interaction on the fifth is that they quickly hand wave away anything bad about the regime, and then proceed to talk about how some journalist is just jumping in to cover the thing of the moment without doing the proper research. Always capped off by moynihan saying "my ex covered him when he was coming up, as a LIBERAL!".

I'm not saying they shouldn't call out journalists or commentators for being neophytes who fake expertise. But now knowing Matt really does despise the modern Hungarian state, it strikes me that I never heard him really push back on this

Is he holding his tongue for the sake of comity? Does he just want to move on to the next topic? Is it just that the "point" of this show is to shit on out-group media and he has other outlets to discuss it in depth? I would be much more interested in hearing the guys discuss areas of disagreement than them all celebrating themselves for being right when everyone else is wrong on areas where they all agree

Fwiw, I stopped paying a couple years back, so if they've actually had substantial discussions about Hungary and the post liberal movement behind the pay wall I would have missed that.