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The Fifth Column

Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch
The Fifth Column
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  • The Fifth Column

    The Loyal Republican w/ Scott Jennings (#576)

    09/22/2026 | 1h 40 mins.
    And is he gonna get that press secretary job or not?
    -Jennings the teetotaler
    -wtf happened to Moynihan’s hair?
    -Jennings’ working-class Kentucky origin story
    -back when Kentucky + West Virginia were swing states
    -Rush Limbaugh + Paul Harvey University
    -what would Rush make of $9K for stay-at-home moms?
    -what kind of Republican is Scott Jennings anyway?
    -why is Trump so unpopular?
    -tariffs, potash + the new Republican orthodoxy
    -the Greenland victory (?) lap begins
    -Scott’s muscular Republicanism meets the universities
    -Van Jones vs. his own side
    -Trump vs. CNN and the White House press pool
    -Scott Jennings, future press secretary?
    -Trump + Mamdani, together again
    -Texas gets way too interesting
    -Georgia gets weird
    -trying to have the one pundit take nobody else has
    -do not get in Scott Jennings’ personal space
    -does Trump have a corruption problem?
    -Trump crypto + the Kentucky coffee can
    -whatever happened to Republican “family values”?
    -Mitch McConnell is alive
    -has Tucker left the MAGA coalition?
    Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.
    The Fifth Column is a viewer/listener supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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    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
  • The Fifth Column

    Academically Unserious With Authoritarian Bureaucratic Aspirations (w/ Tyler Austin Harper) Members Only #344

    09/18/2026 | 17 mins.
    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

    Tyler Austin Harper, staff writer for The Atlantic and co-host of the Time To Say Goodbye podcast joins Michael C. Moynihan & Matt Welch to talk about extreme fishing, picking socialsts as your fighters, and his recent pot-stirring essay “Why I quit the tenure track.”
    •It’s morning in America, or is it Japan?
    •The Night Fisher
    •Worse than Al Qaeda•A pro-America leftist
    •Why Tyler Austin Harper quit the …
  • The Fifth Column

    AI Might Kill Us. Here’s Why It Matters: w/ Jim VandeHei (#575)

    09/16/2026 | 1h 48 mins.
    -Simplify, simplify, simplify…
    -Do people like Jim as a boss?
    -The two things to screen for in prospective employees
    -The humility of Mike Allen
    -AI and the newsroom
    -The way you consume news is about to completely change
    -Are we at the Napster stage of AI?
    -The demand for local news didn’t die
    -DEI without the corporate activism
    -Axios refuses to take a stand
    -Moynihan’s Vice postmortem
    -Jim used to be a hothead. Mostly.
    -AI might kill us. Why it matters
    -Kmele vs. the AI doomers
    -Hugging Face and the runaway AI problem
    -Stuxnet was the dumb version
    -Midterm Madness goes off-script
    -Who should actually be Person of the Year?
    -Too much Trump porn at the New York Times?
    -Jim simplifies Trump’s three biggest precedent breaks
    -Why Trump does it anyway
    Read Simplify: Do 50 Percent More with 50 Percent Less by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz
    (Bookshop | Amazon)
    Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.
    Follow The Fifth Column
    YouTube: @wethefifthInstagram: @we.the.fifthX: @wethefifthTikTok: @wethefifthFacebook: @thefifthcolumn


    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
  • The Fifth Column

    The Things We Thought After 9/11 (#574)

    09/11/2026 | 1h 30 mins.
    -RIP Andrew Wimsatt, a true friend of the show and beloved member of the Fifth Column community
    -And in lighter news, it’s the 25th anniversary of 9/11
    -Trump’s 9/11 story
    -Why we’re called The Fifth Column
    -When Matt Welch welcomed us to war
    -Moynihan moved to New York on September 10, 2001
    -How much of your memory of the day is actually real?
    -Mary Beard and other “the US had it coming” takes
    -Little Eichmanns and the root-causes Olympics
    -Did we win the War on Terror?
    -You get $5,000! And you get $5,000!
    -Midterm Madness and the two Dan Sullivans
    -Hunter Biden’s $LAPTOP speedrun to zero
    Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.
    Follow The Fifth Column
    YouTube: @wethefifthInstagram: @we.the.fifthX: @wethefifthTikTok: @wethefifthFacebook: @thefifthcolumn


    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
  • The Fifth Column

    The Department Formerly Known as Justice (w/ Devlin Barrett) MO 343

    09/09/2026 | 16 mins.
    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

    As well as Epstein, and the conspiracy theories that refuse to die
    -the most famous person from Troy, NY?
    -shut your whore mouth, Producer Jason
    -we actually do have a serious guest today
    -a radical re-purposing of the Justice Department
    -James Comey and the seashells
    -lowercase justice
    -Tom Homan and the $50,000 CAVA bag
    -Abscam and the lost art of government …
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About 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
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