Episode Details

Jon Herold admits up front that it's a slow news day, so he hands the wheel to the chat and still finds plenty to chew on. He starts with Chris Paul's new Illusion series, reading from "The Web of Infinite Wrongness" on the two-party illusion and the uniparty, and argues the movement keeps cheering for one side of a uniparty it says it doesn't believe in. When chat insists you need a solution before naming a problem, Jon answers with a basement-flooding plumbing metaphor he's pretty proud of. Then it's a Washington Post story about anonymous national security officials quietly advising states on possible Trump interference in the midterms, which Jon reads as a narrative play built on unnamed sources. He also casts doubt on a viral Illinois voter's claim that her ballot screen discouraged conservative picks, and checks out North Korea's proof-of-life photos of Kim Jong-un. Later he plays Elissa Slotkin's comments about deterring young people from working for Trump, covers the DOJ grand jury subpoenas to Larry Krasner's Philadelphia DA office, and asks what Trump really means by spending $400 million on the Republican Party.