From Armageddon to Zionism — More Listener Questions [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Our mailbag runneth over! Unsurprisingly, we received so many excellent questions from subscribers for our most recent episode that we decided to answer even more of them. Once again religion seemed to be on the minds of listeners, and we take up charismatic Christians and the evolution of both the religious right and the Republican Party, as well as the role of Christian Zionism in U.S. policy toward Israel. But that's not all: other topics include leftist theory bros; Roy Cohn, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and the politics of sexual blackmail; Gore Vidal at 100, and more.Sources:Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970)Daniel G. Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation (2023)Wilson Carey McWilliams, "The Bible in the American Political Tradition," in Redeeming Democracy in America, ed. Patrick Deneen & Susan McWilliams (2011)The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932–1940, ed. Gershom Scholem (1992)Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, (1938)Phil Christman, Why Christians Should Be Leftists (2025)Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (2025)Nicholas von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn (1988)Christopher M. Elias, Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation (2021)Gore Vidal, United States: Essays 1952-1992 (1993)

It's been nearly a year since we asked our subscribers to send us questions for a mailbag episode—which they did, with remarkable thoughtfulness and intelligence, for our 100th episode back in September 2024. A lot has happened since then (to say the least), so we wanted to once again open up the mailbag and find out what was on the minds of Know Your Enemy listeners, who sent too many excellent questions for just one episode—so, if you like what you hear, consider subscribing on Patreon to listen our next bonus episode when we'll answer even more of them.In this round of listener questions, we take up how much Trump has kept his campaign promises, our favorite bourbons, the politics of Judaism, St. Augustine and original sin, novelists (gay and straight), and more!Sources and further reading:Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories (1945)— A Single Man (1964)Don Bachardy, Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood (1990)Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s (2009)— A Boy's Own Story (1982)— The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988)— The Farewell Symphony (1997)— The Married Man (2000)Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins (1971)— Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)Henri du Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (1962)Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (1949)— Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1968)Sam Adler-Bell, "The Father of All Secrets," The Baffler, Dec 2022. — "The Essential John le Carré," NYTimes, Jul 12, 2023.Henry Roth, Call It Sleep, (1930)Javier Marías, A Heart So White, (1995)Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai, (2000)Percival Everett, Erasure, (2001)...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Over July 4th weekend, the Department of Justice and FBI put out a memo essentially declaring "case closed" on the matter of Jeffrey Epstein, the well-connected sex criminal and pedophile who died (apparently) by suicide in federal custody in 2019. No more files. No more questions. He killed himself and that's that. This was quite the reversal from an administration stacked with figures — like FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino — who built their celebrity in MAGA circles by ginning up the Epstein conspiracy and demanding his case files be released. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi had said the the Epstein client list was "sitting on her desk for review." Now the White House says no such list exists. And Trump wants everyone to stop talking about it.As all this unfolded, a number of listeners wanted the KYE take on the Epstein story—so here it is. We recount some of the most salient details of the case for the uninitiated, then offer our takes on what we think really is going on, and, perhaps more importantly, assess how this might affect Trump's second term: how serious the breach between Trump and the MAGA movement is, the possible consequences of administration officials spinning stories about Hillary's emails (still!) instead of doing their actual jobs, the ongoing attacks on the basic functions of the federal government, Trump's spectacular, open corruption, and, as we all pay attention to the crisis of the day, what sending tens of billions in new funding to ICE will mean for our country.Sources:Emily Davies, Perry Stein, Jeremy Roebuck and Kadia Goba, "Trump fumes as Epstein scandal dominates headlines, overshadows agenda," Washington Post, Jul 27, 2025.Khadeeja Safdar & Joe Palazzolo, "Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump," Wall St. Journal, July 17, 2025Sadie Gurman, Annie Linskey, et al, "Justice Department Told Trump in May That His Name Is Among Many in the Epstein Files," Wall St. Journal, July 23, 2025Jacob Weindling, "FBI Deputy Director Takes Mental Health Day Over Trump’s Epstein Betrayal," Splinter, July 11, 2025Lauren-Brooke Eisen, "Budget Bill Massively Increases Funding for Immigration Detention," Brennan Center, July 3, 2025Julie Turkewitz, "Convicted Murderer Released by Trump From Venezuelan Prison Is Free in U.S." New York Times, July 24, 2025.Glenn Thrush & Julian E. Barnes, "Gabbard’s Attacks on Obama Put the Attorney General in a Tough Spot," New York Times, July 24, 2025Miriam Waldvogel, "Rogan Hits Patel Over Epstein Claims: 'Doesn’t Make Any Sense,'" The Hill, July 25, 2025

This episode from January 2025 has been un-paywalled for your summer enjoyment...A stock rhetorical trope on the right is to invoke ancient Rome when talking about American decline—often making direct comparisons between the Goth invaders and contemporary immigrants, obsessing over homosexuality and Rome's fall, and more. If their understanding of history isn't very serious, what should we make of these appeals? And are there any "lessons" we should learn from Roman history?There's no better time to take up such matters than while Matt is in Rome, and there was no one better for him to talk with about them than Mike Duncan, the prolific and brilliant history podcaster; he currently hosts the Revolutions podcast and, especially relevant for the purposes of this conversation, hosted the History of Rome podcast from 2007-2012, a project that led him to write The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic (2017). Matt and Mike discuss the use and abuse of history, how "norms" do and do not matter, the relationship between imperialist foreign policy and domestic politics, the perils of vast income inequality, then and now, and more.Sources:For quotes from conservatives about Roman decline: Reagan, Nixon, Buchanan, Vance (and Pete Navarro & Michael Anton)Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm(2017)— Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution (2021)

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.We don't do too many New York City-focused episodes on Know Your Enemy, but Zohran Mamdani's decisive win in the Democratic mayoral primary last month certainly warrants this one. The thirty-three year old democratic socialist, state assemblyman, and Muslim of Indian descent born in Uganda, ended up running away with it, defeating the runner-up, former governor and sex pest Andrew Cuomo, by over ten points—and, when all the ballots finally were counted, set a record by receiving the most votes of any candidate for mayor in a Democratic primary in the city's history.Our format in this episode is a little different. In the first half, your podcast co-hosts lay out the basics of Zohran's victory, from Zohran's biography to the final tallies to our impressions of the candidate and his message. In the second half, we're joined by veteran progressive campaign strategist Waleed Shahid to get more of an insider's take on Zohran's achievement: the campaign's stunningly effective turnout operation, which brought out young voters in droves; how he withstood the disgusting way he was attacked as an anti-semite for his protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza; the substance of his pitch to New Yorkers, and it's contrast with Cuomo's uninspiring, mostly negative campaign; the deranged Islamophobic attacks on Zohran since he became the Democratic nominee, and not only from the right; the role of current NYC comptroller and a progressive, Jewish candidate in the race, Brad Lander, who cross-endorsed Zohran, refused to punch left, and joyfully campaigned with Zohran in the final weeks leading up to the election; and more!Sources:Waleed Shahid, "How Broadcast Media Covered Zohran Mamdani's Win," Waleed's Substack, July 3, 2025Matthew Miles Goodrich, "It's...the Politics of No Translation," Something Different, July 2, 2025Sam Adler-Bell, "Can DSA Go the Distance?" Dissent, Fall 2022John Cassidy, "The Case for Zohranomics," The New Yorker, June 30, 2025David Wallace, "10 Ways of Making Sense of Zohran Mamdani’s Win," New York Times, July 2, 2025.Nicholas Fandos, Benjamin Oreskes, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, & Jeffery C. Mays, "How Zohran Mamdani Stunned New York and Won the Primary for Mayor," New York Times, July 1, 2025

This episode is one that Matt and Sam have been anticipating for years: after two-and-a-half decades of research and writing, Sam Tanehaus's authoritative biography of William F. Buckley, Jr.—youthful booster of America First, enfant terrible at Yale, CIA agent, founder of National Review, best-selling author, brilliant television host, and more—has blessedly arrived. Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America stretches to just under 900 pages of text, before you get to the endnotes and index, an appropriately epic biography of an overstuffed, consequential life, containing far more than could be covered in a single episode. This conversation focuses on the challenges of writing a biography of a man whose archives rivaled those found in presidential libraries; Tanenhaus's discovery of a newspaper the Buckley's owned in South Carolina that essentially was a mouthpiece for the White Citizens' Council, and the Southern roots of Buckley's "northern segregationist" politics; the influence of his oilman father, who fled the revolution in Mexico and instilled anti-communist politics, as well as the Catholic faith, in his children; Buckley's role in forging the post-war conservative movement, through National Review and his frenetic endeavors as a columnist and speaker; the controversies, disappointments, failures, and triumphs of his decades-long career; and more. Sources:Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (2025)— Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (1997)John Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (1988)Sam Adler-Bell, "A Practical Fanatic," The Idea Letters, June 26, 2025Alexander Chee, "Mr. and Mrs. B.," Longreads, June 18, 2025Christopher Owen, Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall, (2022)Listen again to these Know Your Enemy episodes for background on:Brent Bozell: "Keeping up with the Bozells," Feb 26, 2021Willmoore Kendall: "The Long Farewell to Majority Rule? (w/ Joshua Tait)," May 17, 2021Frank Meyer: "Frank Meyer, the Father of Fusionism," Nov 10, 2021Joan Didion: "Joan Didion, Conservative (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)," Jan 13, 2022William F. Buckley, Jr.: "Buckley for Mayor (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)," Aug 23, 2021— "The Conservative and the Convict (w/ Sarah Weinman)," May 9, 2022— "Consider the Cranks (w/ David Austin Walsh)," May 21, 2024...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!   

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Donald Trump's rise in U.S. politics over the past decade has been inextricable from his "America First" foreign policy and withering criticisms of the Iraq War, nation building, and both the neoconservatism that led the Republican Party to disaster during George W. Bush's presidency and the Washington establishment that still thought America could police the world. Trump's message of a restrained foreign policy and pledge to avoid getting dragged into forever wars especially seemed to resonate as he ran to take back the presidency in 2024—there was no end in sight to the war between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel was committing genocide in Gaza as Bibi Netanyahu walked all over an exhausted, only occasionally lucid Biden.But less than half a year into President Trump's second term and the failure negotiations with Iran, Israel bombed that country's nuclear facilities and assassinated their negotiators and nuclear scientists—and just over a week later, so did Trump when he ordered the dropping of massive "bunker buster" bombs to try to destroy the nuclear facilities Israel could not.In this episode, we once again talk to executive editor of The American Conservative, Curt Mills, a leading voice of the restraint and realism wing on the right, to try to understand the war within MAGA set off by the "Twelve Day War" with Iran. Why did Trump bomb Iran? Who was he listening to, or not, as he made that decision? How did the various factions within the MAGA movement respond, and what is the state of play currently in Trump World? What was Israel's role in all this? And how much longer will Trump tolerate Netanyahu's constant efforts to get the American military to fight in Israel's wars? We take up these questions, and more.Sources:Ian Ward, "The MAGA Split Over Israel," Politico, June 13, 2025Joe Gould, et al, "MAGA Largely Falls in Line on Trump’s Iran Strikes," Politico, June 21, 2025Katy Balls, "Trump is Taking Fire Over 'Forever Wars,' but MAGA’s Real Battle Awaits," The Times of London, June 22, 2025Jude Russo, "What Next?" The American Conservative, June 24, 2025Sohrab Ahmari, "Did Iran win the 12-day war?" Unherd, June 25, 2025

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Journalist Tammy Kim joins the pod to talk about the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles — and the raids that precipitated them.Further Reading:E Tammy Kim, "Immigration Protests Threaten to Boil Over in Los Angeles," The New Yorker, June 9, 2025.— "Inside the Activist Groups Resisting ICE," The New Yorker, Jun 13, 2025.

As the world falls apart — and we prep for our Buckley mega-episode with Sam Tanenhaus — we're unlocking this fun episode from late last year. Subscribe at Patreon.com/knowyourenemy to never miss an episode like this one. And please listen to Jesse's insane, hilarious, freakishly prescient (and fake) podcast Tech Talk. A palette cleanser for subscribers: we watched Reagan (2024), with our intrepid producer, Jesse Brenneman. Even better, the movie is based on the 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, by Paul Kengor — who just happens to have been Matt's close mentor as an undergraduate student. Reagan clocks in at over two hours and twenty minutes, and it's a wild, even fantastical ride that offers a revealing glimpse into the conservative psyche and a faithful rendition of the most hagiographic version of the Reagan mythology, especially his personal responsibility for ending the Cold War and finally putting the Soviet Union on the ash heap of history.Sources:Reagan (2024)Paul Kengor, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism(2006)— God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life(2004)— A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century(2017)Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (1999)

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.If you pay any attention at all to political news, it's been hard to avoid Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's recent bombshell of a book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, which offers behind-the-scenes reporting from the White House, halls of Congress, the campaign trail, and beyond about Joe Biden's health, mental and physical, and the efforts to conceal just how bad it had gotten from his Cabinet, Congress, and, most damningly, the American people. Much of the coverage of the book has focused on a handful of sensational examples—Biden supposedly not recognizing George Clooney at a fundraiser, or forgetting the names of staffers who'd worked for him for decades—but that's unfortunate. What's most shocking is the book's cumulative force, the sheer number of details that make it undoubtedly clear Biden was not fit to run again in 2024, or, for that matter, be President. As you won't be surprised to learn, Matt eagerly read Original Sin, and he and Sam discuss what the take-aways from the book should really be, what it says about the state of the Democratic Party, what it reveals about the media, and more.Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again (2025)Matthew Sitman, "The 'Weekend at Bernie's' Primary," Commonweal, Mar 3, 2020Sam Adler-Bell, "The Tragic Legacy of the Mourner-in-Chief," New York Magazine, Jan 14, 2025Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s & 70s (2009)— My Lives: A Memoir (2005)— A Boy's Own Story (1982)— The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988)— The Farewell Symphony (1997)— Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)