Here's Episode 83 of the podcast where Fareed Zakaria rambles unchallenged about the supposedly familiarity between Trump and Russia despite the fact that the Trump administration has sanctioned Russia after firing upon it's ally, Syria, multiple times. Oh yeah, he did an entire podcast on it with a writer from The Washington Post who denies the obvious contradiction evident in the Syrian airstrikes and yet, ironically, is the same writer who perpetuated the myth of a Syrian Rebellion by advocated regime change in the region based on phony Islamist propaganda videos of which she has worse than no evidence is even a thing. Just like this Russian hacker hoax! Where's the evidence? All we have is hearsay from the same people who sold us the war in Iraq (WMDs anyone?) and, oh hey, CNN admitting the story is fake.

Here's Episode 81 of the podcast where Sarah Haider states, similarly unchallenged, "I don't think his followers have many principals" and that even were Trump to switch his stance on Islam "the people that are still with him would follow him there as well". That's awful charitable. Gosh, what sort of principals should we be aspiring to? I guess there's not much merit in the sort of president who, in their first day in office, with their first executive order, immediately sets to work on one of their core campaign promises by relaxing the tax burden associated with the grossly illiberal Obamacare federal mandate Democrats never seem to talk about? And now he has a Libertarian overseeing the new state healthcare reform bill? Liberty? Freedom from government overreach? I don't see any point to that. No, clearly rolling back the federal government's ability to dictate special bathroom privileges -I MEAN- protections is "an attack on LGBT" and "a lack of empathy". Clearly Trump is just evil, which is why the vast majority of ensuing violence has been from leftists "defending themselves" from "Nazis" like this guy. Thank god Antifa and BlackLivesMatter was there to stop this mad lunatic.

And that's no unfounded fear either, Sam himself has described Trump on more than one occasion as "terrifying", and here's two-time podcast guest David Frum stoking the flames with such articles as "How To Build An Autocracy". Make no mistake though, David Frum should know what makes a good totalitarian government, here's him on Twitter defending the unfailingly dishonest CNN's public blackmail of a Reddit user for sharing an animated .gif with the president and approximating the equivalent of "if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear". Excellent. Good to have another news outlet to mark off on the increasingly long list of disreputable corporate media companies.

I'd link a video clip of Christopher Hitchens agonizing over how trash The New York Times was even in the 90s, but I can't find it right now and I really can't be asked at the moment to keep linking shit.

TL;DR

I like Sam. I own The Moral Landscape and I listened to every podcast episode he put out up until his second with David Frum. Over 3 hours of arguing with Omer Aziz was more tolerable than even 10 minutes of Sam trying to spell out, for the umpteenth time, why he doesn't like Trump. That's fine. He doesn't have to like Trump, I don't like Trump either, but I like hyperbolic character assassinations even less. I've spent many more hours since the election debating the merits of his individual policies than Sam's spent on-air, confirming his own biases with propagandists and repeating this baseless assertion that Trump defenders are little more than partisan internet trolls. I'm not right-wing. I'm not left-wing either. But I am libertarian and Trump's the closest we've got to one of those in a long time.

Less taxes.

Less spending.

Less bureaucracy.

Smaller government.

Liberty. Let's talk about policies, not people. You know the quote:

Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People

I am all for a podcast in which Sam explores and debates political ideologies, but that's not this. This is spreading misinformation and perpetuating a false narrative intended to undermine enemies of national corporations. ENOUGH. You want to talk to somebody get Styxhexenhammer666 or Sargon of Akkad on the podcast. They don't have your fancy laundry list of academic credentials or "journalism" awards, but they're way the hell more informed than most of people weighing in on political matters here.

I just want the old podcast back. :(