Welcome to Begg to Differ, the Bullworks Weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil

conversation across the political spectrum.

We range from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charen, syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bullwork, and I'm joined

by our regulars Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution in the Wall Street Journal,

Damon Linker, who writes the sub-stack newsletter notes from the middle ground and Linda Chavez

of the NIST Scan and Center.

Our special guest this week is Tom Nichols, contributor to the Atlantic and the star of

the HBO hit Succession.

You did have a cameo on Succession.

Yeah, apparently they decided to fill out a kind of pundit desk for the election night

episode and they did it with the last minute and they called a friend of mine who has

Hollywood connections and the producer said, hey, we need a kind of middle-aged,

curmudgeonly right-wing white guy.

And my pal said, I've got your man.

Of course, the way Succession's filmed, a lot of it is all the people at ATN are just talking

heads on a screen.

So I had all these crazy right-wing lines that I read, but I was a right-wing Republican

analyst named Ben Stove.

I don't know why they named him, but he sounded suspiciously like Carl Rove.

Yeah, exactly.

So I was there with my blue suit and my red tie and my flag pin.

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