Welcome to this weekend's episode of The Contrary Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Let's get right to it. Let's not dance around the fact that this was a truly ghastly week. And if you're feeling it, if you're feeling the weight of it, if you're feeling rattled by it, trust me, you're not alone. And we're going to dive into many of the reasons why I think that feeling is so widespread, not just here, but all around the country.

So we're actually going to be doing something a little bit different today. No guess, just me,

solo podcast, and your question. I'm going to be answering as many questions from readers and

listeners as I can. And frankly, I'll be answering some questions that I wish that I had been

asked, but haven't been asked yet.

So we're going to be diving into the murder in Minnesota, the future of ICE, the attack on

Venezuela, the rise of the new, what is it, the Don Row doctrine, which is basically Trump's

new imperial ambitions. Maybe we should call it the mafia imperium of Donald Trump.

We'll talk about the legacy of January 6th. We had the fifth anniversary. And of course, we saw

the historical revisionism there. Donald Trump proposing a $1.5 trillion defense budget.

Lots of questions about Barry Weiss and CBS, whether or not the

government's going to be shutting down again. Yes, I think it will. The ACA subsidies, the midterms.

Why I left MS now. Used to be called MSNBC. Lots of questions about all of that. And what's

going on with Elon Musk? I really hope we

talk about that because this was a week when a lot of masks were off. So we have a lot of ground

to cover and I really appreciate you joining me on a podcast after a truly extraordinarily,

I'm sorry, awful week. Thanks.

All right, where should we begin? Let's start with this question of why this week felt so

tough. Gary Graf, I thought, had a very interesting analysis in his newsletter. You know,

he talks about the physical weight of Trumpism.

You know, one of the constants that he hears in conversation and I hear in conversations

and you probably don't is that there's kind of this heaviness, this physical and

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