Happy Friday Slatsters. Welcome back to another edition of Shadden Friday. My prester

Elena came up with this term for this segment, that it is our series where we find the fun

in the fundamental breakdown of democracy. I like that. So I feel like I'm going to use it

like every week. And of course, this is for Slate Plus members exclusively. So welcome in, have a seat, stay a while. I got to say, this week has been weird. All the weeks are weird. But this week is particularly weird because we have a war in Iran that's on this like simmer, like bizarre pause situation.

And then you've got Donald Trump's approval ratings plummeting.

And while all this is happening, things are not looking great for the president's cabinet.

Like really not at all.

You've got President Trump's labor secretary who decided to call it a day after she was mired down

in many scandals and pictures of her like blowing out birthday cake candles in the office.

Very strange.

And then there was a spicy article in the Atlantic that had a lot of people thinking

Cash Patel at the FBI might follow her out the door.

Here to talk about all of this with me is Jeet here from the nation. Hey,

Jeet. Hi. How you doing? Good, good. Great to be on the program. So you are Canadian,

which means that maybe you can laugh a little harder at all of our scandals. Yeah, I know. It's

actually been a very interesting experience being a Canadian writer about American

politics.

I like to think that it gives me a little bit of distance.

You know the old saying comedy is pain plus time?

So I like to think like physical distance provides the time.

So I think I'm well suited to this episode. Yeah, yeah. You can just have enough

remove. Yeah. You can, yeah, savor it a little bit more. Okay, I want to start out with

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