I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to the To the Contrary podcast. Welcome to the month of May, you know, after a month like we had in April. I am reminded of what Hunter S. Thompson said that when the going gets weird, the weird GoPro, words to live by. All right, what's going on here? This is not a parody for those of you who have not been paying attention. The Department of Justice actually criminally charged James Comey, the former head of the FBI, for taking a picture of

seashells on the beach. We can talk about that. Of course, this was the week in which the president

used an assassination attempt as a pretext to build his ballroom. And in the annals of tone-deaf

politics, then Trump pushes Lindsey Graham out through the curtain to say that not only do we need

to build the $400 million ballroom, but we need to stick the taxpayers with the tab. Pete

Heggzeth melts down in front of Congress, and this is also

not a parody. Amazon apparently in talks to reboot The Apprentice with Don Jr. So the

craziness continues.

All right, joining me on this weekend's edition of the To the Contrary podcast, our good friend, Susan Glasser, from The New Yorker.

Thanks for coming back, Susan, after an amazing week.

Charlie, I need to take a deep breath listening to that introduction. My goodness.

I don't even know where to start. What is the craziest story? Somebody asked me earlier this morning, what's the craziest thing that happened this week? And I actually was a hard time.

You know, because the indictment of Jim Comey for the 8647 seashell thing strikes me as, you know, at this at the same time, I mean, on the one hand, completely ludicrous but also sort of ominous and disgraceful.

Kind of a reminder that anybody that thought that, well, okay, when Pam Bondi, you Bondi goes away, you know, things will get better.

No, it was pretty much a guarantee that whoever replaced Pam Bondi would be worse.

But just talk to me a little bit about Todd Blanche auditioning for the job of Attorney General by coming up with one of the, I think, objectively stupidest indictments that I have ever heard of.

And I'm not, this is not just me, the legal community, including MAGA types, are going, seriously,

you are criminally charging somebody for posting 8647?

Explain this to me, Susan.

You know, when you've lost Jonathan Turley, right?

Yes.

It might be a niche comment for your listeners.

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