I read the news today. Oh boy. Hey, congratulations making it through the month of February. I'm

Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. It was a very, very long month, but

Februarys are always a long month, particularly for those of us who live in Wisconsin or any of you

who have been on the Northeast. And of course, we had to endure President Trump's

latest, endless state of the union address, which I believe has actually finally ended. We have

an awful lot to talk about this week, including the question, have we actually gone to war?

Are we about to go to war? Does anybody have any idea whatsoever?

Stay tuned. Oh, and to go through

all of this, to dive into this, our good friend, the professor, Tom Nichols, staff writer for the

Atlantic. Tom, it's been too long. Thanks for coming back on. Yeah. Hey, Charlie. It's really good to see you again.

Okay. I don't know where I don't know what to start today. There's just there's so much.

I want to talk about your piece about the crazy Trump ambassadors. The Atlantic has a rather

disturbing story about Jasmine Crockett that I want to get into. But here's a word of a cosmic question. What does it take these

days? And I am referring, of course, both to the Epstein files, but also to the House Republican

majority. Have you followed the story? The Tony Gonzalez story? Oh, yeah. Okay, for people who are

just catching up. And the context I'm trying to put this in is there there was once a time

when if you were a member of Congress and it turned out that you had a lurid sexual affair

with an aide who then committed suicide by setting herself on fire, that would be a big deal.

That that would be the kind of thing that members of your own caucus would say you need to go, you need to resign, you need to drop out of your race for reelection.

I'm talking about Tony Gonzalez, Republican congressman from Texas.

Mike Johnson kind of basically says, yeah, you know, nothing much to see there.

They're not pushing him out.

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