Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. I am Charlie Sykes. The war drums are beating. By the time you hear this, we might actually be at war with Iran.

We're all preparing for the spittle-inflicted state of the union address of rage from Donald Trump. The Epstein file story continues.

The former British ambassador of the United States is arrested the week after

the former Prince Andrew was arrested. I mean, in fact, the royal family says, hey, we're not

above the law, kind of cast a certain shadow on the United States. Meanwhile, Trump continues

to flail in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that slam dunks him on tariffs,

although he appears to double down. We have a lot to talk about because the pattern is full.

And joining me to make sense of all of this is Jamil Smith, who is a columnist for the Guardian U.S. edition and a faculty member, a lecturer, at the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

Jamil, thank you for joining us.

Thank you very much, Charlie. Glad to be here.

You know what I'm still upset about? I really wanted to really get into the American victory in the Olympics on hockey. And yet I can't get that picture of Cash Patel being the fan from hell going into the locker room. And, you know, somebody said to me, oh, Charlie, would you have gone into the locker room if you'd had a choice? Well, first of all, I've actually been in the locker rooms.

And there's sometimes when you realize, you know what, I didn't score any goals.

This is not my place, right?

Indeed.

And also, doesn't the FBI director have something more important to do?

Yes, it certainly does.

And if I were Savannah Guthrie and her family in particular

this morning, I would be enraged. The FBI director does have a job and it is not to fly to the Olympics

to go to exhibitions of his favorite sport. Whether or not he understands his duties, I think it's still an open question, despite all the things that he has had to attend. I think that's a settled question. Yeah. I think that's a settled question. I mean, he's more interested in the jet setting. I hate to dwell on this so many days afterwards, but, you know, the fact that they spent days denying, you know, reports from Ken Delanian that he was-setting on the tax paradigm to hang out at the Olympics. And, you know, they trashed him over and over again. And there, and there he is. And it's not just the Savannah Guthrie story. I mean, you have this drug war down in Mexico. We might be attacking Iran, which might lead to attacks on the homeland, there was, you know, an

attack on Mara Lago with a guy with a shotgun and a cannon. You would think that he would have

some sense of propriety, but he's cash effing Patel. So. Well, I think it's part and parcel of what

we've seen throughout this administration. They are not taking these jobs, which are ostensibly public service positions, right? They're not taking these jobs

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