Welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. I've taken some time off this summer.

I wouldn't turn it over. The Monday podcast, a Will Salatan and Amanda Carpenter, you know,

once again, thank you for filling in. But we are back. It is after Labor Day. It is after the

anniversary of 9-11. And so feels like we are re-engaging with the dysfunctional world. Donald Trump is

mysteriously in Washington, DC this morning. I'm not going to spend any time speculating about what

that's about, what that is about. Maggie Habermann's new book is leaking out, suggesting the Trump told

folks that he would not be leaving the White House. He was just going to stay there. Meanwhile, the

Republicans appear to be getting a little bit of cold feet on pushing anti-abortion measures. There

is a new poll out showing that maybe the talk about semi-fascism is not necessarily overblown.

And of course, we have this lightning counteroffensive in Ukraine. So first of all,

welcome back Will or I guess, you know, hey, it's good to be back with you, Will.

Charlie, we totally missed you. You know, you know, we in your absence, we had a terrible,

terrible shortage of exploatives. I don't think Amanda and I used a single exploitive in the entire

time. But now we got you back. Is this the new normal? Are you saying that that is what I bring to

the table here? That and a thousand other things. By the way, congratulations. I saw the photos of

your beautiful new grandchild and you were at a family wedding. It sounds like you had a wonderful

and eventful summer. We did. It was a wonderful and eventful summer and I had very high hopes for

how the summer would play out. And they actually weirdly enough exceeded all my expectations. So it

was really wonderful. And you know, grandbaby is doing great. French grandkids are back in Angoulem

and starting school today. So they actually missed a little bit of school. But I think they're

tripped to Washington DC and to Mekwan, Wisconsin was educational. And of course, married off another

son. So Will, where should we start to? How can we, you know, start anywhere else? Then what is going

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