Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a special series of discussions about US politics and the Trump presidency, or as we journalists call it, the gift that keeps on giving.

I'm Freddie Gray. I'm deputy editor of the spectator. I'm joined today by Jacob Harbrun, who is editor of the national interest and also author of They

They knew they were right, The Rise of the Neocons.

Jacob, it's been another crazy week in Trumpland, or what we used to call America.

I thought that the story of the week, I think everybody thought the story of week was going to be Comey and his new book,

which was going to be a sensational tell-all all about the president.

There was a lot of media hype around it.

But then it sort of got blown out the water. Why did that happen?

Well, the fact is that Comey didn't really offer anything beyond a few salacious details and some snarky comments about the white moons under Trump's eyes and

the size of his hands. It was amusing to read that Trump himself brought up the famous

peatap that was allegedly filmed in Moscow and asked Comey to investigate him to exonerate him,

and Comey had to point out that this actually might read more suspicion.

It would look peculiar for the FBI to be investigating such a circumstance.

And I think Comey's book had had a lot of nuggets and so forth, but it didn't deal a body blow to Trump.

But again, it's unclear what would constitute a body blow at least to Trump's followers,

because American politics has become so tribal.

If you look at, for example, House Speaker Paul Ryan,

who just said he would step down,

he was always opposed to deficits,

but now he's run up the biggest deficits of all.

So it's hard to know what any of these politicians really stand for.

And, of course, the other big figure is the other person starting to see is Cohen,

...