The American Mind Podcast

Kamala Harris has chosen her VP, and he's right out of central casting--if you're shooting an episode of Ted Lasso featuring nationwide race riots. That's right, it's Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. It's unclear that this will do much to buttress support for Harris among the "white dudes" she claims to be courting, but she's at least avoided angering the pro-Hamas crowd by not picking Palestine criti...

The lame duck Biden Administration, in its last-ditch effort to leave a mark on US policy, is threatening to pack the Supreme Court. Is court packing a trial balloon for a future attempt by another Democrat administration, a winning policy issue, or a toothless threat? Meanwhile, another viral TikTok trend has been absorbed into mainstream Democrat rhetoric. After all, arguments are hard: why not...

It's official: Joe Biden has failed to resist the onslaught of pressure from the elites that are  really  in charge of far-left politics. Kamala Harris is now ascendant, throwing the 2024 election further into chaos. With veepstakes well underway, it seems party elites are already putting a bow on a nice little political coup--in other words, it's “our democracy in action.” Meanwhile, Trump’s camp...

Donald Trump was nearly assassinated last weekend, but for the few degrees of rotation that brought his head out of the bullet’s trajectory at the last possible second. The events surrounding the attempted assassination raise questions about everything from media integrity, to secret service incompetence, to… epistemology? But one thing is certain: Trump has become a world-historic figure. In the...

Biden’s debate performance was so horrid that Democrats have taken it as license to wonder openly who else could be their candidate. But is it too little too late? Trump has taken some notes and mellowed out—at least, after his fashion. The GOP, for its part, has adopted a new, slimmed-down and notably altered platform, having gone without one in 2020. The new one hedges on staple issues like abor...

The editors are off this week to celebrate the Fourth of July with family, friends, and fellow patriots. Happy 4th from everyone at TAM!   This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claremontinstitute.substack.com/subscribe

The Supreme Court ruled in Murthy v. Missouri, that the states of Missouri and Louisiana have no standing to challenge the Biden Administration’s meddling in online speech. So who does? Meanwhile, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has reached a plea deal with the US and is now a free man, leaving onlookers to wonder about details of the deal that—ironically—will probably remain secret. Finally...

Steve Bannon looks to be headed to prison in July as a result of a totally normal and not-at-all political conviction that will take him out of the picture for four of the election campaign's most important months. Nothing to see here! Meanwhile, the CIA's venture cutout In-Q-Tel seems to be gearing up to run its own disinformation campaign. The editors also dive into the antics of environmental a...

Hunter Biden has been found guilty of lying about his drug habits on an application to obtain a firearm—does it matter? Is this a triumph of impartial justice or a smokescreen to cover up other Biden crimes? Meanwhile, Israel has recovered some of its hostages from Hamas, which you would think is cause for celebration—but not for useful idiots in the Western media. And Europe may be heading rightw...

Trump’s enemies can’t seem to let go of their obsession with him, or keep themselves from living up to the worst things he says about them. New York DA Alvin Bragg obtained the felony conviction his supporters have been lusting after since he entered office, upending the legal system in the process. Meanwhile the media ecosystem has already been thoroughly corrupted, in part to protect Biden and O...

The Libertarian Party has rejected RFK in favor of a no-name candidate, Chase Oliver—but he’s a far cry from Libertarians of old. Meanwhile, the US military-built aid pier on Gaza’s coast was hit by harsh seas and will become an artificial reef if not repaired soon, shining a light on the degradation of the military’s infrastructure capabilities. Finally, old recognizes old as the Biden admin trot...

Scarlet Johansson is "shocked" and "angered" that even though she declined to voice ChatGPT 4.0, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seems to have plugged an imitation of her voice into the software. And you thought Her was fiction. Meanwhile, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has been confirmed dead after his Vietnam-era helicopter crashed, plunging Iran—already in a precarious political position—into an even mo...

The Boy Scouts abandoned manly virtue for DEI and participation medals long ago. This killed enrollment numbers, but the Scouts are doubling down, rebranding to “Scouting America” and advertising their willingness to accept boys and girls (and presumably enbies) just as they are. Meanwhile, Biden’s particular brand of senile venom was on full display when he crossed himself in the name of abortion...

Filled with apparent panic at Biden's low standing among "the youth," the Administration pulled out all the stops this week with a press conference featuring...Mark Hamill? Was that the best they could do? Maybe, as student riots and protests continue to emphasize Biden's rowdy kids problem--not that the Right is quite sure how to respond to campus antisemitism, either. Elsewhere in academia, the...

As the global intifada marshals its ranks across American campuses, bemused observers are wondering what exactly the protestors want, and whether they'll show up at the DNC this year. Meanwhile, a group called Catholic Answers created and then promptly "defrocked" an "Al Priest" who took a hard line on matters of sexuality but proved remarkably lax in the baptism department. Given that Al language...

A double-header in Congress this week as Mike Johnson's House passes a foreign aid package with help from Democrats, and the Senate confirms that China's ByteDance will have to sell TikTok to an American company or face exile from the app store. Meanwhile, NPR's new CEO is not only a sinister AWFL censorship enjoyer but a color revolutionary to boot. Is the Right heading off the West's demise at t...

Jeremy Carl, Claremont Senior Fellow and author of The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, joins the editors to discuss the book and the evidence it provides that white people have become objects of state-sanctioned hatred in America. Meanwhile, the movie Civil War is out, and there's not much more to it than the viral trailer. But there's some hilarious posturing on...

The numbers are in, and they aren’t good. Recent inflation exceeded expectations, and even that doesn’t fully capture the pain felt by everyday Americans. Meanwhile, much of the US bore witness to the primal wonder of the cosmos during Monday’s total eclipse. As “The Science” becomes increasingly shamanistic, the world becomes more and more enchanted—but what you make of it depends on where you st...

Liturgical calendar printer go brrrrrr as the Trans Day of Visibility falls this year on Easter Sunday--and Biden's Twitter handlers clearly had no trouble deciding which should win out. Meanwhile Amazon has abandoned its "Just Walk Out" program, which identified as an AI marvel but was actually just a bunch of guys in India watching you shop. And Soros DAs have come up with a new answer to the ho...

Turns out that which doesn't bankrupt Donald Trump makes him richer. Somehow. Truth Social has been valued at $8 billion, over $4 billion of which accrues to Trump's net worth--all while his astronomical bond is being reduced in New York. Meanwhile, as Hamas enjoyers try to overrun the Left, the Right is locked in its own disputes about how to handle antisemitism. Everyone's looking for the one bi...

As Trump goes through the legal wringer in New York, the state’s AG is gearing up to start seizing his properties to cover a mammoth $464 million bond. Meanwhile, the government nakedly colluded with Big Tech giants to censor people that didn’t espouse the approved COVID narrative; can the Supreme Court fix things, or does the problem go deeper? Plus: Christine Blasey Ford has crawled out of the m...

The House has passed a bill that will force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the platform within six months; otherwise, the service will be banned in the U.S. The bill has split the Right as well as the Left, raising questions about espionage, economics, and American sovereignty. But will shutting down the app really hurt China all that much? Meanwhile, old man yells at country a...

In perhaps the least surprising but most unusual Super Tuesday ever, or at least in living memory, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have been all but officially confirmed as the presidential contestants for 2024. Whose party hates their candidate the least? Nothing is now stopping us from finding out--not even the best efforts of the Colorado Supreme Court, whose expulsion of Trump from the ballot was o...

It’s a sad news week. Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the US Air Force, self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in D.C. this week in a misguided protest against the war in Gaza. Meanwhile, a young nursing student, Laken Riley, was murdered by an illegal immigrant in Georgia with multiple prior arrests. Plus: an unusual ruling out of Alabama has raised difficult and uncomfortable qu...

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in prison after multiple poisonings by Putin's operatives. In the States, this has prompted fewer sober reflections than fervid John Le Carré-style fantasies about domestic politics. Those politics are themselves increasingly sordid as Donald Trump grinds his way through one legal procedure after another, including a nakedly political judgment agai...