29 Comments

I'm sorry - I can't treat anyone as an honest broker who starts a discussion by saying, without qualification, that Trump is fundamentally a bad man and Biden is fundamentally a good one. How many times has Biden blatantly lied to the American public? I had to turn off the podcast at that point and that was only 16 minutes in!!!

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Shadi makes a statement that “at least Biden has a moral core” and “he clearly wants to do the right thing in his twilight years.” I am left wondering, at what point should willfully lying to the electorate cause us to question the validity of those statements? One lie, two, 1000?

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founding

A conversation about bias with overtly bias people. I can get that 2 nights a week at a Manhattan dinner party, had to stop my rowing work out and find something interesting.

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I really enjoy roundtable type of discussions. This is a great idea! The "Brown Rebellion", love that term and yes, that is correct. As a Hispanic myself, I feel it coming. I've yet to meet a Hispanic that likes what's going on whether it be in Miami, where I grew up, or in Houston, where I live now. We're done. We're tired. We're over it! #imnotataco #downwithlatinx :-)

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The comment regarding optics of black Muslim woman being kicked off committee is truly misplaced. What’s the difference if she is black and Muslim and wears a headscarf ? Is that a pass to have a seat on congressional committee? Weird

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This was a total miss for me. I dont think we need another episode. It felt too much like a legacy news production - from the format to the host's style to the painfully obvious bias of the host and your other guest (not Bari). It was a lot of standard MSM defense and apologies for Biden. It just wasnt interesting at all. That said, please bring back the TGIF podcast because that was really good. If you're going to try to make this roundtable thing work, you need a new host and you need to make sure to have people at the roundtable who can represent differing viewpoints. Bari was the only person on this that seemed to not be speaking from a partisan point of view.

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You lost me at Biden is a good man. Are you kidding ? I love Bari and all that she reports in but this is probably the most ridiculous thing I have heard. Biden is been caught in a zillion lies !! I had to turn this one off !!!!!!

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Can the Brookings Institution be considered a conspirator in the Russia hoax? A lot of key players were on their payroll, and all the while Talbott was pushing the lies from the top of the organization.

How about some accountability from them?

Being a leftist propagandist means never having to say you're sorry, just move on (.org).

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I found myself thinking of a different saying from the military - "Different spanks for different ranks". The classified document shenanigans affect far more people and this is a far bigger problem. We've had a lowly seaman who made the mistake of taking a picture with his cell phone of the command center on a nuclear submarine spending more than a year in jail. A middle level white house advisor takes a dozen documents from a secure facility home and gets public service, loss of job, and loss of security clearance. A high ranking Secretary of State exposed thousands of documents and is not charged. This is clearly different spanks for different ranks.

I've been through the training on secure practices (which coincidentally were set by a committee chaired by Hillary Clinton) and all of these are clear violations. I would be comfortable with the treatment given the mid-ranked staffers. They were all clear violations of clear laws. Perhaps if they were uniformly enforced the many ridiculous classification decisions might be more reasonable and more related to the actual security needs. Uniform treatment would be a step in the right direction.

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Liked much of the conversation though definitely not a fan of Shadi’s Marxist viewpoints! Bigger issue: Bari, have you thought about eliminating commercial breaks for those of us who subscribe? Not a huge issue but would be nice.

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I prefer Honestly when it’s just Bari and an interviewee. These roundtables are nowhere near as interesting. Plus, Bari’s voice is like honey. These two men? Not so much.

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I really enjoyed this. I look forward to future episodes of Roundtable.

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Jan 15, 2023·edited Jan 15, 2023

This conversation was the worst piece of slapped together content drivel I've heard or read from Common Sense or Honestly, and I've been an avid reader and subscriber since almost day one. Are Lake and Hamid employees? If so, pink slips are in order. Going off grid with the substack crew and others has freed us from the editorial clubhouses of the Times, New Yorker, Atlantic and the rest, about which I have this fantasy construction that they are filled with whining Lorenz's and Maddow's and so forth blubbering inanities at one another about their choice of underwear. Evidence free expectorations of ill-thought, ideological nonsense, like Hamid's on Omar, "It would be good to have a brown, headscarf wearing Muslim on the Intelligence Committee..." such as these make me think the star chamber of thought in Weiss-World is warping for the worse. (In the heat of writing here I misquote as I misremember the proper name for a Muslim headscarf, and if "Intelligence " is the actual committee from which she has been defenestrated. Whichever committee, whichever name would be an oxymoron, and she ill-suited to serve.) We are no better choosing policy makers based on religion or clothing than favored chewing tobacco and concealed carry pistol preferences (those are superficial proxies for related ideological beliefs, so what). Whatever, Lake was even worse, and other topics equally mishandled. I hope the newly named Free Press goes back to the production of fact based content and conversations/ open inquiry standing on the values of humanism and the enlightenment. I'll continue my subscription contingent on the fulfillment of that hope, but... wow, that sucked.

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I love love this round table format . I mostly agree with everyone above regarding subjective judgement statements like “ trump bad, Biden good “. It felt almost childish. Get David Sachs to participate on your round table panel.

I believe his centrist right viewpoint and unconventional opinions without personal judgements will resonate with people .

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I liked Bari's comments about a religious revival in 2023 and fully support her belief that people have replaced church and formal religion with politics, food and other obsessions. I'm eager to hear more form Bari on this topic.

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founding

So much anchoring bias in the panel and half truth-saying. Why not get Michele Goldberg and Thomas Friedman on the next episode. Pretty lame Bari.

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