The COMMENTARY podcast performs some rank punditry, dissecting the polls that look rather abysmal for Donald Trump and the Senate Republican majority. Also, the hosts discuss how the pandemic’s models deceived policymakers, and how disinclined they and the press appear to be to confront that fact.

Hollywood veteran Rob Long joins the program to discuss his latest piece in the new issue of COMMENTARY, “How Right-Wing Characters Become Sitcom Sensations.” Also, a didactic discussion about the promise and peril of self-medicating with Hydroxychloroquine.

The scandalous allegations against Joe Biden are not going away, and his ability to defuse the issue is in doubt. But the big question is: Will anyone care about it in November? Also, the podcast debates wonder whether Americans ever really police conspiracy theories when those theories reinforce their preferred biases.

With economic activity likely in the doldrums for some time and the state wielding virtually unprecedented power to suppress individual liberty, some advocates of a nationalist “common good” philosophy are chafing. But we have to ask: Isn’t this what promoting “the common good” looks like?

Reflecting on the unmasking scandal and the railroading of Michael Flynn by the Justice Department, the COMMENTARY podcast wonders what Barack Obama could have been thinking at the time? Were the last administration’s concerns noble, or at least understandable, but their execution terribly negligent? Or was there something more nefarious at work? Also, we respond to listener emails.

Has the state of lockdown become a strategy for coping with the pandemic in the absence of any real substantive guidance from public officials? The COMMENTARY podcast discusses the backlash against those who question lockdown orthodoxy and asks if those voices have a compelling and rational point? Also, a bit of background on Noah Rothman.

The COMMENTARY podcast gets its morose on with a review of the increasing stress on the nation’s critical supply chain. With shortages persisting and the threat to the food supply becoming urgent, an honest conversation about the trade-offs associated with the lockdown is coming, whether we like it or not. That, and some background on the podcast’s man of mystery, Abe Greenwald.

Joe Biden is finally made to account for his side of the story today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” What kind of impact will the controversy involving allegations of sexual assault involving a Senate staffer have on the media landscape, to say nothing of the 2020 race?

Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake joins the hosts of the COMMENTARY podcast to give New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio a thorough reaming over his decision to threaten and single out the city’s Jewish community. That, and the exculpation of Trump’s former NSA Michael Flynn, on an exciting new episode.

Author and columnist Andrew Ferguson is back to talk about America in isolation. The cracks in the nation’s resolve to remain locked down in perpetuity are beginning to show, leading to blowback from the busiest of the nation’s busybodies. Do the politicians who resorted to extreme measures to prevent an outbreak follow the logic of “flatten the curve” and ease restrictions despite a prolonged plateau of COVID-19 cases in American hospitals?