Know Your Enemy - Has Trump 2.0 Been a Success So Far? — And Other Questions

Matt and Sam answer listener questions about Trump 2.0, Judaism and Catholicism, bourbon, literature, and more.

Duration: 1h 10m
Broadcast on: 04 Aug 2025
Audio Format: other

It's been nearly a year since we asked our subscribers to send us questions for a mailbag episode—which they did, with remarkable thoughtfulness and intelligence, for our 100th episode back in September 2024. A lot has happened since then (to say the least), so we wanted to once again open up the mailbag and find out what was on the minds of Know Your Enemy listeners, who sent too many excellent questions for just one episode—so, if you like what you hear, consider subscribing on Patreon to listen our next bonus episode when we'll answer even more of them.

In this round of listener questions, we take up how much Trump has kept his campaign promises, our favorite bourbons, the politics of Judaism, St. Augustine and original sin, novelists (gay and straight), and more!

Sources and further reading:

Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories (1945)

— A Single Man (1964)

Don Bachardy, Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood (1990)

Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s (2009)

— A Boy's Own Story (1982)

— The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988)

— The Farewell Symphony (1997)

— The Married Man (2000)

Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins (1971)

— Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

Henri du Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (1962)

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (1949)

— Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1968)

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Father of All Secrets," The Baffler, Dec 2022.

— "The Essential John le Carré," NYTimes, Jul 12, 2023.

Henry Roth, Call It Sleep, (1930)

Javier Marías, A Heart So White, (1995)

Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai, (2000)

Percival Everett, Erasure, (2001)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our bonus episodes!

Alright, welcome listeners to episode 117 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sippman, your podcast co-host, and I'm here as always with my great friend Sam at their bell. Hey, Sam. Hi, Matt. We got a good one in store. At least, fun for us. Yeah, it's fun for us, but the listener response, the enthusiasm behind it, and the wave of questions we received for this mailbag episode, I'm always impressed by how earnestly and enthusiastically and intelligently our listeners ask us questions. It's amazing. And if this is the first you're hearing about it, it is because at this point, you know, we have enough subscribers that we kind of reserve the mailbag question asking as a perk for them. Yeah, on Patreon. Yes. On Patreon. So, if you're not subscribed on Patreon, you're missing the chance to ask us questions for these mailbag episodes. Exactly, if the bonus episodes and the dissent digital subscription and the discord aren't enough enticement, you do get a privileged place in asking mailbag episode questions. I mean, it's crazy. We put this out two days ago. We have like 150 responses, and every single one of the questions is like more sophisticated than, you know, than like the topic ideas we come up with for the podcast on our own. Yes. Why don't we just move on to some housekeeping items? As always, we're grateful to our partners at Descent. And one thing they do as the podcast sponsor is they provide a free digital subscription to Descent if you subscribe on our Patreon at patreon.com/knowyourenemy for $10 a month or more. Also, as I just mentioned, at that level, $10 a month or more, you get access to the Know Your Enemy Discord, and of course, as always, for $5 a month, you get access to all of our bonus episodes, of which there's been some great ones recently. Well, as always, you want to thank Jesse Brennanman, our intrepid producer, who is back behind the boards for this episode. Thank God. And we want to thank Will Epstein, who does the music for the podcast, speaking of which Matt, you and me and Will, as well as our partners and a bunch of other friends, are going to a concert tomorrow. Yes, we're recording this Thursday, July 31st, which around my house sort of late has been known as the day before we get to see Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Wilco, and Lucinda Williams at the Outlaw tour that's coming through Jones Beach Theatre tomorrow. I don't remember if I told you this, but when I was texting with Hannah about the show that we're going to go to, she said to some of our other friends around the chain, "I see Bob Dylan more than I see my actual friends." Just one of the perks of being my girlfriend. Yes. This comes only a week after we saw the drive by truckers. God, drive by truckers were so good.

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Matt and Sam answer listener questions about Trump 2.0, Judaism and Catholicism, bourbon, literature, and more.