Greeting folks. Sending along a recording of my live conversation this afternoon with Stuart Stevens of Lincoln Square Media. We get together every month or so and I always really look forward to our conversations. This one is a particularly punchy and meaty session - get to it when you can. A recording is above and you can find a full transcript here.
While we dive into the topics and themes of my three most recent essays:
we spend the bulk of the time discussing Stuart’s most recent essay on Lincoln Square, None Dare Call It Treason: The Republican Party Is Compromised. An excerpt:
The Republican Party is compromised and is now a functional asset of the Russian Federation.
Sound harsh? It’s a simple fact based on indisputable evidence.
The definition of compromised in the political sphere is the inability to act on your beliefs due to external pressure. There are very few United States Republican Senators who agree with Donald Trump’s position that Ukraine started a war it can’t win. If a Democratic president asserted such an obvious falsehood, these Republican Senators would be outraged and label the Democratic president a fool and a traitor.
There are very few Republican Senators who do not believe that American security and prosperity will be greatly weakened if Ukraine does not defeat the Russian invasion in a decisive and clear victory. They understand that a Russian victory in Ukraine is not an end goal of Russia but the next step in an ongoing Russian war against the West.
These Republican Senators offer reassuring platitudes. Shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, South Carolina Senator Lyndsey Graham pledged he would not be part of an appeasement movement that would lead to further conflict.” Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said last summer, “Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has been given every chance to negotiate. Instead, he has chosen to further his terror campaign against the Ukrainian people.”
But here we are at the end of November 2025, and it is clear that the Trump Administration is actively conspiring with Russia to accelerate a Russian victory.
The leaked conversation between the buffoonish Steve Wickoff, Trump’s “Special Envoy,” and Russian Yuri Ushakov is the sort of evidence a prosecutor would consider a classic smoking gun in an espionage case against Wickoff. In the call, Wickoff, who has financial ties to Russia going back for decades, coaches the Russians on the most effective tactics to undermine American support for Ukraine. This is the Steve Wickoff who declares, “The Russian Federation has always wanted peace.”
This is far more damming than the infamous “Zimmerman Telegraph” of 1917, in which the German Ambassador offered support to Mexico in an effort to “reconquer” American territory it had lost while committing to unrestricted submarine warfare against American ships. When revealed, the Zimmermann Telegram became an international scandal that helped galvanize American support for entering the war against Germany.
And what have Republicans done in reaction to this latest proof that Donald Trump supports Vladimir Putin’s war of genocide against Ukraine? Nothing. They view their role not as a branch of the government with equal power to the Presidency but as editorial writers whose ability to influence events is limited to words, not actions.
As we discuss while pleased that Congress has started to move against Trump’s lawless and ill-conceived actions in the Caribbean, we agree that Congressional leaders should be challenging the historically corrupt Trump-Witkoff-Vance selling out of Ukraine far more aggressively - for it is far more important for our national security and our future.
I close our conversation with a reminder that we have three main jobs this December:
Win the TN-7 and Miami elections
Forcefully challenge Trump’s malevolent agenda - his deepening alliance with Putin, his ridiculous illegal, war in Caribbean, his escalating corruption, his ongoing cover up of the Epstein crimes, his assault on our health care, and his terrible tariffs
Make Trump defend his corrupt, dangerous, lawless advisors - Hegseth, Noem, Witkoff, Bondi, Kennedy, Vought, Sacks
Enjoy this conversation with one of the great political strategists of our time and keep working hard everyone. We need to make December a good one for democracy here and around the world - Simon
