On this episode of a new ideologically idiosyncratic podcast, Maureen Tkacik of the American Prospectjoins co-hosts Clementine Ford, Vincenzo Barney, and Christian Lorentzen to discuss the life and crimes of the late Richard B. Cheney. Topics discussed include Joan Didion’s 2006 essay on Cheney and his status as her final and perhaps most sinister muse (beyond even Manson); the fleeting and febrile ‘innocence’ of America and its elected officials; 9/11; Al Qaeda; the Iraq War; lying; the Iran-Contra scandal; the problem with laws being their enactment and thus the inconvenience for high-ranking officials who must violate them; torture; surveillance; Cheney as hero of Benjamin Netanyahu; Stephen Miller as heir of Cheney; President Ford’s habit of kissing coed beauty contestants; the war on terror as model for the Trump administration’s domestic policy; plenary power; apprenticeship to power and the sublime fantasy of its limitlessness; fathers and daughters; Liz Cheney’s split from Trump after January 6; Mary Cheney’s Caribbean vacation at the time of 9/11; neoconservatives as chameleons in the slipstream between the Republican and Democratic parties; Bob Dole’s 93rd birthday lunch at the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland and one co-host’s failure to crash it; John McCain’s rescue of the Affordable Care Act as he was dying of brain cancer; former Ramparts editor David Horowitz and whether his offspring is a prominent venture capitalist; the twerpicide of Charlie Kirk; watching Candace Owens “for research”; Justice Antonin Scalia; the film Vice; the film Dick; Halliburton; the consensusphere; the shattering of the revolving door between governments and corporations; the Cheney/Lieberman debate; the Cheney/Edwards debate; William Kristol’s epic 2014 interview with Cheney; Kristol’s fondness for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and the perception of any idealist as a mark to be converted to liberal imperialism; Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s avoidance of the taint of Watergate; their figurative assassination of Vice President of Nelson Rockefeller, aka the Halloween Massacre, and elevation of Dole to the 1976 Ford ticket; Grover Norquist; the whereabouts of guest and co-hosts during the attacks of September 11, 2001; what a good idea morally to invade Iraq via Christopher Hitchens; what a bad idea it was actually to invade Iraq via reality; Tkacik’s childhood in China; one co-host’s case for invading China and another’s sincere wish of “good luck with that”; and much more. Thank you for listening.