Firehose #181: Peak Athletic Performance

Also: See you paying subscribers at noon ET for Second Sunday

Ah, the human drama of athletic competition! Between the cocktastic Winter Olympics, plus Super Sunday, World Baseball Classic rosters being announced, and watching the patriotic hell out of Miracle: The Boys of ’80, in this house we are watching sportsball with even more unapologetic fervor than Stephen Miller watches arriving flights from Johannesburg. Though we will set aside a couple of hours for paying subscribers on tomorrow’s Second Sunday, beginning at noon ET.

* The above image, which rewards careful scrutiny, is hanging on my home-office wall, thanks to the ministrations of Fifdom Souvenir Artist in Non-Residence Nika Scothorne, who brought hard copies to The Reason Roundtable live show Wednesday night at the D.C. Improv. Was a treat to drink with 15-20 of you Fif’ freaks afterward, argue about Austrian institutionalism (whatever that is), peruse comparative bar-charts of military-branch gayness, that kind of thing. We will definitely be getting down to your bizarre city as a unit sooner rather than later. Here’s what the rest of you missed, including some talk of the Super Bowl, Chuck Kosterman (our guest on Members Only #296), and of course, stadium subsidies:

* If you couldn’t get enough of Gen X Chuck, he was also recently seen talkin’ football with sporto Ethan Strauss (#185, #333, #383, M.O. #151, #408), plus broadcaster extraordinaire Mike Pesca (#343, #418, #467). And … what the heck, here’s Pesca on Strauss!

* Feel like you’re not hearing enough about the (so-called) Epstein Files? Well, on his Report Friday, Moynihan brought on Arick Fudali, attorney for 11 alleged victims of the New York financier, to explain how they felt about the latest document dump:

* Freedom of Information Act fanatic Jason Leopold (M.O. #287) also deepened our Epstein understanding this week with a Bloomberg piece headlined, “Epstein Files Review Was Totally Chaotic.” Sample:

What’s really interesting is the flurry of email queries prosecutors and FBI personnel received during their review of the files. For example, on March 11, 2025 an email was sent that said FBI Director Kash Patel wanted to know, among other things, “if there are any images of individuals on any videos which should be considered for prosecution?”

The lengthy response sent two weeks later said, in part, that agents and prosecutors reviewed videos and photographs for “evidence of a crime” but didn’t find “any evidence that anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell participated in the sexual abuse of victims in this case.” (A separate email said more than 1 million videos and photographs were “extracted from Epstein’s devices.”)

* Coming out hard in Moynihan’s direction on the Epstein release was my Reason colleague Robby Soave (#332, #517), with a piece titled “The Epstein Files Are Becoming a Witch Hunt.” Sample:

[T]he Epstein files do not contain a great deal of new evidence of sex crimes among Epstein’s friends, associates, and acquaintances. Yet everyone whose name appears in the Epstein files is now being treated like an exposed sex criminal. This includes hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, who appears in a photo alongside three young people, possibly on Epstein’s island. On X, high-follower accounts cited the photo as evidence that Dubin had sexually assaulted those children, who were probably procured for him by Epstein.

Except that’s not the case at all. Those are Dubin’s own kids!

* Also appearing on The Moynihan Report this week was Jason Zengerle, author of the new book Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind:

* Tucker’s friend Megyn Kelly (#526) this week interviewed Vice President and Olympics booing-recipient J.D. Vance, who, we learned when appearing at Megyn’s live event in November, is liked very much by her audience. The two discussed, per episode description, “the most absurd parts of Washington DC, the ego of politicians, Trump Derangement Syndrome of the media, the huge drop in the murder rate and crime in America, the pace of deportations, Don Lemon‘s arrest, Tom Homan‘s new tactics in Minnesota, the challenge of deporting all illegal migrants, what happens if the GOP loses the House in the midterms, how hating Trump and the right unifies Democrats, what the Trump administration does next in Iran, why they will avoid another Middle East ‘quagmire,’ what happens next with Greenland, Europe’s decline and a ‘new world order,’ efforts to fix election integrity, the GOP’s messaging problem about the economy and affordability, how his family is adjusting to life in DC, and more.”

* More Roundtable: Monday’s regular episode, about the government shutdown, Texas special elections, the Fed chair nomination of Kevin Warsh, Don Lemon’s indictment, and A.I. agonistes, produced two Welchian miniclips: about Sen. Rand Paul (#509), and how Donald Trump mistook his electoral victory as a mandate for hyper-aggressive immigration enforcement in the interior.

* On the Don Lemon arrest (and, let’s face it, in so many other controversial legal cases besides), it’s always worthwhile to read my careful and meticulous Reason colleague Jacob Sullum: “Lemon was unabashedly sympathetic to the protesters, their cause, and their illegal tactics. Lemon’s own footage suggests he himself may have been guilty of trespassing. The indictment’s allegations nevertheless fall short of making the case that his conduct met the elements of the two federal charges he faces.”

* More from me: Though it’s the kind of thing that 12 people care about anymore, I reacted negatively to Trump explicitly endorsing two foreign candidates for office in allied democracies; then, when people were all But why??? (I mean, when not accusing me of TDS or attempting to win the gold medal for shrugging), I wrote out my reasons at greater length.

* Free subscribers to The Fifth Column usually get the first 15 or so minutes of Members Only episodes, before the paywall comes crashing down. But! Subscribers to our (also free!) YouTube channel sometimes get bigger clips from behind said paywall. Such as this discussion of the Melania doc from M.O. #299.

* Comment of the Week comes from Rebecca Hunter:

One of our neighbors was on the latest Epstein dump, and an angry mob showed up to his house on Saturday inflicting screams, chants, whistles and drums on the entire neighborhood- we couldn’t take our dogs out to walk, kids couldn’t go out to play in their yards, and a peaceful afternoon was ruined. I agree with Moynihan- people are innocent until proven guilty.

* And now it’s time for … Producer Jason’s Video Vault!

If you try to actually sit through the Oscars, you probably realize when they read off the nominees for categories like Best Documentary Short Film that you’re not as up on the movies as you might think. But this year you can go in having watched at least one of the contenders, simply by firing up HBO Max and searching for Armed Only With A Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud. Clocking in at 39 minutes, it is a deeply moving portrait of an American journalist and documentary filmmaker who was killed in Ukraine in March of 2022—not while on the front lines, but in the suburbs of Kyiv while trying to follow a story about the flow of refugees caused by the Russian invasion.

Made by Brent’s younger brother and filmmaking partner Craig Renaud, the film is, to be honest, incredibly uncomfortable to sit through. While a loving tribute to a beautiful person and the Renaud brothers’ humanistic body of work, it is also a painfully intimate record of Craig dealing with the death of his brother in real time, the only way he knows how—by picking up a camera as he heads to Ukraine to retrieve his brother’s body. It’s heart-wrenching, but it is also the most life-affirming film I’ve seen in years. Trailer:

Walkoff music should just merge with my year-end Spotify playlisting, shouldn’t it? RIP to the minor league pitcher, Navy aerial photographer, graphic design entrepreneur, and Fifth Dimension singer/songwriter Lamonte McLemore: