When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

Erin, Radha, and Loren make it back to the Show (where we never handle our own luggage), welcoming back all-star guest Kori Schake to talk NSC turnover, civil-military relations, and everything else that’s radical in a tubular kind of way.  We break down Kim Jong-Un’s super-secret trip to Beijing and note that when the Saudi Crown Prince showed up for his two week tour of America, not all welcomes were warm. Meanwhile, VA Secretary Shulkin is out (sometimes you win), the president’s personal doctor is in (sometimes you lose); and DoD tries to square the circle on the transgender ban (sometimes it rains). We substitute basketball for pop-culture, with predictable consequences. Oh, and when you speak of us, speak well.

• Loren DeJonge Schulman, “John Bolton thinks he can be tough. Can he also be fair?” Washington Post
• Matthew Waxman, “The John Bolton I Knew,” Lawfare
• Alex Ward, “Kim Jong Un’s secret visit to China, explained by an expert,” Vox
• Evan Osnos, “Why Kim Jong Un went to China,” New Yorker
• Dan De Luce, Robbie Gramer, “Congress Sours on Saudi Arabia Over Yemen,” Foreign Policy
• Dana Stuster, “What’s on Mohammed bin Salman’s Agenda?” Lawfare
• Ryan Hass, “What we know–and don’t–about the meeting between Kim Jon-un and Xi Jinping,” Brookings
• “Doubt cast on Saudi claims of Houthi missile interception,” Al Jazeera
• Jeffrey Lewis, “Patriot Missiles Are Made in America and Fail Everywhere,” Foreign Policy
• Phillip Carter, “Chaos Awaits Ronny Jackson at the VA,” Slate
• Leo Shane III, “What we’ve learned from David Shulkin’s post-firing media blitz,” Military Times
• Philip Rucker, “Trump’s Ohio speech to promote infrastructure ranges widely, from North Korea to ‘Roseanne,'” Washington Post