Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson arrives to testify on a whistleblower complaint about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, on Capitol Hill in Washington, October 4, 2019. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

In the latest edition of our podcast, The McCarthy Report, Rich and I took a look at “Trump and the Inspectors General” — the latest 2020 campaign narrative Democrats are test-driving while the president’s management of the coronavirus pandemic dominates the scene and Joe Biden, despite a seemingly miraculous comeback as the putative Dem nominee, is stuck in his basement making rambling videos.


There were three IGs in the president’s crosshairs in recent days, and we discuss all of them: The Intelligence Community IG Michael Atkinson, who was enmeshed in the Ukraine kerfuffle (in particular, his handling of the so-called whistleblower complaint that was central to House Democrats’ impeachment of Trump); the unfortunate Christi Grimm, IG of the Health and Human Services Department, of all things, who somehow managed to become a central character in one of Trump’s jousts with the media during a Coronavirus Task Force presser (even if no one seemed to know what her name was); and Glenn Fine, a former IG and Democratic fave, whom the president, through some bureaucratic maneuvering, nudged out of a short-lived perch as auditor of the administration’s COVID-19 relief spending (i.e., the $2 trillion jackpot Congress approved in the CARES Act) (see also my column on the subject, here).

Specifically on the coronavirus, Rich and I also surveyed the draconian and politicized enforcement of social-distancing and shutdown restrictions, which was also the subject of my column over the weekend.


Finally, we covered the much misunderstood Supreme Court ruling regarding mail-in ballots in last week’s Wisconsin primary. (Spoiler: No, media-Democrat complex, the conservative justices are not trying to infect voters with COVID-19).

We hope you’ll tune in. As the podcast page details, you can subscribe to it on one of the streaming platforms, get each new broadcast automatically, and leave us a review — we’d love to get your feedback.