Jim Antle, the magazine executive editor, brings to life the pages of the Washington Examiner magazine in the show Inside Scoop. Each episode features exclusive insight from the article authors and expert analysis.
This week, Jim Antle discusses the legacy of William F. Buckley Jr., who would have turned 100 last month, highlighting his role as a gatekeeper for the modern American right. Buckley, through National Review and Firing Line, promoted conservative talent and excluded bigoted individuals.
“Buckley tried to keep these people out of his organizations and out of the pages of his publications,” Antle said. “Sometimes he had to expel people who were a little bit eccentric, perhaps fully crazy, and in many cases even a bit bigoted. Perhaps they were racist, perhaps they were anti semitic. He really functioned as a bit of a gatekeeper.”
Antle outlines Buckley’s evolution from an “America First” advocate to a Cold War hawk, later becoming skeptical of post-9/11 foreign policies. Antle contrasts Buckley’s era with today’s decentralized conservative media, noting the rise of social media influencers and the lack of centralized gatekeepers.
“Many media personalities and conservative social media influencers have become very influential,” Antle said. “And they don’t come through any of these traditional organizational processes or editorial processes, necessarily. But now the conservative movement is contending with some of those problems within its own media landscape, in that there are no gatekeepers for us anymore, and there’s really no limiting principle to who might become popular and whose arguments might win the day. Is this truly a free market of ideas that conservatives should celebrate, or do we run the risk of radicalization?”
Next in the show, Antle sits down with Editor-in-Chief, Hugo Gurdon, to discuss America’s interests in Ukraine’s fate. Gurdon writes in his letter from the editor, he doesn’t believe we will see Ukraine peace in our time.
“If one were betting one’s last dollar, this isn’t going to work out,” Gurdon said. “It still seems to me that the maximum that Ukraine can plausibly be expected to offer is less than the minimum that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is demanding. The truth is, Putin has not had sufficient pressure put on him to lessen his demands. He’s not paying the price, except in the cost of a lot of death of a lot of Russian soldiers. But historically, Russia has been willing to have its own people killed in high numbers in war, because they just see that as a cost of doing business.”
Gurdon does not think either are actually willing to do what it takes to end the war and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s strategy aims to avoid blame by appearing reasonable, hoping Putin will reject the deal.
“Zelensky, as everybody will remember, had a dreadful encounter with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the oval office earlier this year,” Gurdon recounted. “Very quickly thereafter Zelensky realized he had to come back, cap in hand, and praising the United States. What Zelensky is doing now is looking as though he’s absolutely on board, hoping it is Putin who walks away from the deal and says this is absolutely unacceptable. Putin doesn’t get to run the table, doesn’t get everything he wants, and you avoid Trump being furious with you.”
Is Zohran Mamdani-style socialism coming to a city near you? His popularity with the democratic socialist squad could mean the next “red wave” to wash over America may be a Marxist-controlled one. Daniel Ross Goodman writes an in-depth report on how New York is bracing for Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
INSIDE SCOOP: WHAT’S WRONG WITH BOTH PARTIES, LEFT ATTACKS AMERICA, RECLAIMING THE KENNEDY CENTER
“New York has survived bankruptcy scares, blackouts, the crack epidemic, 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and COVID-19,” Goodman writes. “It will survive Zohran Mamdani. But survival is not the same as flourishing.”
Tune in each week at washingtonexaminer.com and across all our social media platforms to go behind the headlines in the Washington Examiner’s magazine show, Inside Scoop.
