TUESDAY, JULY 7, 2026
Who is Jeffrey Rosen? Inevitably, the initial segment on The Five began with the Communist / Commies rant.
The Fourth of July had come and gone. Yesterday, Dana Perino started the show by playing the relevant clips from the president's rain-drenched address:
PERINO (7/6/26): Hello, everyone. It's 5 o'clock in New York City and this is The Five.
President Trump, bringing the fight against Communism to America's 250th birthday celebrations...
PRESIDENT TRUMP (videotape): We don't want Communists in our country.
PRESIDENT TRUMP (videotape): Communism is a loser and it always will be. The Communist system is the opposite of the American system and the Communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not fight Communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We're not going to let it happen.
So said the president on July 4, in a rainy-day address. Now, it fell to the stars of The Five to move the agitprop along.
This being a summer holiday week, several of the program's top stars are off in the south of France. For that reason, a slightly second-string lineup was messaging the public this day:
The Five: Monday, July 6, 2026
Kennedy: former MTV VJ
Jessica Tarlov: resident punching bag
Joey Johnny Jones: co-host, The Big Weekend Show
Dana Perino: co-host, The Five
Tom Shillue: comedian
That was yesterday's lineup. After Perino played videotape of the president's statement, something designed to resemble a discussion ensued.
Before long, Perino threw to Shillue. Inevitably, he took the cake:
SHILLUE (7/6/26): If you look at the Trump speech, he uses the "Communism" thing a lot, but he goes on several levels.
So he says, "Oh, the Commies are coming. We beat them. We went to war against the Commies, and we would do it again, but we don't have to."
And then he would say, "Never worked, never will." See, that's the message that young people need to hear...
It's great the way he— You know, when he gives a speech, you can see the speech, and then you see the boldface [points]...then he has his asides. So he said his bit about Communism, then he said, "It never worked, it never will," and then he said, "Communism is for losers, we don't want it."
So it's like working on many different levels.
We don't understand that either. So many different levels!
Let's be fair. As best we can tell, no one but Shilluw stooped to talking about "the Commies" this day. But the messaging continued through the program's first half hour, with The MAGA Four all issuing C-bombs and with Tarlov being interrupted, as is the norm on this show.
This is no country for intelligent discourse! Or at least, that's the impression we may get when we watch this top-rated "cable news" TV program.
The viewership for The Five dwarfs that of corresponding programs on CNN and MS NOW. In our view, this helps explain the salience of Jeffrey Rosen's month-old essay for The Atlantic.
Rosen's essay appears beneath this dual headline. Who the heck is Jeffrey Rosen, and why is he saying these things?
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Can our institutions survive? Who the heck is Jeffrey Rosen, and why is he asking a question like that?
For today, we'll limit ourselves to your initial question. The leading authority starts its profile as shown:
Jeffrey Rosen (legal academic)
Jeffrey Rosen (born February 13, 1964) is an American legal scholar, journalist, and author.
Rosen is a law professor at The George Washington University, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the author of nine books, including New York Times bestsellers. He served as the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center from 2013 to 2026, where he is now CEO Emeritus. Rosen is a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He was a longtime legal affairs editor of The New Republic and was a staff writer for The New Yorker. He was also a writer for The New York Times Magazine and many other outlets.
[...]
Rosen attended the Dalton School, a private college preparatory school on New York City's Upper East Side, and graduated in 1982 as valedictorian. He then studied English literature and government at Harvard University, graduating in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude. He was subsequently a Marshall Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy, politics, and economics, from which he received a second bachelor's degree in 1988. He then attended the Yale Law School, where he served as a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1991.
He started as one of those "good grades" types, then seemed to mature from there. In our own experience—Attention, C-Span Viewers!—he's presented many worthwhile legal forums during his years at the National Constitution Center.
And now, this month-old essay appears.
As we noted yesterday, President Lincoln wanted to know if a nation like ours could hope to "long endure." In his essay for the Atlantic, Rosen seems to be saying this:
Maybe not!
Also, can our institutions survive? As you can guess from his the Atllantic's dual headline, Rosen seems to say the answer might be no.
Why in the world is he saying such things? And in what way might an agitprop pig-pile like The Five be part of the ongoing story?
We think the gentleman's aim is true. Tomorrow, we'll start to explain.
Tomorrow: Rosen lays out his key points