The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been as unstable as the man himself, shifting quickly frompushes for restraint to escalating wars in the Middle East. This volatility is a function not just ofTrump’s personality but the contradictions and competing factions that are gathered under theterm America First, as well as the continued power of the foreign policy establishment thatTrump has claimed he defeated but which maintains a strong capacity to shape policy. To talkabout Trump’s foreign policy and the factional battles that have bedevilled his administration, Ispoke to Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. In particular we take up the attacks on Elbridge Colby, the under-secretary of defense forpolicy. Colby was the subject of a Politico hatchet job which claimed he was running a rogueforeign policy. Justin critiqued this analysis here.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Writing in The Nation, Pamela Alma Weymouth drew a contrast between Kay Graham, her lategrandmother who was publisher of The Washington Post when it fought Richard Nixon’sadministration on The Pentagon Papers and Watergate, with the current owner of thenewspaper, Jeff Bezos. Unlike Graham, Bezos has been all too willing to bend the knee to acorrupt president. I talked to Pamela about Bezos and other contemporary corporate leaderswho are undermining journalistic integrity at a moment when it is needed more than ever.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Over the last decade, centrist Democrats have diligent courted Never Trump Republicans, hoping that this cohort could help create a new consensus politics to oppose the MAGA coalition. From the start, this strategy seemed flawed: after all, this faction is very small and also carries a lot of baggage. In particular, neo-conservatives such as William Kristol and David Frum, now Never Trump stalwarts, were responsible for two of the biggest foreign policy disasters in American history, George W. Bush’s War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq.Have this Never Trump conservatives learned from history? Alas, as my colleague David Klion points out in a recent column, many of them haven’t. Kristol and Frum are now cheerleading the attack on Iran (although to be fair their former ally Robert Kagan is more skeptical). I talked to David about the neocons and why they remain a pernicious force in American politics even if they vote against Trump. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have reported that Elon Musk, currently trying to mend a feud with his quondam political ally Donald Trump, is a heavy user of mind alternating substances ranging from Ketamine to LSD to mushrooms to cocaine. While this story has been treated as one about the foibles of one increasingly erratic powerful man, it has wider implications. The financial journalist Jacob Silverman, author of an upcoming book about Musk, notes that there is a wider drug culture in Silicon Valley, rooted in the supposed performative enhancing power of drugs as well as an ideological commitment to elitism, accelerationism and technological transcendence. I took up these matters in a recent column and Jacob helps flesh out this story.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Michael Ledeen, who died on May 17 at age 83, was a prominent figure on the American right since the 1970s. He is most famous, or notorious, as one of the instigators of the Iran/Contra scandal, helping to connect the Reagan administration with an Iranian arms dealer. Beyond that, he was active not just as a writer but also as an activists who often promoted disinformation, most notably the lie about the “weapons of mass destruction” the was used to sell George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked about Ledeen’s controversial life with Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest and author of a fine study of neoconservatism, They Knew They Were Right.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The late David Horowitz, who died in April at age 86, was often dismissed as a fringe figure not just by liberals and leftists but even many on the right. Horowitz would often complain that his books — crude polemics with titles such as BLITZ: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win (2020) and The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America (2021) — were ignored by respectable conservative publications such as National Review and Commentary. Horowitz got one thing right: that both his friends and foes underestimated him. In truth, as David Klion notes in an obituary for The Nation, Horowitz for all his shrillness and absurdity, had an enormous influence on right-wing politics and deserves to be seen as a precursor to Trumpism. Among other claims to infamy, Horowitz was the mentor of Trump’s anti-immigration advisor Stephen Miller.I talked to David about Horowitz’s long shadow and tumultuous journey from being a red-diaper baby to a New Left radical to an right-wing polemicist who tried to revive the very McCarthism that damaged his parent’s life. Horowitz left a terrible legacy but was also a figure whose impact can’t be ignored.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On his latest trip to the Middle East, Donald Trump is making big news. He’s indicating a receptiveness to making a deal with Iran trading normalization for nuclear non-proliferation. He ended the bombing campaign against Yemen and is also pushing for normalization with Syria. Further, the White House has sidestepped Israel in order to have direct talks with Hamas. These moves have angered some hawks in the GOP as well as the Israeli government. But will Trump’s attempt to shift America’s policy in the Middle East pay off, especially given his record of erratic attention to details and sudden shifts in direction?  To assess the situation I spoke with Trita Parsi of The Quincy Institute, who recently wrote about these matters for The American Conservative.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Jacob Silverman on why it’s hard to regulate the high tech ponzi economics.Over the last few years, crypto-currency has emerged as a political powerhouse, thanks to tens of billions in campaign donations. As Jacob Silverman reports in a recent feature in The Nation, “crypto, despite being a relative flop commercially, has infiltrated American politics.” This is most bluntly obvious in Donald Trump, who has become a crypto king in corrupt schemes that have enriched him and his family in billions of dollars. But almost as corrupt are the members of congress, of both parties, reluctant to regulate crypto. I talked to Jacob about the dangers crypto poses to the American economy and to American democracy. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Silicon Valley has moved to the right in the last few years, with Elon Musk being the public face of a larger trend of tech lords aligning themselves with Trumpism. We now have a window into just how reactionary Silicon Valley has become thanks to reporting about private group chats where the tech elite gather to complain about wokeness and celebrate Donald Trump’s plutocrat-friendly policies.My Nation colleague Chris Lehmann wrote about these group chats in a recent column. He joins the podcast to explain exactly why these wealthy leaders are becoming open supporters of autocracy.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Donald Trump’s tariff war is usually framed in terms of how it would impact consumers and America’s relationship with other countries, but it is also part of a larger project to remake taxation policy. Trump is very explicit that he wants tariffs to replace personal and corporate taxes with tariffs as the main source of revenue. As such, tariffs are a sales tax, of a particularly regressive sort. I talk to Marshall Steinbaum, an economist at the University of Utah, about how tariff’s fit in with Trump’s larger social vision of a plutocratic society, something that can also be seen in how the White House is cracking down on student debt holders. We take up this and other economic matters, bringing a class analysis to the business news. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy