The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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 [https://www.theamericanconservative.com/on-iran-trump-should-resist-the-zero-enrichment-fantasy/] about these matters for The American Conservative. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands [https://redcircle.com/brands] Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy [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 [https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/crypto-trump-money-in-politics/] 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/brands [https://redcircle.com/brands] Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy [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 [https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america] 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 [https://www.thenation.com/article/society/marc-andreessen-semafor-group-chat-signal/]. He joins the podcast to explain exactly why these wealthy leaders are becoming open supporters of autocracy. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands [https://redcircle.com/brands] Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy [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 [https://marshallsteinbaum.org/], 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/brands [https://redcircle.com/brands] Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy [https://redcircle.com/privacy]

Even as he imposes authoritarianism on the United States, Donald Trump has given a new lease on life to the center left in many other countries. Canada is holding an election at the end of April under the shadow of the American presidents threat to turn it into the 51st state. Until Trump’s inauguration, the Conservative Party of Canada had a commanding lead. But voters are changing their minds fast and it now looks like the Liberal Party under new leader Mark Carney will win the election. To talk about the quick revolution in Canadian politics I spoke to Luke Savage, a widely published journalist and substracker [https://www.lukewsavage.com/]. We take up not just Canada’s likely rejection of Trumpism but also the question of whether Carney’s technocratic centrism really offers an alternative. If there is to be a new Canadian nationalism, will it have more substance than Carney offers? Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands [https://redcircle.com/brands] Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy [https://redcircle.com/privacy]