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It's understood that the U.S. must deal with unsavory characters in the realm of foreign policy. This includes one of the most repressive autocrats in the world, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who ordered the grisly murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to U.S. intelligence. Bin Salman was given the red carpet treatment by the Trump administration this week, as he sought defense and economic agreements to burnish his brand as a pragmatic modernizer rather than a reckless monarch. In this episode, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft says the U.S. must engage with the Saudis, but Washington should steer clear of agreeing to a defense pact with the kingdom.

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Tucker Carlson's lovey-dovey interview with a Holocaust-denying white supremacist named Nick Fuentes caused long-simmering tensions on the far right to boil over into a factional civil war. Is the conservative movement that once elected Ronald Reagan now overrun with charlatans, cranks, racists, grifters, and conspiracy theorists in the Age of Trump? In this episode, the political theorist Damon Linker (Notes From the Middleground) and National Review senior writer Dan McLaughlin trace the history of the conservative movement from William F. Buckley to Ronald Reagan, to Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump.

Book suggestions:

Damon Linker recommends Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right by Laura Field

Dan McLaughlin recommends The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism by Matthew Continetti

Martin Di Caro recommends The Age of Reagan by Sean Wilentz and Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot

Further reading:

Trumpism Will Be With Us For a Very Long Time by Damon Linker (New York Times)

Buckley's Hopes for Populism by Dan McLaughlin (National Review)

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President Donald Trump enjoys bashing the press by calling some outlets "fake news" or any negative story a "hoax." Some past presidential administrations went further by censoring information, shutting down newspapers, or even jailing critical voices. Just about every U.S. leader has complained at one time or another about the press while simultaneously trying to cultivate positive coverage. In this episode, historian Lindsay Chervinsky, the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library, takes us on a tour of more than 200 years of president-press relationships.

Recommended reading:

The Presidents and the Press, Part 1 by Lindsay Chervinsky (Imperfect Union on Substack)

The Presidents and the Press, Part 2 by Lindsay Chervinsky

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The hit Netflix film "House of Dynamite" depicts a terrifying scenario. The United States is under nuclear attack as a lone ICBM heads for a major city, but no one knows who launched it. The president has the authority to retaliate, but against whom? In this episode, nuclear arms expert Joe Cirincione says the moral of the story is that an accidental nuclear war is indeed possible as the world witnesses a new arms race. (Note: Audio excerpts of "House of Dynamite" are courtesy Netflix.)

Further reading/listening:

To Love the Bomb (podcast)

Donald Trump's Deep Nuclear Confusion by Joe Cirincione on Substack

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Dick Cheney died on Nov. 3. From the 1970s onward, he held several powerful posts as White House chief of staff, a Wyoming congressman, Secretary of Defense, and a private-sector oil executive. But Cheney will be remembered most of all for his eight years as Vice President under George W. Bush, when he exerted his influence to invade Iraq in 2003 and impressed his ideas about executive authority and conduct, ignoring Congress, the Constitution, and international law. The Iraq war became an intractable calamity. Even today, the country is not considered a healthy democracy. Cheney's idea of the "unitary executive" is now being put into practice once more by Donald Trump, an unintended consequence of Dick Cheney's enduring influence. Historian Jeremi Suri is our guest.

Further reading:

The Costs of War: Iraq by Brown University

Further listening:

Saddam and his American Friends w/ Steve Coll

The Iraq War w/ Andrew Bacevich

The Iraq War w/ Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

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History As It Happens returns to the movies! In this episode, historian Kevin Levin discusses the 1989 film Glory, a moving portrayal of one of the first Black fighting regiments of the Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, and its commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

Further reading:

Robert Gould Shaw, Glory, and the Problem of AI by Kevin Levin (Civil War Memory on Substack)

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The U.S.-led military coalition that expelled Saddam Hussein's armies from Kuwait in 1990-91 is usually remembered as the first major conflict of a post-Cold War world. But it was not the first time during those heady days that the U.S. invaded a country to get rid of a dictator in the name of human rights and the rule of law. That was Panama in 1989, a short war that would seem relevant now, as the Trump administration seeks regime change in a different Latin American country, Venezuela. In this episode, historian Alex Aviña reminds us why the rise and fall of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, a longtime CIA asset and drug trafficker, matters.

Further listening:

Trump and the Panama Canal w/ Jonathan Brown

TR to Trump: America and Venezuela w/ Alex Aviña

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Carl Schmitt was a German legal theorist who joined the Nazi Party after Hitler achieved power. Schmitt supplied legal justifications for the Third Reich as it crushed all opposition and persecuted Jews. Yet long after he collaborated with this monstrous regime, Schmitt's ideas remained influential, and he maintained a respectable following. What explains his popularity on the New Right today in the Age of Trump?

Further reading:

The American New Right Looks Like the European Old Right by Phil Magness and Jack Nicastro in Reason

The Enemy of Liberalism by Mark Lilla in The New York Review

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The "No Kings" protests across America were aimed at President Donald Trump's mounting abuses of power, based on the idea that he's acting like an elected monarch 250 years after the framers of the Constitution established the separation of powers. In this episode, the eminent historian Joseph Ellis explains why America's founders forged a republic where there'd be no kings.

Further reading/listening:

Enemies Lists (podcast)

Shall We Have A King? by William Leuchtenberg (American Heritage)

The Great Contradiction by Joseph Ellis

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After Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism became a surprise bestseller. Arendt, who died in 1975, became a sort of prophet for the liberal "Resistance" based on her insights into lying and politics and the origins of fascism. Today, as President Trump acts with increasing authoritarianism and corruption, Arendt is still frequently quoted, but she's not the star she once was on the American left. Why? Yale historian and law professor Samuel Moyn discusses the uses and abuses of Hannah Arendt, one of the twentieth century's towering philosophers.

Further reading:

You Have Misunderstood the Relevance of Hannah Arendt by Samuel Moyn, Prospect (2020)

Men in Dark Times by Rebecca Panovka, Harper's (2021)

Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt on Deception, Self-Deception, and the Psychology of Defactualization by Maria Popova, The Marginalian

Big Racket Man by Martin Jay for Verso Books (2023)