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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 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?

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By helping the Republicans pass a spending bill that made no compromises with the Democrats and extend Donald Trump’s power over the government, Chuck Schumer has made himself widely unpopular in his own party. Anger at Schumer is so intense that he had to cancel parts of his tour to promote his new book Antisemitism in America: A Warning. David Klion, Nation columnist and frequent guest on the podcast, reviewed this volume for The Baffler. He joins to podcast to discuss both the book and the making of Chuck Schumer.

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This week Washington was abuzz with a security scandal over a group chat planning the bombing of Yemen accidentally included magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Lost amid the finger pointing about operational security was the fact that the bombing of Yemen is illegal, immoral, and ineffective.

To take up the actual scandal of the war, I spoke with Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy. We also discuss the actual contents of the group chat which real important fissures within Trump’s foreign policy team between neo-conservatives who favor fighting as many wars as possible and unilateralists who insist there has to be a prioritizing of conflicts. This fissure opens the path to a much different foreign policy, one that the left can play a role in shaping.

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