The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, has often been profiled in the media, but usually in a superficial way that focuses on her personality and disputes with fellow journalists. She is currently on the cusp of great power, reportedly working on a deal to sell The Free Press and take a senior position at CBS.

David Klion, Nation columnist and frequent guest on the podcast, has written an exceptionally trenchant analysis for The Guardian of Weiss’s politics and the way they align with the Trump administration’s war on critical voices. I was pleased to talk to David about Weiss’s career and how she has used her influence as an ideological enforcer, one that has the support of many wealthy patrons and powerful political allies.

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Matt Duss, vice-president of the Center for International Policy, wrote an excellent review for The Nation of Bob Woodward’s book War, which is a celebration of Joe Biden as a foreign policy sage. Duss is rightly skeptical of the book. We discuss Biden’s actual record on Ukraine and

especially Gaza. Matt’s essay on this topic for Foreign Policy is also worth reading.

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On August 27, journalist Taylor Lorenz reported for Wired on a dark-money project funded by

anonymous Democratic Party donors to shape social media. Her article documented that,

"In a private group chat in June, dozens of Democratic political influencers discussed whether to

take advantage of an enticing opportunity. They were being offered $8,000 per month to take

part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet.

But the contract sent to them from Chorus, the nonprofit arm of a liberal influencer marketing

platform, came with some strings. Among other issues, it mandated extensive secrecy about

disclosing their payments and had restrictions on what sort of political content the creators

could produce."

I talked to Taylor about her article and the considerable backlash it provoked from the people

she wrote about. We also discussed why Republicans have done so well on social media and

why this latest effort is both morally dubious and ineffective.

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The Iran-Israel conflict in June was terrifying but brief: it lasted 12 days. But that war is not

over. Trita Parsi, vice president and cofounder of the Quincy Institute, has been warning that

both the United States and Israel are planning for another round, with their European allies

providing the groundwork. I spoke to Parsi about the likelihood of war, the rationale behind the

current sabre-rattling, and ways to stop the impending catastrophe.

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In April, the Liberal Party of Canada, under the leadership of Mark Carney, won an election that heartened opponents of the right-wing. Carney had run on the promise of fighting Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada and also to bolster the Canadian state to deal with issues like affordable housing. But in office, Carney has been delivering something different than his rhetoric suggested: he has been servile to Trump and is promoting austerity. The journalist Luke Savage has written about Carney’s turn-around for both The Baffler and the Toronto Star. I talked to Luke not only about Carney’s policies but also why centrist technocratic liberals are so inept in fighting the far right. 

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Almost everyone who is on line or even has a cell phone has encountered a familiar and

perplexing nuisance: an email or text with a job offer to make lots of money while working from

home. These messages seem like obvious scams but how do they work? Alexander Sammon, a

feature writer for Slate, conducted a personal experiment to find out by taking one of the jobs

he was offered. The result is a hilarious article detailing not just what it’s like to be ripped off

but also illuminating the new grift economy that flourishes in the internet age as Donald Trump

pursues his agenda of deregulation and the promotion of crypto currency. I had enormous fun

both reading Alex’s article (which I can’t recommend highly enough) and talking to him about

his strange experiences.

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Writing in The New Republic, Greg Sargent called attention to Zohran Mamdani’s highly

effective media strategy which has allowed him to reach many voters that have been drifting

away from the Democratic Party, especially young people and immigrants. In punchy, short

videos, Mamdani has offered an optimistic message that celebrates big city life and diversity

while showing how government policies can help make life better. I talked to Greg about the lessons

of the Mamdani campaign. We also talk about strategies for investigating the Jeffrey Epstein scandal,

a subject he wrote about here.

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Since 2015, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the American foreign policy establishment

for being too belligerent and unwilling to negotiate with adversaries. But in office, Trump has

carried out a foreign policy that has all the vices he has criticized and been even more inclined

to risk war or get into new wars. In a recent essay in The New York Times, Stephen Wertheim,

a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for

International Peace, has written an incisive critique of Donald Trump’s foreign policy

incoherence emphasizing how the president’s ad hoc response to problems and his excessive

faith in his own deal making ability prevents any systematic change from the status quo.

Stephen and I have a wide-ranging discussion on the over-stretched American empire and why

Trump is just making things worse.

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Tech lords such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are among the richest humans who have ever

lived and have an enormous sway over the American political system but even that isn’t enough

for them. They also want a compliant media, one that echoes their ideas, doesn’t investigate

their business practices, and goes after their enemy. This is the subject of a new book by Eoin

Higgins: Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. I

talked to Eoin about two of the major figures in this story, Peter Thiel, a plutocrat who is eager

to abandon the human species and Matt Taibbi, a onetime anti-establishment voice who now

has become a standard reactionary.

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Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been as unstable as the man himself, shifting quickly from

pushes for restraint to escalating wars in the Middle East. This volatility is a function not just of

Trump’s personality but the contradictions and competing factions that are gathered under the

term America First, as well as the continued power of the foreign policy establishment that

Trump has claimed he defeated but which maintains a strong capacity to shape policy. To talk

about Trump’s foreign policy and the factional battles that have bedevilled his administration, I

spoke 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 for

policy. Colby was the subject of a Politico hatchet job which claimed he was running a rogue

foreign policy. Justin critiqued this analysis here.

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