Podcast / The Time of Monsters / Nov 2, 2025

After the American Empire

On this episode of The Time of Monsters: Trita Parsi on why Donald Trump’s retrenchment doesn’t go far enough.

Donald Trump speaks in front of US Navy personnel on board the US Navy’s USS George Washington aircraft carrier at the US naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, on October 28, 2025.

Donald Trump speaks in front of US Navy personnel on board the US Navy’s USS George Washington aircraft carrier at the US naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, on October 28, 2025.

(Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)

Donald Trump claims he wants to be the peace president and has even lobbied for a Nobel Peace Prize. But his foreign policy has been wildly contradictory. While the United States is clearly retrenching from many parts of the world, violence against hemispheric neighbors is increasing. I talked to Trita Parsi, cofounder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, for a wide-ranging discussion on why American hegemony is declining but also why the push for retrenchment hasn’t gone far enough. 

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The Living Legacy of Norman Podhoretz w/ David Klion and Ronnie Grinberg | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, died on December 16 at

age 95. His legacy is a complex one, since in recent decades neoconservatism has been

supplanted in many ways by American First conservatism. But many aspects of Podhoretz’s

influence still play a shaping role on right. I take up Podhoretz’s career with David Klion (who

wrote an obituary for the pundit for The Nation) and the historian Ronnie Grinberg, who had

discussed Podhoretz in her book Write Like a Man.

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Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.

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