Podcast / The Time of Monsters / Jun 8, 2026

Fighting Trump’s Corruption

Chris Lehmann on grifts and slush funds.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

Fighting Trump’s Corruption w/ Chris Lehmann / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

Donald Trump is corrupt on a scale that puts all other criminal presidents, including Richard Nixon, to shame. One recent example is the so-called Anti-Weaponization fund of $1,776,000,000, being deployed to reward convicted criminals who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump and his cronies are also profiting from billion-dollar deals with foreign governments and engaged in stock market trading while in office. 

My Nation colleague Chris Lehmann has written about this in a recent column. We talk about both the corruption, and the political tools Democrats can use to fight it.

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President Donald Trump listens to members of his Cabinet speak during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on May 27, 2026 in Washington, DC.

(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Donald Trump is corrupt on a scale that puts all other criminal presidents, including Richard Nixon, to shame. One recent example is the so-called Anti-Weaponization fund of $1,776,000,000, being deployed to reward convicted criminals who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump and his cronies are also profiting from billion-dollar deals with foreign governments and engaged in stock market trading while in office.

My Nation colleague Chris Lehmann has written about this in a recent column. We talk about both the corruption, and the political tools Democrats can use to fight it.

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/subscribe.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

The Iran War Stalemate w/ Trita Parsi / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

The Trump administration has announced a new set of harsh sanctions against Iran. This is a strange development since originally Trump launched a war on Iran on the pretext that sanctions weren’t working. Trita Parsi of the Qunicy Institute argues the current tactic won’t work and is a holding action as both the US and Iran bide their time in a long conflict. Parsi’s writings can be found on his Substack. In the interview, we discuss his column on the surprising way many governments are rooting for Iran to check US imperialism.

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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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