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John Ganz on the Books of Donald Trump

On this episode of The Nation Podcast, John Ganz on the president's Trump’s ghostwritten canon.

D.D. Guttenplan and John Ganz

April 21, 2025

Donald Trump, signing his book The Art of the Deal.(Rick Maiman / Sygma via Getty Images)

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.

John Ganz on The Books of Donald Trump | The Nation Podcast
byThe Nation Magazine

On this episode of The Nation Podcast, D.D. Guttenplan and John Ganz discuss the hype, hustle, and collapse embedded in Trump’s ghostwritten canon. "Dog Eat Dog," Ganz's review of Trump's three books, is in the May issue of The Nation.

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On this episode of The Nation Podcast, we’re joined by John Ganz to discuss the hype, hustle, and collapse embedded in Trump’s ghostwritten canon. “Dog Eat Dog,” Ganz’s review of Trump’s three books, is in the May issue of The Nation.

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

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.

Liberal Philanthropy and the Fight for Democracy w/ David Callahan | The Nation Podcast
byThe Nation Magazine

It’s no surprise that liberal philanthropy — a longtime pillar of the Democratic establishment — has become one of the Trump administration’s latest targets. As David Callahan writes in our December issue, liberal foundations “have often been depicted as the great puppet masters of the left, bankrolling and directing a who’s who of progressive groups intent on destroying the American way of life.” In other words, catnip for MAGA madness.

But as Callahan points out, the reality of how these institutions operate is far from radical. As powerbrokers of the elite, liberal philanthropists are averse to challenging “the systems that spawned them.”

How have liberal foundations failed to mobilize working-class Americans? And how can they ramp up the fight to defend the democracy they claim to care so much about saving?

Joining us to discuss this is David Callahan, founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy, and author of The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age.

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Subscribe to The Nation to Support all of our podcasts

D.D. GuttenplanTwitterD.D. Guttenplan is a special correspondent for The Nation and the host of The Nation Podcast. He served as editor of the magazine from 2019 to 2025 and, prior to that, as an editor at large and London correspondent. His books include American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone, The Nation: A Biography, and The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority.


John GanzNation columnist John Ganz is the New York Times best-selling author of When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. He writes the Unpopular Front newsletter on Substack, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, Harper's Magazine, Artforum, the New Statesman, and other publications.


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