On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion on neocons and the attack on Iran.
An Iranian flag is draped from a building damaged during a recent attack by Israel near Milad Tower in Tehran, Iran, on June 25, 2025. (Majid Saeedi / Getty Images)
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Over the last decade, centrist Democrats have diligent courted Never Trump Republicans, hoping that this cohort could help create a new consensus politics to oppose the MAGA coalition. From the start, this strategy seemed flawed: after all, this faction is very small and also carries a lot of baggage. In particular, neo-conservatives such as William Kristol and David Frum, now Never Trump stalwarts, were responsible for two of the biggest foreign policy disasters in American history, George W. Bush’s War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq.
Have this Never Trump conservatives learned from history? Alas, as my colleague David Klion points out in a recent column, many of them haven’t. Kristol and Frum are now cheerleading the attack on Iran (although to be fair their former ally Robert Kagan is more skeptical). I talked to David about the neocons and why they remain a pernicious force in American politics even if they vote against Trump.
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Over the last decade, centrist Democrats have diligently courted Never Trump Republicans, hoping that this cohort could help create a new consensus politics to oppose the MAGA coalition. From the start, this strategy seemed flawed: After all, this faction is very small and also carries a lot of baggage. In particular, neoconservatives such as William Kristol and David Frum, now Never Trump stalwarts, were responsible for two of the biggest foreign policy disasters in American history, George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq.
Have this Never Trump conservatives learned from history? Alas, as my colleague David Klion points out in a recent column, many of them haven’t. Kristol and Frum are now cheerleading the attack on Iran (although to be fair their former ally Robert Kagan is more skeptical). I talked to David about the neocons and why they remain a pernicious force in American politics even if they vote against Trump.
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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 famed economist Larry Summers, not for the first time, finds himself the center of a
scandal. He’s had to take a leave from Harvard, where he teaches, because of embarrassing
emails he had with his late friend Jeffrey Epstein.
I talked to economic journalist and Nation contributor Doug Henwood, a long-time Summers
watcher, about the career of this controversial and influential figure. Summers has been one of
the most influential policy makers of his era, serving as Treasury Secretary and President of
Harvard. He has also embodied the major intellectual and political limitations of the ruling class.
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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet 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 Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.