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The Making of Donald Trump

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion on the new Trump biopic, The Apprentice.

Jeet Heer

October 27, 2024

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The Making of Donald Trump | The Time of Monsters
byThe Nation Magazine

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Jeet Heer is joined by David Klion to discuss 'The Apprentice' — a movie about Roy Cohn’s mentoring of a future president.

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Donald Trump is such a clearly defined figure—a walking, talking political cartoon—that it’s hard to imagine when he was someone different. Ali Abbasi’s new film, The Apprentice, gives us a Trump we’re not used to seeing, a young man who was unsure of himself and found his path thanks to the mentoring of Roy Cohn, the notoriously crooked lawyer and political fixer. David Klion, a frequent guest of the podcast, reviewed the movie for The Nation. While David liked the movie more than I did, we both agreed it is well worth watching, with superb performances and a vivid evocation of the New York of the 1970s and ’80s. In our talk, we discuss what the movie says about Trump’s origins and also the Trump fatigue that has hurt the film at the box-office.

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.

Bombing Iran Won’t Help the Protesters, with Annelle Sheline | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

Iran is facing upheavals at home and abroad. For more than two decades, the Islamic Republic has faced waves of protests from citizens demanding a more democratic society. Over the past two weeks, these protests have erupted with a new ferocity and are being met with violent repression. Meanwhile, the Israeli government is pushing the United States to renew bombing Iran, a military objective now being given the guise of a humanitarian mission. To discuss the turmoil in Iran and place it in the larger context of regional instability and competing visions of the future of the Middle East, I spoke with Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at The Quincy Institute who studies the region, in this special Friday edition of the podcast. 

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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 GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


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