Podcast / The Time of Monsters / Dec 14, 2025

Trump’s Global Culture War

On The Time of Monsters: Stephen Wertheim on the government’s new National Security Strategy.

(Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images)

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy is a marked shift from not only earlier administrations but also Trump’s first term in office. While the new policy statement eschews the goal of global hegemony, it promotes culture war in Europe by promising support for anti-immigration political parties; economic rivalry in Asia with China; and a renewal of US military hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. To survey this document and Trump’s often contradictory foreign policy, I spoke to frequent guest of the show Stephen Wertheim, an American Statecraft senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

The Time of Monsters podcast features Nation national-affairs correspondent Jeet Heer’s signature blend of political culture and cultural politics. Each week, he’ll host in-depth conversations with urgent voices on the most pressing issues of our time.

Jon Ossoff and the Georgia Battleground w/ Joan Walsh
byThe Nation Company LLC

My Nation colleague Joan Walsh recently profiled Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff for the magazine. Georgia is very much a purple state. The fact that Ossoff won there and stands a good chance at re-election is evidence of his political talent, turning him into an increasingly prominent national figure. Joan and I talked about Ossoff’s background and the long struggle to transform Georgia, a formerly red state where Democrats are making headway.

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Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.

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Editor and Publisher, The Nation

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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