Podcast / The Time of Monsters / Aug 18, 2025

The Great Canadian Betrayal

On The Time of Monsters: Luke Savage on how Mark Carney sold out the Canadian people.

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 Great Canadian Betrayal | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

In April, the Liberal Party of Canada, under the leadership of Mark Carney, won an election that heartened opponents of the right-wing. Carney had run on the promise of fighting Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada and also to bolster the Canadian state to deal with issues like affordable housing. But in office, Carney has been delivering something different than his rhetoric suggested: he has been servile to Trump and is promoting austerity. The journalist Luke Savage has written about Carney’s turn-around for both The Baffler and the Toronto Star. I talked to Luke not only about Carney’s policies but also why centrist technocratic liberals are so inept in fighting the far right.  

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomes United States President Donald Trump during an arrival ceremony at the Group of Seven (G7) Summit at the Pomeroy Kananaskis Mountain Lodge in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada on June 16, 2025.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomes United States President Donald Trump during an arrival ceremony at the Group of Seven (G7) Summit at the Pomeroy Kananaskis Mountain Lodge in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada on June 16, 2025.

(Government of Canada / Anadolu via Getty Images)

In April, the Liberal Party of Canada, under the leadership of Mark Carney, won an election that heartened opponents of the right. Carney had run on the promise of fighting Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada and also to bolster the Canadian state to deal with issues like affordable housing. But in office, Carney has been delivering something different than his rhetoric suggested: he has been servile to Trump and is promoting austerity. The journalist Luke Savage has written about Carney’s turnaround for both The Baffler and The Toronto Star. I talked to Luke not only about Carney’s policies but also why centrist technocratic liberals are so inept in fighting the far right. 

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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.

Origins of the Imperial Presidency w/ David Sirota | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

As millions of Americans protest Donald Trump under the slogan of “No Kings,” it is

worth asking how the nation ended up with such an authoritarian president. David Sirota

and the team at The Lever have provided a great answer to this question in their new

podcast seriesMaster Plan: The Kingmakers, which looks at the revival of the Imperial

Presidency after the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. I talked to David about the

history uncovered in this podcast and why Trump is merely a symptom of a much

deeper problem.

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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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