The Rush to War With Venezuela
On The Time of Monsters: Van Jackson on Trump’s reckless plunge into conflict in Latin America.

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On Friday, the self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth announced the US was sending an
aircraft carrier to bolster its attacks on Venezuelan boats (which the Trump administration
alleges, without evidence, are trafficking drugs). I spoke to international relations scholar Van
Jackson (whose work can be found here) about the motives for this new war as well as the
muted opposition to it from Democrats.
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An indigenous woman waves a Venezuelan flag during a rally to commemorate Indigenous Resistance Day, on October 12, 2025 in Caracas, Venezuela.
(Jesus Vargas / Getty Images)On Friday, the self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth announced that the US was sending an aircraft carrier to bolster its attacks on Venezuelan boats (which the Trump administration alleges, without evidence, are trafficking drugs). I spoke to international relations scholar Van Jackson (whose work can be found here) about the motives for this new war as well as the muted opposition to it from Democrats.
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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.
The scandal around Jeffrey Epstein, who trafficked and abused children and died in a prison cell
in 2019, has never gone away. It continues to explode now that House Democrats have
released thousands of emails from Epstein and his cronies. But while the political class and
mainstream media are understandably focused on the sex scandal, another dimension of the
scandal goes uncovered except by independent media outlets such as Drop Site: Epstein’s deep
ties to the national security state. I talked to international relations scholar Van Jackson about
this crucial part of the story.
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