On The Time of Monsters: Van Jackson on Trump's reckless plunge into conflict in Latin America.
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)
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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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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.
Journalist Eoin Higgins was recently sued for defamation by a fellow journalist Matt Taibbi, who is subject on criticism in Higgins’ book Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. The case was briskly dismissed by a judge and is now on appeal. The lawsuit was manifestly frivolous and is filled with irony, since Taibbi likes to present himself as a free speech champion. I spoke to Higgins about it and the larger tendency of wealthy right-wing figures, including Donald Trump, to use lawsuits to intimidate critics.
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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.