Chris Lehmann on Ron DeSantis Using Migrants as Pawns

Chris Lehmann on Ron DeSantis Using Migrants as Pawns

On this week’s episode of The Time of Monsters, a discussion of how the GOP’s immigration gambit might boomerang. 

Jeet Heer
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In the theater of American politics, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is auditioning for the role of Trump II. His pitch is that he’ll offer all the hard-right policies the GOP base loves but with a more competent and stable persona which won’t offend centrist voters. His current gambit of shipping asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts is just his latest bid to gain attention.

But Chris Lehmann, the recently appointed Washington Bureau chief of The Nation, is skeptical as to whether it’ll pay off. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talk with Chris about why DeSantis is risking a backlash. We also take up the center right and centrist pundits who are all too eager to jump on the DeSantis bandwagon.

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Katrina vanden Heuvel

Editorial Director 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 Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


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