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
Facebook
Twitter
Email
Flipboard
Pocket

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.

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

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.


x