Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest. He lives in Washington DC
24 min listen
Suspected Israeli air strikes were launched on targets in Syria this week and Israel’s war in Gaza has entered its seventh month. Americano regular Jacob Heilbrunn joins Freddy to discuss what an escalating situation in the Middle East could mean for Joe Biden. What’s the Democrats’ strategy? And how could this impact the 2024 election?
Donald Trump may be spending much of his time complaining that Nato members aren’t paying their bills, but he has been compiling his own. The latest is a whopping $350 million (£278 million) judgment courtesy of Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, who came down with a decisive thud on Trump’s business dealings in his civil fraud
30 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Americano regular Jacob Heilbrunn about Lord Cameron’s recent visit to DC, where he persuaded Congress to pass a bill sending aid to Ukraine. Jacob and Freddy also discuss why Jacob thinks Biden’s mental capacity is over exaggerated, and what Nato could look like under Trump, and the latest on his charges.
25 min listen
The House of Representatives has voted to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, after three Republican-led committees alleged bribery and corruption during his time as vice-president. Could it actually be good news for Biden? Freddy speaks to Jacob Heilbrunn.
24 min listen
Freddy Gray is reunited with Charles Lipson and Jacob Heilbrunn to debate the impact of Biden’s Middle East policy, and his shaky reputation at home. Is he a Cold War liberal, out of touch with the modern Democratic Party?
When Donald Trump appeared at a Republican Jewish Coalition event in 2019, he referred to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as ‘your prime minister’. Now that prime minister has incurred Trump’s wrath. On Tuesday at a rally in South Palm Beach Trump declared that Netanyahu was ‘not prepared’ for the assault by Hamas on Israel.
22 min listen
This week Freddy speaks to Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest, about Vivek Ramaswamy. What does he stand for? Could he be the ideal candidate for Trump’s vice president?
19 min listen
Freddy Gray sits down with Jacob Heilbrunn to discuss Donald Trump’s latest indictment over January 6th. The former President faces 78 charges which, if found guilty, could mean he will spend several years in prison.
The surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump was indicted. It’s that it took this long. After Attorney General Merrick Garland dithered for two years, Special Counsel Jack Smith is making up for lost time. He’s been on something of a judicial tear, indicting Trump whenever and wherever he can. Smith’s latest move is a forty-five-page indictment assailing
14 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks with Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, ahead of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. They discuss if this is a turning point in US relations with Taiwan, whether we are heading for World War Three, or if Pelosi is calling China’s bluff.
39 min listen
This week Freddy is joined by Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest, and Charles Lipson, professor of political science at the University of Chicago. They discuss Charles’s recent piece in The Spectator’s US edition where he argues that the walls are closing in on old Joe, in relation to the Hunter Biden story. Is the President’s involvement
Donald Trump has chalked up a lot of firsts. First president to be a chum of Russian president Vladimir Putin. First president to threaten withdrawal from Nato. Now add a new one: first former president to be indicted on seven federal counts, which is a polite way of saying that a serial prevaricator has been
47 min listen
This week: Having been found guilty of sexual assault, is Donald Trump still in the running for the White House? In his cover piece, Niall Ferguson says he could still defy gravity. He joins the podcast alongside Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest. (01:00) Also this week: Journalist Andrew Watts interviews the Reverend Canon
29 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Jacob Heilbrunn about Trump’s indictment and whether this could galvanize voters or hurt his presidential campaign.
Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis declared as he was sworn in for a second time yesterday that, under his reign, Florida ‘will never surrender to the woke mob’. Meanwhile, woke or not, a different mob was disrupting the proceedings in Washington, D.C. at the nation’s Capitol. The same lawmakers who plotted to disrupt Joe Biden’s inauguration
With the January 6 Committee’s recommendation to the Justice Department last night to prosecute Donald Trump on four counts of insurrection, obstruction and conspiracy, he has gone from predator to prey. Like Jay Gatsby, who believed in the ‘orgastic future that recedes before us year by year’, he has never doubted in his abilities to
Poor Donald Trump. The 6 January committee has subpoenaed him. The New York attorney general is seeking to put the kibosh on his new Trump II organisation. The Supreme Court has rejected his bid to stymie the Mar-a-Lago investigation. What next? Will it turn out that Jared or even — gasp! — Ivanka has been
It almost seems worthy of the opening scene in a Bond film. Vital Russian gas pipelines running beneath the Baltic Sea close to Denmark and Sweden are the victims of sabotage. The two countries have warned of leaks from both Nord Stream 1 and 2 after seismologists suggested there had been underwater explosions. No one wants to
30 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to journalists Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of The National Interest, and John Daniel Davidson, senior editor of The Federalist, about the beginning of public hearings at the House Select Committee into the events of January 6th 2021.
In his novel The Loyal Subject, which appeared on the eve of the first world war, Heinrich Mann, the brother of Thomas, satirised Wilhelmine Germany as a hotbed of chauvinistic nationalism. The servile nationalism that Mann mocked could not be further from the ethos of the Federal Republic of Germany today. So pervasive is Germany’s
