Trump’s New Brand of Imperialism

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by Morris and Essex books, presenting History Nation, a citizen's guide to the history of the United States. Author David Hanna makes sense of our nation's history by connecting past to present while emphasizing connection over division, a reminder, in the words of the San Francisco Book Review, to never stop learning. Available in paperback, Kindle, and Audible. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick. So many things about Donald Trump's presidency have been without precedent. But the U.S. seizing power over a smaller country Well, there's a very, very long history of that.

The American record of military intervention and adventure overseas, it goes back well into the nineteenth century and forward to Vietnam, Iraq, and beyond. In Venezuela, Trump has made no secret of his desire for oil revenues, and who will be running the show. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. Daniel Immervar is a professor of history at Northwestern and one of our most interesting writers on foreign policy and American imperialism.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (33 minutes, 5,631 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.