November 22, 2025 • 48 mins
SEGMENT 1: Frank Gaffney is Joined By Mark Krikorian Pt. 1
SEGMENT 2: Frank Gaffney is Joined By Mark Krikorian Pt. 2
SEGMENT 3: Frank Gaffney is Joined By Rod. D. Martin Pt. 1
SEGMENT 4: Frank Gaffney is Joined By Rod. D. Martin Pt. 2
SEGMENT 5: Frank Gaffney is Joined By Rod. D. Martin Pt. 3
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:25):
Welcome to Securing America with me, Frank Affne, the program
that's a kind of owner's manual for protecting the country
we love against all enemies foreign and domestic, to the
glory of God and his Kingdom. Well, we're going to
talk a bit about protecting the country we love against
enemies foreign and some now who are domestic, with one
(00:45):
of the men who I admire most for his absolutely
relentless efforts to assure that the rest of us understand
the importance of immigration policy and practice the mistakes that
have been made, particularly in recent years with respect to both.
(01:05):
His name is Mark Krekorian. He is the president of
a stupendously important organization, the Center for Immigration Studies. He
has been the watchman on the wall for as long
as I've known him, which is a couple of decades
I think at this point, and absolutely a go to resource,
and I'm sorry we haven't gone to him more regularly
(01:28):
of late. It's been a while, Mark, but we're delighted
to have you back. Welcome once again, my friend.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Glad to be here anytime.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
So I wanted to sort of level set a little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Mark.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The very good news as I understand it, is in
the wake of the new second Trump presidency, what we
were told was an insuperably hard problem of securing, particularly
the southern border, got solved in Well, it wasn't a
couple of days. I guess it was a couple of
(01:58):
weeks at most. Is that in fact the case, do
we now have a secure southern border?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Would you say, sir, Yeah, we do. And it doesn't
mean that nothing's ever gonna happen there. I mean, you
can lock your car and it could still get stolen.
But the number of apprehensions there is the lowest, really
the lowest ever recorded because even in earlier generations, and
we're talking about a long time ago, numbers were lower sometimes,
(02:27):
but we also didn't know what was going on at
the border. We now have eyes on the whole border
day and night in a way that never exists before.
So we really do know what's happening at the border.
The numbers are way down doesn't mean that the challenge
isn't there. People now are trying to smuggle on boats
come up you know, past San Diego or Visa overstairs,
(02:50):
which is always a real challenge, or the Canadian border.
So the point is this never goes away. It's a
permanent feature of national security. But we're actually doing the
national security now at the southern border in a way
that not only do we not see under Biden, but
really under all previous administrations, we just didn't have this
(03:12):
level of security. So absolutely, So, Mark, let me just
be clear.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
The border has greater surveillance on it than previously. Does
it still have holes in the wall there? And when
you say the apprehensions are minimal at this point, does
that mean that we're no longer having the phenomenon of
getaways that previously weren't apprehended but were nonetheless getting into
(03:41):
the country.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
There's always going to be some god aways, but the
numbers are much lower and we have much more certainty
about the estimates of god aways because of that surveillance.
I mean, we have remote cameras, there are underground sensors.
We have these stationary blimps sometimes that are used in
order to get a higher view. So yeah, absolutely we
(04:07):
are there holes. The wall is never going to be
two thousand miles long, because there's no real reason in
some places to even have a wall. They are filling
in holes. But the wall itself isn't some magic thing
that you seal it up and then you can you know,
set it and forget it. It's a tool, and they
have to have roads and sensors and lights and all
the rest of that stuff. And you know there there's
(04:29):
still room for improvement, and they're working on it. They're
building some more wall sections, but you know, it's it's
sort of a work in progress, but it's a work
that's actually progressing very well. Now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, And so Mark, when when we talk about this,
and I alluded to it in my opening question to you,
how is it that all of this seemingly was done
so quickly when we were so assiduously told and not
just by Democrats by the way. I mean, there was
(05:03):
James Langford and you know, Mitch McConnell and others who
were insisting that no, no, no, we needed comprehensive legislation
or some version thereof to get the tools that we're
going to be required to keep this keep this problem
for persisting. Why was that not so, sir?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
We didn't really need new laws, We needed a new president.
And you know that's that's what Trump had said, and
there's actually a lot of truth to that, because prospective
illegal immigrants and they're smugglers. Aren't some kind of I
don't know, irresistible force or you know, superheroes or something.
(05:44):
The regular people making rational calculations, And probably the most
important thing other than just Trump's rhetoric, it's like, oh
my god, the bad Orange man is here. We better
stop a policy change that. The fundamental one is that
they stopped letting everybody go with the border. If you're
not going to spend all that money and take all
(06:04):
that risk, if you're just going to end up in
detention and they're going to send you home anyway. Biden
was just letting everybody go. Once you stop that, the
only people who are going to keep trying are the
real hard cases, and you know you need to stop them.
And it's labor intensive, but you don't have the kind
of flood that we did for four years under Biden.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And on the point about enforcement of the laws, we're
hearing a lot about the efforts by ICE, Customs and
Border Patrol, other law enforcement agencies, national Guard, even in
some cases working the problem of trying to remove people
here illegally. Talk to us about the state of that
(06:51):
effort as you see it, sir.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, See, that's the other side of the coin, if
you will. In other words, the administration has done a
very good job of basically turning off the faucet, but
they now have to mop up the you know, flow
from the overflow of the bathtub to use the continue
the metaphor, and they're you know, making significant progress there.
Most of it, from our research is people leaving on
(07:14):
their own, illegal immigrants who were kind of concluding that
the party's over and they bear to get out quick.
Our research through July, from January through July suggests, using
Census Bureau data, that two point the number of foreign
born people legal or illegal has declined by two point
two million, and that of that one point six million
(07:38):
were illegal immigrants. So the number's gone up since obviously.
But our research director has looked at that question from
a bunch of different angles, and it does seem to
be a real thing, not just illegal immigrants not answering
the surveys or something they do that actually believe it
or not.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
So who are self deporting?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Self deporting? Say, some of those are actual ice deportations,
but the large majority our self deportations. That's what the
administration is counting on. And one of the reasons they
have such publicity about this is to try to send
the message to get people to leave on their own.
The one thing that they need to now ramp up
is employer based employment based enforcement too. They need to
(08:18):
purp walk some employers that are knowingly hiring illegal immigrants,
send the message that it's not just murderers and rapists
that we're looking for. Those are the first priority, but
that regular, ordinary illegal aliens need to put their affairs
in order and go home as well.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And by shaming essentially people who are giving them employment, the.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Theory punishing hopefully more than shaming.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Well yeah, it starts with I guess shaming as part
of the punishment. But yes, and this would hopefully cause
others to cease and desist in that practice as well,
creating a new impetus for people to self deport I
take it exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, because look, most employers aren't crooks.
I mean, I'm an employer, you know, I come from
a line of small business men people or you know,
most employers they want to just know what the rules
are and be able to follow the rules. It needs
to become clear that the rules are now what the
law says rather than the kind of wink and nod,
(09:23):
nudge nudge, you know know what I mean, kind of
non enforcement that prevailed in the past. When we do that,
you're going to see real self deportation increase.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
This is this is a tremendously important point. Mark. We
have to take a short break. When we come back,
I want to talk to you about one of the
other things that is compounding the problem, and that is
sanctuary cities and whether we're about to see New York
City become one of a whole new class. Stay two.
We'll be right back with more with Mark Gordan of
the Center for Immigration Studies. Right after this welcome back,
(10:18):
we are visiting with Mark Krekorian, a man whose insights
and expertise and dogged tenacity when it comes to matters
involving immigration, I have admired greatly for many years, as
I have his organization, the Center for Immigration Studies. You
can find it at CIS dot org. You can find
(10:40):
his books on Amazon. He's got a number of them,
The New Case Against Immigration being one, How Obama transformed
America through immigration being another. There are many others, and Mark,
I wanted to talk to you about transforming America through
saint sanctuary cities. What the historic impact has been of
(11:06):
I think in every case democratic mayors, some cases democratic
governors have done this with states, I believe, but certainly
mayors have. And now we have this fellow Zoron Mamdani,
a communist as well as jihadist, making no bones about
what he intends to do to be welcoming of immigrants,
(11:30):
he being one of them after all, talk a little
bit about this particular aspect of the immigration security problem.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
A sanctuary city. People misunderstand this sanctuary city or state
as you suggested, or county isn't a place that says, okay,
our police will not go around checking people's papers. Ice
doesn't want the police to be going around and saying, hey, Paco,
where's your green card. What they want is the jurisdictions
(12:00):
to let ICE know when they're done whatever they're going
to do with people they arrest for normal reasons. They're
driving drunk, beating their wives, you know, uh, dealing drugs.
They're arrested for that. Their fingerprints all go to DHS
now as well as the FBI, so they know if
(12:21):
this guy's an illegal. A sanctuary city says, no, we
are not we are going to release these people back
into American communities. It's specifically designed to protect criminals, and
it's outrageous. And the thing is that we've our estimate
is at a slight majority of all the illegal immigrants
live in sanctuary jurisdictions. So how is ICE supposed to,
(12:43):
you know, do his job if the main way that
illegal immigrants come in contact with the authorities is foreclose
to them. And so this is a serious problem. Governor,
I mean, the new or elected mayor of New York
has said he's gonna type and even further their sanctuary policies. Interestingly,
(13:04):
the current governor, Eric Adams actually kind of loosened up
a little bit and has been cooperating to a limited
degree with Ice. Again with regard to people they've arrested
for murder and what have you to hand them over
when they're finished with them, whatever they're going to do
with them. The interesting thing is, will mom Donnie try
to presume to try to arrest ICE agents doing their jobs.
(13:28):
That'll be interesting and that would force a constitutional crisis,
I think in the same way that his pledged to
arrest Prime Minister and Yahoo if he comes to the
un it's the same kind of thing. It's not going
to happen. Frankly, that's the way a mayor ends up
getting arrested himself. But it does send a message to
illegal immigrants that this is a place you should stay.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
And mark among those I fear will be well, Gie Hoddies,
I mean, this is a mayor, actually a Sharia's supremacist
convert to Islam convert actually, as you know, I'm sure,
to the Shia death cult known as Twelverism, which thinks
that we ought to have the apocalypse to bring back
(14:14):
the Mahdi, the twelfth Imam, the golden age of Islam.
And so I mean it's terrifying to think about the
kind of people who he might provide safe haven to,
who seek such you know, diabolical you know, missions and
states to the extent that there are, in fact, in
(14:39):
part as a result of Joe Biden's open border policy,
not only possibly millions of immigrants who embrace this doctrine
of Sharia and seek to impose it upon our country,
but there is also by some estimates, and I'd be
very appreciative of your best guess. I've heard numbers as
(15:03):
low as ten thousand as high as two hundred thousand
individuals who are believed to be Chinese soldiers who've gotten
into this country through those open borders as well. What
are your thoughts about those threats, sir? And why don't
we hear more about trying to remove such people find
(15:24):
the first of all, I guess and remove them as well.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
See the thing with these kind of threats, whether they're
you know, Chinese spies, jihattis, or any other kind of malefactors,
if we knew which ones they were, in other words,
if they had some kind of patch on their head
saying I'm a member of the People's Liberation Army, even
Biden wouldn't have let them in. I mean, but we
have no idea. And so this is the point I
(15:49):
try to make to people who talk about sanctuary and
the rest of it, is that we don't know who
the ordinary illegal aliens are versus the you know, malign,
dangerous illegal aliens, or even just criminals and gang members,
let alone Chinese spies or jihatis. You have to have
enforcement across the board if you're going to weed out
(16:12):
those people. This idea that we're going to focus on
just the Chinese agents. It's a recipe for non enforcement, inaction,
and failure. You have to enforce the rules across the
board so that you also get the gang members, the spies,
the terrorists. Otherwise, what are you doing that you're not
(16:36):
providing security? It's you know, national security is indivisible, I
guess is one way to put it. You have to
go after everybody in order to uproot and remove the
malignant actors as well as the dishwashers and the drywall hangers.
We don't know which one is which.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
No, I take the point, but I think if you're
looking for mostly Hispanic dishwashers and you know one people,
for example, and you are not making the point to
the American people that we're also worrying about large numbers
(17:18):
of military age, unaccompanied men of apparent China Chinese extraction
who are perhaps as well, you know, in groups, and
that that's a problem, then this whole idea of see something,
say something seems to me to be somewhat doomed to failure,
(17:41):
and more to the point, the possibility of sort of
crowdsourcing the situational awareness that we need to enforce the
laws and protect the country as being missed.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree, and the administration does
need to highlight that they've highlighted the game issue, maybe
not as much the terrorist issue, although they did just
I think recently arrest an illegal alien truck driver. This is,
you know, part of this crackdown on the truck drivers.
Guy turns out to be an Uzbek wanted terrorist back
(18:14):
in his home country. But that's my point. Regular enforcement
is the way you end up nabbing these people, especially
we're employment enforcement all of it. So you got to
enforce it across the board, not just pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right, Mark, and you know
you've been very clear about that, and we were facing, unfortunately,
I guess, the harsh reality that you've got limited resources,
and especially when you find them running into interference at
every turn, you've got an even greater challenge than otherwise.
(18:51):
Leslie drug trafficking, how instrumental are the cartels to what
is continuing to come across that border? Human trafficking, child
trafficking and the like that has that also come to
a pretty much a holt.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
From what I've seen. Fentanyl trafficking is down, but meth
and heroin and other things. Is the cartels are seeking
to replace it with that because in a sense, fentanyl
became the you know, the the drug of the day,
and that everybody was focusing attention on it. And so
these guys are businessmen and they're saying, Okay, well, let's
(19:35):
move something else. But clearly, if it's harder to get
across the border, it's going to be harder to move
dope and other things, because regular people storming across the
border are also cover for all kinds of bad things.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Mark, we have to leave it at that, Thank you
so much for your efforts. Cs cis dot org is
the website for Marc Korean. Check it out please and
support his great work.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
We'll be right back, folks. We're back, and I am
(20:27):
delighted to say always. Rod Martin is back as well.
Rod Martin is, of course the founder and the chairman
of the board of our Institute for the American Future.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Which I'm very proud to be the president.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
He is an incredibly free range minded individual who now
is the proprietor in addition to all of that of
the Rod Martin Report, which you can find Atmartin dot org.
He is an entrepreneur and businessmen as well, who cut
(21:03):
his teeth with Peter Teel and the PayPal mafia. But
he before that worked as a policy advisor to then
Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, the man in short of
many parts, including a longtime leader of the Southern Baptist Convention.
We're always delighted to have a chance to pick his brains,
(21:24):
considerable brains at that. Welcome back, Rod, Good to have you,
my friend would be here. So I wanted to start
with some thoughts of my own on the subject that
I want to turn to with you first. It was
something you discussed with Eric Metexas recently and very impressively.
It concerns what's been happening to our conservative movement for
(21:49):
one of a better term maga the base, the right,
however you describe it. What has been taking place, I
think is nothing short of a sort of fratricide at
a very unfortunate time. We've got conservatives who agree on
(22:09):
some things and disagree on other things now increasingly finding
that they don't seem to agree on much at all,
and that in their disagreements there is a kind of
bitterness that is poisonous I'm afraid, certainly for a movement
(22:32):
more needed now arguably than ever.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Some of the.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Disagreements revolve around Israel, its importance to our country, its
importance of course to the Jewish people, but also its
importance to Western civilization, and I'd want to be absolutely
clear about this. I don't think we can overstate the
importance of Israel to Western civilization as well to our
(23:01):
own interests, particularly in the Middle East. And I find
it difficult to state with sufficient conviction that I pray
that those who were seeing things otherwise will think better
of their position as it becomes more and more untenable
(23:24):
by the day. Rod Martin, you talked a bit about
this with Eric Metaxas and your clarity on the kinds
of well, at best, willful blindness and at worst, I
think a kind of dishonesty is characterizing the positions of
(23:50):
those who are finding fault with Israel and disregarding its
importance to us. Walk us through your thinking on this.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Well, we have a lot of friends who are theologically
committed to Israel for one reason or another. We have
a growing number of friends and in some cases not friends,
who have a theological argument with the first group, and
therefore Israel is evil and you just look at that,
(24:20):
and honestly, I just shake my head. Israel is like
every other country that we have any business with. We
don't agree religiously with Japan if we're Christians. We don't
agree religiously with France, honestly, if we're Christians. So you know,
(24:40):
but we get along. We can be friends, we can
love our neighbors as ourselves, we can make meaningful alliances,
we can have meaningful trade deals. There's nothing wrong with
any of that. And you know, for some of our
pastors on one side to take this vament andy Israel
position because they don't agree with Mike Huckabe's eschatology, just
(25:05):
boggles my mind. I mean, I don't agree with lots
of countries for lots of reasons, some of them theological
that those people seem to want to give a pass. So,
for example, we're constantly told that somehow the tail is
wagging the dog. This country of nine and a half
million people controls the whole world, and certainly Donald Trump.
(25:28):
I haven't noticed that Donald Trump is capable of being
controlled by anybody. I think the last four years showed
us anything. It's that literally nobody can control Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump has spent a lifetime telling us he's
pro Israel. So why are these folks all of a
sudden in an uproar about Donald Trump doing exactly what
(25:51):
Donald Trump promised he would do. And more to the point, Look,
Israel is a capitalist, free enclave in a sea of tyrants.
Everyone around them has fewer rights than Arabs do. In Israel,
There's no question about this. They have become a technology powerhouse.
(26:14):
This idea that somehow they're dependent on USAID is honestly,
at best forty years out of date, and second, just absurd.
The money that does go to Israel almost entirely never
gets to Israel. It goes to General Dynamics and Boeing
as grants to help them buy things, largely in exchange
(26:36):
for things they're doing for us, like the joint development
work on iron beam and so forth, but also all
our dirty work in the Middle East. The idea that
Donald Trump got dragged into the war against Iran? Are
you kidding? Donald Trump set it up where the Israelis
do all the hard stuff and then we show up
(26:58):
for a grand finale, and again and again and again
you see this it reflects just a level of nonsense
that is hard to grasp apart from, of course, natari money.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Well, that's the point I wanted to get to Roder.
It seems as though nonsense doesn't begin to describe the
impetus behind this. I'm sure there's some of it, obviously,
but to the extent that we are witnessing an aggressive
influence operation by this nation of Cutter, which has more
(27:38):
money than it knows what to do with. But what
it seems to be principally interested in doing with it
is trying to advance the jihad and take down those
opposed to its success. And one of the ways in
which that is playing out, as best I can tell,
is well buying off, for want of a better on
(28:01):
some prominent conservative influencers to a point where it does
it does get into that space where it seems rather
virulently anti Israel, not just you know, sort of an
argument about our priorities domestic and otherwise your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Well, the thing is, if Cutter weren't doing it, George
Soros or Reid Hoffman would be you know, this is
the thing constantly treated to this idea that there's this
sea of Israeli money in American politics, but the numbers
are pretty clear. In a ranking of numbers one through
(28:41):
ten countries by expenditures to influence American politicians and citizens
in America, Open Secrets has Israel in tenth place. The
Chinese are ahead, Cutter is ahead, Saudi Arabia is ahead.
Get this, the Bahamas are ahead. Everybody is ahead of Israel.
(29:05):
And why wouldn't they lobby in the United States. It's
not illegal to lobby in the United States. We have
this crazy new fangled thing called the First Amendment. So yeah,
they have interests here against people who are out spending
them dramatically to try to turn American opinion against them.
They're spending money to try to keep people in support
(29:26):
of them. Okay, that's all fine. That's called a marketplace
of ideas. Now, if you could show they were bribing
politicians or something, that'd be fine. You know, we should
put those people in jail. But wouldn't you have to
start with Eric Swolwell, wouldn't you have to start with
all these democrats who are in bed with the Chinese
Communist Party And I don't hear people attack in China.
(29:50):
None of these people are questioning the DNA of the
Han Chinese in the way that they suddenly are about you.
And I just keep coming back to, First of all,
that's been completely debunked. The science claiming that Jews in
Israel aren't the same as Jews two thousand years ago
(30:12):
is just obscene anti Semitism. There's no science to it.
But it's more than that. A Jew is anybody who
wants to be a Jew, just like a Baptist is
anybody who wants to be a Baptist. We don't do
a DNA check on Baptists. That's just silly. So you know,
the kinds of arguments being marshaled sound like they come
(30:32):
straight out of Gebels, and it's just horrifying to watch.
And it really you know, I'm not saying we should
cancel anybody. That's not true. I want to give them
enough exposure that we can hear how obscene their arguments
actually are and reject them.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah, And I guess the question that occurs, rod is
are the folks that such individuals seem to be particularly
appealing to, namely the younger cohort of Americans able to
(31:10):
discern determine from that exposure that these folks are acting
in this scene way that what they're saying and what
they're recommending, what they're what they're calling for visa the
Israel and for that matter, visa be the United States
is beyond the appalling. It's it's totally unacceptable. I want
(31:36):
to explore this with you on the other side of
the break because I think this is really a critical
issue for our time. Have we lost the youth of
our country or are they susceptible to making sensible, responsible
decisions once they understand actually what people are trying to
do here Gerbalesque especially. We'll be talking about all of
(31:59):
that and much more with Rod Martin on the other
side of the short break.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Please stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
We're back, and so is Rod Martin. Praise the Lord,
follow his great work at Rodmartin dot org, and support
the work of the organization that he founded, the Institute
for the American Future at Usfuture dot org as one
of its employees. I will be very appreciative Rod. Let
me just drill down a little bit. Tucker Carlson is
(32:49):
an individual who has been doing some I think very
troubling platforming of another individual, notably well several of them
we have the Qatari Prime minister I believe, and the
Iranian president I think it was, and then more recently
some historians of some disrepute. But Nick Fuentes is a
(33:13):
name that I had not heard, frankly until fairly recently,
and for two and a half hours, Tucker showcased him
and some of his ideas. I'm not sure that they
were fully on display in that performance. It seemed as
though he was tempering his.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Rhetoric a bit.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
But the more you're exposed to it, and I find
it a kind of soiling experience, honestly, the more it's
evident he really falls into that category of reprehensible people
that you're talking about. What are your thoughts about the
seeming affinity of an awful lot of young Americans to
(33:55):
the kind of well worldview, shall we say, the kind
of at a Semitic, the kind of pro Nazi even
attitudes that Flint seems to embrace.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Well, I just want to start by saying I don't
have any problem with Tucker platforming Nick Flint. Is I
just wish Tucker had actually interviewed him with the vigor
shall we say, that he did Ted Cruz and all
he did was throw softballs at Flint as and when
Flint has outright says I think Stalin is cool, Tucker
(34:33):
just let it go, never came back to it, never
asked to follow up at all. I'm sorry, Stalin wasn't cool.
Stalin murdered twenty million of his own people and proceeded
to take over every country he was in reach of,
where further millions died, including China, where sixty five million
(34:54):
were killed by their communist government. There is nothing cool
about that. But Nick Flints will tell you Hitler was
also cool, and you know all these people are cool. Okay,
that's a problem for me. I don't need to know
what he thinks about Israel, you can guess. But I
don't even need to know. I just need to know
that he's a communist. He is a communist who dresses
(35:18):
himself up in just enough free market and pro American
trappings to be able to pretend he's on the right.
But he's not. He's a communist. And not only is
he a communist, he's a pretty reprehensible person. I mean,
just look at the other things he's pushing. This is
(35:38):
a guy who you know, there is honestly just no
limit to how bad it is now? Is he is
he pro masculinity, Yes, but he's also misogynistic, you know.
Is he is he pro Trump? Well, yes, after the election,
(35:59):
but before the election he was posting over and over
again about how how we have to do whatever we
can to stop Trump. So he spends with four Katungu.
He just wants to tell you enough like the devil
to get you to listen, and then he slips in
the poison. And I don't understand why Tucker Carlson didn't
(36:20):
interview him properly. I think a retarded fifth grader could
have interviewed him better than Tucker did well.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
And again it's fitting a pattern. The same kind of
softball approach was taken with the Iranian and with the
Katari and with some of these other characters as well,
which gives again a certain legitimization to the moment.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Again, is fine, as you know, to the degree that
it's letting them get their side out. I don't have
a problem with someone interviewing the Ayatola. I want to
hear what the Ayatola thinks. I want to hear what
Saddam Hussein thought or Adolf Hitler thought. Those are reasonable things.
When I hear Vladimir Putin, I know more about what's
going on in Russia. Of course his spin is on it,
(37:01):
but if we're sitting here, we're giving it our spin too.
I don't have a problem with that. I believe in
the marketplace of ideas. But I know that if I
were the one being interviewed, I would be getting hit
harder than Nick Flint has got, or than Vladimir Putin got.
And I think there's a real fundamental problem with that,
(37:21):
not with the interview, but what the interview were.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Let me turn to something you've written about at Rodmartin
dot org, and that is that President Trump's hemispheric strategy
is actually part of a two front approach to containing
communist China. You're a member of our Committee on the
President Danger China, as you know, we're rather big on
(37:49):
rolling back China, not just containing it. But took us
through the theory of these pieces that you're talking about,
the two front aspects of this conflict.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Well, Donald Trump grasps that if you can't handle your
own backyard, you can't handle anything else. And we used
to understand that, we actually understood that for most of
American history, we have gotten very slack in the last
not just years, but several decades, and we have let
China and Russia and Iran in particular have meaningful dangerous
(38:26):
presences in places like Venezuela and Cuba, which is just unconscionable.
And we've let China own the ports at both ends
of the Panama Canal, which is just unconscionable. And we've
let China move into a position where it could end
up exploiting the mining rights in Greenland, which is just unconscionable.
(38:47):
So Donald Trump has addressed all of those things quite
aggressively since even before he took office again, and that's essential,
that's foundational to American grand strategy globally.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
This is I think at the core of the question
that I want to explore with you a bit further.
If the President is in fact intent on containing China
rod or better yet, rolling it back, and that certainly
(39:24):
is the clear implication of what we've learned, for example,
from Lee Smith's new book The China Matrix, that chronicles
Trump's attitude towards China over decades. Really, I want to
explore with you the other piece of his strategy, which
(39:45):
is seemingly maintaining the Chinese Communist Party in business and
you know, doing deals with them on well, rare earths
among other things. We in fact do really have a
deal with him on that. Talk about it with Rod Martin.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Please stay too, We're back.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
We're talking with our free range minded friend and colleague
Rod Martin about the Trump strategy towards China. Is the
hemispheric security piece of it part of a larger strategy
to contain or I would prefer to see roll back
the Chinese Communist Party put it as Ronald Reagan did
(40:48):
the Soviet Party on the ash heap of history. But
there's also this other dimension Rod, that I wanted you
to address, if you would, and that is what the
President is doing with respect to trade with the Chinese,
including trade that seemingly is now being once again restricted
(41:11):
by the Chinese. They've said that they are going to
deny the use of their rare earth minerals, their processed
rare earth minerals by companies in the United States that
are doing business, at least in part with our military.
How does all this come together as a grand strategy, sir?
Speaker 3 (41:33):
And to what end I think Trump learned most of
his lessons on these things from Reagan, which has been
really remarkable to watch. Actually, obviously the details differ and
the circumstances in the world are very very different from
the eighties, and in most ways that's a good thing.
(41:55):
You know, we're not in danger of being conquered by
the Soviet Union tomorrow, and that's definitely and that positive
in the world. But what Reagan did, as you know,
was not eliminate the Soviet Union by bombing the radar
at Krasnoiarsk or you know, going after SS twenties, you know,
with with FB one eleven's, that wasn't the plan. The
(42:17):
plan was to bankrupt them, which he did, and that
involved continuing to do business with them, but also constraining
their ability to do that business. So you get the
deal with the Saudi's in eighty five that starts collapsing
the price of oil, which then as now was the
source of Soviet hard currency, and all of a sudden
(42:39):
they can't keep up in the arms race. They certainly
can't compete with SDI and you know, Gorbachev is trying
to get the economy to do right, and in the
process he just absolutely broke the entire system. So I
think that's what you're seeing here. I think Trump is
aware that there are certain things that we have allowed
(42:59):
ourselves to be dependent on China for that we're not
going to be able to decouple from overnight, and so
the continued dialogue makes sense at least until that point
at which we can, and that's in progress. As you
saw during the Asian trip, we had a new deal
we actually this was at the White House the week before.
(43:20):
We had a new deal with Albanizi in Australia, not
just for rare earths mining but processing. So we're taking
back some of that refining which China currently dominates. Ninety
two percent of the Ukraine deal is about rare earths.
The Greenland deal is in part about rare earths. But
we're also opening significant facilities in the United States, old
(43:44):
mines and new mines that are capable of producing these things.
And we're building refining capacity, including a giant new plant
in Fort Worth that will take over production of about
a third of the rare earth's magnets we need, so,
you know, and that's just one facility. A lot of
this eighteen trillion in new investment coming in will go
(44:06):
to that. And you just saw just not that I
can't talk. You just saw half a billion dollars go
from the Pentagon into RP Materials, which is which is
the main producer in the United States, and another half
billion dollars come in in an investment from Apple. So
we're moving aggressively on this. They're not going to be
(44:28):
able to hold this over our heads much longer. And
at the same time, the other big pain point, of
course is their dominance of pharmaceuticals, and Trump is moving
aggressively on getting pharmaceutical plants built here. So I think
over a four year period you see their ability to
control events dropped significantly.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
So for the interim period though, rod General Motors and
Tesla have both said that they're going to respond to
this threat from the Chinese to restrict companies that do
business with the Pentagon by saying, you know, they're ending
(45:11):
their supply chain dependency on China. Is that something they
can do at this point in time? I mean, I
take your point that there's a lot of other things
in the works that will give them options in the future,
But can we essentially decouple even selectively by such companies now,
do you think.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
There's stock piles here and there, there are long term
contracts here and there. They're not going to make a
pronouncement like that without thinking at least that they have
it covered, and I don't doubt that they do. If
we have a two year production hit on f thirty fives,
we've got a bunch of them, the world won't end.
(45:50):
And at the other side of that, we're just going
to double production. So even if you have that kind
of thing, I don't think it material affects us. But
here's what I do know. Scott Bessant was on TV
again yesterday saying, if they do mess with us on this,
we have a lot of levers on them, and he's
not kidding, and we can prove that they actually are
(46:14):
susceptible to some of those by virtue of two factoids
that your audience will appreciate, you know. The first one
being that we are still charging China almost four times
the tariff they're charging us, and Chi chen Ping agreed
to that. That's remarkable to me. The other thing is
(46:36):
Trump really pressed him on Russian oil imports. Obviously they
can't wean off immediately, and obviously there's only so much
face they can lose in one shot. But two of
the largest Chinese oil companies immediately announced that they aren't
buying Russian oil anymore. Will they keep their word? Don't know.
(46:57):
But that's actually a really big diplomatic ship, even if
it doesn't change a lot on the ground, and Putin
has to plan for that and deal with that whether
it happens or not. So that materially impacts Putin's ability
to continue the war in Ukraine. He is completely energy
dependent for funding that war and frankly funding his government.
(47:21):
And at some point that starts putting enough hurt on
the oligarchs that they start demanding some kind of change
either in his policy or in.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
His position, meaning that his days may be numbered. In
all of this a fascinating perspective. As usual, you have
stretched the envelope of the possible here, and our appreciation
to you is likewise greatly expanded as well. Rod Martin,
thank you for all that you're doing at Rodmartin dot org.
(47:53):
Thank you for featuring this program in our conversations with
you on that platform as well. As You're right Broad
Martin Reports, subscribe folks to them come back to us soon.
I hope the rest of you'll do the same next time.
Until then you'll go forth and multiply.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
H m hmm.
Welcome to Securing America with me, Frank Affne, the program
that's a kind of owner's manual for protecting the country
we love against all enemies foreign and domestic, to the
glory of God and his Kingdom. Well, we're going to
talk a bit about protecting the country we love against
enemies foreign and some now who are domestic, with one
(00:45):
of the men who I admire most for his absolutely
relentless efforts to assure that the rest of us understand
the importance of immigration policy and practice the mistakes that
have been made, particularly in recent years with respect to both.
(01:05):
His name is Mark Krekorian. He is the president of
a stupendously important organization, the Center for Immigration Studies. He
has been the watchman on the wall for as long
as I've known him, which is a couple of decades
I think at this point, and absolutely a go to resource,
and I'm sorry we haven't gone to him more regularly
(01:28):
of late. It's been a while, Mark, but we're delighted
to have you back. Welcome once again, my friend.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Glad to be here anytime.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
So I wanted to sort of level set a little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Mark.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The very good news as I understand it, is in
the wake of the new second Trump presidency, what we
were told was an insuperably hard problem of securing, particularly
the southern border, got solved in Well, it wasn't a
couple of days. I guess it was a couple of
(01:58):
weeks at most. Is that in fact the case, do
we now have a secure southern border?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Would you say, sir, Yeah, we do. And it doesn't
mean that nothing's ever gonna happen there. I mean, you
can lock your car and it could still get stolen.
But the number of apprehensions there is the lowest, really
the lowest ever recorded because even in earlier generations, and
we're talking about a long time ago, numbers were lower sometimes,
(02:27):
but we also didn't know what was going on at
the border. We now have eyes on the whole border
day and night in a way that never exists before.
So we really do know what's happening at the border.
The numbers are way down doesn't mean that the challenge
isn't there. People now are trying to smuggle on boats
come up you know, past San Diego or Visa overstairs,
(02:50):
which is always a real challenge, or the Canadian border.
So the point is this never goes away. It's a
permanent feature of national security. But we're actually doing the
national security now at the southern border in a way
that not only do we not see under Biden, but
really under all previous administrations, we just didn't have this
(03:12):
level of security. So absolutely, So, Mark, let me just
be clear.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
The border has greater surveillance on it than previously. Does
it still have holes in the wall there? And when
you say the apprehensions are minimal at this point, does
that mean that we're no longer having the phenomenon of
getaways that previously weren't apprehended but were nonetheless getting into
(03:41):
the country.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
There's always going to be some god aways, but the
numbers are much lower and we have much more certainty
about the estimates of god aways because of that surveillance.
I mean, we have remote cameras, there are underground sensors.
We have these stationary blimps sometimes that are used in
order to get a higher view. So yeah, absolutely we
(04:07):
are there holes. The wall is never going to be
two thousand miles long, because there's no real reason in
some places to even have a wall. They are filling
in holes. But the wall itself isn't some magic thing
that you seal it up and then you can you know,
set it and forget it. It's a tool, and they
have to have roads and sensors and lights and all
the rest of that stuff. And you know there there's
(04:29):
still room for improvement, and they're working on it. They're
building some more wall sections, but you know, it's it's
sort of a work in progress, but it's a work
that's actually progressing very well. Now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, And so Mark, when when we talk about this,
and I alluded to it in my opening question to you,
how is it that all of this seemingly was done
so quickly when we were so assiduously told and not
just by Democrats by the way. I mean, there was
(05:03):
James Langford and you know, Mitch McConnell and others who
were insisting that no, no, no, we needed comprehensive legislation
or some version thereof to get the tools that we're
going to be required to keep this keep this problem
for persisting. Why was that not so, sir?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
We didn't really need new laws, We needed a new president.
And you know that's that's what Trump had said, and
there's actually a lot of truth to that, because prospective
illegal immigrants and they're smugglers. Aren't some kind of I
don't know, irresistible force or you know, superheroes or something.
(05:44):
The regular people making rational calculations, And probably the most
important thing other than just Trump's rhetoric, it's like, oh
my god, the bad Orange man is here. We better
stop a policy change that. The fundamental one is that
they stopped letting everybody go with the border. If you're
not going to spend all that money and take all
(06:04):
that risk, if you're just going to end up in
detention and they're going to send you home anyway. Biden
was just letting everybody go. Once you stop that, the
only people who are going to keep trying are the
real hard cases, and you know you need to stop them.
And it's labor intensive, but you don't have the kind
of flood that we did for four years under Biden.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And on the point about enforcement of the laws, we're
hearing a lot about the efforts by ICE, Customs and
Border Patrol, other law enforcement agencies, national Guard, even in
some cases working the problem of trying to remove people
here illegally. Talk to us about the state of that
(06:51):
effort as you see it, sir.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, See, that's the other side of the coin, if
you will. In other words, the administration has done a
very good job of basically turning off the faucet, but
they now have to mop up the you know, flow
from the overflow of the bathtub to use the continue
the metaphor, and they're you know, making significant progress there.
Most of it, from our research is people leaving on
(07:14):
their own, illegal immigrants who were kind of concluding that
the party's over and they bear to get out quick.
Our research through July, from January through July suggests, using
Census Bureau data, that two point the number of foreign
born people legal or illegal has declined by two point
two million, and that of that one point six million
(07:38):
were illegal immigrants. So the number's gone up since obviously.
But our research director has looked at that question from
a bunch of different angles, and it does seem to
be a real thing, not just illegal immigrants not answering
the surveys or something they do that actually believe it
or not.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
So who are self deporting?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Self deporting? Say, some of those are actual ice deportations,
but the large majority our self deportations. That's what the
administration is counting on. And one of the reasons they
have such publicity about this is to try to send
the message to get people to leave on their own.
The one thing that they need to now ramp up
is employer based employment based enforcement too. They need to
(08:18):
purp walk some employers that are knowingly hiring illegal immigrants,
send the message that it's not just murderers and rapists
that we're looking for. Those are the first priority, but
that regular, ordinary illegal aliens need to put their affairs
in order and go home as well.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And by shaming essentially people who are giving them employment, the.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Theory punishing hopefully more than shaming.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Well yeah, it starts with I guess shaming as part
of the punishment. But yes, and this would hopefully cause
others to cease and desist in that practice as well,
creating a new impetus for people to self deport I
take it exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, because look, most employers aren't crooks.
I mean, I'm an employer, you know, I come from
a line of small business men people or you know,
most employers they want to just know what the rules
are and be able to follow the rules. It needs
to become clear that the rules are now what the
law says rather than the kind of wink and nod,
(09:23):
nudge nudge, you know know what I mean, kind of
non enforcement that prevailed in the past. When we do that,
you're going to see real self deportation increase.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
This is this is a tremendously important point. Mark. We
have to take a short break. When we come back,
I want to talk to you about one of the
other things that is compounding the problem, and that is
sanctuary cities and whether we're about to see New York
City become one of a whole new class. Stay two.
We'll be right back with more with Mark Gordan of
the Center for Immigration Studies. Right after this welcome back,
(10:18):
we are visiting with Mark Krekorian, a man whose insights
and expertise and dogged tenacity when it comes to matters
involving immigration, I have admired greatly for many years, as
I have his organization, the Center for Immigration Studies. You
can find it at CIS dot org. You can find
(10:40):
his books on Amazon. He's got a number of them,
The New Case Against Immigration being one, How Obama transformed
America through immigration being another. There are many others, and Mark,
I wanted to talk to you about transforming America through
saint sanctuary cities. What the historic impact has been of
(11:06):
I think in every case democratic mayors, some cases democratic
governors have done this with states, I believe, but certainly
mayors have. And now we have this fellow Zoron Mamdani,
a communist as well as jihadist, making no bones about
what he intends to do to be welcoming of immigrants,
(11:30):
he being one of them after all, talk a little
bit about this particular aspect of the immigration security problem.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
A sanctuary city. People misunderstand this sanctuary city or state
as you suggested, or county isn't a place that says, okay,
our police will not go around checking people's papers. Ice
doesn't want the police to be going around and saying, hey, Paco,
where's your green card. What they want is the jurisdictions
(12:00):
to let ICE know when they're done whatever they're going
to do with people they arrest for normal reasons. They're
driving drunk, beating their wives, you know, uh, dealing drugs.
They're arrested for that. Their fingerprints all go to DHS
now as well as the FBI, so they know if
(12:21):
this guy's an illegal. A sanctuary city says, no, we
are not we are going to release these people back
into American communities. It's specifically designed to protect criminals, and
it's outrageous. And the thing is that we've our estimate
is at a slight majority of all the illegal immigrants
live in sanctuary jurisdictions. So how is ICE supposed to,
(12:43):
you know, do his job if the main way that
illegal immigrants come in contact with the authorities is foreclose
to them. And so this is a serious problem. Governor,
I mean, the new or elected mayor of New York
has said he's gonna type and even further their sanctuary policies. Interestingly,
(13:04):
the current governor, Eric Adams actually kind of loosened up
a little bit and has been cooperating to a limited
degree with Ice. Again with regard to people they've arrested
for murder and what have you to hand them over
when they're finished with them, whatever they're going to do
with them. The interesting thing is, will mom Donnie try
to presume to try to arrest ICE agents doing their jobs.
(13:28):
That'll be interesting and that would force a constitutional crisis,
I think in the same way that his pledged to
arrest Prime Minister and Yahoo if he comes to the
un it's the same kind of thing. It's not going
to happen. Frankly, that's the way a mayor ends up
getting arrested himself. But it does send a message to
illegal immigrants that this is a place you should stay.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
And mark among those I fear will be well, Gie Hoddies,
I mean, this is a mayor, actually a Sharia's supremacist
convert to Islam convert actually, as you know, I'm sure,
to the Shia death cult known as Twelverism, which thinks
that we ought to have the apocalypse to bring back
(14:14):
the Mahdi, the twelfth Imam, the golden age of Islam.
And so I mean it's terrifying to think about the
kind of people who he might provide safe haven to,
who seek such you know, diabolical you know, missions and
states to the extent that there are, in fact, in
(14:39):
part as a result of Joe Biden's open border policy,
not only possibly millions of immigrants who embrace this doctrine
of Sharia and seek to impose it upon our country,
but there is also by some estimates, and I'd be
very appreciative of your best guess. I've heard numbers as
(15:03):
low as ten thousand as high as two hundred thousand
individuals who are believed to be Chinese soldiers who've gotten
into this country through those open borders as well. What
are your thoughts about those threats, sir? And why don't
we hear more about trying to remove such people find
(15:24):
the first of all, I guess and remove them as well.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
See the thing with these kind of threats, whether they're
you know, Chinese spies, jihattis, or any other kind of malefactors,
if we knew which ones they were, in other words,
if they had some kind of patch on their head
saying I'm a member of the People's Liberation Army, even
Biden wouldn't have let them in. I mean, but we
have no idea. And so this is the point I
(15:49):
try to make to people who talk about sanctuary and
the rest of it, is that we don't know who
the ordinary illegal aliens are versus the you know, malign,
dangerous illegal aliens, or even just criminals and gang members,
let alone Chinese spies or jihatis. You have to have
enforcement across the board if you're going to weed out
(16:12):
those people. This idea that we're going to focus on
just the Chinese agents. It's a recipe for non enforcement, inaction,
and failure. You have to enforce the rules across the
board so that you also get the gang members, the spies,
the terrorists. Otherwise, what are you doing that you're not
(16:36):
providing security? It's you know, national security is indivisible, I
guess is one way to put it. You have to
go after everybody in order to uproot and remove the
malignant actors as well as the dishwashers and the drywall hangers.
We don't know which one is which.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
No, I take the point, but I think if you're
looking for mostly Hispanic dishwashers and you know one people,
for example, and you are not making the point to
the American people that we're also worrying about large numbers
(17:18):
of military age, unaccompanied men of apparent China Chinese extraction
who are perhaps as well, you know, in groups, and
that that's a problem, then this whole idea of see something,
say something seems to me to be somewhat doomed to failure,
(17:41):
and more to the point, the possibility of sort of
crowdsourcing the situational awareness that we need to enforce the
laws and protect the country as being missed.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree, and the administration does
need to highlight that they've highlighted the game issue, maybe
not as much the terrorist issue, although they did just
I think recently arrest an illegal alien truck driver. This is,
you know, part of this crackdown on the truck drivers.
Guy turns out to be an Uzbek wanted terrorist back
(18:14):
in his home country. But that's my point. Regular enforcement
is the way you end up nabbing these people, especially
we're employment enforcement all of it. So you got to
enforce it across the board, not just pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right, Mark, and you know
you've been very clear about that, and we were facing, unfortunately,
I guess, the harsh reality that you've got limited resources,
and especially when you find them running into interference at
every turn, you've got an even greater challenge than otherwise.
(18:51):
Leslie drug trafficking, how instrumental are the cartels to what
is continuing to come across that border? Human trafficking, child
trafficking and the like that has that also come to
a pretty much a holt.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
From what I've seen. Fentanyl trafficking is down, but meth
and heroin and other things. Is the cartels are seeking
to replace it with that because in a sense, fentanyl
became the you know, the the drug of the day,
and that everybody was focusing attention on it. And so
these guys are businessmen and they're saying, Okay, well, let's
(19:35):
move something else. But clearly, if it's harder to get
across the border, it's going to be harder to move
dope and other things, because regular people storming across the
border are also cover for all kinds of bad things.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Mark, we have to leave it at that, Thank you
so much for your efforts. Cs cis dot org is
the website for Marc Korean. Check it out please and
support his great work.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
We'll be right back, folks. We're back, and I am
(20:27):
delighted to say always. Rod Martin is back as well.
Rod Martin is, of course the founder and the chairman
of the board of our Institute for the American Future.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Which I'm very proud to be the president.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
He is an incredibly free range minded individual who now
is the proprietor in addition to all of that of
the Rod Martin Report, which you can find Atmartin dot org.
He is an entrepreneur and businessmen as well, who cut
(21:03):
his teeth with Peter Teel and the PayPal mafia. But
he before that worked as a policy advisor to then
Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, the man in short of
many parts, including a longtime leader of the Southern Baptist Convention.
We're always delighted to have a chance to pick his brains,
(21:24):
considerable brains at that. Welcome back, Rod, Good to have you,
my friend would be here. So I wanted to start
with some thoughts of my own on the subject that
I want to turn to with you first. It was
something you discussed with Eric Metexas recently and very impressively.
It concerns what's been happening to our conservative movement for
(21:49):
one of a better term maga the base, the right,
however you describe it. What has been taking place, I
think is nothing short of a sort of fratricide at
a very unfortunate time. We've got conservatives who agree on
(22:09):
some things and disagree on other things now increasingly finding
that they don't seem to agree on much at all,
and that in their disagreements there is a kind of
bitterness that is poisonous I'm afraid, certainly for a movement
(22:32):
more needed now arguably than ever.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Some of the.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Disagreements revolve around Israel, its importance to our country, its
importance of course to the Jewish people, but also its
importance to Western civilization, and I'd want to be absolutely
clear about this. I don't think we can overstate the
importance of Israel to Western civilization as well to our
(23:01):
own interests, particularly in the Middle East. And I find
it difficult to state with sufficient conviction that I pray
that those who were seeing things otherwise will think better
of their position as it becomes more and more untenable
(23:24):
by the day. Rod Martin, you talked a bit about
this with Eric Metaxas and your clarity on the kinds
of well, at best, willful blindness and at worst, I
think a kind of dishonesty is characterizing the positions of
(23:50):
those who are finding fault with Israel and disregarding its
importance to us. Walk us through your thinking on this.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Well, we have a lot of friends who are theologically
committed to Israel for one reason or another. We have
a growing number of friends and in some cases not friends,
who have a theological argument with the first group, and
therefore Israel is evil and you just look at that,
(24:20):
and honestly, I just shake my head. Israel is like
every other country that we have any business with. We
don't agree religiously with Japan if we're Christians. We don't
agree religiously with France, honestly, if we're Christians. So you know,
(24:40):
but we get along. We can be friends, we can
love our neighbors as ourselves, we can make meaningful alliances,
we can have meaningful trade deals. There's nothing wrong with
any of that. And you know, for some of our
pastors on one side to take this vament andy Israel
position because they don't agree with Mike Huckabe's eschatology, just
(25:05):
boggles my mind. I mean, I don't agree with lots
of countries for lots of reasons, some of them theological
that those people seem to want to give a pass. So,
for example, we're constantly told that somehow the tail is
wagging the dog. This country of nine and a half
million people controls the whole world, and certainly Donald Trump.
(25:28):
I haven't noticed that Donald Trump is capable of being
controlled by anybody. I think the last four years showed
us anything. It's that literally nobody can control Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump has spent a lifetime telling us he's
pro Israel. So why are these folks all of a
sudden in an uproar about Donald Trump doing exactly what
(25:51):
Donald Trump promised he would do. And more to the point, Look,
Israel is a capitalist, free enclave in a sea of tyrants.
Everyone around them has fewer rights than Arabs do. In Israel,
There's no question about this. They have become a technology powerhouse.
(26:14):
This idea that somehow they're dependent on USAID is honestly,
at best forty years out of date, and second, just absurd.
The money that does go to Israel almost entirely never
gets to Israel. It goes to General Dynamics and Boeing
as grants to help them buy things, largely in exchange
(26:36):
for things they're doing for us, like the joint development
work on iron beam and so forth, but also all
our dirty work in the Middle East. The idea that
Donald Trump got dragged into the war against Iran? Are
you kidding? Donald Trump set it up where the Israelis
do all the hard stuff and then we show up
(26:58):
for a grand finale, and again and again and again
you see this it reflects just a level of nonsense
that is hard to grasp apart from, of course, natari money.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Well, that's the point I wanted to get to Roder.
It seems as though nonsense doesn't begin to describe the
impetus behind this. I'm sure there's some of it, obviously,
but to the extent that we are witnessing an aggressive
influence operation by this nation of Cutter, which has more
(27:38):
money than it knows what to do with. But what
it seems to be principally interested in doing with it
is trying to advance the jihad and take down those
opposed to its success. And one of the ways in
which that is playing out, as best I can tell,
is well buying off, for want of a better on
(28:01):
some prominent conservative influencers to a point where it does
it does get into that space where it seems rather
virulently anti Israel, not just you know, sort of an
argument about our priorities domestic and otherwise your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Well, the thing is, if Cutter weren't doing it, George
Soros or Reid Hoffman would be you know, this is
the thing constantly treated to this idea that there's this
sea of Israeli money in American politics, but the numbers
are pretty clear. In a ranking of numbers one through
(28:41):
ten countries by expenditures to influence American politicians and citizens
in America, Open Secrets has Israel in tenth place. The
Chinese are ahead, Cutter is ahead, Saudi Arabia is ahead.
Get this, the Bahamas are ahead. Everybody is ahead of Israel.
(29:05):
And why wouldn't they lobby in the United States. It's
not illegal to lobby in the United States. We have
this crazy new fangled thing called the First Amendment. So yeah,
they have interests here against people who are out spending
them dramatically to try to turn American opinion against them.
They're spending money to try to keep people in support
(29:26):
of them. Okay, that's all fine. That's called a marketplace
of ideas. Now, if you could show they were bribing
politicians or something, that'd be fine. You know, we should
put those people in jail. But wouldn't you have to
start with Eric Swolwell, wouldn't you have to start with
all these democrats who are in bed with the Chinese
Communist Party And I don't hear people attack in China.
(29:50):
None of these people are questioning the DNA of the
Han Chinese in the way that they suddenly are about you.
And I just keep coming back to, First of all,
that's been completely debunked. The science claiming that Jews in
Israel aren't the same as Jews two thousand years ago
(30:12):
is just obscene anti Semitism. There's no science to it.
But it's more than that. A Jew is anybody who
wants to be a Jew, just like a Baptist is
anybody who wants to be a Baptist. We don't do
a DNA check on Baptists. That's just silly. So you know,
the kinds of arguments being marshaled sound like they come
(30:32):
straight out of Gebels, and it's just horrifying to watch.
And it really you know, I'm not saying we should
cancel anybody. That's not true. I want to give them
enough exposure that we can hear how obscene their arguments
actually are and reject them.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah, And I guess the question that occurs, rod is
are the folks that such individuals seem to be particularly
appealing to, namely the younger cohort of Americans able to
(31:10):
discern determine from that exposure that these folks are acting
in this scene way that what they're saying and what
they're recommending, what they're what they're calling for visa the
Israel and for that matter, visa be the United States
is beyond the appalling. It's it's totally unacceptable. I want
(31:36):
to explore this with you on the other side of
the break because I think this is really a critical
issue for our time. Have we lost the youth of
our country or are they susceptible to making sensible, responsible
decisions once they understand actually what people are trying to
do here Gerbalesque especially. We'll be talking about all of
(31:59):
that and much more with Rod Martin on the other
side of the short break.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Please stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
We're back, and so is Rod Martin. Praise the Lord,
follow his great work at Rodmartin dot org, and support
the work of the organization that he founded, the Institute
for the American Future at Usfuture dot org as one
of its employees. I will be very appreciative Rod. Let
me just drill down a little bit. Tucker Carlson is
(32:49):
an individual who has been doing some I think very
troubling platforming of another individual, notably well several of them
we have the Qatari Prime minister I believe, and the
Iranian president I think it was, and then more recently
some historians of some disrepute. But Nick Fuentes is a
(33:13):
name that I had not heard, frankly until fairly recently,
and for two and a half hours, Tucker showcased him
and some of his ideas. I'm not sure that they
were fully on display in that performance. It seemed as
though he was tempering his.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Rhetoric a bit.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
But the more you're exposed to it, and I find
it a kind of soiling experience, honestly, the more it's
evident he really falls into that category of reprehensible people
that you're talking about. What are your thoughts about the
seeming affinity of an awful lot of young Americans to
(33:55):
the kind of well worldview, shall we say, the kind
of at a Semitic, the kind of pro Nazi even
attitudes that Flint seems to embrace.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Well, I just want to start by saying I don't
have any problem with Tucker platforming Nick Flint. Is I
just wish Tucker had actually interviewed him with the vigor
shall we say, that he did Ted Cruz and all
he did was throw softballs at Flint as and when
Flint has outright says I think Stalin is cool, Tucker
(34:33):
just let it go, never came back to it, never
asked to follow up at all. I'm sorry, Stalin wasn't cool.
Stalin murdered twenty million of his own people and proceeded
to take over every country he was in reach of,
where further millions died, including China, where sixty five million
(34:54):
were killed by their communist government. There is nothing cool
about that. But Nick Flints will tell you Hitler was
also cool, and you know all these people are cool. Okay,
that's a problem for me. I don't need to know
what he thinks about Israel, you can guess. But I
don't even need to know. I just need to know
that he's a communist. He is a communist who dresses
(35:18):
himself up in just enough free market and pro American
trappings to be able to pretend he's on the right.
But he's not. He's a communist. And not only is
he a communist, he's a pretty reprehensible person. I mean,
just look at the other things he's pushing. This is
(35:38):
a guy who you know, there is honestly just no
limit to how bad it is now? Is he is
he pro masculinity, Yes, but he's also misogynistic, you know.
Is he is he pro Trump? Well, yes, after the election,
(35:59):
but before the election he was posting over and over
again about how how we have to do whatever we
can to stop Trump. So he spends with four Katungu.
He just wants to tell you enough like the devil
to get you to listen, and then he slips in
the poison. And I don't understand why Tucker Carlson didn't
(36:20):
interview him properly. I think a retarded fifth grader could
have interviewed him better than Tucker did well.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
And again it's fitting a pattern. The same kind of
softball approach was taken with the Iranian and with the
Katari and with some of these other characters as well,
which gives again a certain legitimization to the moment.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Again, is fine, as you know, to the degree that
it's letting them get their side out. I don't have
a problem with someone interviewing the Ayatola. I want to
hear what the Ayatola thinks. I want to hear what
Saddam Hussein thought or Adolf Hitler thought. Those are reasonable things.
When I hear Vladimir Putin, I know more about what's
going on in Russia. Of course his spin is on it,
(37:01):
but if we're sitting here, we're giving it our spin too.
I don't have a problem with that. I believe in
the marketplace of ideas. But I know that if I
were the one being interviewed, I would be getting hit
harder than Nick Flint has got, or than Vladimir Putin got.
And I think there's a real fundamental problem with that,
(37:21):
not with the interview, but what the interview were.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Let me turn to something you've written about at Rodmartin
dot org, and that is that President Trump's hemispheric strategy
is actually part of a two front approach to containing
communist China. You're a member of our Committee on the
President Danger China, as you know, we're rather big on
(37:49):
rolling back China, not just containing it. But took us
through the theory of these pieces that you're talking about,
the two front aspects of this conflict.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Well, Donald Trump grasps that if you can't handle your
own backyard, you can't handle anything else. And we used
to understand that, we actually understood that for most of
American history, we have gotten very slack in the last
not just years, but several decades, and we have let
China and Russia and Iran in particular have meaningful dangerous
(38:26):
presences in places like Venezuela and Cuba, which is just unconscionable.
And we've let China own the ports at both ends
of the Panama Canal, which is just unconscionable. And we've
let China move into a position where it could end
up exploiting the mining rights in Greenland, which is just unconscionable.
(38:47):
So Donald Trump has addressed all of those things quite
aggressively since even before he took office again, and that's essential,
that's foundational to American grand strategy globally.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
This is I think at the core of the question
that I want to explore with you a bit further.
If the President is in fact intent on containing China
rod or better yet, rolling it back, and that certainly
(39:24):
is the clear implication of what we've learned, for example,
from Lee Smith's new book The China Matrix, that chronicles
Trump's attitude towards China over decades. Really, I want to
explore with you the other piece of his strategy, which
(39:45):
is seemingly maintaining the Chinese Communist Party in business and
you know, doing deals with them on well, rare earths
among other things. We in fact do really have a
deal with him on that. Talk about it with Rod Martin.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Please stay too, We're back.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
We're talking with our free range minded friend and colleague
Rod Martin about the Trump strategy towards China. Is the
hemispheric security piece of it part of a larger strategy
to contain or I would prefer to see roll back
the Chinese Communist Party put it as Ronald Reagan did
(40:48):
the Soviet Party on the ash heap of history. But
there's also this other dimension Rod, that I wanted you
to address, if you would, and that is what the
President is doing with respect to trade with the Chinese,
including trade that seemingly is now being once again restricted
(41:11):
by the Chinese. They've said that they are going to
deny the use of their rare earth minerals, their processed
rare earth minerals by companies in the United States that
are doing business, at least in part with our military.
How does all this come together as a grand strategy, sir?
Speaker 3 (41:33):
And to what end I think Trump learned most of
his lessons on these things from Reagan, which has been
really remarkable to watch. Actually, obviously the details differ and
the circumstances in the world are very very different from
the eighties, and in most ways that's a good thing.
(41:55):
You know, we're not in danger of being conquered by
the Soviet Union tomorrow, and that's definitely and that positive
in the world. But what Reagan did, as you know,
was not eliminate the Soviet Union by bombing the radar
at Krasnoiarsk or you know, going after SS twenties, you know,
with with FB one eleven's, that wasn't the plan. The
(42:17):
plan was to bankrupt them, which he did, and that
involved continuing to do business with them, but also constraining
their ability to do that business. So you get the
deal with the Saudi's in eighty five that starts collapsing
the price of oil, which then as now was the
source of Soviet hard currency, and all of a sudden
(42:39):
they can't keep up in the arms race. They certainly
can't compete with SDI and you know, Gorbachev is trying
to get the economy to do right, and in the
process he just absolutely broke the entire system. So I
think that's what you're seeing here. I think Trump is
aware that there are certain things that we have allowed
(42:59):
ourselves to be dependent on China for that we're not
going to be able to decouple from overnight, and so
the continued dialogue makes sense at least until that point
at which we can, and that's in progress. As you
saw during the Asian trip, we had a new deal
we actually this was at the White House the week before.
(43:20):
We had a new deal with Albanizi in Australia, not
just for rare earths mining but processing. So we're taking
back some of that refining which China currently dominates. Ninety
two percent of the Ukraine deal is about rare earths.
The Greenland deal is in part about rare earths. But
we're also opening significant facilities in the United States, old
(43:44):
mines and new mines that are capable of producing these things.
And we're building refining capacity, including a giant new plant
in Fort Worth that will take over production of about
a third of the rare earth's magnets we need, so,
you know, and that's just one facility. A lot of
this eighteen trillion in new investment coming in will go
(44:06):
to that. And you just saw just not that I
can't talk. You just saw half a billion dollars go
from the Pentagon into RP Materials, which is which is
the main producer in the United States, and another half
billion dollars come in in an investment from Apple. So
we're moving aggressively on this. They're not going to be
(44:28):
able to hold this over our heads much longer. And
at the same time, the other big pain point, of
course is their dominance of pharmaceuticals, and Trump is moving
aggressively on getting pharmaceutical plants built here. So I think
over a four year period you see their ability to
control events dropped significantly.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
So for the interim period though, rod General Motors and
Tesla have both said that they're going to respond to
this threat from the Chinese to restrict companies that do
business with the Pentagon by saying, you know, they're ending
(45:11):
their supply chain dependency on China. Is that something they
can do at this point in time? I mean, I
take your point that there's a lot of other things
in the works that will give them options in the future,
But can we essentially decouple even selectively by such companies now,
do you think.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
There's stock piles here and there, there are long term
contracts here and there. They're not going to make a
pronouncement like that without thinking at least that they have
it covered, and I don't doubt that they do. If
we have a two year production hit on f thirty fives,
we've got a bunch of them, the world won't end.
(45:50):
And at the other side of that, we're just going
to double production. So even if you have that kind
of thing, I don't think it material affects us. But
here's what I do know. Scott Bessant was on TV
again yesterday saying, if they do mess with us on this,
we have a lot of levers on them, and he's
not kidding, and we can prove that they actually are
(46:14):
susceptible to some of those by virtue of two factoids
that your audience will appreciate, you know. The first one
being that we are still charging China almost four times
the tariff they're charging us, and Chi chen Ping agreed
to that. That's remarkable to me. The other thing is
(46:36):
Trump really pressed him on Russian oil imports. Obviously they
can't wean off immediately, and obviously there's only so much
face they can lose in one shot. But two of
the largest Chinese oil companies immediately announced that they aren't
buying Russian oil anymore. Will they keep their word? Don't know.
(46:57):
But that's actually a really big diplomatic ship, even if
it doesn't change a lot on the ground, and Putin
has to plan for that and deal with that whether
it happens or not. So that materially impacts Putin's ability
to continue the war in Ukraine. He is completely energy
dependent for funding that war and frankly funding his government.
(47:21):
And at some point that starts putting enough hurt on
the oligarchs that they start demanding some kind of change
either in his policy or in.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
His position, meaning that his days may be numbered. In
all of this a fascinating perspective. As usual, you have
stretched the envelope of the possible here, and our appreciation
to you is likewise greatly expanded as well. Rod Martin,
thank you for all that you're doing at Rodmartin dot org.
(47:53):
Thank you for featuring this program in our conversations with
you on that platform as well. As You're right Broad
Martin Reports, subscribe folks to them come back to us soon.
I hope the rest of you'll do the same next time.
Until then you'll go forth and multiply.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
H m hmm.
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