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Frank Gaffney
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Guaranteed human, Foreign. Welcome to Securing America with me, Frank Afne 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. We have a very important conversation coming up with one of my great personal friends and heroes. Before we get there, I want to just set the stage for our conversation with a few remarks of my own. Prudent military officers plotting battlefield strategies are mindful of an immutable fact that can undo even the most brilliant of plans. The enemy gets a vote Starting today in the state of Texas. That is literally the case with the beginning of early voting. In its open GOP primary, Democrats, independents and yes, jihadists can vote, among other things, on the ballot's Proposition 10, which simply says Texas should prohibit Sharia law. If only Republican Texans voted, a call for banning Islam's toxic, totalitarian and demonic ideology masquerading as a religion now being insinuated into their state would pass overwhelmingly. If they do not turn out massively, however, our Sharia supremacist enemies may well do so and significantly skew the vote. So it behooves every patriotic Texan voter to turn out and say yes to Prop 10 and a Sharia free Texas. Bansharia.com those are some of my thoughts. For more of them, follow me at X and of course at the website of our Institute for the American future. Usfuture.org you can make contributions that will make this program possible, as well as much of the work that we're doing, among other things here in the great state of Texas, to try to ban Sharia. The guest that I am so pleased to be able to present first to you all is, as I mentioned, a great personal friend and hero of mine. That would be Debbie Georgia. She is the Republican National Committee woman for the state of Texas. There's only one of them. And she got elected to that role in May and is being unbelievably formidable in terms of carrying out her duties, not least of which of late has been to raise the alarm in this state about Sharia, the threat that it represents. Yes, to Texas and its, you know, values and its freedoms, but also to our nation as well. And she is leading a very concerted effort to try to make sure that this proposition is approved. Proposition 10 on the Republican ballot down at the very end of the ballot. So you have to look for it, you have to get to the polls. You have to do this as soon as possible. Early voting has begun as we speak today. Debbie Georgias, thank you so much for finding time in what I know is a crushingly busy schedule. Among other things, traveling around the state, making addresses about this very problem. We're so pleased to have you back. Give us an update.
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Debbie Georgias
Frank Gaffney, thank you so very much for having me. It's always great to see you and to talk with your listeners. Yes. You know, this is I had the thought this morning. It's kind of like that feeling in college or law school even. Working, working, working. You're actually so glad the exam day finally got here. Just get it over with. It's kind of like this in Texas. We have our primary in Texas, the actual primary voting date is March 3, but we have early voting starting today. And for Texas voters, you can vote anywhere in your county. I believe it is in early voting. And of course, we have significant primary ballot decisions to make with candidates. We set us Senate and our attorney general just many important races on the ballot. But what we're talking about today are the propositions that there are actually 10 of them in the Texas ballot. And I think for people to get excited and comfortable to vote yes on these, I would say vote yes on all 10, but certainly number 10, what we're talking about, the power of the reason these are so important is because if there is a strong message sent to elected officials all the way from the governor's office, lieutenant governor, attorney general, state legislature, county government, city government, that the Republican lawyers in Texas are sending a message to them that we want them to take every constitutional possible step to stop this implementation of Sharia in Texas. And just so everyone understands, this is not going to change the Constitution. If you vote yes on the proposition, it doesn't become law. It's simply a gauge, a measure of the thought of the Republican voters in Texas in and getting this on the ballot was a result of a lot of work by representatives all around Texas. It has been reviewed and thought through, and it ends up being with the language you said, Frank Gaffney, which is Texas should prohibit Sharia law. It's vital that we send this message that the people actually understand the issue. And we do not want Texas to go the way of UK or other countries that have slowly and kind of unknowingly submitted to Sharia.
- [05:55]
Frank Gaffney
Now, Debbie, you, among other things, have studied the law. You know very well that one of the central aspects of our Constitution is Article 6, which says very explicitly the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. And yet here in Texas, it's Not sort of a prospect. It's happening that in so called tribunals in at least two of the mosques in this state, of which there are hundreds. Sharia is being used to adjudicate matters, family law and contracts and all manner of other things. How much of a problem is that, Debbie? And how does it tie into the Sharia supremacist agenda of making everybody conform to this other set of laws, draconian, barbaric and toxic as they are.
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Debbie Georgias
It's such a great point, Frank. I'm so glad you raised it. You know, for people who are not familiar with Sharia, you might think it is just kind of a set of religious beliefs and lots of different religions have their own thoughts. But Sharia is intended by, I call them jihadists, people who are trying to impose Islam on the world. Sharia is intended to replace America's constitution, set of laws, the whole structure of laws. And you can hear imams all over the country, if you take the time to look online, they're telling you, yes, we do intend. These are Islamic imams in America telling Americans, yes, we do intend ultimately to replace your law with Sharia. And as a surreptitious and incremental effort, but the better, the best choice, the only way really to defend ourselves is to stop it at the beginning, to nip it in the bud, as the saying goes, for people needing to understand why Sharia is so toxic. You mentioned courts in Sharia tribunals or courts in Texas. They actually deprive Texas citizens, women of the presumption of equal rights and equality before the law because Sharia doesn't treat women. Women are second class citizens. They're pretty much property, they're chattel. They're not entitled to the same notion of individual respect. So that's one aspect of Sharia and the other for everyone to understand. Besides that the imams intend, the jihadists intend to replace America's law with Sharia. Is that every step along the way that, that we concede to this is viewed as submission. We think we're being accommodating, we're being respectful of other religions. They see it as, oh, good, we've taken another step toward forcing submission. Sharia does not allow freedom of religion, does not allow freedom of speech, does not allow women to be treated equally. That's all you need to know. Vote yes on Prop 10.
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Frank Gaffney
Debbie, one other piece of this that I just wanted you to tease out is this idea that we're dealing with a religion and that it is somehow protected under our Constitution. Could you Speak to that question. You've described this Sharia business very differently, as have I. But how do you address that point that's made by non Muslims in some cases as well as Muslims?
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Debbie Georgias
Okay, I'm sorry, Frank. The point that the Muslims are making
- [09:24]
Frank Gaffney
about that Sharia is just a religious practice and it's protected by our Constitution, okay?
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Debbie Georgias
Everyone has a First Amendment right to freedom of religion. We love that in America. The First Amendment does not protect conduct that's otherwise unlawful. You can't say we break a law, but it's okay because our religion lets us. There is only, can only be one and actually another theme to keep in mind. One nation, one law. And Islam is a religious belief, but it's also a military ideology, a conquest ideology, a structure of laws and government. There's no protection of the First Amendment at all of Sharia, no protection. And Islam itself only has protection with respect to beliefs. But you can't change laws or break laws because you say my religion requires it.
- [10:13]
Frank Gaffney
Debbie, we have to go. Thank you for all your great work. Keep it up. Come back to us with updates. God bless you. We're back, and I couldn't be more pleased to say we have with us one of the people, well on the ground here in Texas who is very much engaged in the fight to keep Texas free of, well, among other hazards, Sharia. And she is doing it as she does everything with extraordinary skill and grace. Her name is Cindy Castilla. She is the president of the Texas chapter of a wonderful organization, the living legacy of a dear friend of mine, Phyllis Schlafly. It's called Eagle Forum and the Texas Broke branch of Eagle Forum, under both Cindy's able leadership and that of her predecessor, Tracy Bradford, has been of surpassing importance both in this state and I think, in the country, because they take seriously the responsibility of citizens to be knowledgeable about the issues of the day and to be engaged in trying to help shape them to the betterment of our people, people, our constitutional republic, and the free world more generally. And I couldn't be more pleased to say Cindy is a dear friend of mine, as you may have gathered, as well as a very valued colleague, and we're delighted to have you. Cindy, welcome to Securing America.
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Thank you, Frank. Glad to be here.
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So we're talking about, as we were a moment ago with another of our dear friends here In Texas, Debbie, Georgia, what's happening with respect to something called Proposition 10 on the ballot of the Republican primary, which has started in earnest with early voting as we speak today. Cindy, give Us a sense of the lay of the land as you see it politically and in terms of the substance of this issue.
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Okay, well, it's a very important issue, and we need people to understand how important it is. So that's part of. Part of what we do is work to educate people and let them know that our, our state and our nation are at stake with this growth of Islam in Texas. And so we've got to do some work to take back things that we've let pass in the past. We fought them, and we've got to make some. Some things stronger. But what we really need are people's voices. We need people to go to the polls, vote for Proposition 10. That will elevate it within the Republican Party. We have the majority of legislators. It tells them this is very important to the people of Texas and the people of this party. And so all of that movement starts with this proposition.
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And I'm going to come back to this issue of some of the other things that flow from the action on the proposition. But just to drill down for a second, you mentioned the growth of Islam in the state of Texas. It's, of course, particularly of concern that it's not just people who are Muslim who are moving into the state in large numbers and building infrastructure, cities in some cases, certainly mosques and others, and, you know, all that goes with that. But it's the growth of Sharia in this state, the. I call it the totalitarian, toxic, demonic ideology of Islam, that is what's most of concern. Right. And that's what this particular proposition 10 is trying to address, is it not?
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Yes. Yeah.
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Debbie Georgias
We.
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Frank Gaffney
We want this gone. I mean, we want any precepts of Sharia law gone in Texas. We don't. We don't want to. To do things that make it even comfortable for them to live here. They have so many dictatorial rules that they're supposed to live under, and their goal is to force those on us. They want our dogs. They hate our dogs. They don't want us to. And they don't want them. They don't want them to exist. They don't want them to walk down the street.
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Rod Martin
They.
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Frank Gaffney
So many things. They don't want us to have free speech. Women don't have due process. Really, People don't have due process. And the halal food, we've got school districts, once they bring this in, it gets hard for them to have. What are they going to have? Two kitchens and, and two suppliers. And so they are forcing food that has been basically sacrificed to a false satanic. Little G. God and our children are eating that in some of our districts, which the thought just makes me sick. They don't even understand or know that.
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So let's talk a little bit about taking all of that very much to heart. What happens in the process here in Texas? Let's just say for the purposes of discussion that there will be a affirmative vote on Proposition 10. People have to again go to the bottom of this very long ballot to find it. They have to say yes to Proposition 10, which simply says Texas should prohibit Sharia law. What happens then in this so called precinct caucus operation and what flows from it?
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Okay, after our primary is over on March 3, different counties have different dates, but within a few days, that night or within a few days, every Republican precinct will meet and they will pass ideas, resolutions through. They will pick their delegates for their senatorial district conventions, which are the second step. Those happen on March 28th. And these resolutions will help enhance our platform, speak to our platform. They'll also be passing legislative priorities and we want them to.
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And that takes place at the next step after the state things, and that's the convention, Is that right? In June?
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Yes. You can present them at your precinct convention. They're elevated to the senatorial district level and those, the things that come out of that convention are elevated to the state convention.
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Okay, how does this actually work? Is there a vote at the precinct level? And then on the basis of an affirmative vote, they go on to the next level.
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It really matters who shows up. The people that show up will bring with them. We'll have on our texaseagleforum.com website, we will have some resolutions posting in the next weeks to help people be ready to take things into their convention. But they'll, they'll bring things in and, and it might be a simple thing, you know, whereas Islam is dangerous to our American Constitution that, you know, Texas values our dogs, women's rights. So many things will have resolutions, but they'll resolve that we ban Sharia in Texas and that we make it a legislative.
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That's the bottom line.
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That's the bottom line.
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And then when the convention acts on these things, does it go to this so called state Republican executive committee to translate it into a specific legislative direction to the people serving in the state legislature.
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What our executive committee does is they make committees to oversee each legislative priority. And it's been a wonderful tool because they will have committees that will look at every bill that either furthers Sharia. God forbid, you know, we have some of those out there. We have people in Texas trying to, to further their, their ideals. And then we'll have things looking to pull back to change to secure our state. They'll look at those, they'll say, you know, the Republican Party supports this or doesn't support it. And they will work in the Capitol alongside organizations like ours and other grassroots organizations to encourage it. Really, really push our legislators to support the party's ideals. So it's a great system. We are grassroots up at the Republican Party. And so we let the grassroots do a lot of speaking in to legislative priorities. And so we need people to show up and be part of this process and part of elevating Proposition 10 into law. And as they're doing it, as they're learning more, as they're speaking to their neighbors, as they're outside on a healthy walk with their dog and somebody stops to pet their dog, you know, they say to them, do you know there's a movement in Texas for this Sharia law that will eventually not let me walk my dog. You know, they hate dogs. And, and we just, we, we educate all along the way until we can get our movement making it untenable for an elected official to vote to further Sharia.
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Well, Cindy Kasiha, you do an absolutely spectacular job of this. Your teams are indispensable in the state legislative process and as you say at the grassroots level, we're so grateful to you for what you do, especially in this moment when we need people to understand they need to turn out to vote for, for Proposition 10 on the Republican primary ballot sometime between now and the 3rd of March. Don't let this get away from you folks. It's too important. Thank you. Come back to us soon, Cindy, with updates. Bancheria.com Be right back. Welcome back, and I am delighted to say welcome to one of our favorite guests and certainly one of our most faithful contributors to this program and to the work of the Committee on the Present Danger of China, of which he is an important member. And that would be Colonel Grant Newsham, United States Marine Corps, retired. A man who has the distinction of having also served as a diplomat in our embassy in Tokyo, Foreign service officer there. He's been a businessman in the Far East. He's been one of the most astute and well, assiduously engaged analysts of what the Chinese Communist Party is up to. Insights from which he put into a best selling book entitled When China Attacks A Warning to America. Colonel, it's always a privilege to have you with us, sir. Welcome back.
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Colonel Grant Newsham
I'm glad to be here.
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Frank Gaffney
Frank, I'm especially anxious to get your thoughts on a topic that we will be addressing in one of our Committee on the Present Danger China webinars. I'm going to ask you to permit us to make your interview with us today a contribution to that webinar, which will run on Friday. It's about political warfare, Colonel. It's about the use made of that form of unrestricted warfare against our country by the Chinese Communist Party and some recent revelations by, amazingly, the State Department about the extent to which this is being done with some very prominent American entities like Code Pink and People's Forum. Tell us about the macro problem we face in this quarter, the specifics of what we have now learned about the Chinese role with these disreputable operations, and the extent to which we are in that game.
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Colonel Grant Newsham
Sure, Frank. I'll try to put this into a larger context. Now. I watched a good bit of the hearings yesterday and read about the transcripts and the optimist, if you wake up and you want to cheer yourself up and say as well, finally, somebody is talking about this. The China Select Committee in Congress does excellent work, and the State Department as well. I can't recall hearing something like this. You were getting very close and similar during the first Trump administration, but before that or since, I'd never seen it. So that, you know, is a good thing to finally see. Now, the bad news is that World War three has already started and we're on the road to losing it. Now you might say, well, how. How has it actually started? Because nobody's actually been shooting. Well, remember that there's two different conceptions of war. You know, with us, unless you actually start shooting, you're not actually at war. To the Chinese, the shooting part is just the very end. And they have been fighting and waging a very successful war against us. It's not a shooting war, but it's a political war and generally comes under the terms political warfare. Now, political warfare is kind of an umbrella term for a number of different activities ranging from economic warfare, psychological warfare, drug warfare, financial warfare, lawfare, using America's legal system against it, proxy warfare. And I'll just focus on a couple of these because you see these at work through the Code Pinks, the Neville Singhams of the world, and they have been very successful getting Americans to actually do their jobs for them. If you look out in these riots and look into their structures, there's no Chinese, very few Chinese people to be found. They're behind the scenes, but you have, you have the people into your Intended victim, your intended target country, actually doing the work for you. And this has worked immensely well for the Chinese over the years. You know, you ask yourself, you know, how many times have you heard American experts say, well, China's not really communist. Well, all they want to do is make money. How many times have you heard American businessmen CEOs say, say Tim Cook from Apple, well, we just have to be in China. We have to word about human rights. Nothing at all. You look at the American say the, the solar, the green energy industry. Solar industry. Well, the Americans invented the technology, the Chinese stole it, put it on sort of economic, sort of manufacture, giant manufacturing scale, and now they sell the stuff into America and have put all the American companies out of business. Now, who is it that is lobbying in Congress to ensure that the Chinese imports don't stop? Well, that's America. That's China's American proxies, the law firms, the lobbyists and the people on Capitol Hill who to support China's interests. So this proxy warfare has been immensely, just immensely effective. And by doing all of this, you create a constituency in the United States which is pro China or sees pro China as where its paycheck comes from. And at that point you can see how deftly China has gone about actually hurting us. And you look at the, the economic warfare as well, we'll throw in that, you know, look, consider of the last 30 years. Well, we've moved so much of our manufacturing to China and you've hollowed out American cities, American neighborhoods, American, separated Americans from their lives. And that was all done as a result of successful Chinese political warfare. And you got Americans to think we have to be in China. China's not our enemy, it's our friend. And this is creating a dependency. And because if we want things made, well, so much of it has to be made in China. If we want drugs, well, China makes most of them. If we want the so called critical minerals that you need for everything from iPhones to F35 fighters, well, it comes from China. We're dependent. You saw how effective this was a year ago when President Trump came into office and he tried to really get tough on China. Remember, he put tariffs up to 140%, suggested they might even go higher. Well, the Chinese said, well, not so fast, Donald. We have these rare earths and without them your business is shut down. And you had major CEOs coming into the White House saying, look, we got two weeks or we closed down. And that caused President Trump to stop in his tracks and even back up and that shows you just how effective the war has been. They didn't have to fire a shot, they didn't have to deploy the People's Liberation Army. They had just built up through successful political warfare, the economic end of it, the psychological warfare end of it. The strength that really handcuffed the United States trying to get out of it is proving very hard. And part of the another thing that you try to do is to you want to destroy, you want to break down your opponent. You know, the so called entropic warfare. You want to cause friction, you want to make Americans start to see each other as the enemies. And that is where the groups like Code Pink but the, the Tides organization and go back to Black Lives Matter antifa. Well, this goes bad. The Chinese connections go back to the 60s with the black Panthers if anyone bothers to look. Michael Waller from Center for Security Policy does excellent work on this. But the Chinese connections are there and you just have to look at it. But think of the harm that that has done. You know, when you have Americans really starting to hate each other, when you have American cities in flames, well, how much better does it get from the Chinese perspective? And once again, they haven't had to as they deploy the military to do this at all. Now, now back to the proxy examples, and there's really no limit to those. I would in fact argue that one of the most successful ones besides Hunter Biden probably was actually Hank Paulson. The former Goldman Sachs executive was Secretary of Treasury. He did more to help China build up its financial system, its economy than probably anyone in America. And his pedigreed, you know, a decent guy, but you know, the Chinese very successfully worked on him. And you appeal to American greed, vanity, naivete. And really when there's a certain type of American, you find a lot of them on Wall street when they smell money, they act like a sea lion at Sea World who thinks he's going to get a mackerel snack, turn themselves into pretzels. But TikTok is another good example. Now the Indians banned TikTok in about 72 hours, about four or five years ago after they had a fight with the Chinese up on the northern border. We can't figure out how to do that. And when you saw this was a while back, the president of, CEO of, excuse me, of TikTok, testifying before Congress. And he was of course saying the things they would say. But the most interesting thing, the most telling was behind him was a phalanx of lawyers and account lawyers and lobbyists, all white people all, all Americans who were there to do the Chinese Communist Party's bidding, and that is successful warfare. Imagine if you could turn all this on its head, we could do that to them. We would be patting ourselves on the back to no end. We would have far less concerns about China because we would know that they are nowhere near the military or economic threat that they should be, nor psychologically prepared to take us on. Additionally, as one outcome, it's an aspect of political warfare. I mentioned drug warfare, fentanyl, we talk about this all the time. It's killed well over 750,000Americans since about 2013. And that's the dead. The wounded are many times more. So every year, China takes two or three divisions off the battlefield. Now, for us, what has the American response been? Nothing. Capitol Hill has never put any serious punishment on the Chinese for doing this, and that is successful political warfare. So again, to the Chinese, it's war. To us, well, it hasn't started because there's no shooting. And all we have to do is talk to them. If we engage, negotiate, understand their position, we can work something out. Well, we'll discover we're wrong about that at some point when we either cannot move or that we find ourselves under attack and there's nothing that we can do. Now, another example of how successful this has been is, is that until 2017 in the US military, you couldn't even say China was an adversary. You couldn't use the word adversary, you certainly couldn't say enemy. So it wasn't until Mr. Trump came along that finally you could say this, despite the evidence being clear for 30 years. And once again, this is the outcome of successful political warfare. So the Code Pinks, the Neville Singhams, these are one front in a multi front war that's being waged against us. Now you'd think, well, man, they're doing this to us. Well, certainly we're doing that to them. Well, actually the bad news is we're not. We don't even have a political warfare scheme, a strategy. We don't do it. And you must say, well, somewhere, no, it isn't. We just don't do it.
- [32:14]
Frank Gaffney
Colonel Newsham, we have to leave it at that. What a splendid depiction, albeit, breaks my heart to hear you say it, but we need nonetheless to confront it and take corrective action. God bless you, my friend. Come back with to us with updates soon. We'll be right back, folks. Stay tuned.
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Colonel Grant Newsham
Foreign.
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Frank Gaffney
We're back and so is our dear friend and very valued chairman of the board of the Institute for the American future, of which I'm proud to be the president. That would be Rod Martin. Rod is a man of considerable accomplishment both in the public sector, notably as the policy advisor to then governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, who has gone on to other things commendably as the US Ambassador to Israel at the moment. Rod has also been wildly successful in business. He was one of the PayPal mafia at the founding of that epic enterprise. And these days he's doing business in his own right, but also keeping his hand in on religious matters with his Southern Baptist Convention as well as the public policy arena with our institute. And we couldn't be more grateful for his visits with us each week, especially at a time such as this. Welcome back, Rod. Good to have you with us.
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Rod Martin
Great to be here.
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Frank Gaffney
I wanted to start by picking up on a theme of the program at the beginning. We are, as we speak on day one of early voting in the Republican primary. Well, I should say the nominally Republican primary. It is an open primary and Republicans will be voting in some numbers, of course, but may also have others weighing in to tell them who should be their candidates for various high offices and not least why the proposition 10 that says simply Texas should prohibit Sharia law should not pass. And I'm anxious to get your thoughts on both the point that Sharia should be prohibited not just in the state of Texas, but across the country, but also this idea that some good comes of having people who basically seek the defeat of the Republican Party in every aspect, telling them how to run their nominations as well as their policy positions.
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Rod Martin
Well, to start with, of course Sharia law should be banned. But let's be very clear what we're saying. We're not saying religious practice should be banned until and unless it violates some principle of American law. So sorry, no honor killings here. We're not doing that. And you can go on from there. But the issue really isn't what people do privately in their own home or their own mosque. The issue is where it imping on the rights of others and where a foreign antithetical to American life legal system is being imposed as a parallel legal system on masses of people. And we're seeing that in a number of parts of the country. So of course Texas is right to ban this. I'm sure if they are successful in doing so, it'll go through all kinds of court challenges over the exact issues I just identified. But ultimately should succeed because this is well trod ground in American law. You don't get to use religion to subvert the American system. And also the American government must not subvert religion. So, you know, that dynamic tension has always existed and we've always had that. That legal debate. I think the lines are pretty clear. The problem is.
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Frank Gaffney
Can I just say on this point, because I wanted to hear what you have to say on the other. Of course. But on this point, Rod, I think an emphasis that we've been making here in Texas, trying to help people understand what Sharia is and why it should be banned, is that it's not a religion. It is a totalitarian political ideology. And it is especially the case, as you say, that those things that by definition impinge upon freedom and undermine our constitutional republic and the rest are not protected by that Constitution. Right?
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Rod Martin
No. And if we want. If we had a Christian denomination that wanted to impose some crazy belief, okay, we're going to execute everyone who didn't come from such and such country. Well, that isn't good Christianity, for starters. But you could have someone who cloaked in religion some absurd, obscene demand, and that would not be constitutional. That is not protected free exercise of religion. And that's what Sharia is. Sharia, as long as it's your private moral code that does not impinge on the rights of other human beings, so be it. And you can believe what you want and you can talk about it and you can try to persuade everybody to agree to it. All of that is fine. But what you can't do is impose a legal code that is absolutely antithetical to the idea of America and force people under its yoke. That's what they're trying to do. That's what they're trying to do in Detroit and Dearborn and Minneapolis and lots of parts of the country now. And it's just somebody's gotta draw a line, call a halt. That's what the Texas Republicans are trying to do.
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Frank Gaffney
Amen. And need to. So, Rod, you've had a background, as I mentioned, in politics. Talk to me about this idea that open primaries is the way to run a political party in this country.
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Rod Martin
Well, I've been very active in politics. I was on the College Republican National Committee. I was one of the youngest ever members of the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Arkansas. I've been president of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, done a bunch of stuff. And in all of those cases, we keep coming back to the same problem our Texas friends are having, which is the scourge of open primaries. There's always some Democrat wanting to have open primaries so that they can flood Democrat activists into the Republican primary and pick our nominee for us. It is every bit as corrupt in principle, not necessarily in intent all the time. Greg Abbott is for open primaries. I can't imagine why he would be for open primaries, but I'm sure it's a good faith argument, just mistaken. Nevertheless, this is an old argument we've been having my whole lifetime and I've always been on the side of I don't want a bunch of Muslims coming to my church and voting for my pastor. They wouldn't want a bunch of Baptists coming to their mosque and voting for their imam. Why would I want a bunch of Democrats and independents coming into my party primary and picking my candidates, let alone
- [40:10]
Frank Gaffney
jihadists, which is what I think are going to be turning out in sizable numbers here. That's the thing that's really chilling. And Rod, I guess we understand why those guys would want to have a vote in the Republican primary, but what the Republicans would see and that I just can't figure. We'll talking more about all of this on the other side of a very short break with the great Rod Martin. Follow his Great work at RodMartinReports. Rodmartin.org we'll be right back. Welcome back. We're talking with Rod Martin, the chairman of the board of the Institute for the American Future, for which I'm profoundly grateful, as I am the president and very much value his leadership in this organization as well as his contributions to the program that the Institute makes possible, which is Securing America. Think about donating, if you would. It's vital to the work that we do both at the institute and I think for the public good by broadcasting information with wonderful guests like Rod Martin. Rod, we've been talking about internal politics. I want to talk about a matter of foreign politics, specifically the government of Iran and whether there is not only an urgent need, but an actual America first argument for the end of the brutally repressive totalitarian religious tyranny of the mullahs. That has not only been a horror for the people of Iran, but that has from its inception threatened ours. You actually have a piece@rodmartin.org by a guest author that makes exactly that case. Talk to us about it if you would.
- [42:22]
Rod Martin
Well, these opportunities don't come around that often. You know, what we are talking about is not a big Bush era invasion. You're not talking about a bunch of American troops occupying Iran for 20 years and fighting insurgents. That's not what we're talking about. The Iranian people have risen hundreds of thousands in the Streets, tens of thousands murdered, Unarmed, peaceful protesters murdered by the regime. Some of them in their hospital beds, taken to the hospital for treatment for their injuries at the hands of the secret police and then shot in their beds in the hospital. This is horrifying. These people who run around are and always have been the worst of the worst for 47 years. And they have been a scourge on the earth. They are twelvers. Twelver is an interesting term. Not many people know it. It's an eschatological position. You'll. You'll run into Christians who believe that Jesus is going to return any minute now, possibly next Tuesday, and he's going to establish his kingdom. What you don't have is, as in the 12ers, a belief that it is their duty as Muslims to burn down the world to bring on their Messiah. That's a completely different thing. So, you know, mutual assured destruction can't work with people who actively want a nuclear war. That's just crazy. And it would be crazy to let these people have the bomb. Something that Donald Trump has understood incredibly well. Between 2011 and the 12 Day War, he said 58 separate times in public, we will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Well, that's right. And now the people are rising. So if America can do the things, be the decision maker, be the guys who, who actually tip the scales in favor of the people in the streets, we can have a democratic, free Iran that quits terrorizing its neighbors. And the entire level of tensions in the Middle east just drops to nearly nothing overnight, as a result of which American forces don't have to be all over the Middle east. And we can focus on China.
- [44:49]
Frank Gaffney
Yeah, and that's where the America first piece comes in, is that it is in our interest to see those kinds of tectonic changes take place in the Middle East. Others will benefit as well, of course. Even some who are currently saying, no, no, don't, don't change the regime like the Saudis, for heaven's sakes. But it's an opportunity, as you say. It doesn't come along very often that you have this kind of correlation of forces. So, Rod, you are nothing if not gimlet eyed when it comes to assessing the realities of situations as we speak. Two people in whom, I must say I don't have a whole lot of confidence, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, notwithstanding Jared's contributions to the Abraham Accords, which I think were important. But you have these two guys parlaying with the Iranian foreign minister, suggesting that President Trump is still hankering after some sort of deal. I mean, he said it just the other day that, you know, it'd be good to have a deal. He has also said just the other day that the best thing that could happen is the end of this regime.
- [46:14]
Rod Martin
Yes.
- [46:15]
Frank Gaffney
What do you think is the bottom line? What's he going to do and how soon do you think he might do it?
- [46:21]
Rod Martin
The bottom line is that Donald Trump has stated three non negotiable points that the Iranians have declared non discussable. So they seem to be giving a little bit of ground on one of the three. But Trump has been clear it's all three. I mean, we aren't doing a deal that doesn't include all three points.
- [46:43]
Frank Gaffney
And the three being ballistic missiles and terrorism.
- [46:49]
Rod Martin
Nuclear weapons. Gotta go.
- [46:51]
Frank Gaffney
And the nuclear weapons, of course, enrichment.
- [46:53]
Rod Martin
You gotta actually curtail the ballistic missile program. And you actually have to stop funding all the proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis. That's all gotta stop. They're never gonna agree to that. They can't agree to that. So, yeah, this is buying time. I mean, the Trump administration gets to rightly say that they did everything they could to get this to a peaceful resolution, and then, lo and behold, it didn't happen and we're going to hit them. And that's exactly what happened in the 12 day war. You know, Trump gave them 60 days to negotiate a deal. On day 61, the Israelis started striking Iran. And of course, the capstone of all of that was us destroying the installations at Fordo and Isfahan. So, you know, Trump has a history here. The guys saying Taco are just inventing their own narrative that doesn't bear relationship to reality. It is true that the President stakes out maximalist positions and then negotiates to something everybody can live with. But that's when you can avoid a war. You can't avoid a war with these guys. It's just a matter of when. So it might as well be now, when the people are in the streets.
- [48:13]
Frank Gaffney
Yeah. Taco, of course, stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. And we trust in this case that will not be the case by any means. Thank you, Rod Martin. Thanks for what you do@rodmartin.org and of course at the Institute for the American Future. Keep it up. Come back to us again very soon. I hope the rest of you do the same next time. Until then, go forth and multiply.
- [48:44]
This is an Iheart podcast.
- [48:46]
Guaranteed human.