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Mark Krikorian
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Podcast Host / Interviewer
Com Foreign. Welcome to Securing America with me, Frank Afney. 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 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 and the mistakes that have been made particularly in recent years with respect to both. His name is Mark Krikorian. 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 of late. It's been a while, Mark, but we're delighted to have you back. Welcome once again, my friend.
Mark Krikorian
Glad to be here anytime.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
So I wanted to sort of level set a little bit. Mark, 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 weeks at most. Is that in fact the case? Do we now have a secure southern border, would you say, sir?
Mark Krikorian
Yeah, we do. And it doesn't mean that nothing's ever going to 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, 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's never existed 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 overstayers, 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 did we not see under Biden, but really under all previous administrations, we just didn't have this level of security. So. Absolutely.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
So, Mark, let me just be clear. 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 the country?
Mark Krikorian
There's always going to be some gotaways, but the numbers are much lower. And we have much more certainty about the estimates of gotaways 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 are there holes. The wall is never going to be 2,000 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 are, there's 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 in very well now. Yeah, yeah.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
And, 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 James Lankford 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 were going to be required to keep this, keep this problem for persisting. Why was that not so, sir?
Mark Krikorian
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 their smugglers aren't some kind of, I don't know, irresistible force or, you know, superheroes or something. 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. The fundamental one is that they stopped letting everybody go at the border. If you're not going to spend all that money and take all 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.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
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 effort as you see it, sir.
Mark Krikorian
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 flow from the overflow of the bathtub, to use, to continue the metaphor. And, and they're, you know, making significant progress there. Most of it from our research is people leaving on their own illegal immigrants who were kind of concluding that the party's over and they better 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 2.2 million and that of that 1.6 million 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.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
So these are people who are self deporting.
Mark Krikorian
Self deporting. Some of those are actual ICE deportations, but the large majority are 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 perp 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 the regular ordinary illegal aliens need to put their affairs in order and go home as well.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
And by shaming, essentially people who are giving them employment.
Mark Krikorian
The theory punishing hopefully more than shaming.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Well, 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?
Mark Krikorian
Exactly. 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 businessmen. People are, 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, 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.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
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 tuned. We'll be right back with more with Mark Krikorian of the center for Immigration Studies right after this.
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Podcast Host / Interviewer
Welcome back. We are visiting with Mark Krikorian, 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@cis.org you can find his books on Amazon. He's got a number of them. The new case against immigration being one 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 sanctuary cities. What the historic impact has been of, 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, Zoran Mamdani, a communist as well as jihadist, making no bones about what he intends to do to be welcoming of immigrants, he being one of them, after all. Talk a little bit about this particular aspect of the immigration security problem.
Mark Krikorian
The 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 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, dealing drugs. They're arrested for that. Their fingerprints all go to DHS now, as well as the FBI. So they know if 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 that a slight majority of all the illegal immigrants live in sanctuary jurisdiction. So how is ICE supposed to, you know, do its job if the main way that illegal immigrants come in contact with the authorities is foreclosed to them? And so this is a serious problem, Governor. I mean, the new or elected mayor of New York has said he's going to tighten even further their sanctuary policies. Interestingly, 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 Mamdani try to presume to try to arrest ICE agents doing their jobs? That'll be interesting and that would force a constitutional crisis. I think in the same way that his pledge to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu 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.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
And mark among those I fear will be, well, jihadis. This is a mayor, actually, a Sharia 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 the Mahdi, the 12th Imam, the golden age of Islam and so on. 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, and end states to the extent that there are in fact, in 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 was also, by some estimates, and I'd be very appreciative of your best guess, I've heard numbers as low as 10,000, as high as 200,000 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 them first of all, I guess, and remove them as well.
Mark Krikorian
See, the thing with these kind of threats, whether they're, you know, Chinese spies, jihadists 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 am 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 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 jihadists. You have to have enforcement across the board if you're going to weed out 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? You're not that you're not 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.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
No, I take the point, but I think if, if you're looking for mostly Hispanic dishwashers and, you know, lawn people, for example, and you are not making the point to the American people that we're also worrying about large numbers of military age, unaccompanied men of apparent 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. 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 is being missed.
Mark Krikorian
Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree. And the administration does need to highlight that they've highlighted the gang issue, maybe not as much the terrorist issue, although they did just, I think recently arrest an illegal alien truck driver. This was, you know, part of this crackdown on the truck drivers guy turns out to be an Uzbek wanted terrorist back in his home country. But that's my point. Regular enforcement is the way you end up nabbing these people, especially in employment enforcement, all of it. So you got to enforce it across the board, not just pick and choose.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right, Mark. And you know, you've been very clear about that. And we are 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. Lastly, drug trafficking. How instrumental are the cartels to what is continuing to come across that border? Human trafficking, child trafficking and the like, has that also come to a pretty much a halt?
Mark Krikorian
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 move something else. But clearly you. 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.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Things. Mark, we have to leave it at that. Thank you so much for your efforts. CS CIS.org is the website for Mark Krikorian. Check it out please and support his great work. Stay tuned. We'll be right back folks.
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Podcast Host / Interviewer
We're back and I am 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, which I'm very proud to be the president. 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@rodmartin.org he is entrepreneur and businessman as well, who cut his teeth with Peter thiel in 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 longtime leader of the Southern Baptist Convention. We're always delighted to have a chance to pick his brains, considerable brains at that. Welcome back, Rod. Good to have you, my friend.
Mark Krikorian
Good to be here.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
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 Metaxas recently and very impressively. It concerns what's been happening to our conservative movement, for want 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 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 more needed now arguably than ever. Some of the 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 as to our own interests, particularly in the Middle East. And I find it difficult to to state with sufficient conviction that I pray that those who are seeing things otherwise will think better of their position as it becomes more and more untenable by the day. Rod Martin, you talked a bit about this with Eric Metaxas and your clarity on, on the kinds of, well, at best, willful blindness and at worst, I think a kind of dishonesty is characterizing the positions of those who are finding fault with Israel and disregarding its importance to us. Walk us through your thinking on this, sir, if you would.
Rod Martin
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. You just look at that 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, 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 vehement anti Israel position because they don't agree with Mike Huckabee's eschatology just 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 9 and a half million people controls the whole world. And certainly Donald Trump. 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 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. This idea that somehow they're dependent on USAID is honestly, at best, 40 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 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 for a grand finale. And again and again and again. You see, this reflects just a level of nonsense that is hard to grasp. Apart from, of course, Qatari money.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Well, that's the point. I wanted to get to Rod. 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 Qatar, which has more 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 is best I can tell, is, well, buying off, for want of a better term, 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?
Rod Martin
Well, the thing is, if Qatar weren't doing it, George Soros or Reid Hoffman would be. This is the thing. We're 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, 1 through 10 countries by expenditures to influence American politicians and citizens in America. Open Secrets has Israel in 10th place. The Chinese are ahead. Qatar is ahead. Saudi Arabia is ahead. Get this, the Bahamas are ahead. Everybody is ahead of Israel. And why wouldn't they lobby in the United States? It's not illegal to lobby in the United States. We have this crazy newfangled thing called the First Amendment. So, yeah, they have interests here against people who are outspending them dramatically to try to turn American opinion against them. They're spending money to try to keep people in support 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 Sweet? Wouldn't you have to start with all these Democrats who are in bed with the Chinese Communist Party? And I don't hear any attacking China. None of these people are questioning the DNA of the Han Chinese in the way that they suddenly are about Jews. 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 2000 years ago 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 straight, straight out of Goebbels 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.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
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 determine from that exposure that these folks are acting in an obscene way, that what they're saying and what they're recommending, what they're calling for vis a vis Israel and for that matter, vis a vis the United States, is beyond the appalling. It's totally unacceptable. I want 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, Goebbelesque especially? We'll be talking about all of that and much more with Rod Martin on the other side of the short break. Please stay tuned.
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Podcast Host / Interviewer
We're back. And so is Rod Martin. Praise the Lord. Follow his great work@rodmartin.org and support the work of the organization that he founded, the Institute for the American Future, at usfuture.org as one of its employees. I will be very appreciative. Rod, let me just drill down a little bit. Tucker Carlson is an individual who has been doing some, I think, very troubling platforming of another individual, notably, well, several of them. We had 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 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, his rhetoric a bit. But the more you are 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 the kind of, well, worldview, shall we say, the kind of anti Semitic, the kind of pro Nazi, even attitudes that Fuentes seems to embrace?
Rod Martin
Well, I just want to start by saying I don't have any problem with Tucker platforming Nick Fuentes. I just wish Tucker had actually interviewed him with the vigor, shall we say, that he did Ted Cruz? All he did was throw softballs at Fuentes. And when Fuentes outright says, I think Stalin is cool, Tucker 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 20 million of his own people and proceeded to take over every country he was in reach of, where further millions died, including China, where 65 million were killed by their communist government. There is nothing cool about that at all. But Nick Fuentes 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 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 a guy who, you know, there's honestly just no limit to how bad it is. Now, is he pro masculinity? Yes, but he's also misogynistic. You know, is he pro Trump? Well, yes, after the election. But before the election, he was posting, you know, over and over again about how. How we have to do whatever we can to stop Trump. So he speaks with fork and tongue. 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 interview him properly. I think a retarded fifth grader could have interviewed him better than Tucker did.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Well, and again, it's fitting a pattern. The same kind of softball approach was taken with the Iranian and with the Qatari and with some of these other characters as well, which gives, again, a certain legitimization to them.
Rod Martin
All, again, is fine to the degree that it's letting them get their side out. I don't have a problem with someone interviewing the Ayatollah. I want to hear what the Ayatollah 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. Of course his spin is on it. 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 Fuentes got or than Vladimir Putin got. I think there's a real fundamental problem with that. Not with the interview, but with the interviewer.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Amen. Let me turn to something you've written about@rodmartin.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 Present Danger China, as you know, we're rather big on rolling back China, not just containing it, but but talk us through the theory of these pieces that you're talking about the two front aspects of this conflict.
Rod Martin
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 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. 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.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
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, and that certainly is the, 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 is seemingly maintaining the Chinese Communist Party in business and you know, doing deals with them on, well, rare earths, among other things. If we in fact do really have a deal with them on on that talk about it with Rod Martin. Please stay tuned.
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Podcast Host / Interviewer
We're back. 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, 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 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? To what end?
Rod Martin
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 80s. And in most ways that's a good thing. You know, we're not in danger of being conquered by the Soviet Union to. And that's definitely a net positive in the world. But what Reagan did, as you know, was not eliminate the Soviet Union by bombing the radar at Krasnoyarsk or, you know, going after SS20s, you know, with FB111s. That wasn't the plan. The 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 Saudis in 85 that starts collapsing the price of oil, which then as now was the source of Soviet hard currency. And all of a sudden they can't keep up in the arms race. They certainly can't compete with sdi. And 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 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. Well actually this was at the White House the week before. We had a new deal with albanese in Australia, not just for rare earths mining, but processing. So we're taking back some of that refining which China currently dominates. 92% 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 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. And that's just one facility. A lot of this 18 trillion in new investment coming in will go to that. And you just not saw, just not. I can't talk. You just saw half a billion dollars go from the Pentagon into RP Materials, 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 able to hold this over our heads much longer. And at the same time, the other big pain point of course, 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 drop significantly.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
So for the interim period though, Rod, General Motors and Tesla have both said that their 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 their supply chain dependency on China. Is that something they can do at this point in time? I mean, I, I take your point that there's a lot of other things in the works that will give them options in the future. But, but can we essentially decouple, even selectively by such companies.
Rod Martin
Now do you think there are stockpiles 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 F35s, we've got a bunch of them, the world won't end. 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 materially affects us. But here's what I do know. Scott Besant 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 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 Xi Jinping agreed to that. That's remarkable to me. The other thing is 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. But that's actually a really big diplomatic shift, 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. And at some point that starts putting enough hurt on his oligarchs that they start demanding some kind of change either in his policy or in his position.
Podcast Host / Interviewer
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@rodmartin.org thank you for featuring this program and our conversations with you on that platform as well as your great Rod Martin reports. Subscribe, folks, to the Come back to us soon. I hope the rest of you do the same next time. Until then, you'll go forth and multiply.
Rod Martin
You know what your customers are doing right this second? The exact same thing. You are listening to me, which let's be honest, is kind of flattering. But my point is, ads on iHeartRadio actually get heard. In the car, at the gym, on the couch, while people are walking their dogs. Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? You're a good boy.
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Mark Krikorian
You're a good.
Rod Martin
So why not make the next ad about you? Get started today. Call 844-844-IHEART or go to iheartadvertising.com. that's 844-844-iheart or iheartadvertising.com.
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Podcast: Real America’s Voice
Host: Frank Gaffney
Guests: Mark Krikorian (Center for Immigration Studies), Rod Martin (Institute for the American Future)
Date: November 22, 2025
Episode Theme:
An in-depth discussion on U.S. immigration policy and practice post-2025 Trump administration, its impact on national security, the transformation and challenges within the conservative movement—especially around U.S.-Israel relations—and implications of American grand strategy vis-à-vis China.
This episode explores two major themes:
Frank Gaffney leads probing conversations with immigration expert Mark Krikorian and policy analyst Rod Martin, unpacking pressing security, cultural, and geopolitical issues significant for American listeners.
Guest: Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies
“We didn’t really need new laws. We needed a new president.” — Mark Krikorian [07:28]
“A slight majority of all the illegal immigrants live in sanctuary jurisdiction. So how is ICE supposed to do its job…if the main way that illegal immigrants come in contact with the authorities is foreclosed to them?” — Mark Krikorian [16:30]
Difficulty Identifying Bad Actors:
Potentially Thousands of Chinese Nationals Inside U.S.:
Drug & Human Trafficking:
Guest: Rod Martin, Institute for the American Future
Theological and Political Split:
Arguments about Control & Influence:
Qatar and Other Foreign Influence:
Modern Antisemitism:
“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.” — Rod Martin [36:40]
Hemispheric Security as Foundation:
Emulating Reagan’s Approach:
Leveraging Economic Power:
“What Reagan did…was not eliminate the Soviet Union by bombing…the plan was to bankrupt them, which he did… I think Trump is aware that there are certain things that we have allowed 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.” — Rod Martin [52:12]
On Border Security:
“We now have eyes on the whole border day and night in a way that’s never existed before…we really do know what’s happening at the border.”
— Mark Krikorian [04:10–05:00]
On Employer Enforcement:
“They need to perp walk some employers…It needs to become clear that the rules are now what the law says rather than…the kind of wink and nod…non enforcement that prevailed in the past.”
— Mark Krikorian [10:00–11:41]
On Sanctuary Policies:
“It’s specifically designed to protect criminals. And it’s outrageous.”
— Mark Krikorian [15:46]
On Fratricide in Conservatism:
“For some of our pastors…to take this vehement anti-Israel position because they don’t agree with Mike Huckabee’s eschatology just boggles my mind.”
— Rod Martin [30:35]
On Foreign Influence:
“[Qatar]…they have interests here against people who are outspending them dramatically to try to turn American opinion against them. They’re spending money to try to keep people in support of them…that’s called a marketplace of ideas.”
— Rod Martin [34:57–36:10]
On Tucker Carlson’s Interviewing:
“All [Tucker] did was throw softballs at Fuentes…A retarded fifth grader could have interviewed him better than Tucker did.”
— Rod Martin [44:22]
On U.S.-China Economic Strategy:
“We’re moving aggressively on this. They’re not going to be able to hold this over our heads much longer.”
— Rod Martin [54:30]
This episode provides a comprehensive and candid exploration of both border security and broader national security issues facing the U.S. in late 2025. It details measurable successes and persistent challenges in immigration enforcement, the internal schisms of the conservative movement around Israel and foreign influence, and outlines strategic shifts in America’s approach to emerging global rivals, particularly China. Guests Mark Krikorian and Rod Martin inject deep institutional insight and frank assessments, with memorable moments and sharp critiques, making this a must-listen for those interested in American security, policy, and geopolitical strategy.