American Thought Leaders

For decades, we’ve been reporting on the ways the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) crushes the religious freedom of its citizens. But in recent years, the CCP has been escalating its tactics against a religious group here—on American soil.

In this episode, I sit down with religious freedom lawyers Justin Butterfield and Lea Patterson to understand what’s going on and discuss their response to a recent lawsuit against Shen Yun, the performing arts company founded by Falun Gong practitioners in New York. The case touches on vital questions about what it means to be able to practice your faith—and guide the education of your children in America.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

When Adam Coleman was 8 years old, he was institutionalized after contemplating suicide. He shares his struggles—and the struggles of so many others in America—of growing up without a father in his new book, “The Children We Left Behind: How Western Culture Rationalizes Family Separation and Ignores the Pain of Child Neglect.”

“I went through a lot when I was a kid, and I want my story to be an example that, yes, certain things happen to you when you’re a child, but when you’re an adult, you make life happen for you. So, it is possible to overcome these circumstances,” he says.

Only 60 percent of children in America live with married biological parents. Among black children, it’s 33 percent.

What’s fueling the rise of divorce and family separation in the West? How do we make resilient, two-parent families the norm?

“There are a lot of people who are afraid of marriage, afraid of having children, afraid of being alone with the opposite sex because of their childhood situation,” says Coleman.

“If we demonstrate a household that is proper, that is healthy, then you have more kids who grow up with a good, positive image of having children, wanting a bigger family, of having marriage as the priority.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Recently, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met for the first time after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced its entire membership with new picks.

In this episode, I’m sitting down with two new ACIP members, Dr. Robert Malone and MIT professor Retsef Levi, for a deep dive into all things ACIP.

“They basically impact billions of dollars of revenue for the pharmaceutical industry. So there’s big money at stake here. There’s big policy at stake,” says Malone.

“One of the problems that we had in the context of vaccines, and more broadly maybe pharmaceutical products, is that debate was considered confusing to patients and something that we should avoid,” says Levi.

We take a look at some key discussions during the recent meeting, from thimerosal in certain flu vaccines to RSV shots for children, and what may happen with this committee moving forward.

“What you’re seeing here is a firm commitment on the part of these two volunteers, and I think the committee as a whole, in trying to be open and transparent to the general public,” Malone says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.    

John Eastman is founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. He is also a former law professor at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law and served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the 1990s. He has represented over a dozen parties before the U.S. Supreme Court.

His life took a sharp turn when he helped President Donald Trump challenge the integrity of the 2020 election results.

He is facing disbarment and criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona. He has pleaded not guilty.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

To understand Middle East dynamics, I always count on Michael Doran, Director of the Middle East Center at the Hudson Institute.

“For the first time, Jan, in history, Israel and the United States have taken military action together. This is totally new,” he tells me.

We sat down to discuss what has now been dubbed ‘The 12-Day War’ and how Middle East political realities have been transformed.

“One of the most amazing things about the Israeli attack against the Iranians is that they totally took the Iranians by surprise. Scientists were in their beds. Commanders all got together, thinking they were safe. That is just remarkable,” says Doran.

How did the strikes on Iran change the geopolitical landscape? Was World War III ever a real possibility? And has the threat of a nuclear Iran been neutralized … for good?

There’s still a little lingering doubt that maybe some of the enriched uranium was squirreled away by the Iranians in some other secret site,” says Doran. “Right now, Iran is a nuclear power of indeterminate status. So, we have to wait and determine.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I sit down with Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization. We dive into his vision for revitalizing American manufacturing, making American-made products competitive globally, and building alternative financial and tech systems where people can’t be canceled.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I’m sitting down again with Kyle Bass, founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management and founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, to get an update on how China’s economy is faring since our last interview five months ago.

“There’s nothing that’s going to bail China out of their economic spiral. They’re having a real estate crisis, a banking crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, and now they need to be worried about their current account,” Bass says.

How have the Trump administration’s policies and recent events affected China and its economy?

And how do the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites impact the Chinese regime’s ambitions in Taiwan? How likely is a kinetic war?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump has recently criticized the ANC-led government of South Africa for what he says are state-sanctioned, racist policies that have been endangering white farmers.

In this episode, I sit down with South African businessman and entrepreneur Robert Hersov to get a read on what’s happening in the country. What is the real story surrounding white farmers in South Africa today? What role have Iran and Russia played in the region? And what can we expect from U.S.-South Africa relations moving forward, after the confrontational meeting between Trump and President Cyril Ramaphosa last month?

“In South Africa, we have two farm attacks a day, two murders of farmers a week. And of those farm murders, 20 percent of them involve rape and torture,” says Hersov.

“Cyril Ramaphosa went back to South Africa and proclaimed his meeting as a huge victory,” says Hersov. “I think America is about to unleash serious punishments—not on South Africa, but on the leaders.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

On June 20, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 56 into law, criminalizing geoengineering and certain weather modification activities in the state, with violations classified as a third-degree felony.

“They were intending to alter the trajectory of hurricanes using things like silver as a way to change the precipitation and intensity of these storms. Later, in Vietnam, for example, they used it for increasing weather, such as precipitation, on the so-called ‘enemy.’ Project Popeye [using cloud-seeding] is well-established to have been a successful weaponization of the weather. So, there is a pretty long history of weather modification and militarization of weather modification technology,” says Sayer Ji, chairman of the Global Wellness Forum and founder of GreenMedInfo.com.

“What the main concern is, is that there are other operations that are clandestine [where] we don’t actually know what the agenda is, outside of official acknowledgement that solar radiation management technologies are being deployed, which include using things like sulfur, calcium, titanium—various elements to create a dimming effect,” he said.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Five months into the Trump administration, I sit down with Heritage Foundation chief economist EJ Antoni to get his insights into how the American economy is doing, where the US-China trade war is headed, and how he assesses the “big, beautiful bill,” which has engendered significant debate among conservatives.

How are Americans faring financially today compared to a few months ago?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

John Miller is the CEO of Superb Industries. He resisted mounting pressure to move his production overseas to China, and instead innovated and grew a thriving made-in-America component manufacturing business.

“Do you make decisions based on the long-term benefit that are principle-based, or do you make decisions for financial gain in the short term, at the cost of the long term?” he asks, rhetorically. “[Other businesses] made a lot of money by outsourcing to China over a short period of time, but then lost their ability to make stuff, and now they’re paying the price.”

Miller has close ties to Ohio’s entrepreneurial Amish community and is an advocate for what he calls “food freedom.”

“We joined forces and started what we call the Food Independence Summit that basically brings specialists together to teach people how they can become self-sustaining on food, even if it’s only on a fractional basis,” says Miller. “To change culture, you have to change the structure.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Say we had credible intelligence about an impending terrorist attack or major acts of violence, what actions are justifiable to prevent these crimes from occurring? How do we balance the urgency of preventing harm, with the importance of safeguarding civil liberties?

“We have to make trade-offs all the time, and there’s no jurisprudence to that trade-off. We live in the preventive state,” says Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. “We are moving more and more toward replacing deterrence and reaction with prevention.”

He is the author of the new book, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms While Preserving Essential Liberties.”

Should someone charged—but not convicted—with a serious crime be denied bail to potentially prevent further crimes? Should governments be able to compel inoculations in a scenario where that could actually prevent deadly contagion? And notably, a few days after this interview was filmed, Israel launched preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. When is such preventive military action warranted?

In this episode, we dive into the legal framework laid out in his new book—which he describes as the most important work he’s ever written—and get his insights into the debate around deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles, the Trump administration’s clash with Harvard University, the dilemma of tackling Chinese espionage on college campuses, and the growing erosion of free speech protections in Europe.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

A 33-year-old researcher and her 34-year-old boyfriend, both Chinese nationals, were recently charged with allegedly smuggling into America a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, a potential bioterrorism weapon.

This recent case is just the tip of the iceberg, says investigative reporter Sam Cooper.

He played a key part in uncovering a similar case in Winnipeg, Canada.

“A married couple from China had been allegedly—according to the documents we now have access to—working with the highest levels of the Chinese military’s bioweapons program in Ebola research,” Cooper says. “They were running, clandestinely, materials from China and connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology into the Winnipeg lab.”

For years, Cooper has been at the forefront of exposing Chinese Communist Party infiltration in the West.

He is the founder of The Bureau and author of “Wilful Blindness: How a Criminal Network of Narcos, Tycoons, and Chinese Communist Party Agents Infiltrated the West.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 

Dr. Kirk Milhoan is a pediatric cardiologist and senior fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance. He has been treating children with myocarditis and other cardiovascular issues associated with COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccines.

“Four years later, five years later, I’m seeing this constant and dramatic change in who I’m seeing coming to see me. They’re complaining their heart doesn’t beat normally. And it beats fast for no reason at all,” says Dr. Milhoan. “Specifically after the second dose of the new platform for the COVID vaccine, we were seeing an increase in myocarditis in children that we’ve never seen before with any vaccine product in children.”

In this episode, we dive into the apparent rise of cardiovascular conditions in children and how to better address and understand them.

“We need to return the idea of a patient-doctor relationship,” says Dr. Milhoan. “You’re not a consumer. We’ve made this too marketing-oriented. We need to go back to: ‘I’m a physician who cares for you because I have compassion for you. And because of my compassion, I want you to do well, and I want you to be healthy.’”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“You can essentially divide the region between two sets of players. You have the, broadly speaking, Western-aligned players, which essentially consist of Israel and the non-Islamist Arab countries—countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE—and then, on the other hand, you have the axis of Islamism—of support for Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and jihadism. And that, these days, is mostly the Iranian regime of course, Turkey unfortunately under Tayyip Erdogan, and Qatar, Qatar being the lead financier of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood,” says Josh Hammer, host of the Newsweek podcast “The Josh Hammer Show” and author of “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.”

“Iran is the source of evil in the Middle East. We should be very clear about that,” he says. “This is the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. They have been ever since the hostage crisis that formed this horrific regime that ended the Jimmy Carter presidency in 1979.”

What does an America First foreign policy look like? How does Trump’s Middle East strategy fit into it? And what about the U.S. relationship with Qatar?

“America has always been engaged on the world stage. So the fact that we’re not necessarily going to be going around crusading in the name of spreading liberal democracy does not necessarily mean that we have no interest in the world. We’re America first, but you have to be America smart as well,” says Hammer.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“When we are dispersed and we interact with other human beings only online, and the algorithms feed back our preferences and desires to us, what it effectively does is kind-of isolate us in these multiple sub caves.”

Jacob Howland is the provost of the University of Austin, a new, private liberal arts university that is pushing back against censorship and politically popular narratives in higher education.

As dean of the Intellectual Foundations program, Howland gives students a comprehensive education in the Western tradition, emphasizing both “Athens and Jerusalem,” he says.

“After communism fell, it’s as if the historical amnesia had removed the capacity of those who were still around to reckon with the past,” he says. “There are inexhaustible resources in the tradition, and if we’re going to find our way forward, we’ve got to understand the past.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Few people understand artificial intelligence and machine learning as well as MIT physics professor Max Tegmark. Founder of the Future of Life Institute, he is the author of “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”

“The painful truth that’s really beginning to sink in is that we’re much closer to figuring out how to build this stuff than we are figuring out how to control it,” he says.

Where is the U.S.–China AI race headed? How close are we to science fiction-type scenarios where an uncontrollable superintelligent AI can wreak major havoc on humanity? Are concerns overblown? How do we prevent such scenarios?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“It’s now been revealed that the Chinese—who manufacture virtually all of our solar panels, both in the United States and Europe—have been installing cellular radios inside the inverters, which can act as kill switches,” says Michael Shellenberger, an investigative journalist, author, founder of Public, and CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at the University of Austin.

Shellenberger is the author of the books “San Fransicko” and “Apocalypse Never.”

In this wide-ranging interview, we dive into key vulnerabilities in America’s energy grid, how Trump is transforming America’s energy future, the current status of the “censorship industrial complex,” as Shellenberger describes it, and his continued fight for government transparency, including around unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs).

Two years on from the publication of the Twitter Files—in which Shellenberger played a key role—where are things now?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Dr. Lynn Fynn is a clinical research scientist and a retired infectious disease specialist. We sat down together to discuss issues she sees plaguing medical research, including the misallocation of funds, a broken peer review process, and major conflicts of interest.

”Any time you incentivize something, you’re creating a bias. And when you create a bias, there’s an element of truth that’s removed from the equation,” says Dr. Fynn.

“When a pharmaceutical company gets to pour money into a program, the curriculum is going to reflect what they want it to reflect, to make it a profitable transaction for them. It’s a return on investment.”

What practical steps are needed to restore public trust in science and medicine?

“Where there’s transparency, there’s trust. It’s really that simple,” says Dr. Fynn. “Oftentimes, [in] what used to be the scientific method, the process gets reversed. They look at the conclusion that is agreeable or preferred, and then they start working backwards. How can we prove this conclusion?”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Hollywood is about as left and progressive a community as there is in this country. And unfortunately, part of the box you have to check in that very left, super progressive space is being anti-Israel and being pro-Palestine in an anti-Israel way,” says Jonah Platt.

Platt is a jack of all trades in the entertainment industry—an actor, director, producer, and singer. In the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis led by terrorist group Hamas, he launched the podcast “Being Jewish.”

He recently visited Auschwitz, the largest German death camp, alongside over a dozen Muslims. He went with the organization Sharaka, which builds on the work of the Abraham Accords and educates Middle Easterners and other Arabs and Muslims around the world about the Holocaust.

“Some of these people came on this trip at great personal risk. If you’re coming from Pakistan to hang out with Jews in the middle of this Israel-Gaza war, I mean, you could be in real, physical danger. Some people—they couldn’t be in any photos and their identities had to be kept secret to protect them,” says Platt. “There were Jewish slaves [at Auschwitz], working out in that kind of rain in threadbare pajamas, starving to death, and having to do physical labor and be shot if they didn’t keep up. And meanwhile, I’m freezing in the cold, but I get to go on a warm bus and get a hot meal after this.”

In this episode, we discuss how to navigate being Jewish and Zionist in a society that is becoming increasingly hostile to Israel.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

***Disclaimer: One of the producers for American Thought Leaders participated in the Sharaka program to Poland on an all-expenses paid trip.

“Service … it’s a great healer for a broken heart. It helped me a lot through our fight for our son, and the difficulties and the challenges of fighting for him and then losing him,” says Gary Sinise.

An Emmy Award-winning actor, producer, director, and musician, Sinise has dedicated his life to supporting America’s active-duty military, veterans, first responders, and their families.

The Gary Sinise Foundation has raised over $500 million in support of these communities, and Sinise has won many awards for his humanitarian contributions, including the Presidential Citizen Medal, the second-highest civilian honor in the United States.

In this episode, Sinise reflects on his three decades of service, from building dozens of specially modified homes for wounded veterans and first responders to playing nearly 600 concerts with the Lt. Dan band (named after his Forrest Gump character) at military bases across the United States and overseas.

Sinise’s son McCanna Anthony “Mac” Sinise died last year at age 33 after a five-year battle with a rare bone cancer called chordoma. Before he passed, he was able to record an entire album of music that he’d begun in college. It’s titled “Resurrection & Revival.”

Mac’s story and his father’s full tribute to his son can be found here on the Gary Sinise Foundation website: https://www.garysinisefoundation.org/mac-tribute

A few months ago, Canada unveiled its national memorial to the millions of victims of communism.

In this episode, Ludwik Klimkowski, chair of the Tribute of Liberty, gives us a tour of the memorial and reveals the 17-year battle to realize it as the group navigated changing political winds.

“This is a memorial to those who still struggle. This is the memorial given to those who still want to escape. This is the memorial to those who are still sitting in prison, whose organs are being harvested,” Klimkowski says.

The memorial was inaugurated last year, although the final elements on the Wall of Remembrance are still under development.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, we sit down again with Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist, military historian, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and author of two dozen books, including most recently “The End of Everything.”

In this interview, we dive into the multifaceted dimensions of what he describes as Trump’s “counterrevolution” in the foreign policy space, from Canada to China to the Middle East to Ukraine and Russia.

What might the end of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza look like?

Should Trump have accepted a plane from Qatar’s royal family? Was it a good idea to lift U.S. sanctions on Syria’s new leader? Is there any truth to rumors of friction between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

Is it possible that Trump actually, in some sense, wanted Mark Carney to win and become Prime Minister of Canada?

And how can the United States ensure the Chinese leadership upholds their commitments in a trade agreement, given their track record of not following through?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

There are few people who understand the workings of Chinese espionage as well as Nicholas Eftimiades.

After a 34-year government career—including time at the CIA, Department of State, and Defense Intelligence Agency—he’s now a professor at Penn State University’s Homeland Security Program and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“China uses what we call a whole-of-society approach to conducting espionage. … We’re not talking about thousands [of people]. We’re talking about tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people engaged globally in carrying out the CCP’s will,” Eftimiades says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“One of the major driving factors of the extreme polarization that we’re living through right now is that most news consumers can very easily … tune in somewhere where they are just being force fed worldviews and perspectives that confirm all their priors,” says journalist Isaac Saul.

“Think about what media outlets are really making their audience uncomfortable on a regular basis, and there’s very few of them,” he says.

After writing for a wide variety of media outlets and seeing some disturbing trends, Saul decided to found Tangle, a newsletter that puts viewpoints from both the left and the right side by side.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.  

“This system I had been turning to for help through all of these years, through the most formative years of life, that I had been assuming existed to take care of me ... was actually a system of control. And I just hadn’t seen it for what it was, because I had never said no to it before,” says Laura Delano, author of “Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance.”

For 14 years, Delano was a “professional mental patient,” as she puts it, after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was a teenager.

Now she wonders whether the dominant, medicalized approach to mental illness is actually making us as a society sicker.

“Sixty-five million American adults and 6 million American children are currently on psychiatric drugs, and there are zero off ramps for getting them off these drugs safely within the mental health industry. Zero,” she says. “This is not about being ‘pro’ or ‘anti.’ This is about using straightforward, honest language to talk about what these drugs are, to talk about our limits of knowledge around what these drugs are and how they actually affect us, and then to let people make their own decisions from there based on their own life circumstances.”

In this episode, we dive into Delano’s story and discuss the dangers of relying solely on medical treatments to treat mental health issues and of rapidly withdrawing from psychiatric drugs.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Donald Trump is looming so large in the Canadian consciousness right now,” says Brian Lee Crowley.

“And I have seen a lot of my compatriots running around like chickens with their heads cut off, saying, ‘Oh my God, Donald Trump is a mad man. You can’t understand what he’s doing. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.’ And I looked at what Donald Trump was doing, and I thought, ‘Okay, I don’t have to like it. That’s a separate question. But if the question is, ’Can I understand it?' The answer is yes.”

Crowley is the founder and managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a Canadian think tank whose work is often cited by the Canadian Parliament.

“What exactly is the difference between Canada and America, or Canadians and Americans? It’s not that it’s difficult to answer because there aren’t differences. It’s difficult to answer because the differences are subtle and hard to express,” says Crowley.

“Remember that America broke away through a violent revolution from the crown and the United Kingdom—from Great Britain. Canadians never experienced that.”

In this episode, we dive into the recent election in Canada, Trump’s comments about Canada as America’s 51st state, and what the future of United States–Canada relations may look like.

“Canada exports 50 percent of everything made in the private sector, and the vast bulk of that, like 90 percent, goes to the United States. But [in] the United States, by contrast, foreign trade, or international trade, only represents barely 25 percent of the amount of the American economy, and that’s diversified across all of its trade partners. So, while for Canada, the relationship with the United States is existential, for America, the relationship with Canada is convenient, nice—not existential.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Dr. Paul Marik is a pulmonary and critical care specialist and a founding member of the Independent Medical Alliance, formerly known as the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.

“Our healthcare system is completely and utterly broken. From the top to the bottom, it’s a broken, dysfunctional system,” says Marik. “If you do an experiment, it should be reproducible. And I think that’s the most important qualifier of good science; the results are reproducible, because then, it’s likely to be true.”

Best known for his revolutionary, lifesaving protocol for Sepsis and for being the second most published critical care physician in the world, Marik is now focusing his efforts on the treatment and prevention of cancer.

“Intermittent fasting, in which the body was designed to eat for a while and then to starve for a while, is not a difficult concept. The human body wasn’t designed to snack and eat all the time, which is what people seem to do. And that has serious metabolic consequences, with high insulin levels and insulin resistance,” says Dr. Marik. “Vitamin D is effective in preventing cancer, but it’s also very effective in the treatment of cancer.”

Views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

How is the Trump administration transforming the Department of Justice’s civil rights priorities?

Joining us today for a deep dive is DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the civil rights division.

Their jurisdiction includes a wide range of constitutional issues, from religious freedom to Title IX protections, race-based discrimination, and enforcing voting rights laws.

The views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Never before in history have two great trading entities ever engaged in outright economic warfare, like is being engaged today. And that’s why I say we’re living in historic times,” says Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist during President Donald Trump’s first administration and host of the “War Room” show.

“It’s not just tariffs. They’re a tool. [Trump]’s reorganizing the world system of commerce and of trade,” Bannon says.

In this episode, we dive into the U.S.–China trade war, Trump’s tariff strategy, his first 100 days in office, and where America is headed in the weeks and months to come.

“The next 100 days is going to be three times more intense, dramatic, and meaningful than the first 100 days,” Bannon says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“They picked me up, and I’m hopping on one leg. And I saw Commander Griffin, Major Gray, Major Kennedy, and then USAID [officer] at the time, Ragaei Abdelfattah, were all killed by the same bomber that didn’t kill me,” said Florent Groberg.

Groberg is a retired U.S. Army Captain who fought in Afghanistan and was severely injured attempting to thwart a suicide bomber. For his actions, he received the Medal of Honor, America’s highest award for military valor.

“Everything that we have in this nation is because of men and women who put their lives on the line and didn’t come home. And their families—they have to live with the consequences of that,” he said.

I spoke with Captain Groberg on a wide range of topics, from DeepSeek AI and swarming drones to the war in Ukraine and the threat from China’s communist regime.

“When I first heard about DeepSeek and its battle with Open AI ... I saw it as an opportunity for the Chinese government to have free access to all of our data as they see fit,” said Groberg. “The Chinese have been developing the majority of the world’s small drones. I believe that the majority of the Russian [drones] come from China. ... I know that Ukrainians are also using their own specific drones, and they’re creating as much chaos on the other side. So, it really has changed the landscape of warfare.”

Views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“What happened during COVID is exactly a perfect illustration of the harms of sacrificing some for the many,” says Leslie Manookian, founder and president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund.

She played a pivotal role in getting her state of Idaho to pass the first legislation in the United States banning most medical mandates, including vaccines and masks.

“One of my missions at Health Freedom Defense Fund, in founding this organization, was to educate the public and raise awareness about the importance of medical freedom, because I think it’s the most basic and fundamental of human rights—and then to codify that in law. And the Idaho Medical Freedom Act is the first step in that process,” says Manookian.

In this episode, we dive into the volatile process of getting this bill signed into law, and discuss why Manookian believes Americans must be protected from being forced to undergo medical interventions—even if they are potentially lifesaving.

“On the last day of the legislative session, we were able to insert … that no healthy, unvaccinated individual may be excluded from any educational entity or any business entity on the basis of a disease outbreak. So just because you’re unvaccinated, if you’re healthy, they can’t kick you out,” says Manookian. “In the last 50 to 70 years, somehow public health has started to intrude into private health, and I think that’s a mistake.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

A recently leaked directive details the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy to respond to Trump’s tariffs.

How is the CCP trying to leverage this moment? Will this be the end of China as the “factory of the world?”

And what’s behind the purges in the military, the apparent removal of two Xi Jinping loyalists, and recent changes in top CCP leadership? Why did two top CCP officials recently swap positions?

Joining us today is longtime China analyst and commentator Heng He.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

David Zweig is a journalist and author of “An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions.” His book is a searing criticism of the policy to close schools across America during the COVID-19 pandemic. The result: Major lags in education achievement, a mental health disaster, and so much more that simply cannot be easily quantified.

“How do we track what happened to that kid who could have gotten into college and instead is doing something else now? We don’t know exactly the kids who were lost, who just stopped going to school entirely.”

And what was it all for?

“They were sacrificed for nothing,” Zweig says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

As the U.S.-China trade war continues to escalate, I’m sitting down with China analyst Gordon Chang.

“Jamie Dimon said this: ‘Why don’t you just pick up the phone?’ Well, the reason is we’ve had that attitude for five decades … and look where it’s gotten us. So, if the Chinese want to do something about our tariffs, it’s up to them to pick up the phone,” says Chang.

What is the current state of play when it comes to Trump’s tariff strategy? Is it working in America’s favor?

“The only way China wins this trade war is if it gets Trump to preemptively surrender,” says Chang. “This is an existential struggle. It’s more than just a trade war. It’s more than just a tariff war. And we better win it.”

And how is Xi Jinping’s leadership being challenged inside China?

“General He, I think, was sacked not by Xi Jinping, but by the adversaries of Xi Jinping in the Chinese military ... we have seen all these unexplained and unusual disappearances of military officers, especially since the middle of 2023,” says Chang. “I think this is the most dangerous moment in history.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

After Beijing retaliated to U.S. tariffs, President Donald Trump has now announced a tariff hike to 125 percent on Chinese products—and a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs on other countries.

To understand what’s really going on, we’re speaking with one of the world’s leading experts on the Chinese economy.

Christopher Balding was a professor at Peking University’s HSBC School of Business until 2018 when he was fired for pushing back against censorship. Now, he is a senior fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and the founder of New Kite Data Labs.

“I think President Trump wants to push a very deep, ongoing decoupling from China, and I think he wants to promote that decoupling, not just with China, but [by] drawing at least a secondary moat around near allies like Mexico, Canada, parts of Europe, Japan, and South Korea,” Balding says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“I felt like I was a Rip Van Winkle therapist. I left my profession due to a health condition in 2017 ... In 2021, I came back, and it was radically different,” says licensed clinical social worker Pamela Garfield-Jaeger. “All the teens that I had worked with before had never talked about being trans, and then the new program I was working at, half the girls were identifying as trans.”

Known as “The Truthful Therapist,” she is the author of “A Practical Response to Gender Distress” and is featured in the Epoch Times documentary “Gender Transformation.”

How has the mental health profession changed in recent years? What’s behind the spike in teens identifying as transgender? Why has “affirmation” become the norm? What alternatives exist? What impact is the widespread prescription of antidepressants and other drugs having on teenagers?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I sit down with Mikki Willis, an award-winning filmmaker and producer of the Plandemic Series. His new film, “Follow the Silenced,” tells the stories, over the course of three years, of individuals injured by the COVID-19 genetic vaccine.

“We followed the science, we got harmed, and now Facebook won’t even let us have a group where we can talk to each other? What is happening here in this country? And so, we have made this film to give them a voice, and to make sure that their story and their sacrifice doesn’t go unnoticed,” says Willis. “The game we’re playing as citizens is a very different game than is being played by the policy makers.”

We also discuss his views on spirituality and how human beings have become disconnected from the brilliance of nature and their divine intelligence.

“We have the fables of the devil in the crossroads or meeting the devil and signing away for fame and fortune or whatever it might be—giving a piece of your soul. After 30-some odd years working in Hollywood, I saw a lot of people that I will say most definitely came in with a soul and left without one, incrementally giving away a little piece of themselves,” says Willis.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Dr. Joseph Varon is a critical care physician, medical professor, and president of the Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), formerly the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). Their mission is to provide and advocate for patient rights, informed consent, and medical transparency, and they’ve played a major role supporting Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Hopefully, now with the new NIH director, we'll be able to fund some of these studies for these repurposed drugs that are really going to cut on cost of health care expenses,” he says.

Varon has contributed to more than 950 peer-reviewed journal articles and is the editor-in-chief of multiple medical journals, including the newly launched Journal of Independent Medicine. In this episode, we dive into the IMA’s recent work.

“When you have, let’s say, a paper that has 20 authors and out of those 20 authors, more than 90 percent of them are on the payroll of a specific pharmaceutical company that makes a product that you are studying, that’s a conflict,” says Dr. Varon. “If we don’t do something about the current state of medicine in our country, we’re doomed. We’re really doomed.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“More and more Iranian-supported, anti-American, Islamic terrorist cells are established on U.S. soil with the aim of eliminating key American personnel, and eliminating key American institutions and installations. This has been the ayatollah’s vision from day one,” says former Ambassador Yoram Ettinger.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Ettinger held a number of high-profile positions within Israel’s government, from minister of congressional affairs in D.C. to director of its press office. A now retired insider and expert on U.S.–Israel relations, he regularly advises Israel and America’s legislators, and produces a weekly newsletter challenging conventional wisdom on Middle East affairs.

“The State Department probably still is under the delusion that the U.S. has a choice between Arab countries that abide by human rights and Arab countries that do not abide by human rights,” says Ettinger. “The choice is between pro-American Arab regimes that violate human rights or anti-American Arab regimes that violate human rights.”

In this episode, we dive into key realities of the U.S.–Israel relationship that are poorly understood, and the global threat posed by the Iranian regime.

“The early pilgrims and the Founding Fathers, to a large extent, viewed themselves as the modern-day chosen people. They viewed this country as the modern-day Promised Land, and they considered the manner in which Moses governed the Jewish people to be the foundation for the system which they established: the separation of powers, and later on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” says Ettinger.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

David Mansdoerfer served as deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the first Trump administration. Now, he’s chief strategist at the Independent Medical Alliance and describes himself as the MAGA-MAHA Connector.

“We have seen a complete reset of a federal agency within 60 days of Secretary Kennedy getting there. To me, that is unprecedented, and it is going to be one of the most impactful approaches to public health and the health economy in the United States,” he says. “We have not won this fight. We’ve begun the fight. And we have industry forces, which I would say [have] unlimited money, that are going to try to do everything to protect their bottom line, but also limit good policy ideas of a Secretary Kennedy and a President Trump.”

What reforms are already underway since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over HHS? What pushback has he faced? And will the administration be able to reconcile and even merge the disparate agendas of the MAGA and MAHA movements?

“You basically get to put an entirely new, fresh face of career leaders that are aligned to the president’s agenda and the secretary’s agenda in positions of authority that could be and will be longer lasting than just this administration,” says Mansdoerfer. “Even in terms of the unknown, it is better to have leadership that’s willing to take these bold actions than it is to continually lead Americans down a poor health outcome path.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Find showtimes for Shen Yun at https://www.shenyun.com/tickets

Use the code JAN25 to get ticketing fees waived.

“The United States depends on China for 95 percent of the key components that are necessary to make our generic drugs, and if China shut the door on exports, within months, our health care system would begin to collapse.”

Rosemary Gibson is a national authority on health care policy and patient safety, and the author of “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine.”

“How come we don’t know that our medicines are being made in China? And this has been going on for a long time, and for years, there was actually zero regulation. How do we outsource production from a country with the highest standards in the world to places with no standards?” she asks.

In this episode, we dive into the realities of China’s control of America’s medical supply chain, the increasing problem of contaminated medications, and what the current administration can do to fix it.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Find showtimes for Shen Yun at https://www.shenyun.com/tickets

Use the code JAN25 to get ticketing fees waived.

Joel Salatin is one of America’s most revered regenerative farmers. At Polyface Farms, he avoids synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and vaccines. He doesn’t take any government subsidies. And he’s been a major source of inspiration for many seeking to build farms of their own with symbiotic, sustainable ecosystems—ones that enrich rather than deplete the soil.

For decades, he’s been fighting government overregulation of small food producers.

Salatin is featured in multiple documentaries and is the author of 17 books, including “Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front” and “Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times

Find showtimes for Shen Yun at https://www.shenyun.com/tickets

Use the code JAN25 to get ticketing fees waived.

Dr. Eithan Haim said he was working as a resident surgeon at the Texas Children’s Hospital when he discovered that doctors were secretly continuing and expanding their program of transgender medical procedures for minors—after publicly shutting it down.

He blew the whistle, and ended up under federal investigation. After three indictments and 148 legal files, his case has now been dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Find showtimes for Shen Yun at https://www.shenyun.com/tickets

Use the code JAN25 to get ticketing fees waived.

Tens of millions of Americans are unwittingly investing in Chinese companies involved in military weapon production, surveillance technologies, and egregious human rights abuses, says former Reagan adviser Roger Robinson.

Through a complex web of investment vehicles and regulatory loopholes, Americans are pouring trillions of dollars into companies that directly threaten American national security, including ones blacklisted by the U.S. government—often without even knowing. Chinese companies often make up the bulk of index funds like emerging markets funds that many Americans invest in.

“You have ... companies that are responsible for manufacturing China’s most advanced weapon systems,” Robinson says. “We’re funding, in some ways, our own demise.”

During the Reagan administration, Robinson served as senior director of international economic affairs at the National Security Council, where he played a linchpin role in Reagan’s economic strategy against the Soviet Union. He’s the co-founder of the Prague Security Studies Institute and the co-founder of the Prague Security Studies Institute and former Chairman of the Congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

America is facing an epidemic of loneliness, and it’s as bad for people’s health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, says U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy.

In the past two decades, there’s been a marked rise in suicides and “deaths of despair.”

What’s fueling these trends of social fragmentation, isolation, and atomization? And how are they linked to broader political and social trends?

In this episode, two of the world’s leading thinkers on bioethics and group psychology join together with me for the first time.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a former psychiatry professor and director of the medical ethics program at the University of California Irvine Medical School. He’s the author of “The New Abnormal.”

Mattias Desmet is a professor of psychology at Ghent University and author of “The Psychology of Totalitarianism.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Emma Reilly worked as a human rights lawyer at the United Nations. She discovered that for years, the Human Rights Council had been handing over the names of Chinese dissidents slated to attend the U.N. to the Chinese regime. Included were the names of U.S., Canadian, and European citizens.

“The CCP demands get listened to because the U.N. takes them seriously, whereas they believe that the money from the U.S. will always flow, no matter what the law says in Congress, and that’s a problem,” Reilly says. “You see the way that individuals who are willing to prioritize China’s influence and China’s comfort over their own mandate managed to rise and rise in the U.N., whereas people that object get fired.”

After speaking out and informing the United States of what she says was a “criminal” practice at the U.N., she lost her whistleblower protection status and was fired.

“I was one of the 2 percent of people that are recognized as a legitimate whistleblower that found a dangerous policy and reported it. So, I should have been protected, but the U.N. decided to ignore its own rules. It was very blatant,” Reilly says. “You see just the sheer number of sex abuse scandals within the U.N., even by their own reckoning. There are—and this is literally according to their own figures—there are 800 cases of sexual harassment or abuse. No NGO could sustain that.”

Views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Caroline Glick is a journalist, author, and recently, adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The discussion that we’ve had about the war itself is just sort of blind to the basic realities of the situation. And that, to me, is the ground zero of all of the problems,” she says.

“The stronger Israel is, the more secure the United States is. I think that the more Israel is able to project its power in the region, the more stable the region is, because Israel is a fundamentally peaceful country that doesn’t seek war and does everything to avoid it. The more powerful Israel is, the less likely there are to be wars in the region.”

Glick breaks down Israel’s perspective on various developments in the region, from resuming wartime operations in Gaza, to the situation in Syria, to U.S. President Donald Trump’s strikes on the Houthis in Yemen.

“When somebody tells you that they want to kill you, you have to believe them—like, you have no choice. You have to take them at their word,” she says. “By showing [Gazans] that the only thing that they get from being with Hamas is death and destruction, and giving them an alternative, which is what the Trump plan does ... you have this opportunity to build a life in a different place.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

From cutting programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development to putting Voice of America employees on paid administrative leave, the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been aggressively seeking to reduce government spending on international initiatives.

But some such spending may be worth keeping.

Cleo Paskal, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, breaks down how certain U.S. measures in the Pacific are vital to deter increasing Chinese encroachment in the region, but they may not be well-understood.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Fifteen or 16 percent of the population [is] now taking antidepressants … When they’ve gone out and asked people who actually use these medications whether they’re experiencing sexual dysfunction, approximately 60 percent of people will [affirm] it.”

Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring is a board certified psychiatrist, former FDA medical officer, and director of the Taper Clinic. He treats patients suffering from post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD), and protracted withdrawal—two conditions becoming more common, and in some cases permanent, in people who have stopped taking antidepressants.

“SSRIs and antidepressants are really popular drugs. Some people just don’t want to believe that they could potentially cause something so catastrophic,” he says. “We should only be using these medications after we’ve done everything else.”

In this episode, we discuss how patients can safely discontinue psychiatric medications and regain control of their mental health, and why there needs to be more awareness about conditions that arise after people stop taking their drugs.

“What I saw going through all of that ... as a drug safety officer ... was essentially that we really were practicing outside of what the psychiatric clinical trials and the evidence showed,” says Witt-Doerring. “Doctors have been led astray about the drugs to the point where they overestimate the benefits and minimize the harm.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Michael Lucci is the founder, CEO, and chairman of State Armor. He helps states enact policies and solutions that protect their assets from foreign adversaries like communist China.

“They’re trying to invade our homeland, and they likely have developed the capacity to make life very difficult, to create crises within the United States—whether it’s power, whether it’s wastewater treatment, whether it’s telecommunications,” he says. “They have laws that require those companies to engage in espionage. So why are we letting them sell connected devices of any type into the United States?”

In this episode, we dive deep into how the Chinese regime has managed to infiltrate our critical infrastructure and communications systems at the local, state, and federal levels.

“It’s the largest military buildup since World War Two is what China is doing right now,” says Lucci. “If they’re just in our back doors, listening, reading, following everything we’re doing, following the pattern of life for important officials across the country, that’s a pretty deep problem.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Over the years, Pano Kanelos, the founding president of the University of Austin, observed a growing “homogenization” and “bureaucratization” of higher education. He saw school programs becoming more and more similar, administrators outnumbering students and young adults being taught that the pathway to success is dependent on censorship and adherence to the status quo.

“We’ve created a culture of conformity at universities—a culture of conformity in higher education,” he says. “This just flattens out, I think, the potential for higher education to do great things and be dynamic.”

So, in 2021, along with a group of similarly concerned individuals, he started the University of Austin, a private liberal arts university in Texas that emphasizes curiosity, risk-taking, and moral agency.

“We’re trying to generate graduates who themselves are builders and creators. This is an important part of our curriculum,” says Kanelos.

Three years later, he is the president of a fully operational freshmen class and a diverse faculty.

“If anybody visits the University of Austin, they will see that it’s probably one of the most intellectually alive environments you'll ever encounter,” says Kanelos.

The views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect those of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, we sit down with Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), a decorated veteran who served over 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy as a helicopter pilot and a medical corps officer.

As a lawmaker, he has co-sponsored legislation to challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rampant economic espionage and tech influence campaigns, and a resolution supporting formal recognition of Taiwan.

“We now are in a new evolution of warfare where we’re heavily reliant on technologies. This has changed conventional warfare forever,” McCormick says.

Three U.S. Army soldiers were recently indicted for stealing top-secret information for the Chinese regime. The U.S. has also charged 12 Chinese hackers and officials for cyber operations targeting U.S. agencies and media outlets, including The Epoch Times.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, we dive into President Donald Trump’s multi-pronged strategy to revitalize America’s economy, from aggressive reciprocal tariffs to massive DOGE cuts, and a large-scale deregulation effort to promote business growth.

The Code of Federal Regulations is now over 190,000 pages long. A 2017 Auburn University study found that each federal regulator effectively “costs the U.S. economy the equivalent of 138 private sector jobs per year.” The researchers said that equated to a $11 million annual loss for the U.S. economy for every additional regulator.

What will be the impacts of the Trump administration’s policies? Will they usher in economic prosperity or will America have to head into a recession first?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Half a million unaccompanied minors entered the United States between 2019 and 2023, and experts fear many of them have been trafficked. And that does not include the children who crossed the border with individuals falsely claiming to be their family members. So where are all these children now?

Alina Habba, who is currently serving as counselor to the president, says she’s working with the different agencies involved to identify and rescue trafficking victims and prosecute the perpetrators.

“I am drafting a couple executive orders regarding that currently that I think will be important to properly get this moving for those kids,” she says.

In her role advising the president, Habba says she’s focused on human trafficking and Iraq. Habba is the daughter of Chaldean Catholics who fled Iraq in the 1980s.

We dive into her work today and get an update on the status of the long-awaited Epstein files.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

There are few people who have played a more important role in broadly supporting the rights of religious believers in China than Marco Respinti, director-in-charge of the Bitter Winter magazine.

“In the first six to eight months of our existence online as a magazine, some 40 people who were connected to us on the ground were arrested in China. … Half of them simply disappeared,” Respinti says.

During the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, I had the great pleasure of finally sitting down with Respinti to discuss how the Chinese Communist Party systematically infiltrates, coopts, and destroys religious movements in China.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump has promised that he will bring back American manufacturing during his presidency. What if there aren’t enough Americans who want to work those jobs?

“Every year for the last decade or so, for every five tradesmen who retire, two replace them,” says Mike Rowe, Emmy Award-winning TV host of the Dirty Jobs series.

“If we don’t have a workforce who is disabused of the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that have kept millions of kids from giving these jobs an honest look ... you’re going to wind up in a pretty nasty feedback loop,” he says.

“People still don’t believe me. Even when I show them, not just the stats, but the actual humans who are making $150-grand a year welding with an $8,000 certificate, they just don’t believe it,” he says.

Rowe is the founder of mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which awards millions of dollars in work ethic scholarships for young people to learn a skilled trade.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump has been widely criticized for his “transactional” approach to diplomacy. But is that really such a bad thing?

In this episode, I sit down with China expert and retired U.S. Marine Col. Grant Newsham, a senior research fellow with the Center for Security Policy, to discuss Trump’s approach to diplomacy and negotiations and how America can leverage what he describes as the “kryptonite” of the Chinese regime.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the President Santiago Peña of Paraguay. He shared why Paraguay is one of only 12 countries in the world that recognizes Taiwan instead of communist China and one of only six countries that have moved their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Now I’m sitting down with his foreign minister, Rubén Ramírez Lezcano, to learn more about Paraguay, the region, and Lezcano’s candidacy for secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS).

“Paraguay matters in the agenda of the United States. Why? Because Paraguay is a very important and key partner for the United States,” says Lezcano. “I think that America abandoned for a long time Latin America. In the last year, the United States lost a lot of markets, a lot of investment, and a lot of opportunities. I think that [now] is the time to work closely again.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“When I got my COVID vaccine, my reaction started within an hour, and it started with tingling down the same arm as my injection. It moved to my other arm, then it moved to my legs, and then it moved to my head, into my brain, and I had this horrific electrical, pulsating sensation through my body 24/7.”

Brianne Dressen was left severely injured after participating in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trials. She’s the co-founder of the nonprofit React19, which helps people impacted by COVID-19 vaccine injuries. React19 now advocates on behalf of over 36,000 people.

“We can’t be found in any kind of database that the public or anyone beyond the government can access,” she says. “All of the programs that we’ve developed, they work together in concert to build an avenue for healing for the people that literally have no avenue.”

She’s the subject of the new book “Worth a Shot?: Secrets of the Clinical Trial Participant Who Inspired a Global Movement.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Joining me today is Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana. Since he took office last year, he’s implemented sweeping changes in public safety, tax policy, and education.

We discuss gains made in the state’s educational rankings, as well as his plans for boosting election integrity, increasing manufacturing, and ensuring fiscal responsibility.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, we dive into China’s influence and the communist regime’s propaganda efforts worldwide. Joining us is Piero Tozzi, a longtime China expert and staff director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

What are some key misconceptions we have about China and the Chinese regime? And are we finally seeing a real “pivot to Asia” as the Trump administration signals a dramatic reduction in U.S. military presence in Europe and demands that NATO allies pitch in more for Europe’s defense?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“The science is out there: There have been 64 peer-reviewed studies that Linda Nielsen has reviewed. And they all come to the same conclusion—that children fare better with both parents.”

After experiencing firsthand systemic problems within the family court system, in which one parent, typically the father, is relegated to weekend visits with his children in divorce cases, Mark Ludwig founded Americans for Equal Shared Parenting to raise awareness about the need for children to have equal access to both parents.

“The opposition has done a great job of creating the narrative that this is just a bunch of angry dads who have anger management problems, conflict resolution problems, and maybe they shouldn’t even be a dad,” he says.

Ludwig travels the country advocating for a 50/50 rebuttable presumption—legislation that presumes both parents will share equal custody in a divorce, so long as they are fit, willing, and able.

“The No. 1 stability point a child needs is not where they live, but who they have a relationship with. And the stability of the relationship with both parents is more important than what house they live in,” says Ludwig. “I'll fight just as hard for mothers as I do fathers, because I’m not fighting for the mother or the father. I’m fighting for the child.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In January, the western province of Alberta in Canada released a 269-page report—the first of its kind—examining the information and data that informed its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Doctors felt pressure to do things they didn’t agree with. We need to have good autonomy where a physician is doing things safely, but they’re allowed to treat their patients in what they believe is the best for them. It still has to be regulated. You can’t just have everybody off on their own, but it has to be done,” says Dr. Gary Davidson, an emergency physician and primary author of the report.

“I was asked to form a task force. There’s people on the task force that are more aligned with how I saw it or how I think, and then there were people invited to join who are not aligned with how I think or see it.”

The report found that pandemic lockdowns, masking mandates, and vaccine mandates all failed to achieve their intended results.

“There’s just so much data out there. The Nordic countries did a huge study—millions of people, showing that if you’re under 50 years old, and if you don’t have any really good reason, you probably shouldn’t get this vaccine,” says Davidson. “And so that’s what we recommend doing in Alberta.”

The views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Andrew Hale is a senior trade policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. In this episode, we discuss how Trump is using various trade tools to strengthen alliances and weaken adversaries.

“I look upon what he’s trying to do as a negotiating tactic. He’s using tariffs as an instrument of statecraft, and also for economic coercion, to achieve matters that sometimes go well beyond trade policy,” Hale says.

Hale says that tariffs should be used against America’s foreign adversaries, but not necessarily against its allies.

“Among [those on] the protection side, there’s a knee jerk reaction saying a tariff is the panacea to all of our problems. And actually, a lot of these problems we created right here in Washington. And we can fix them right here in Washington, with dealing with some of the stupid and foolish regulations that we have,” he says. “What we cannot go back to is what we had during the Clinton years, what we had during the Bush years, the Obama years—which was this seamless trade with China, where we treat them as a market economy. They’re a non-market economy. They’re a foreign adversary.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“We had a case of a little cell of Christian believers who were all converts from Islam, and they were meeting secretly. And they were infiltrated by a radical terrorist group called Al Shabaab, and they burnt down the house. They captured some of them, they took them onto the beach, and only two of them managed to survive, because they killed the rest of them.”

Charmaine Hedding is the founder and president of the Shai Fund, a humanitarian organization that aids, protects, and even rescues persecuted minorities throughout the Middle East and Africa.

“In 2014, I watched as the Islamic State swept over Syria and Iraq. And I watched as the Yazidi and the Christian women were taken as sex slaves and sold in the markets of Raqqa and in Turkey and across the Middle East. And I thought to myself, ‘Who’s going to do something about this?’” she says. “The greatest struggle in the Middle East and in Africa, at the moment, is this concept of freedom of religion and belief.”

Hedding was born and raised in South Africa, where her father and grandfather were outspoken anti-apartheid activists. Because of their activism, they were eventually forced to flee to Jerusalem when Hedding was a child.

“By the time I was 12, we were harassed by agents. And we had agents in the church. We were followed,” she says. “The question that I remember asking myself as a child after reading the stories of the Holocaust is: If I was a European, what would I have done? And would I have put myself at risk to save a Jewish family? And that’s what motivated me, that question.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“In the last four years, we’ve seen an aggregate inflation of about 26 percent. So that’s a quarter of your purchasing power—phoosh gone—just disappeared across the board,” says Stefan Rust, founder and CEO of Truflation, a blockchain-based financial data service that provides real-time economic and inflation data.

What will be the impact of DOGE’s aggressive cost-cutting? Could it cause a short-term reduction in the size of the U.S. economy?

Some people have been talking about risks of deflation—is that really a concern? And what will be the economic impact of Trump’s tariffs?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I sit down with John O’Sullivan, a former policy and speech writer for British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and former editor-in-chief of National Review and executive editor of Radio Free Europe. Today, he’s the president of the Danube Institute, a Hungary-based think-tank.

A “unified national identity is an absolute essential for a successful democracy,” he says. “If we continue on a multicultural path, it’s a path which is going to go in the directions of ever more aggressive and hostile identity politics, and people will feel that their neighbors are their enemies.”

O’Sullivan’s latest book is titled: “Sleepwalking into Wokeness: How We Got Here.”

“The idea of post-nationalism is unachievable if you’re a state. You don’t remain just a post-national state, what you become is something else,” he says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The Chinese AI app DeepSeek recently became the most downloaded iPhone app in the United States and caused U.S. tech stocks to plummet. President Donald Trump described it as a “wake-up” call for American companies.

So what’s really going on? Is DeepSeek as powerful as people think? Or is there a bigger story here?

In this episode, we sit down with AI expert Nicolas Chaillan, former chief software officer for the U.S. Air Force and now founder of the generative AI company Ask Sage.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“The fires themselves are pretty much out. There’s a few smoldering remains, but the trouble has just begun,” says Edward Ring, director of Water and Energy Policy for the California Policy Center. “It’s going to be very hard to get everything rebuilt in Los Angeles.”

In this episode, we do a deep dive on the California wildfires. How did they originate? Why was the devastation so horrific? Could they have been prevented? What is the scope of the damage? And in the aftermath, what should be done?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“They’re at war for the American mind. That’s why you have TikTok out there. That’s why you have DeepSeek. That’s why you have the China Daily. They’re out there trying to control information and your perception of reality,” says Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.), who was recently elected for his first term.

His first bill seeks to ban the widespread distribution of the China Daily in the House of Representatives. China Daily is a registered foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In 2020, the newspaper was among many Chinese state media outlets designated as foreign missions in the United States.

“It’s propaganda by a foreign government that’s trying to influence the highest echelons of the United States government. It’s unacceptable,” Hamadeh said.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Michael Pack is a documentary filmmaker and the president of Palladium Pictures. During Donald Trump’s first presidency, he led the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees America’s state-funded news networks, including Voice of America.

“The budget is something like $900 million,” he says. “It’s only a mid-sized government agency, but it’s one of the largest broadcasters in the world. They’re broadcasting over 70 languages to hundreds of millions of people a week. So it’s really a potent tool, and it’s designed to promote American ideas and values abroad.”

In this episode, we discuss his recent films, the future of media, and how the U.S. government can better leverage public diplomacy as a tool against its adversaries.

“We could do nothing better, really, than to knock [China’s internet] firewall down. I think if people in China had a chance to hear the range of ideas out there, it would change the country more than almost anything else. And it’s not expensive,” he says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Eric Berg, popularly known as Dr. Berg or “The Knowledge Doc,” is a nutritionist and chiropractor specializing in weight loss and alternative health care. He has published more than 6,000 videos and amassed 13 million followers on YouTube, and has trained more than 2,500 doctors and health care practitioners in how diet can impact your health.

“When you reduce carbohydrates, it then forces your body to go after your own fat as fuel. So for weight loss, it’s great. And for other things, it’s good too,” says Dr. Berg.

In this episode, we discuss Dr. Berg’s approach to health, why he advocates for a keto diet and intermittent fasting, and his thoughts on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary.

“If we are going to make some changes, we have to, first of all, make people aware of these hidden ingredients and start to get them out of your diet,” he says. “They find these loopholes and they try to cheat the system. And it’s called ‘organic,’ but is it really organic?”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Suella Braverman is the former home secretary of the United Kingdom, and a conservative member of the British parliament. While she was in Washington for President Donald Trump’s inauguration, we sat down to talk about what’s been happening in the U.K., and what Trump’s election means to her and her constituents.

“We need to learn a lot from the MAGA movement, from the success of the Republicans under Donald Trump, and really try and apply some of those lessons to U.K. politics right now, because we are mired in the depression, the recession, and the doom and gloom over socialism,” said Braverman.

We discussed the grooming gangs scandal currently making headlines in Britain, in which predominantly migrant gangs of men have been sexually assaulting and abusing young girls for roughly two decades.

“The Pakistani men who were involved in this abhorrent behavior were targeting white girls for a specific reason—that they have an outdated, unacceptable view of women. And the authorities failed to act because they were scared of the charge of racism,” said Braverman. “It’s one of the biggest national scandals in our history.”

We also discussed issues related to anti-Semitism and free speech.

“We’ve got this problem in the U.K. of hate marches, where extremism, antisemitism, and Islamism can be paraded on our streets, and the police won’t take any action. And it’s caused a real increase in antisemitism, and it’s made parts of our streets and our public realm no-go zones for Jewish people,” she said.

“We have a crisis of free speech in the United Kingdom, and I use that word deliberately. We have a situation where the police have the powers to record your information and log your details, if you’ve said something that might be offensive to someone. It doesn’t matter about the objective nature of what you’ve said. If someone, somewhere, happens to be offended by what you have said, and it relates to a personal characteristic, race, gender, religion, or sex, then that’s it. The case is closed. You will be considered guilty of what we call a ‘noncrime hate incident.'”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Dr. Aseem Malhotra is a world-renowned British cardiologist and a best-selling author of several books. After losing his father to a heart attack after taking the COVID-19 vaccine, Dr. Malhotra began speaking out about the corporatization of medicine, and how it’s making us sicker.

“We have well over 60 percent of the adult population now overweight or obese. I would take it further and say that 88 percent of Americans have abnormal metabolic health markers,” he says. “The benefit of a statin over a five-year period based upon their trial data shows that there’s a one in 39 chance it'll prevent you having a further heart attack, and one in 83 chance it will delay your death or save your life. Patients are not told that.”

We sat down together to discuss his new film, “First! Do no Pharm,” which examines many factors contributing to the West’s chronic disease epidemic.

“There is a false perception out there that medicine is an exact science, like, say, physics or chemistry, when, in fact, it is a social science—the science of human beings. It’s constantly evolving,“ he says. ”You spend $4.3 trillion on health care—highest health expenditure in the Western world—with the worst health outcomes. So, why is that?”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

At a young age, Cooper Davis was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed a low dose of Ritalin, which helped his ability to focus but caused unwanted side effects. To counteract them, he was prescribed other medications. By age 30, Davis was dependent on six different psychiatric drugs at any given time, what’s commonly known in the mental health community as a “prescription cascade.”

“It’s complicated enough that the scientific consensus will generally say, ‘We don’t quite understand why these drugs work,’” says Davis.

Today, he is executive director of the Inner Compass Initiative, where he addresses America’s mental health crisis and overmedication problem by helping people make informed choices about prescription drugs, diagnoses, and withdrawal.

“Once people experience withdrawal symptoms, they get back on the drug. They treat it as confirmation that they are still mentally ill,” says Davis. “Experiential expertise, expertise gained from your own life, is just as valid—and probably more useful in many, many cases than clinical expertise.”

Davis says that one out of four adults in America and 6 million children are currently taking at least one psychiatric drug.

“That’s going to be inclusive of teenagers, but it is certainly the trend that more and more kids that are younger and younger are being diagnosed and prescribed earlier and earlier.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, we have a special guest: Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña.

Paraguay is a unique country. It is one of only 12 countries in the world that recognize Taiwan instead of communist China.

It is also one of only six nations in the world, alongside the United States, that have moved their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Peña said he made the decision despite immense opposition from other world leaders.

An economist, Peña served as Paraguay’s minister of finance before he was elected president. He assumed office in August 2023 after a landslide victory. During his tenure, Paraguay has seen robust economic growth, outperforming many other Latin American nations. Last year, Moody’s awarded Paraguay an investment grade rating.

In this episode, I ask President Peña about what President Donald Trump’s return to the White House means for Paraguay and Latin America more broadly, his hopes and economic strategy for Paraguay, why he’s concerned about communist China’s influence in the region, and what he thinks about Trump’s recent comments about controlling the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

President Trump says he wants the United States to control the Panama Canal and other regions and waterways that he says are crucial to America’s national security interests.

“The question we would have to have with Panama is: Do you truly, verifiably know everything that China is doing in regards to your canal for national security concerns? And unless they could give us an answer of ‘100%, we do,’ I think that we’re going to have to have more transparency on that. And I think that’s where the conversation is at today,” says Joseph Humire. He is an expert on Latin America, specializing, in foreign policy, national security, and asymmetric warfare.

“Worst case scenario for the United States would be that [China] would find a way to disrupt the Panama Canal so that the United States no longer has rapid reaction capabilities to be able to move from the Atlantic into the Pacific,” he says.

In this episode, Humire breaks down the context of Trump’s recent comments and explains how vulnerable the United States is to increasing Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence in the region.

“The United States has not had a grand strategy for the Western Hemisphere arguably in 100 years—arguably since the Monroe Doctrine,” he says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“In America, we really don’t have a health care system, even though we call everything ‘health’ insurance, ‘health’ care, and this and that,” says Dr. Jingduan Yang.

“We’re not healthy as a nation because we allocate all resources trying to deal with consequences of problems or disease, rather than to prevent [them] and find the root causes that cause those problems,” he says.

Yang is a specialist in psychiatry and integrative medicine, and is a fifth-generation practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. He’s the CEO of Northern Medical Center and founder of the Yang Institute of Integrative Medicine.

Western medicine could learn a lot from the approach of Chinese medicine, he says, which emphasizes prevention before problems become structurally damaging and looking at every part of the body as part of an integrated system.

“In Chinese medicine, every organ is connected. ... Therefore, there’s no way you could address any part of the body’s issue without looking at the whole system,” Yang says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“The UK has now banned puberty blockers—probably will ban cross-sex hormones too, is my prediction, in the next few years,” said Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

He has been following the massive increase in children identifying as transgender and undergoing what’s known as “gender-affirming care” treatment—from puberty blockers to double mastectomies.

“[The World Professional Association for Transgender Health] commissioned systematic evidence reviews as part of the process of developing [Standards of Care Version 8]. When it found out that the evidence reviews, specifically for minors, were unimpressive and did not get them the results that they wanted—that would support their medical approach, they suppressed them. They basically instructed the researchers at Johns Hopkins University who were doing these systematic reviews to not publish them,” said Sapir. “Any way you look at it, WPATH greatly deviated from how responsible, trustworthy medical guidelines are supposed to be developed.”

His current area of focus is the pushback to gender interventions for minors, including state bans, lawsuits, and a landmark case now at the Supreme Court.

“This case has tremendous consequences for what’s going to happen in the 26 states that have banned these interventions in minors,” said Sapir.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is stepping up its efforts to destroy a religious group in America that it sees as a threat to its rule, according to leaked information from multiple CCP insiders.

Tactics include lawfare, bomb threats, smear campaigns, impersonation attempts, and bribing U.S. officials. The Department of Justice sentenced a Chinese agent for trying to bribe an IRS agent to target practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline.

So what’s going on exactly? And why would this be a priority for the Chinese regime?

Today, I’m sitting down with Erping Zhang, president of the International Falun Dafa Association.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“I think race is a very emotional issue with black America, and it can be very easily manipulated. And it has been manipulated for decades by people who use it to direct blacks to vote in a certain way.”

In this latest episode in our special series on the U.S. presidential transition, I sit down with Bob Woodson and Joshua Mitchell. Woodson is a civil rights activist and the Founder and President of the Woodson Center. Mitchell is a professor of political theory at Georgetown University.

“The partisan debate on race is driven by guilty whites who are seeking absolution from crimes they never committed, and entitled blacks who are seeking absolution from injustices they never suffered,” says Woodson.

What does Trump’s victory mean for black America? Will Trump be the first post-racial president? And what is the role of mediating institutions and what Woodson and Mitchell call “invisible knowledge” in revitalizing American communities?

“We have levels of despair and depression because the state has become this administrative behemoth, making citizen competence impossible,” says Mitchell. “We’ve got this invitation, literally, to return to the founders’ vision, where we have citizen competence. The only way you can have small government is if you have massive citizen competence.”

“The biggest challenge we’re facing is a moral and spiritual free-fall that is consuming people of all races and all colors,” says Woodson. “But we’re not going to be able to find the source of this solution if we are separated by race, and that’s why we must become post-racial.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

As part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I’m sitting down today with Jeff Clark, an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice during the first Trump administration and now senior fellow and director of litigation at the Center for Renewing America.

What are recess appointments? Why is Trump so interested in them? Are there legal or historical precedents for them? And how could they impact the effectiveness of this coming administration?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2

“Our bodies are not meant to handle these man-made chemicals that have been invented in the last 50 years. These chemicals are invented for one sole purpose, and that’s to improve the bottom line of the food industry, not improve our health.”

In this episode, I sit down with author and activist Vani Hari, popularly known as the “food babe.” For over a decade, she has been exposing toxic ingredients in America’s food—and getting companies to stop using them.

“[The FDA has] not reviewed the safety data of these artificial dyes in over 10 years. However, children’s consumption of these artificial food dyes have increased 500 percent,” says Hari. “We’re not trying to stop fast food or get rid of fast food. We want to make it the same as they do in Europe. McDonald’s french fries: 11 ingredients here in the United States, including dimethyl polysiloxane, an ingredient you would find in silly putty ... but in the UK, there’s three ingredients, and the fourth ingredient is optional. It’s just salt.”

Hari argues that food companies should add a warning label to every product that uses artificial food dyes, as they already do in Europe.

“That would automatically almost force the food industry to remove them here as well, because they do not want parents to be concerned about their products,” she says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this latest installment of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I’m sitting down with Nazak Nikakhtar, former assistant secretary of commerce for industry and analysis under the first Trump administration. She’s an expert on trade and national security and a partner at Wiley Rein LLP.

In this episode, we dive into the debate surrounding the use of tariffs. How have China’s unfair trade practices destroyed American manufacturing? Will tariffs work? Or will they make things worse for the average American? And what other tools will Trump have at his disposal that can restore and protect U.S. industry?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

We’re launching a special American Thought Leaders series during this post-election transition period where I will be interviewing topic matter experts and former and potential future Trump administration officials to understand what the incoming American administration’s policies in 2025 may look like—for America, Canada, and the world.

In this episode, I’m sitting down with Todd Bensman, an expert on the border and counterterrorism and author of the book, “Overrun.” He’s a senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington policy institute.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2

“We’re being lied to about chronic disease. That’s 90 percent of medical spending—92 percent of American deaths are chronic disease. Only 8 percent are infectious. And we have this system that profits from that. But what we could do, which is what President Trump and Bobby Kennedy talked about, is get to the root cause.”

In this episode, I sit down with Calley Means, co-author of “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health.”

He has been working in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement on a blueprint for reforming the public health establishment.

“We’re going to let information out. We’re going to do new research on why we’re getting sick. We’re also going to release the existing research. We’re going to stop infantilizing the American patient. We’re going to trust Americans that they’re trying to make the best decisions for their health and their kids,” says Means.

“I really think that the problem with public health in America right now is we’ve relied too much on the experts. We should have expertise, we should have to read science, but we should have it open, and then really unlock flexibility for Americans to make the best decision for their personal situation with their doctors.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2

“We do need to shrink our spending and we need to get a hold on the debt, but it needs to be done in a way that you have the growth go first. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with less revenue, which means you’re going to actually widen the deficit and create a worse problem—a ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ type of scenario.”

As part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I’m sitting down with Carol Roth, a former investment banker and author of several books—most recently, “You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back.”

In this episode, we discuss the biggest financial challenges facing the incoming administration and how best to navigate them.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

More than 5,000 minors in the United States underwent transgender surgeries between 2019 and 2023 and nearly 14,000 had transgender-related treatments, according to research into insurance billing codes conducted by the advocacy organization Do No Harm. In total, these treatments and procedures cost at least $119 million.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb is a board-certified kidney specialist and the board chairman of Do No Harm, which recently released a national database on transgender-related services at medical facilities across America.

The “gender-affirming” treatment model is based on flimsy evidence and has, in many cases, robbed children of normal lives, he says.

Dr. Goldfarb says social justice ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion standards have taken over medical education, to the detriment of patients. Students are no longer taught to think critically and to properly evaluate medical research and statistics for weaknesses and flaws, he says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has been advising President-elect Donald Trump’s national security team. At Turning Point USA’s AmFest conference in Phoenix, I sat down with him to discuss key challenges facing the incoming administration, such as how to address Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control of the Panama Canal.

“Who’s controlling this very important waterway? It’s the most strategic waterway for the United States of America on the planet,” Flynn says. “China is the dominant player right now between us and them.”

Lt. Gen. Flynn says the Chinese regime either owns or controls some component of 80 percent of the largest ports of our hemisphere. “And yet we have people in our government that go ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’”

He argues that although America has always been a benevolent “nation of givers,” it must focus more energy on domestic policy, and that every citizen has a responsibility to engage in local action.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2

Kyle Bass is the founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management, and he’s known for his prescient bets on major global economic events.

In this episode, we dive into why he believes China’s economy is collapsing, why Bytedance hasn’t sold TikTok despite a looming January deadline, and what he believes the big economic and financial priorities of the incoming Trump administration should be.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

At Turning Point USA’s AmFest conference in Phoenix, I sat down with former TV anchor Kari Lake, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head Voice of America (VOA).

VOA is an international broadcaster funded by Congress that releases content in nearly 50 languages to more than 300 million people weekly around the globe.

It was founded in 1942 to combat Nazi propaganda and share the “policies of the United States clearly and effectively.” VOA later played a major role in the ideological fight against communism during the Cold War.

The director of Voice of America is officially nominated by the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. After Senate approval, the candidate must also be approved by a majority vote of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board.

What would Voice of America look like under Kari Lake?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2

As part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I’m sitting down with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).

In the next Congress, Johnson will become chairman again of the homeland security committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has uniquely powerful subpoena powers to investigate crime and corruption within the U.S. government and beyond.

In this wide-ranging episode, we dive into the future of the Make America Healthy Again movement; what Johnson believes key steps are for the incoming administration to restore transparency, scientific integrity, and small government; and why Congress needs to retake its oversight authority.

“Our oversight authority is probably our greatest authority and greatest responsibility. ... We’ve got to fund government. But then once we funded it, we need to take a look at what we funded. … What we passed, did it actually work?”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

As part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, Sebastian Gorka breaks down the complexities of recent events in Syria, and what the incoming Trump administration’s foreign policy may look like when it comes to NATO, the Middle East, Russia, and China.

Gorka will serve as Trump’s deputy assistant and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2

Forty-five key figures in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement were recently sentenced to up to 10 years each. More than 1,900 political prisoners have been convicted and imprisoned in Hong Kong in the last five years. Thousands more are simply being held without bail for years on end. About 40 percent of Hong Kong’s entire prison population is being held without a conviction.

“They haven’t even taken the trouble to convict these people in a kangaroo court,” says Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.

Clifford has lived in Asia since the late 1980s and witnessed Hong Kong’s transformation from a largely free society in 1997, to an increasingly repressive one. He previously served as editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post and executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council.

He’s the author of multiple books, including “Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World” and most recently “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”

Hong Kong, once celebrated for its economic freedom and rule of law, has now become a key node for authoritarian regimes to evade sanctions, Clifford says. According to a report by Samuel Bickett, Hong Kong has become an indispensable location for the transfer of money, military technology, and prohibited products to Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Despite decades of a US Department of Education, we’re not doing any better in educating our students. If anything, we’re now doing worse ... I think the question is how the American people can best be served. The goal shouldn’t be to preserve jobs of bureaucrats. The goal shouldn’t be to preserve the status quo. We should ask, how can we best serve students and their families?”

As part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I’m sitting down with Kenneth L. Marcus, former assistant secretary of education for civil rights and the founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Universities today are increasingly plagued by ideological nihilism, bloated costs, and the growing infantilization of students with “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” says Ralston College President Stephen Blackwood.

And far too many students are being funneled into universities as the default step after high school, he says. “We’re trying to make universities the kind of catch-all for job training, and universities have historically not played that role,” Blackwood says.

Ralston College is an attempt to restore a rich and transformative humanities education, one that ponders the deepest questions of life and that seeks out what is true and what is beautiful.

“We thought it was necessary, at this time in Western civilization, to revive the conditions for human flourishing, to reinvent and revive the university and the fundamental role that communities of learning have played throughout the entire trajectory irreducibly in Western civilization,” Blackwood says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

There is an unprecedented child trafficking crisis in America today. Large numbers of unaccompanied migrant children are being released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to sponsors that are not thoroughly vetted, including individuals associated with dangerous criminal organizations like MS-13 and the 18th Street gang, whistleblowers say.

Many migrant children now work backbreaking shifts in slaughterhouses, restaurants, or factories. Others are being sold for sex.

From 2019 to 2023, immigration authorities transferred more than 448,000 unaccompanied minors from the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the HHS. A recent watchdog report found that ICE is unable to account for more than 32,000 unaccompanied children who failed to appear for court hearings. Another 291,000 unaccompanied children simply did not receive notices at all.

So how many children in America have fallen victim to trafficking? To what extent are international actors facilitating this? What can the incoming administration do to stem child trafficking? What will be the greatest challenges they must tackle?

Join me for this special live crossover episode with NTD’s International Roundtable program, hosted by Cindy Drukier. The two of us will be sitting down with three key individuals who have been at the forefront of exposing child trafficking and demanding policy change.

Guests:

Tara Rodas, HHS whistleblower and 20-year public servant, primarily working in the federal inspector general community

Aaron Stevenson, DHS whistleblower and former intelligence research specialist for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Mary Flynn O’Neill, executive director of the America’s Future nonprofit

Drew Pinsky, popularly known as Dr. Drew, is an addiction medicine specialist and host of the TV series “Ask Dr. Drew.” For decades, he has been studying public health and drug addiction in America, exposing its ongoing challenges in nationally syndicated television and radio programs. He saw early on during the COVID-19 pandemic that the response from the authorities would cause unnecessary harm and suffering.

“A member of the school board came in and said, ‘We’re going to lock the schools down.’ And I said, ‘Why? Why are you doing that? Who did you consult with? Did an infectious disease doctor come in and say you’ve got to do this?’ ‘No, it’s just the right thing to do.’ ... I knew then that was big, big, big trouble,” says Pinsky.

He says that how authorities reacted to the pandemic followed a similar playbook to how they responded to the opioid crisis. And in both cases, he argues, the physician-patient relationship has degraded.

“The physician-patient unit is so badly encumbered and so badly adulterated right now that it’s hard for it to function,” says Pinsky. “There are some of us that can’t get over COVID—not the virus—the way our country dealt with the COVID, just mind-boggling.”

Pinsky is particularly concerned about the centralization and algorithmizing of medicine.

“The young folks are being taught to look at the computer and just fill out forms, do an algorithm, look things up if you don’t know—I mean, I don’t know how you develop judgment. I don’t know how you think about a risk-reward if all you’re doing is following an algorithm on your electronic medical record. It’s really disturbing,” he says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.