The Eric Metaxas Show - #201 - Rod Martin

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Rod Martin joins Eric to break down the major forces reshaping America and the world. Rod explains why he believes Iran is trying to hold out until the U.S. midterms, what he thinks President Trump intends to do about the Iranian regime, and how Trump is reshaping America’s relationships with allies and adversaries.Eric and Rod also discuss the fight over artificial intelligence, why Rod believes major AI companies are using safety fears to push regulation that would hurt open-source competitors, the controversy surrounding data centers, America’s $40 trillion debt, and the coming midterm elections. Rod also previews his new book Trump’s New World Reorder.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🪙 Grace Precious Metals: https://www.metaxasmetals.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/0:00 Eric’s Meeting With Reza Pahlavi4:06 Rod Martin Joins5:05 Trump’s New World Reorder7:22 Why Rod Says Big AI Wants Regulation10:22 Trump, AI, And The Race With China12:18 Is Opposition To Data Centers Helping China?19:07 Why Iran Is Waiting For The Midterms22:00 Rod Says Trump Intends To Finish The Iran Conflict26:02 How Trump Is Reordering America’s Global Power31:27 Can America Pay Off $40 Trillion In Debt?37:21 Can Republicans Defy History In The Midterms?- - -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ericmetaxas#EricMetaxas #TheEricMetaxasShow #News #PoliticsChapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program Tuesday. the 15th of September. I don't know how that happened. I'm going to be talking to our friend Rod Martin today. Rod, I can say this before he comes on.

He's an amazing person. His brain, his ability to frame things in a way that is hopeful except real. Now, he's not just, you know, he's not blowing smoke. He's extraordinary. He has a new book coming out called Trump's New World Reorder. I hope you'll order a copy of it. We are the publishers of it, Odysseus, the same publisher as My Book Revolution.

And by the way, my book revolution, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know why, but Amazon recently has lowered the price of this to $29. That's from $45. So I'm telling everyone I know, if you want copies for Christmas or whatever, it's not going to get cheaper than $20. Now, it's 35% off.

Get your copies now. Go to Amazon. I'm just telling you. I don't know why they did this. Maybe they had a surplus. I don't know why. I don't talk to people at Amazon. One thing I know is don't buy it from Barnes & Noble.

Don't darken the door of Barnes & Noble. I've said enough on that subject. But Rod Martin's coming up. His new book is Trump's New World Reorder. My book, Revolution, $29. And before we get to Rod Martin, got to tell you, I'm always traveling. I was recently in Nashville for a private meeting with the son of the late Shah of Iran.

His name is crowned prince Riza Pahlavi. And it was an extraordinary thing to meet him, to talk with him. He, of course, is hoping and praying that the current satanic, theocratic regime will fall. I believe they will in time, that they're clinging to power, but they can't hold out. And that eventually, by the grace of God, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi would come in as an interim leader to help shepherd that country into the future and into governing themselves. But it was extraordinary meeting him. I'd like to interview him for Socrates in the city. We stay tuned on that.

Also, after that, I traveled to Grand Rapids where I had the privilege of going into the private vault of a new friend who has a gun collection. And he showed me, and I put this on my Instagram account, he has some treasures in this vault, one of which are the two pistols that Alexander Hamilton had on his person. at the Battle of Yorktown when he stormed readout number 10 an unbelievable thing to look I didn't want to touch them

he would have let me touch them put on special latex I didn't even want to touch them but I was inches away from this unbelievable history and also the epaulets the epaulettes

worn by Alexander Hamilton as he as he was fighting in the revolution. The history is just so beautiful. Of course, I write about that battle in my book Revolution, but just a huge, huge privilege to get to see these things with my own eyes. If you're not following me on Instagram, you can see photos. My Instagram account is Eric Metaxus, so follow me on Instagram and on X.

All right, that said, we're now going to get to our guest, Rod Martin. I think he's around. Hang on. Hey, the folks, welcome in the program. to Rod Martin today. You know Rod Martin. His name is Rod Martin. Rod Martin, it's always encouraging to have you on.

Welcome back. Great to be here. Before we leap in to talking about, oh, I don't know, AI or something like that, I want to mention to folks, your book coming up, ladies and gentlemen, you got to get this book. It is called Trump's New World Reorder. Trump's New World Reorder. You can pre-order it at Amazon.

Please do Trump's New World Reorder. We'll be talking about that in the weeks ahead. But, Rod, this issue of AI, I find myself, when I get confused by something, I just tune it out. I figure I'll get back to it at some point. But I'm confused. What can you tell us about what is happening right now? Because it seems to be like it or not, a very hot topic. Well, before we get into that, let me just say briefly,

that the book, Trump's New World Reorder, is about the end of the New World Order, about the complete reordering of the world that we're seeing right now, and starts from the premise that, no, Donald Trump is not just a chaos monster. He is actually following a very well-thought-out plan that is rooted in Reagan. And this is a story that people need to hear. They need to understand how all these different pieces fit together. They need to see the whole board.

and that's what Trump's New World Reorder tries to do. So yes, go to Amazon and order it. Eric Mataxis wrote the foreword so it's obviously good. No, that's nothing. That's nothing. Eric Mataxis decided he wanted to publish this book. We have a new publishing imprint called Odysseus Books, and this book is so important that I said I would like us to publish it.

So we, Odysseus Books, which publishes my book Revolution, we've published this book, Trump's New World Reorder. And it's very, very encouraging because it really masterfully makes sense of the crazy stuff that's happening. It explains. You explain Rod Martin in your inimitable way. You explain what Trump is actually doing. And part of what makes it so difficult for us, you know, until you read the book, is you think, I can't make head or tail of it because Trump,

is constantly misdirecting on purpose. He's constantly saying things and playing both sides and, you know, praising dictators or whatever he's doing, if you don't really understand him, it's confusing. But he knows exactly what he's doing. And that's maybe not in every single case. But it's a masterful reordering of the order of things in the world, the order of nations.

and you explain it so beautifully. So it's Trump's New World Reorder. Be sure to order and perhaps reorder Trump's New World Reorder. Go to Amazon.com. Presale are very important, folks. You will get the book, so you might as well get it now. So let's talk about AI.

AI is currently in the news because we have the leadership of anthropic and open AI. That's Claude and ChatGPT. We have those CEOs coming out and saying, oh my gosh, our stuff is too dangerous. You've got to regulate us. Well, they don't mean for themselves to be regulated. They mean for their competition to be driven out of the market. They are facing serious competition from open source models in particular that run locally.

I've got an open source model running on my laptop right now. I don't pay one penny except the cost of the electricity to use that model, which, by the way, in case anybody wants to know, is Jimma 4 because I don't use Chinese models like... Okay, but let me ask you, because I do not use AI. Anybody who reads my book Revolution can tell AI was not used in the writing of that book. That's true. It's quirky, it's quirkily human, as I confess to being. So I know very little about this subject. I don't use AI.

So when you say open source models, whatever, so you're saying that there are these two mega companies that they don't like the competition that's out there is what you're saying. Yeah. This is a naked conspiracy and restraint of trade. This is an attempt to make themselves collectively, not just one company like AGM used to be, but an oligopoly of basically three favorite. American AI companies that the government would regulate like a public utility and would control pricing. So these guys can charge monopoly pricing forever. They can raise prices anytime they can

talk some Democrat regulator into letting them. And meanwhile, open source dies, competition dies. And actually all of the harms they're predicting come from that lack of competition. We had the hugging face incident a few weeks ago. A frontier model hacks into hugging faces system to get information it shouldn't get okay, but every other model out there immediately adjusted to prevent exactly that sort of thing. If you have competition, these problems get solved really fast before they get too big. If you don't have competition, they do well. They do whatever some evil deep stater and some evil CEO decide to do. It's basically Tony Fauci and Al Gore all over again. They are hurting us with fear for the purpose of shutting down their competitors,

and that hurts America, that hurts the world. Okay, now, from what little I followed this, I get the impression that there are people on the right who are divided on this issue. Yes. Are there people on the right who are calling for regulation? Absolutely. But notably... Who are those people? But notably not the president. The president has been stunningly clear the last couple days, just saying, this is bunk.

We're in a race with China. We wouldn't have restricted American aircraft development in 1926 because somebody might fly a plane into the twin towers that didn't exist. yet. We actually need to shoot ahead on aircraft development in 1926 because the Germans and the Japanese are. And that's the situation here. And the president's been very clear-minded on it. We have a lot of people on the right who are really concerned about this. Some of them are very well-intentioned. Many of them have watched a little too much Terminator in the Matrix. And they really need to watch Star Trek. Because if they watched Star Trek, They would know that in that setup, you have competing AI models, and the Federation AI, Commander Data, ultimately beats the evil enemy AI, the Borg. That is how it has to work. Without competition, we're toast in multiple dimensions. With competition, these dangers go away.

Can you think of any names on the right that are promoting the idea that we need regulation? I can't off the top of my head think anybody I would want to name. Most of those people, I hope, will think better of it once they've thought about it. Maybe they should talk to Larry Kudlow or George Gilbert. They get it. But the bigger thing we're seeing about this. But the bigger thing we're seeing in that same vein is the conservative opposition to data centers, which we know is a Chinese op.

Not that these people think that they're doing China's bidding, but China is spending a shocking amount of money to gin up opposition to data centers while they build a new one every 10 minutes or something. Why? Well, you heard them yesterday. The CCP put out a release yesterday where they said, we don't believe in these AI fears. That's all fearmongering.

We are having no part of that. We are racing ahead. Okay, well, they're just saying it to you playing. If we restrict our ability to compete with the most important technology, of our time. And yeah, there will be another new one tomorrow and another new one after that. But right now, this is the focus, just like nuclear weapons were the focus in the 1940s. If we let our enemies race ahead, we will live as slaves. What actually are data centers? In other words, I'm always amazed, you know, when we're

talking about computers, I always think of miniaturization. So it's hard for me to fathom why data centers would need to be so big and need so much water. and take up so much space. Can you shed any light on that? Absolutely. I mean, first and foremost, it's just a building full of servers. And we use a shocking amount of data. If you've ever watched anything on Netflix, you've used a data center.

If you've ever sent an email, you use a data center. If you have online banking, you're using a data center. We've been doing this for 40, 50 years. Actually, I talked to somebody just the other day who built a data center in 1965. The other thing that gets missed in this is that, no, they actually don't use a lot of water. All of the data centers in America combined use a tiny fraction of the water that we use just for golf courses. So that's silly, but it's sillier still. We have data centers in deserts.

Why? Because water's not the only way to cool them. You can either use water or you can use electricity. electricity gives you the ability to run really powerful air conditioning units. Run those chillers, you can cool the servers, no problem. You're like, well, but that'll run up my power bill. No, it won't because people like Donald Trump, people like Governor Abbott in Texas, have said,

if you're going to build one of these and it's going to put any needless restriction on the power grid, you've got to build your own power plant. Okay, that's exactly what they're doing. And that's why Unit 1 at Three Mile Island is coming back online to power a data center because when you do that, when you create those new power sources, that will absolutely generate more power than the data center's need. As a result of which it will feed back into the grid, as a result of which consumer electricity prices go down over time.

So this isn't a water threat. this isn't an electricity threat. This is more COVID and global warming fear mongering to herd us into submission to our foreign enemies. And we have to see it for what it is. So what is the left say about these data centers that they're so horrible, why? In other words, why would anybody be opposed to this? I don't quite get it.

They're all on board. You know, Bernie Sanders put out. some stuff yesterday that's, you know, typically mind-numbing. And, you know, this is all dangerous and we have to regulate it into the ground. And, okay, you know, sure. I remember the famine they predicted in the 1980s. I remember the extinction of 90% of the human population by 2000 because of the Ice Age. We were promised when I was a kid.

all of these fear-mongering attacks on progress always have the same solution, more government control. Look at the solution, and you know the heart of the person stating the problem. These guys aren't interested in solving a problem. They're interested in government power. So it is appropriate that the leading light on the left attacking these things would be Bernie Sanders unavowed socialist. I believe Barack Obama has also been attacking them.

Yes. He just started. Yes. Yeah. But that should tell you everything you need to know. Yeah. I'm afraid it would. If he speaks out on something, I know I'm probably against it.

Whatever he's speaking out. I'm against his wherever he's coming from. I'm again it. Now, Eric, let me quickly say, and then I'll hush, but it's important to say that doesn't mean that there are no downsides to any of this. That doesn't mean there are no threats. There are threats from airplanes. It turns out that you can fly them into the Twin Towers. You know, there are threats to steel mills and coal plants. They industrialized the Western world and made us wealthy and improved everybody's standard of living, but they also necessitated

the clean air and the clean water acts. There is no question that there are problems that arise along the way. You don't want to throw out the baby with the bath. This is an incredible productivity boost that is going to eliminate poverty on an incredible scale and also greatly enhance our military security. And our enemies really want us to not have either of those two things. You've often heard me talk about the Golden Triangle of Freedom, that intersection of faith, virtue, and liberty. And for that triangle to hold, we need access to the truth. Unfortunately, the Medicare system often feels designed to obscure the truth, leaving millions on plans that don't actually fit their needs. That's why I want you to know about Chapter. Chapter is a rare breed

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Well, in case you're just tuning in, I'm talking to Rod Martin, and his book is Trump's New World Reorder. Get a copy. Trump's New World Reorder. Rod, Willis, can we talk about that's in the news these days? What is happening that we should cover? Do you want to talk about Iran? I think Iran is a fascinating topic. You know, the president said the other day that he expects that the war will end shortly after the midterms. I think most people in the West misunderstood him. What he's saying is that Iran is trying desperately to hold out long enough for the Democrats to win and save them. And what Trump knows and knew from the beginning is that it actually doesn't even matter if the Democrats took both houses of Congress. America doesn't have a parliamentary system. Mark Carney is confused on this same point. He's convinced that if he can hurt Trump in the midterms, all of this will go away.

No, it's not going to go away. Donald Trump is still the president of the United States. And last I checked, the Supreme Court is relentlessly restating and reestablishing Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, all executive powers shall be vested in a president of the United States. Okay, he runs the executive branch. The executive branch is co-equal with the legislative branch and the judicial branch, and he has tons of powers. and I'm sorry, Mark Carney, if you keep going this way, we're going to shut down Canada's economy,

and you don't have anywhere to go. And the same thing with Iran. They can't sustain this. All they can do is hope to hold out long enough for a political salvation that historically has come. They certainly got it with Obama. They certainly got it with Biden. They're not going to get it from Donald Trump. So when he says the war will probably end right after the election, first of all, that doesn't, say anything about what he's going to do between now and then. It also is actually a political statement that they are dragging this out purely for American domestic politics that they think will save them that won't. Okay, I had not picked up on that. This is typical of you, Rod Martin, to say something that I hadn't thought of and that I think brilliant. Iran

is hanging on doing everything they can to prolong this, not to capitulate, because they do believe they will be saved if the Democrats take back the House and or the Senate. They believe that. And so they think if we can just hang on till then, we have hope. But they don't. It's a false hope. It is a misunderstanding of our system. It is a calculation that presidents for decades have blinked with regard to them. Trump's all in. He's going to finish this. This is a legacy thing for him. And finish more likely than not. I'm not going to say certainly, but more likely than not, involves a well-armed and trained popular uprising. And anybody who thinks that we have been

wasting our time since March training and arming key Iranians inside Iran, is just smoke and crack. Are you kidding? Of course that's what we're doing. Of course it's been what we've been doing. And to the degree that Trump has said things that might misdirect from that, well, I would tell everybody you go back

and read his books and watch The Apprentice because he told you he was going to misdirect constantly. He was very clear on that point. He also said that all prior presidents, with very few exceptions, are stupid. That was his word, stupid, because they make a habit of telegraphing everything America is doing in advance to its enemies. And he says that's dumb.

So, no, he ain't doing it. Yeah. And when he says the word stupid, I want to be clear. In the original Greek, demeaning means really, really stupid. So you have to understand the context from scripture. So basically, what we're talking about here is, I guess it's fascinating to me, because most people would hope and pray. I hope that most people would hope and would pray

that the regime in Iran would fall. Not that we would make a deal with them, but that they would fall and that there would be some kind of a government, ideally with Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince, the son of the Shah, that he would come in and be able to bring some sense of order that really would be the hope and prayer of my hope and prayer. We always have to be clear.

This means, no, this doesn't mean we want a forever war. It doesn't mean we want to expend American lives in this. We've learned some lessons, some bitter lessons in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it does seem that that would be the ideal outcome, not just to keep them from having a nuclear weapon, even though Trump always says that. Well, you know, look, Trump lived through Vietnam and both Iraq wars and Afghanistan. He ain't stupid. He's paying attention. We didn't lose any of those wars on the ground. We lost them at home. And Donald Trump understands flawlessly. We can't go sending a quarter million troops into some foreign stand somewhere and stay for 20 years. He's not going to do that. So it makes the job a little bit harder.

there's no question, but it's absolutely not something the American public can sustain over time. Maybe for a minute, maybe for a year, but certainly not for 10 or 20. Moreover, this war has been going on. Since I was a kid, since you were a kid, I was 10 when the Ayatollah took over. And when the Ayatollah took over, he instituted a terrorist, regime that executes young girls for getting raped and that has spread its ideology across the region, resulting in its arming, directing, and funding every single armed conflict in the Middle East in our time.

You've got to cut the head off that snake. Donald Trump is not going to engage in a forever war. He's ending one. I've been really impressed with Scott Bacent talking about how we are, I mean, we're using our power in America as we've never done before. And that's why Trump always says that his predecessors are dumb. That we're stupid, which are pretty kind words for the evil that they have allowed by their malfeasance, ignorance, feat, cowardice. But the idea that we're using our economic leverage with other countries and saying, listen, if you aren't with us in this, you're against us. He's forcing them to choose, forcing them to, it's difficult for them, but we're making it easy by being real clear.

This is a key, key theme of Trump's New World Reorder. So everybody go to Amazon and buy that. Trump's New World Reorder. A key theme is that after World War II, we engineered a world order in which America was basically tied down by a bunch of Lilliputians. I mean, that's the reality of the post-war order. You've got all these multilateral institutions that maybe we have a veto, but we don't really have control.

And they're spending our money. And they're spending our blood. They are frequently not contributing. and we did this for a reason. We did it because they were flattened during the war, and we wanted them to reestablish themselves and not succumb to communism. Okay, well, last I checked,

the Cold War ended about 35 years ago, so why are we still doing that? Why do we still have lopsided trade deals where Germany gets to charge us four times our auto tariff? I have a question for you. You're the author of Trump's New World Reorder. why do you think that the Cold War ends, the Soviet Union goes away, why have our feckless, idiot leaders allowed all of these European nations to continue to take advantage of us? What is your sense or what is your explanation for that?

Part of official Washington was not convinced that the Soviet Union had really died. They actually thought it had just gone underground. So, okay, that's kind of dumb, but I get it, and that's actually a reasonable basis for a certain course of action. Another part of official Washington was just absolutely certain that we had reached the end of history, you know, in Francis Fukuyama's phrase, which she took from Conch. And, you know, the idea was that the American order has prevailed. why would we do anything to change it? Well, because circumstances have changed.

So you actually ought to make some adjustments as things change. When I was five, I really, really loved hot dogs and ketchup all the time. You know, later my tastes matured a little bit. So, so, you know, time passes, you got to adjust. Some of these people couldn't. And then there were some people in official Washington who just really were dissatisfied with the outcome of the Cold War. They really want to dismember the rest of Russia, not just the Soviet Union, but Russia itself.

And they have friends in Beijing. In Beijing, those guys actually have classroom maps in their schools showing big chunks of Siberia inside China. Likewise, the EU guys, they would love to see five or ten or twenty new states in the place of European Russia that would all be members of the EU and NATO, and we're all one big, one big, happy family being told what to do by Brussels. All of these people have a certain alliance, and I think that's part of how we ended up with the Ukraine war, which does nothing to absolve Vladimir Putin of his evils. It's just a reality. A lot of these guys' hands weren't clean. So there's been this long-term problem. Trump looks at all that and says, this is bog. This is just stupid. What's wrong with you people? So, yeah, in the

Middle East. He's reorienting relationships in a way that makes the dollar dominant and makes U.S. force preeminent, but in a way where the locals actually have to contribute. Israel is the perfect model of that. They take care of business in their own backyard with very little need for help, and when they really, really need help, we can step in or not as we judge right. Japan is stepping up and doing the same thing. Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia to a lesser degree, India more and more. The holdouts have largely been Europe and Canada, and the Europeans are coming along now. It's mostly just Canada, who's a pain in our butt, and mostly because they've cozyed up to Xi Jinping.

Right. Not that we're judging, folks, cozing up to communist dictators, we've all done it. And so we don't want to judge China and Mark Carney and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and. and the other horrible human beings that lead countries. So let me ask you a tough question. We don't have a ton of time here. We're $40 trillion in debt. What do you suppose we're going to do about that? We actually know exactly what we want to do about it.

And our brilliant Treasury Secretary, absolutely the best Treasury Secretary in American history, our brilliant Secretary of State, one of the best secretaries of state ever, and our president have been constantly, consistently clear on this point. We have to grow. Growth is the key. There is no possible consensus on Capitol Hill

that is ever going to do meaningful damage to the entitlement state. You can attack it on waste and fraud, and we are. People say, oh, there are no arrest. pardon me, there have been over a thousand convictions on the welfare fraud stuff just this year. Jim Comey is awaiting trial on two different indictments. That's two different trials. And Clapper just got called before the grand jury in South Florida. Oh, and Fauci's Toppe is about to get sentenced to prison.

So he's already been convicted. I thought Brennan was just indicted. Yes, yes. Actually, I didn't know about the indictment. I knew about the subpoena. But here's the thing. I'm sorry, subpoenaed, yeah. Here's the thing.

We are moving as fast as we can, and the key thing you have to do to solve the $40 trillion in debt is enough economic growth that it becomes manageable to pay it off. And we saw how we did it in the 90s when Newt Gingrich won Congress back for effectively the first time in about seven decades. and suddenly it was in a position to force some things on Bill Clinton that Bill Clinton was a smart politician and decided, okay, I'll just take credit for it. And for four straight years, which never would have ended if it worked for 9-11, for four straight years, we ran budget surpluses and we paid down the debt.

Not all of it, but you're not going to pay that off in four years, any more than you're going to pay off your house in four years. This is how you do it. Now, are we going to? Yes, because in the Obama years, we were told that we just had to accept 1.6% GDP growth as, quote, the new normal. Never mind that average U.S. GDP growth per year since World War II until Barack Obama was actually about 3.4% a year, which doubles your economy every quarter century instead of Obama's numbers, which double your economy every quarter century, which double your economy, every more than a half century, meaning far less new opportunity for young people. This is the norm historically. That 3.4% will guess what? The president's policies are unleashing that again.

And what we've seen, the Atlanta Fed just released their forecast for this quarter's GDP growth. They have it at an annualized rate, not of 1.6, not of 3.4, of 4.4. If you consistently hit four plus percent growth, you'd completely pay off our 40 trillion in debt in 20 years flat. And again, we'd be romping and stomping. We'd be completely dominant. So that's how you do it. We're not going to cut Social Security. It's just not going to happen.

And I'm not going to say I wish it would. I wish we had enough money to pay for it. And so here we go. This is how. Well, that's extraordinary. You're always hopeful, but you back it up, which is again why I hope folks will order your book, Trump's New World Reorder. I think Trump has kind of ruined everything for us. I mean, anything before Trump, it's amazing to me when you see somebody doing what he's doing,

you just think, my goodness, what had we settled for? When we think of Mitt Romney and John McCain and George W. Bush and George Bush Sr. I mean, even Reagan looks, you know, kind of tepid compared to what Trump is doing right now. Well, I think that that's entirely fair except maybe for Reagan. And Reagan, if he looks tepid now, partly it's the distance in time, but partly it's because he had a Democrat Congress. And he couldn't pass much legislation. Despite that, Ronald Reagan cut the top marginal tax rate from 71% to 28. Ronald Reagan gave you the 401K and IRA revolution that made the majority of Americans shareholders

and gave them a future that was better than that pittly social security check we're not looking forward to. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Ronald Reagan was such a pro-life president. He was to his time, the only president to ever write a book while in office, and it was a pro-life book. So, you know, he did amazing things given the constraints of the time. Trump doesn't have a lot of those constraints. So, yeah, he's kicking butt. Well, we've just got a few minutes left, Rod.

I want to make sure that we don't miss anything. think. There is a lot going on in the world right now. We've covered AI. We've covered Iran. We've covered the debt. What do you think is going to happen in the midterms coming up soon? And, you know, whether Trump is president or not, the, you know, a hostile Congress can do a lot of damage. I'm going to take a relatively radical stand and say, I think we have a shot. And, it's radical because, as you know, but maybe all your viewers may not, the president's party is only won midterm elections about three times in modern history. It never happens. I mean, it just never happens. So that being the case,

if we are even in this game, that's a miracle by itself. Now, getting a little more granular, I think we're looking really good in Michigan. Abdul al-Said's numbers are dropping, you know, Mike Rogers is doing better. I think we've got a shot in, well, no, I think Susan Collins wins her race. I think Sununu wins New Hampshire. So that's two pickups and one hold. I think we're going to lose North Carolina because Wadley's just running a terrible campaign. He's going to have to pull it together.

He could still win it, but right now he's not going to. We're going to win in Florida. We're going to beat Tala Rico in Texas. These things, I mean, I think we've got a deep. chance of actually increasing our Senate majority, and at worst, maybe dropping a seat, maybe two, which still gives you a majority. On the House side, it's tough, but Charlie Cook's numbers are pretty clear. The Democrats are going to have to win two-thirds of the seriously contested races to be able to win a majority. I just don't see that happening. I just don't think

that's real. So I think we've got a real shot. We're in this race. And Eric, the key is going to be, we've got to tell our story. We've got to tell the good things that are happening that people don't know about because they're just so used to being betrayed and let down. They don't even pay attention to good news anymore. We got to tell it to them. And then we've got to put them in the backseat of our cars and drive them to the polls. We have to take responsibility for our own country like our founding fathers did. Like you see in your book Revolution, we actually have to be individually responsible for our part of winning this election and the next and the next. And that's what I'm calling on conservatives to do.

It doesn't take everybody. It takes a determined minority because in a midterm, in particular, you have a low turnout election and every additional voter from one side or the other can make the difference. Well, we're going to leave it there. The book is Trump's New World Reorder, folks, please pre-order a copy. Trump's New World Reorder. My guest has been Rod Martin. Rod, thank you so much.

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