American Thought Leaders - The Epoch Times

How polarized are Americans really? Are we really on the brink of civil war as some would suggest? Or is that just a mirage? That’s what I wanted to find out when I sat down with Jonathan Butcher, author of the new book “The Polarization Myth: America's Surprising Consensus on Race, Schools, and Sex.” “When we hear the term polarization, it makes us think that there's 50% on one side and 50% on the other side. But that's not what's going on,” says Butcher, who is acting director of the Center for Education Policy at @Heritage. Butcher conducted a survey of over 2,000 Americans and asked the survey participants for their opinions on contentious cultural and political issues. You’ll be surprised what he found. 🔴 PREMIERE 9pm ET on @EpochTV: https://ept.ms/4s1Y2Qh

“The Andrew Johnson administration was the first… to try and acquire Greenland.” “Woodrow Wilson tried to acquire it.” “Harry Truman tried to buy it.” “Dwight Eisenhower considered buying it.” Many people believe President Trump trying to buy Greenland is outrageous. Former NSC Chief of Staff Alex Gray broke down the long history of U.S. presidents pursuing Greenland and why he believes it remains vital to American security. “This is a long-standing, important piece of American strategic thought.” “The strategic logic of why Greenland matters to us has not changed because geography doesn’t change.” “Whoever controls Greenland or exerts coercive influence over Greenland is going to have a pivotal role in the security of the Arctic, in the North Atlantic, and in the passage between all of these critical geographies.” “That's why it's so important, as it was in 1867.” https://youtu.be/9jw2eIVfvkc

“The American people are the last bulwark against CCP hegemony.” “Thr more divided we are, the harder it is for us to resist the CCP’s ultimate political objective.” “Which is global hegemony.” Former NSC Chief of Staff Alex Gray told me that China uses extreme partisan groups to sow division in the United States. “The Soviets made a very professional effort to sow discord in the United States.” “The Chinese have inherited those lessons, and in many ways, they’ve refined them, and they’ve made them more sophisticated and more effective.” “The goal is to use organizations that are partisan, that are extreme, that sow disunity and disharmony within American society to create wedges that make us vulnerable to the CCP’s division.” “If they can divide us, confuse us, keep us at each other’s throats, they will have an easier path towards their ultimate goal.” https://ept.ms/4au4CaP

This is what most people don’t realize about the Greenland saga. It didn’t start with Trump. For over a century and a half, American Presidents have tried to purchase or acquire Greenland, says Alex Gray, who served as National Security Council chief of staff and deputy assistant to the president during the first Trump administration. Andrew Jackson was the first in 1867. Truman tried to buy it right after WWII. “The strategic logic of why Greenland matters to us,” he said, “has not changed.” For many years, China has shown great interest in establishing dominance over the arctic region and is regularly moving its submarines up to the North Pole. 🔴 PREMIERE 5PM ET on @EpochTV: https://ept.ms/4au4CaP

“With this surveillance technology, they can absolutely control you before you even utter a word. And with the social credit system, they absolutely enslave every Chinese,” Xi Van Fleet told me during our recent interview. Xi Van Fleet’s latest book is titled: “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.” 🔴 WATCH FULL: https://ept.ms/3Ogoqak

"People going on the street today in Minneapolis, fighting ICE, believing they're doing something noble…that's exactly what happened to the Red Guards,” argues Xi Van Fleet, who grew up during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. Americans do not understand communism, she says. And as a result, for over a century, Washington has made repeated, grave mistakes that have enabled the survival and rise of the Chinese Communist Party as America's greatest adversary. In this interview, she breaks down the findings of her latest book: "Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat." 🔴 PREMIERE 9PM ET on @EpochTV: https://ept.ms/3Ogoqak

Here’s the untold story of how America rescued the CCP from likely collapse: 1972 was the height of the Cultural Revolution. “Everything was in ruins…No economy, no jobs, no nothing. We lived in extreme poverty,” says Xi Van Fleet, who was a high school student at the time. Then she heard the shocking news: the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, was coming to visit China. For her entire life, she’d been taught America was China’s deadly enemy. Now the U.S. was opening the door to Beijing diplomatically and, in time, economically. This was a godsend for the CCP. With China’s economy in shambles and a split with the Soviet Union that had brought the two communist powers to the brink of nuclear war, Mao Zedong suddenly found an unwitting partner in Washington. “Sure enough, help was on the way. And that was no other than the President of the United States: Richard Nixon.” Xi Van Fleet is the author of “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.” https://rumble.com/v75o78y-the-untold-story-of-how-america-inadvertedly-rescued-the-ccp-from-collapse-.html

“Almost every single top Chinese biomedical research scientist of note was funded in some part by the NIH. Many were trained in the United States,” NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told me during our recent interview. He says the NIH is now overhauling how it handles foreign research collaborations. The old “sub-award” system—where U.S. institutions funneled money to foreign labs—led to major oversight problems, Bhattacharya says. Under that structure, the U.S. partner was responsible for auditing the foreign collaborator, not the NIH itself. 🔴 WATCH FULL: https://ept.ms/4r8unEF

This is what a lot of people don’t realize about gain-of-function research, says NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Not all gain-of-function research is necessarily bad. Some forms of it have saved lives—like when scientists genetically altered bacteria to produce insulin for diabetics. But the dangerous kind—the kind that likely led to the COVID‑19 pandemic—should never have been allowed. https://rumble.com/v75l0ye-dr.-jay-bhattacharya-on-ending-funding-of-dangerous-gain-of-function-resear.html

“Every single NIH employee had to write…a loyalty oath to DEI principles. And they were sometimes evaluated on the basis of their sufficient devotion to the cause…The ticket to getting extra relatively easy funds was to promise to do DEI research,” says NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. In this wide-ranging interview, he reveals what he found when he took over the NIH, and how he’s redirecting the focus of the NIH’s almost 50 billion dollars annual budget. “We're no longer just focused on having research that publishes papers…We want those ideas to translate over to better results for Americans” in terms of long-term health and longevity, he says. 🔴 PREMIERE 9PM ET on @EpochTV: https://ept.ms/4r8unEF

Here’s how one military officer discovered one of the deepest state secrets of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2001, Jim Zhang’s daughter disappeared in police custody. “He spent 18 years searching for his missing daughter.” He went to “government agencies, police stations, labor camps.” But he was met only with “evasion, cover-ups, intimidation, and eventually, death threats.” Filmmaker Raymond Zhang believes Yun was likely one of countless victims of the CCP’s secret state organ harvesting operation. Raymond sat down with me to discuss his documentary “State Organs” and the shocking stories he uncovered about the CCP’s murder-for-organs industry. 🔴 WATCH THE FULL EPISODE: https://youtu.be/sIQAknOqk2A

At 2AM on April 19, 2001, Yun Zhang left a message for her sister in Canada from China. It contained her last wish. Then, she vanished in CCP police custody. “She said her family’s experience was only the tip of the iceberg in the persecution in China.” Raymond Zhang told me her story—one of countless victims of the CCP’s brutal campaign to eradicate Falun Gong. His documentary “State Organs” featured original recordings of Yun Zhang’s final plea to her sister. Yun’s husband had already been killed in detention, and police came for her too when she tried to raise awareness about her husband’s plight. That night, she left a hurried message to her sister as police closed in on her: “Her only wish,” was that the “international community could help to end this persecution.” She was never heard from again. Raymond’s film exposes one of the darkest state crimes in modern history—the mass killings of prisoners of conscience for their organs. 🔴 WATCH FULL: https://youtu.be/sIQAknOqk2A

“The degree of cruelty of the organ harvesting is beyond imagination.” Born and raised in China, Raymond Zhang knew the CCP’s brutal history. But in 2006, he uncovered a state secret that shocked him to his core. His documentary “State Organs” shares the stories of victims of the CCP’s state organ harvesting operation. One victim was just 17 years old. His mother had bribed the army to get him a spot, thinking it would be the path to a brighter future. He got on the wrong side of his supervisor and was put into a military jail. “His blood type matched that of a high-level military officer, so the army decided to kill this boy for his two kidneys and one eyeball.” 🔴 PREMIERE 5PM ET on @EpochTV: https://ept.ms/4a3Gw83

George Zheng was a resident doctor at one of China's largest military hospitals when he was summoned one day for an unthinkable assignment. Told they were on a "secret military mission," he and several other doctors were brought before a 17-year-old boy bound so tightly that the ropes cut into his flesh. He was ordered to hold onto the boy's legs and prevent him from moving as two other doctors cut him open and removed both of his kidneys. Then, he was ordered to remove the boy's eyes. "When I looked at him, I saw fear in his eyes. His eyelids were moving. He was alive." Zheng's testimony is featured in the harrowing documentary “State Organs,” directed by Raymond Zhang, which follows two families' 20-year search for their disappeared loved ones. Tonight, director Zhang shares what they uncovered while making this film—and the threats they faced along the way. 🔴 PREMIERE 5PM ET on @EpochTV: https://ept.ms/4a3Gw83

These are the insane realities a British-Pakistani man faced for converting from Islam to Christianity in the UK: Nissar Hussain and his family were excommunicated and branded "kafir," "infidel," "unbeliever," and "Jew dogs." Men confronted him in the street, spat on him, and cursed him—in front of his young children. One night he woke up at 3am to see "seven foot flames shooting up" from his car. His car was rammed and vandalized so often that insurance companies wrote him off as a walking liability and refused to insure him. It was as if "all hell broke loose…I was dead and buried," he told me at the recent @IRFSummit . Young men hurled bricks and other missiles at his house at night repeatedly. In 2015, he was ambushed outside his home, suffering a fractured kneecap and a broken hand. He was hospitalized for 11 days and developed PTSD. It was "acts of terrorism on a daily basis," he says.

It's been almost 4 months now since Grace Jin Drexel's father Pastor Ezra (Mingri) Jin and over a dozen others members of the Zion Church were rounded up and detained by the CCP. They have been held ever since for the "crime" of worshiping outside state control. No family visitations have been allowed, so little is known about their condition, Grace told me during the recent @IRFSummit . She has not seen her father in person in 7 years. He was not even able to attend her wedding because the CCP had imposed restrictions on him traveling. "That all 18 of the detained individuals—including my father—will be released unconditionally and immediately…I hope and pray for that," Grace says. "And I hope and pray that the rest of the world—everyone who knows our story—will be able to pray with us for this."

Here’s what many don’t realize about the Declaration of Independence, says Hillsdale professor Matthew Spalding: “We have a sense today that somehow [the signers] are just these dainty individuals, sitting around debating and wearing tricorn hats and wigs and writing with quill pens.” But nothing could be further from the truth, he says. Those who signed the Declaration were “literally giving up their lives [and] their fortunes—but not their sacred honor,” Spalding says. 🔴 WATCH FULL: https://ept.ms/45RvqAr

Here’s a fascinating anecdote from Hillsdale professor Matthew Spalding’s new book on the American founding: In 1776, Congress voted to declare independence on July 2nd, not July 4th. That same day, George Washington spots warships from Great Britain—the greatest military power on Earth at the time—arriving at New York harbor and landing troops on Staten Island to crush the rebellion. The Founders faced hanging as traitors. After two days of editing and deliberation, they finalize the text of the Declaration of Independence—words that would define America and reshape Western civilization. This is just one of the amazing stories in Spalding’s new book “The Making of The American Mind: The Story of the Declaration of Independence.” https://rumble.com/v75do4i-the-incredible-story-of-americas-founding-matthew-spalding.html

The progressive historian Carl Becker wrote a century ago that he’d concluded that whether we have natural, inalienable rights or not as described in the Declaration of Independence had become a meaningless question. Since then, that has expanded into other progressive claims: there is no absolute truth, no Creator who endows rights, only a state that dispenses them—and a Constitution that must be stretched and reworked to fit the moment. Hillsdale professor Matthew Spalding argues the opposite. The assumption that there are self‑evident truths, natural rights, and a real moral order is not a footnote but the beating heart of the Declaration—and therefore of America itself. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’ - [It’s] a very powerful line. It doesn't say: ‘We have some of our personal opinions we'd like to share with you.’ It's a claim of truth.” Spalding is the author of the new book, “The Making of the American Mind” 🔴 PREMIERE 9PM ET on @EpochTV: https://ept.ms/45RvqAr

Every year, thousands of innocent people are being murdered for their organs by the Chinese regime. Millions languish in Chinese prison camps, blood-tested and organ-scanned, their data cataloged for transplant to CCP elites or wealthy buyers. This is utilitarian bioethics at its most grotesque — human life reduced to inventory. Thank you to Bannon’s WarRoom for having me on and to Steve for endorsing my book "Killed to Order." You can pre-order it now, and learn how the CCP has made killing a business.