Webinar | Is POTUS Rolling Back the CCP? January 6, 2026

Webinar | Is POTUS Rolling Back the CCP?              

Published On: January 6, 2026

A CPDC WEBINAR

Is POTUS Rolling Back the CCP?

(1:09:58)

Wednesday, January 7, 2025
11:00 am – 12:30 pm ET

FULL TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may contain grammatical and spelling errors incurred during transcription. Please refer to the referenced media to confirm.

 

President Trump has repeatedly expressed his admiration for and friendship with Communist China’s emperor Xi Jinping. He has made a “trade truce” that has avoided a complete cut-off of the PRC’s rare earth minerals, and not retaliated when it withheld them from U.S. defense and other so-called “non-compliant” companies. The National Security Strategy and Department of War’s new 2024 China Military Power publications both seemed calculated to avoid giving offense to the CCP. And the President permitted the sale of sophisticated AI-relevant chips and directed Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to enforce a prohibition on actions by federal agencies that might jeopardize the trade truce.

Such actions have dismayed members of the Committee on the Present Danger: China and others who recognize the Chinese Communist Party as our mortal enemy, one determined to destroy the United States, and believe that every effort must be made to put America on a whole-of-society war-footing as Xi has done with his.

Yet, there is increasing evidence that President Trump is actually giving the Chinese Communists a bit of their own medicine by engaging in cognitive warfare aimed at obscuring the actual “unrestricted warfare” he is increasing waging at their expense.

This CPDC webinar explores the myriad ways in which U.S. power is being exercised to the detriment of Xi and his quest for world domination. It also considers what else President Trump should be quietly doing that will not only thwart such ambitions but advance the necessary takedown of the Chinese Communist Party.

Moderator

• Frank Gaffney, President, Institute for the American Future; Vice Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger: China; Member, Victory Coalition; host, “Securing America”

Panelists:

• Capt. James Fanell, U.S. Navy, (Ret.), Former Chief of Intelligence and Information Operations, U.S. Pacific Fleet; Senior Fellow, Geneva Center or Security Policy; co-author, Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure
• Lt Colonel Guermantes Lailari, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Former Foreign Area Officer, Senior Non-Resident Fellow, Jewish Policy Center (Taiwan)
• Cleo Paskal, international expert on Indo-Pacific Islands; Senior Non-Resident Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
• Col. Grant Newsham, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), Former Foreign Service Officer; longtime businessman in East Asia; author, When China Attacks: A Warning to America; Senior Fellow, Center for Security Policy
• Rod Martin, Esq, Chairman of the Board, Institute for the American Future; Author, The Rod Martin Report, essayist, entrepreneur
• Brian T. Kennedy, President, the American Strategy Group; former President, the Claremont Institute; author of, among other works, Communist China’s War Inside America