Don’t miss my analysis of what Trump can still achieve after losing the midterms.
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Our full discussion transcribed after the break:
by Rod D. Martin
November 10, 2026
Seventy-seven years after the fall of China, I appeared on NTD Newsroom with host Don Ma to discuss how Taiwan shows what was lost — and how peace through strength offers a path to the freedom the Chinese people were denied.
Don and I discuss:
Jensen Huang’s affair with a CCP spy, and the importance of Nvidia to U.S. national security
The FBI’s counterintelligence crisis
Why Congress must pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — and the reconciliation bill — NOW
The looming National Popular Vote (NPV) catastrophe, and what citizens must do about it
How Reagan, Clinton, and Obama triumphed after losing their midterms
It’s 20 minutes of the in-depth analysis you need: watch it, and pass it along!
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Our Full Discussion:
Don Ma: For more analysis on the potential national security implications of this investigation, we’re joined by Rod Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital and author of the new book, Trump’s New World Re-Order. So, Rod, good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. So, two topics I wanted to discuss with you today. The Nvidia CEO situation and I also wanted to speak with you about the midterm election results because I don’t believe we have spoken yet and I’m really curious as to what you think there.
But in regards to Nvidia probing its CEO’s affair with a suspected Chinese spy, what is your reaction to the story, and what does this tell us about Chinese spy operations within the U.S.?
Rod D. Martin: Well, I want to second the president that I figure in general, Jensen’s a good guy and he’s doing a lot of good stuff and I don’t want to dogpile him too much, but my gosh, what’s he doing cheating on his wife? You know, you just can’t end up sleeping with a Chinese communist spy if you don’t cheat on your wife. When are these guys ever going to learn? There’s a reason that’s wrong. And you never know what somebody’s motives are when they approach you in that way.
I’m sure she was very well trained in how to seduce him, but he shouldn’t have been seducible. And now he’s going to pay a truly terrible price for it, whether the board investigation comes out one way or the other. And I mean, I saw one report that suggested that if he does find himself sued for divorce here, he’s going to end up, you know, giving up just Jeff Bezos-level money. This is needless. Just be faithful. Just be faithful. This is not rocket science.
This is just basic morality 101.
Don Ma: I mean, that is the appropriate reaction. I don’t think I was looking for anything different. This is common sense, right, as you pointed to.
America’s Lead in AI Chips
But there are, of course, potential national security concerns, because, you know, with AI, the U.S. is in this arms race with China. So maybe you can shed some light just briefly on what potentially could be the national security implications.
Rod D. Martin: Well, Nvidia makes the best chips for AI anywhere in the world. And Apple is catching up with them. You know, Elon is catching up with them with Terafab: they’re doing some things that are quite extraordinary, but they’re not there yet. And at the moment, Nvidia’s best chips are the best chips in the world. We have a distinct interest in preventing the Chinese from getting the ability to duplicate that. That’s a race where you just are constantly struggling to stay ahead.
I think we would all agree that the Chinese are some of the smartest people in the world. It’s hard to stay ahead of them under the best of circumstances. If you’re sleeping with the enemy and telling her stuff, it makes it a lot harder still. So, you know, it remains to be seen what he did or didn’t say to this woman, what materials she may or may not have had access to. But clearly, she was there for that reason, to give China a big edge in AI.
And AI is going to be a key component of everything we do in this world from now on. So this was really, really stupid. But it was stupid on the most basic level. Dude, don’t cheat on your wife. Stop it.
Don Ma: I mean, there’s talk about not being in bed with the enemy. Jensen Huang literally was… I don’t know if this joke is in bad taste, but let’s just move on here.
China’s Espionage and U.S. Counterintelligence
So this is the latest case that’s coming to light of many where there’s CCP-linked spying in either critical industries, in defense or technology or in government. Can we dig a bit deeper into this for just a moment? How does someone find themselves being recruited for work for the CCP? What are they doing when it comes to espionage right now? What is Beijing doing?
Rod D. Martin: They’re everywhere. It is unbelievable. And look, at the end of the Cold War, we got access to the Soviet archives, which was quite a treasure trove. I was studying at Cambridge when that happened, and one of my professors was one of the first people into the old Soviet archives. And what she had to tell us was just remarkable. Here’s the most remarkable thing of all, I think. At the time, the KGB had 250,000 spies in the NATO countries, primarily the United States, but also the others.
250,000! I mean, who the heck can keep up with that? What kind of counterintelligence operation does it take to deal with that? The Chinese have more people. They have more money. They have every resource in the world to infiltrate everything that can be infiltrated. I don’t think we’re taking it nearly seriously enough. I think Kash Patel is doing a great job, so don’t let me sound like I’m knocking that. But we need to significantly beef up counterintelligence at the FBI. We need to take this very, very seriously.
And I notice the Confucian Institutes are rebranding because they’ve come under scrutiny. Those are all just spying operations. They’re also propaganda operations, but they’re spying operations. A lot of what we’re seeing with Chinese students in our universities, they’re in a really bad place. Even if they don’t want to be spies, they have family back home that is under the thumb of a regime that would rather kill you than look at you, or send you to a labor camp, or something terrible.
And of course, we know what they’re doing to Falun Gong practitioners with live organ harvesting on these poor people, just because they’re crossways with the regime, not because they did anything to the regime, but because the regime just decided it doesn’t like them. So if you’re in that position, or your parents are, or your grandparents are, or your cousin is, and you’re over here, you’re under significant pressure to do whatever the regime tells you to do. That’s a massive security threat.
And again, the answer isn’t to cut off all ties with China or refuse to let Chinese people come to the United States. The answer is a much, much more serious approach to counterintelligence, which the FBI did a pretty good job of during the Cold War, but really let down its guard after the Cold War. We have to understand we’re dealing with an active enemy that is actively seeking to steal everything that isn’t nailed down.
Rod D. Martin: The biggest thing we’ve got to do is staff up. We do not have enough people working on this at all. I mean, nothing even close. And we are fantastically good at signals intelligence. If you’re doing it on a computer, we know. If you’re calling somebody on a burner phone, we can probably tell exactly where you’re making the call and who is standing there at that moment. That stuff we’re amazing at. The human intelligence equation is kind of pathetic.
It’s not that we can’t be good at it. We have chosen to emphasize signals intelligence, as a result of which we are critically dependent on foreign powers, such as the United Kingdom, such as Israel, for that human intelligence component, not because we can’t do any, not because we’re completely incompetent or anything, just we don’t have enough staff. And that’s the biggest problem abroad. Guess what? It’s also the biggest problem at home. And a lot of this is kind of treated as just a law enforcement matter.
The truth is, this is an intel problem, and it happens to reside at the FBI, even though the FBI isn’t primarily for that purpose. And the FBI needs help here. I would note that under Joe Biden, there was an effort to hire 87,000 new IRS agents. No, no, no, no, no. We need a huge number of FBI agents to actually do the hard work of preventing crime, making our country safe for its own people, and above all, stopping this Chinese spying operation.
This has to be a priority. I call on John Thune to make it a priority in the lame duck before the Democrats get control and start gutting everything in sight.
Don Ma: And stop cheating on your wife, to your point. I mean, that would just stop. Stop cheating on your wife. Yeah, that would get rid of a portion of the Chinese spying operations altogether. Okay, let’s move on to the next topic here.
Rod D. Martin: Bigger than we think.
Don Ma: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So let’s move on to the next topic here. How did Republicans lose? And Republicans only have a few weeks left to advance the president’s priorities. What should they do?
The Midterm Losses and the Next 60 Days
Rod D. Martin: So you and I have been talking about this for a long time, and I told you we don’t have to lose, but we probably will. Here’s how we could win. And by the way, in Florida, we did. I’m sitting here in the panhandle of Florida right now. We delivered. We helped get all our guys over the top. We started the night with all of the statewide offices, with supermajorities in both houses of our state legislature, with 20 U.S. House members.
And that’s exactly how we ended the night. So you didn’t have to lose. The wipeout in Texas is partly self-inflicted. If they had done what Ron DeSantis did, they wouldn’t have had that wipeout. And so part of the reason we lost is just honestly being stupid. The Republican Party never misses a chance to screw it up, and this is an example of that. The president was out there. The president was doing everything he could do. I’ve never seen a president do a fraction of what Donald Trump did to campaign for our team this year, and not just campaign.
Oh, my goodness. He spent $450 million on these races out of money he raised for his super PAC. That’s extraordinary. No other president has ever done anything like that, and no other Republican president has gotten close to what guys like Barack Obama did. So this is a huge, huge upgrade. It just didn’t happen to work this time. And as you know, I mean, the party in the White House has lost all but two midterm elections in the last 96 years. So the odds were always that we would lose.
It’s still a needless loss, I think. Florida proves it, but it is what it is. So where do you go from here? Well, first of all, you’re talking about the lame duck session. We’ve got 60 days in which to get crucial work done. You just had John Thune on screen talking about one key bit of legislation, which actually is bipartisan, that I think we’ll be able to pass tonight. I’m hopeful about that. That will directly address affordability in a big way.
The bigger issue, the one that just takes the cake, is the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA. That must be passed. If you let the Democrats pass an NDAA after the first of the year, we’re just toast. They’re going to gut everything they possibly can. They can’t get to ICE. They can’t get to the border wall. They can’t get to any of that stuff that they promised their base dishonestly they would go and do because we have a multi-year appropriation on all of those things.
Those things are safe into 2029. The NDAA is not. So we’ve got to pass the National Defense Authorization Act in the next 60 days. And not only that, there’s a supplemental that needs to be passed alongside it. There’s also the reconciliation bill that has to be passed alongside it. That actually contains most of the funding for Golden Dome, which is the big new missile defense. That’s essential. And it’s a China issue again. The Chinese have tripled the number of nuclear weapons.
They’re pointing at us. Just in the last four years, they’re on track to reach parity with the United States and the Russians. Within five to ten years, that is terribly disruptive, incredibly destabilizing. And the only way out of that box, honestly, is this Golden Dome missile defense. So we’ve got to get that passed. That’s got to happen in the next 60 days.
The Electoral College and the National Popular Vote Catastrophe
Don Ma: Okay, Rod, I don’t know if this is on your radar, but right now Democrats potentially have a path to getting rid of the Electoral College system and move on to a popular vote system. I don’t know if that’s on your radar. If it is, is there anything Republicans can do if they want to keep the Electoral College system?
Rod D. Martin: This is the biggest single danger we face. The Electoral College is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I know most people don’t understand why. I get that. The Electoral College forces presidential candidates to actually pay attention to flyover country, where most people live. They actually have to care about rural America. They actually have to care about small businesses and small towns. They actually have to pay attention to those things and those people. That’s what the Electoral College does. It forces you to have 50 state-by-state races. It also means you haven’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Under a national popular vote system, the big cities on the coasts could determine the outcome of the election just about all the time. First, because they have nearly half of the country, but second, because they cheat. The big city machines are a byword in our American history classes, in our lived experience, and that’s been true since Tammany Hall in the 1870s, for heaven’s sake. So why on earth would you leave your entire presidential election vulnerable to Tammany Hall or those corrupt Democrat ward bosses in Chicago or what we saw in L.A. with the Spencer Pratt election? It’s just absurd.
The Electoral College spreads it out across the fruited plain where everybody gets a say, everybody has to be paid attention to, and no one state or city can mess with the outcome more than a little bit. That is a much, much better system for America. It’s worked for 250 years. I don’t know why the heck we’d want to change it, but the Democrats do because they like everything I just said. They think that’s a great idea. So yes, there is this National Popular Vote Compact, the NPV Compact, which has been passed by a number of states.
And what it does is it pledges them, once you hit enough states to account for 270 electoral votes, which is the number needed to elect a president, the compact kicks into force, and the states that have ratified it have to, by law, give their electoral votes to whoever won the national popular vote. So, sounds great, sounds reasonable. Not at all reasonable. It’s a Trojan horse. It has to be stopped. So there are about five states they’re going to go after hard.
Texas isn’t one of them because we kept the Senate in Texas, thank God. But we’ve got several other states where they’re going to make a real run at this in the next year for the purpose of changing the outcome of the 2028 election. It is incumbent upon conservatives to get down to their state capitals, either electronically or in person, is even better, and really, really lobby their legislators. There will be Democrats who think this is a bad idea, too. There will be a lot of Republicans who don’t understand why it’s a bad idea.
This is something we have to personally take responsibility for as citizens and go fight. We can stop this, but we have to actually go stop this.
Presidential Power After a Midterm Loss: The History
Don Ma: All right, Rod, just one final question here. In the midterm elections for Clinton and Obama, they had low approval ratings. They both lost the midterm elections, comparable to President Trump in the current situation. But at the end of the terms for Clinton and Obama, they had much higher approval rating. Do you think President Trump could achieve the same, and how does he do it?
Rod D. Martin: Well, you’re singing my song, and I published an article on this on Friday that everybody should read at RodMartin.org, and I give you the numbers on Reagan’s two lost midterms, Clinton’s disaster in the 1994 midterms, Barack Obama’s disasters in both sets of midterms, 2010 and 2014. And in every one of those cases, those presidents had phenomenally successful ends of their presidencies. In Reagan’s case, he loses the ’82 midterms, but he’s got this economic boom building that people hadn’t felt yet when they voted, but they certainly felt it two years later, and he won 49 states.
You know, likewise, Clinton has this wipeout in ’94. He had a 37 percent approval rating going into that election. By the end of his term, he’d hit 73 percent approval. Obama, same thing, phenomenally successful, not at things I wanted him to succeed at, but phenomenally successful in his last few years in office, despite a nine-seat wipeout in the Senate, which exceeds what happened on Tuesday.
So, yes, the president is not a prime minister. We do not have a parliamentary system. The executive branch does not work for the legislative branch. This is not Canada or Great Britain.
Therefore, the president has tremendous constitutional power built into Article II for a reason. His branch is a co-equal branch with the legislative branch. He has an awful lot he can do. And as we were talking about earlier in this segment, a bunch of the things that are most important to the president’s agenda are already insulated from anything the Democrats can do to alter it in the next two years. And most of what they could do will just get vetoed, and they don’t have the votes to override.
So there’s a lot of harm they can cause, but the president can do a lot of good. And if we do our jobs, we can prevent the really crazy, extreme stuff like this NPV compact that is going to be up for a vote in about five states that could put it over the top. We have to do our part there, but the president will certainly do his. And that economic boom is underway, created a million jobs just in August and September.
That’s going to be felt by this time next year. It is really going to be felt by the 2028 election. I think our prospects are quite good.
Don Ma: Okay, Rod, it’s always great to hear your insights. Thank you for your time today.
Rod D. Martin: Thank you.
