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Our full discussion transcribed after the break:
by Rod D. Martin
October 26, 2026
Don Ma interviews Eric Metaxas and me about my new book, Trump’s governing strategy, the challenge from China, and why American liberty must define the future.
Don, Eric and I discuss:
Why America is at a multi-generational turning point
Restoring constitutional government and rebalancing America’s alliances
Eric Metaxas explains why he published my book.
Is Trump a “chaos monster”? Negotiating by keeping opponents off balance
The stakes of the midterms
China, the space frontier, and the future of human civilization
It’s 18 minutes of the in-depth analysis you need: watch it, and pass it along!
Our Full Discussion:
Don Ma: And next, joining us to discuss his new book, Trump’s New World Re-Order, is Rod Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital. He’s a member of the team that started PayPal.
And we also have Eric Metaxas, host of Socrates in the City and the Eric Metaxas Show. He’s also the author of the new book, Revolution. So good to have you both here this afternoon, this Friday afternoon.
So, Rod, I want to start with you to talk about your book. It talks about how President Trump is fundamentally reordering how America is governed and how the United States exercises power around the world.
So why do you say America is at a turning point, Rod?
Rod D. Martin: Well, this is absolutely an epochal change. And this happens every so often in American history. The American Revolution, about 80 years later the Civil War, about 80 years after that the Great Depression and World War II. These things changed America in fundamental ways: how we do the business of America, how we govern ourselves, if we govern ourselves.
One of the biggest things that came out of the Depression in World War II, though, was ceasing to govern ourselves, in part at least, by creating what we call the Deep State. But it’s this giant administrative state composed of allegedly independent agencies, for which the Constitution makes no provision whatsoever, that fuses executive, legislative, and judicial power in unelected bureaucrats who can’t even be fired.
Donald Trump is changing that dramatically, taking us back to a constitutional understanding of government, both by his own actions and through his litigation strategy before the Supreme Court, which has resulted in the overturning of cases like Chevron and Humphrey’s Executor that have been with us 50 and almost 100 years respectively.
At the same time, globally, he’s reorienting our foreign policy, really for the first time since World War II, where we actually made things lopsided against America and in favor of our friends. We wanted to rebuild them after World War II. We wanted to win the Cold War. We wanted to prevent these flattened countries from falling to communism.
And then we forgot what we’d done and why. And we left everything out of balance, everything lopsided against America, both in our trade and our alliance structures.
And Donald Trump is reorienting that, too. The net result is a country that’s much more accountable to its voters, and a foreign policy that is vastly more defined by what’s best for America than it has been since the end of the war.
It is truly transformative. And assuming we don’t blow it and lose in 2028, this is actually going to define the rest of the 21st century.
Eric Metaxas: Understanding Trump’s Larger Strategy
Don Ma: So, Eric, let me go to you now. I understand you wrote the foreword of Rod’s book and you’re publishing it. So I want to know from your perspective here. Talk to us about how you got involved in this and why.
Eric Metaxas: Well, I guess the simple answer is I love America. I love liberty. And my book, Revolution, gives the story of the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world. We have to understand: what is American liberty? What is America? And I think we’ve drifted away from that.
Rod’s book tells us how we get back. We’ve drifted and drifted. How do we get back? And what Rod is doing in his book, which I am so thrilled that this book is out. I hope everybody will buy a copy.
In his book, he is telling us what President Trump does not tell us because President Trump is too clever. He doesn’t want to tell us everything he’s doing. He wants to confuse people on purpose. It’s the art of the deal.
But what Rod does is he helps us understand what the president actually is doing. And it is 5D chess. It’s so many things happening. The mainstream media cannot cover this. Usually even the conservative media cannot cover it.
But Rod, in his book, masterfully explains how many things the president is doing. But again, the president will not explain what he’s doing because he wants to get it done. His issue is he wants to get it done. He has the authority to do it. He is doing it. What he did in Venezuela, what is happening in Iran, all of these things are fitting together.
And it is absolute genius. It is absolute genius. And in these midterms, we need to encourage people, this president is a gift from God to this country.
We don’t deserve this president. We’ve had a lot of very average Republican presidents. We’ve had a lot of evil Democrat presidents. This president is doing things that have been deferred for 50 years and more. He is doing what should have been done decades ago. It takes tremendous courage. It takes tremendous zeal and passion to pull it off. And we see this president, he’s doing it.
But to understand it, to really appreciate it, you have to read Rod’s book. It’s called Trump’s New World Re-Order.
It’s brilliant. I’m just so grateful that Rod wrote it because so many of us were trying to make sense of what President Trump is doing. And the president’s not, he’s not helping us. He’s just, he’s just getting it done. That’s the good news. But the book explains it.
Negotiation, Surprise, and the Art of the Deal
Don Ma: Well, I’m impressed, Rod. You just got a glowing review for your book. And I want to follow up on Eric’s point because you talk about this as well in your book about chaos, right? What seems to be chaos is actually order, what you’re saying in your book. Tell us more about this.
Rod D. Martin: Well, Trump has been telling us exactly how he negotiates since the 80s. I mean, there’s just no end to how much he’s told us. You can read it in The Art of the Deal from 1987. You can read it in Surviving at the Top in 1990. You can read it in Art of the Comeback in 1997. You can watch it for about 15 seasons of the top-rated show in America, The Apprentice. He never stopped telling us exactly what he was going to do.
And nobody paid attention. So they’re just expecting him to act like a politician. He doesn’t act like a politician. He acts like a wildly successful real estate developer. And in that vein, he is phenomenal at keeping people off balance, demanding things that are beyond what he actually expects to get, and getting the deal he really wants. And he does it again and again and again. We heard about this just a moment ago on this show, talking about the eight peace deals he got done in just eight months last year.
That’s phenomenal. Some of those wars, especially, you know, the Congo-Rwanda conflict, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Nobody in America can pronounce the names of those countries, much less knew they’d been fighting a war for 40 years.
Donald Trump went in and made peace. And he did it again and again and again in other conflicts that just seemed intractable, one of which, between India and Pakistan, could have become a nuclear war. All of this requires a degree of bluffing, a degree of concealment, and certainly the art of surprise.
And it’s Donald Trump who’s told us again and again that “the dumbest thing our presidents have done is tell the world exactly what they will and won’t do in advance. You will never see me do that.” Well, guess what? He is constantly throwing everyone off balance. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be explained. It just means that you’re not going to get it if you look at the superficial moves he’s making.
Results, Moral Clarity, and the Stakes of the Midterms
Don Ma: So, Eric, and Rod, he was talking about this as well in the rally earlier. We were playing that. He was talking about how he ended eight wars and he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize. And a woman nobody’s heard of got the Nobel Peace Prize. Those are his words, not mine. I just wanted to throw that in there.
But, Eric, you said every American should read this book. What do you think they would see the world differently, or America at least? What would they see differently after reading this book?
Eric Metaxas: Well, I think what it really boils down to is results. This president is not about appearing to be a good president. He’s about actually getting things done. And his attitude, he has enough confidence. He doesn’t care what people think. And so he’s accomplishing staggering things all the while his critics carp and criticize and carp and criticize. He doesn’t care. He just gets it done and gets it done and gets it done. And it’s brilliant. It’s also quintessentially American.
I mean, you have to think of a character like a Bugs Bunny or Groucho Marx. They win and they bamboozle their enemies constantly. And it’s delightful to watch. It’s entertaining. You don’t know how they do it.
Trump is like that. You don’t know what he’s going to say. He’ll say something. He’ll spin around, say the opposite thing. The media explodes with fury. They can’t bear it. “He’s being inconsistent!” “He doesn’t care!” His point is, look at my results. Look at what I’m getting done.
And let’s be honest. We are dealing with evil. I don’t need to tell the folks watching this station. Communist China has no values except power. They will murder people. They will murder people for their organs. They do not care. They don’t look at things the way most Americans do with a biblical worldview, that we’re created in God’s image, that every human being is sacred and we have rights.
We’re dealing with actual enemies, whether it’s North Korea or China or Putin. They don’t think the way we do.
And so President Trump has to deal with evil actors, not to mention the mullahs in Iran, who have no values that are comparable to our values. And so the question is, how do you deal with lunatics? How do you deal with evil? The Democrats, the left, and many of the RINOs, they’re ignorant, they’re naive, and they’re ineffective.
This president is tremendously effective. He’ll say whatever needs to be said. He’ll play whatever game needs to be played, and he gets it done.
And to me, the most amazing thing is he’s doing it for us. He’s working for us. We elected him. He’s not doing this for the Trump Organization. Yes, he cares about his legacy. But all of the effort that he’s putting in, all of the brilliance that he brings to this job that he is doing, he’s doing for the American people. He’s doing it for his kids and his grandkids and for posterity. And it’s a glorious thing. And in Rod’s book, he explains it.
This is the thing that why I love this book, Trump’s New World Re-Order, because many people are kind of wondering, and you’re never going to find this in most of the media. We just don’t have the time to cover it. The left doesn’t want to cover it. They don’t understand it.
But in the book, Rod explains it. And you think, my goodness, there is a method to Trump’s madness. This is brilliant. We should be celebrating it. We should tell our friends, make sure you vote in the midterms, because if we lose the momentum, we will lose the nation.
This president has been, I believe, appointed by God to save America, to save liberty, that we would be a beacon of liberty to the people around the world, that we would stand strong. That is happening under this president. It is a gift from God. Rod, we’re in an existential crisis, and I believe we will win, but we are in a battle. We’re in a war.
China, Reagan’s Strategy, and the Space Frontier
Don Ma: So, Rod, Eric brings up China, and I’m very glad he did, because early on in your book, you have a few chapters, relatively early on, about China, their strength, the possibility they might overcome the United States and become the top country in the world. So, talk to us about China. What are you saying in your book about the CCP?
Rod D. Martin: Well, the book is divided into sections, and one of them is entitled, “All Trump’s Roads Lead to China.” Donald Trump understands that China is the principal existential geopolitical threat of our era in exactly the same way that the Soviet Union was in a prior time, Reagan’s time.
And Donald Trump understands exactly how Reagan defeated the Soviet Union. He dried up the access they had to the hard currency necessary to compete in an arms race, and then he launched one of the biggest arms races ever. And he did that all while making it too risky for the Soviets to go to war, as a result of which they actually had to deal with their own problems internally without capturing any foreign soil and therefore wealth.
As a result of that, they collapsed. That’s what will happen to the CCP. I can’t guarantee it will happen next Tuesday. It might not happen next decade, but it’s coming because communism doesn’t work. It is a philosophy of power. It is not actually useful for running a country except in the near term.
And so they can murder 65 million people. They had the power to do that. They can continue their genocide against the Uyghurs as they are at this moment. They can continue going after Christians and Falun Gong practitioners and actually harvesting their organs. My gosh, I mean, how evil does it get? And they can do that right now.
But at some point, the overbuilding of ghost cities, the complete command and control economy starts to come apart. And we’re beginning to see that quite a bit, as you and I have talked about a lot on this show.
We’re starting to see that Trump wants to push it over the edge. And the long-term result of that is a pretty simple question: Will the future be communist or will the future be free? So another thing the book deals with is the aspect of space. Elon Musk is bringing down the cost per pound to orbit so much that you’re getting radically more stuff launched into space. Pretty soon, that’ll be people. Pretty soon, that’ll be a city on the Moon, a city on Mars, real manufacturing and mining out there.
And if the Chinese control it, they control the Earth with it. Donald Trump gets it. He talks about it. He just launched this new United States Space Academy. That’s a big deal. All of this is about the future. It’s not about the next election. It’s not even about the 2028 election. It’s about making sure that the future is free and that America leads that and doesn’t sit passively while the Chinese dominate the world.
Don Ma: Okay, Eric, I have to get your reaction before we leave here. Rod making some very strong, very powerful points saying China’s rule, it’s good for its power. It’s not good for the people of China. And talking about China’s organ harvesting using the word evil. I mean, some of these victims, they’re still alive, actually, when their organs, some of them are being harvested. Let me just get your final reactions here.
Eric Metaxas: Well, I think we have to be very blunt and very clear. There is good and there is evil. There is a God who is a judge. If you don’t believe in that God, you think you can do whatever you like to human beings, but they’re created in God’s image and he loves them and he died for them. And if you side with evil, as China has done, eventually it will catch up with you. And that is what we’re seeing.
It can only last so long. The Soviet Union lasted for decades. You need people with courage to stand against it, to call it what it is. There is no question in my mind that there are millions and millions and millions of people in China longing and praying that the corrupt regime will fall. And the fact of the matter is you cannot, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. It’s enslavement. It’s cruelty. It’s sadistic. But the point is, if you don’t believe in God, who’s to say what’s right or wrong?
The communist leaders, they don’t believe there’s good and evil. They just believe in themselves. They believe in power. This country, the United States of America, which I love and I will die for, this country stands for something beautiful and good and true.
It’s why I wrote my book on the American Revolution. We need to understand that this country, which celebrates liberty, the opposite of slavery, the opposite of communist tyranny, this country stands as a beacon in the world to lift hope up for the hopeless, for those in places like China who are wondering, will there ever be justice?
I know there will be justice, but we have to fight. Now we’re in a time we have to fight. We have a president who understands this. He’s doing everything he can. We can’t do it tomorrow, but we can do everything we can. We need to give him our support. People better vote in these midterms so we can keep Congress and keep the Senate. If you do not vote, you are complicit with evil. You’re complicit with the evil of China and North Korea and Iran.
We’re living in a very, very important historical time. We have to stand with the president.
Don Ma: You’re so right, Eric. If history has proven anything, is that good truth and justice always prevails. Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure to speak with you guys. Eric, Rod, thank you very much.
Rod Martin and Eric Metaxas: Thank you. Thank you.
