At a time when our nation is portrayed as increasingly polarized, media often ignore viewpoints and stories that are worthy of attention. American Thought Leaders, hosted by The Epoch Times Senior Editor Jan Jekielek, features in-depth discussions with some of America’s most influential thought leaders on pertinent issues facing our nation today.
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In this episode, I sit down with the 28th governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, to learn about how he’s reducing his state’s vulnerabilities and dependency on communist China. We also dive into Oklahoma’s push toward critical-mineral production and the governor’s mission to promote economic development and reignite the American Dream. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
“China is surpassing American strength, whether it be naval forces or nuclear forces,” says retired U.S. Army Col. John Mills. His four-decade career has spanned key roles from the Cold War era to the War on Terror. At the Department of Defense, he directed cybersecurity policy. “I was brought into cyber in 2007 when the threat really was Russian cyber adventurism, but by 2012, from that point onward, it was all China—wasn’t even close,” he says. “For every dollar Russia spent on misadventure, C...
Former Trump national security adviser retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn found himself at the center of a national firestorm when he was charged with lying to the FBI over a phone call he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States. The DOJ would later drop the case, saying there was no “legitimate investigative basis” to have targeted him. In his new book “Pardon of Innocence,” he details his story. As new documents are released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, we sat d...
“A quarter to a half of the exploitation that’s happening to our own nation’s youth ... it’s a caregiver doing it—it’s a familial figure,” Jaco Booyens says. He is the founder of Jaco Booyens Ministries (JBM), an anti-human trafficking organization working to protect American children from predatory exploitation. “We’re talking about a $52 billion industry of buying and selling predominantly women and children inside this country—American citizens. The discussion about an immigrant child or an i...
Kelly Walker, a local coffee shop owner in Tucson, Arizona, never imagined how his world would be turned upside down when he started speaking out publicly against COVID-19 mandates and the harm to children. He and Sam Sorbo are cofounders of the Parents Demanding Justice Alliance. They have put together a report detailing alleged actions taken by local authorities to censor, surveil, and pressure parents who protested policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Editor’s Note: Kelly Walker previously ...
In this episode, Rushan Abbas reveals how the Chinese communist regime has escalated its campaign against the Uyghurs. Uyghurs are being mass surveilled, forcibly sterilized, and exploited as slave labor both in Xinjiang and in other provinces across China. There are growing signs of large-scale forced organ harvesting in the region—including an apparent special lane in the city of Kashgar’s airport dedicated to the transport of human organs. In 2018, the Chinese regime imprisoned Rushan Abbas’s...
In this exclusive interview, I spoke with Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), about his first 100 days in office and how he is transforming the agency. In this wide-ranging interview, we dive into his work to change food guidelines and drug approval processes, reduce supply chain vulnerabilities, and tackle conflicts of interest. We also address criticism of some of the FDA’s recent decisions surrounding vaccines. Views expressed in this video are opini...
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a newly established U.S.-backed aid group distributing food in Gaza, is under fire from critics who say hundreds of Gazans have been killed near its distribution sites. But is there a bigger story here? In this episode, I sit down with Johnnie Moore, executive chairman of the GHF and former commissioner for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “We have one mission, to feed the people of Gaza in a way that Hamas—a designated terrorist org...
“We’re living in this strange day and age when we’ve essentially bio-hacked all of the things that we do and really come to organize our lives around our little rewards, right? So, we wake up in the morning, we reach for our phones, we have our cup of coffee, we have our favorite muffin.” Dr. Anna Lembke is a psychiatrist, professor, and medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University. She’s the author of “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.” “This is, of cou...
For decades, we’ve been reporting on the ways the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) crushes the religious freedom of its citizens. But in recent years, the CCP has been escalating its tactics against a religious group here—on American soil. In this episode, I sit down with religious freedom lawyers Justin Butterfield and Lea Patterson to understand what’s going on and discuss their response to a recent lawsuit against Shen Yun, the performing arts company founded by Falun Gong practitioners in New Y...
When Adam Coleman was 8 years old, he was institutionalized after contemplating suicide. He shares his struggles—and the struggles of so many others in America—of growing up without a father in his new book, “The Children We Left Behind: How Western Culture Rationalizes Family Separation and Ignores the Pain of Child Neglect.” “I went through a lot when I was a kid, and I want my story to be an example that, yes, certain things happen to you when you’re a child, but when you’re an adult, you mak...
Recently, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met for the first time after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced its entire membership with new picks. In this episode, I’m sitting down with two new ACIP members, Dr. Robert Malone and MIT professor Retsef Levi, for a deep dive into all things ACIP. “They basically impact billions of dollars of revenue for the pharmaceutical industry. So there’s big money at stake here. There’s big policy at stake,” says Malone....
John Eastman is founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. He is also a former law professor at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law and served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the 1990s. He has represented over a dozen parties before the U.S. Supreme Court. His life took a sharp turn when he helped President Donald Trump challenge the integrity of the 2020 election results. He is facing disbarment and criminal ...
To understand Middle East dynamics, I always count on Michael Doran, Director of the Middle East Center at the Hudson Institute. “For the first time, Jan, in history, Israel and the United States have taken military action together. This is totally new,” he tells me. We sat down to discuss what has now been dubbed ‘The 12-Day War’ and how Middle East political realities have been transformed. “One of the most amazing things about the Israeli attack against the Iranians is that they totally took ...
In this episode, I sit down with Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization. We dive into his vision for revitalizing American manufacturing, making American-made products competitive globally, and building alternative financial and tech systems where people can’t be canceled. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
In this episode, I’m sitting down again with Kyle Bass, founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management and founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, to get an update on how China’s economy is faring since our last interview five months ago. “There’s nothing that’s going to bail China out of their economic spiral. They’re having a real estate crisis, a banking crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, and now they need to be worried about their current account,”...
President Donald Trump has recently criticized the ANC-led government of South Africa for what he says are state-sanctioned, racist policies that have been endangering white farmers. In this episode, I sit down with South African businessman and entrepreneur Robert Hersov to get a read on what’s happening in the country. What is the real story surrounding white farmers in South Africa today? What role have Iran and Russia played in the region? And what can we expect from U.S.-South Africa relati...
On June 20, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 56 into law, criminalizing geoengineering and certain weather modification activities in the state, with violations classified as a third-degree felony. “They were intending to alter the trajectory of hurricanes using things like silver as a way to change the precipitation and intensity of these storms. Later, in Vietnam, for example, they used it for increasing weather, such as precipitation, on the so-called ‘enemy.’ Project Popeye [...
Five months into the Trump administration, I sit down with Heritage Foundation chief economist EJ Antoni to get his insights into how the American economy is doing, where the US-China trade war is headed, and how he assesses the “big, beautiful bill,” which has engendered significant debate among conservatives. How are Americans faring financially today compared to a few months ago? Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of ...
John Miller is the CEO of Superb Industries. He resisted mounting pressure to move his production overseas to China, and instead innovated and grew a thriving made-in-America component manufacturing business. “Do you make decisions based on the long-term benefit that are principle-based, or do you make decisions for financial gain in the short term, at the cost of the long term?” he asks, rhetorically. “[Other businesses] made a lot of money by outsourcing to China over a short period of time, b...
Say we had credible intelligence about an impending terrorist attack or major acts of violence, what actions are justifiable to prevent these crimes from occurring? How do we balance the urgency of preventing harm, with the importance of safeguarding civil liberties? “We have to make trade-offs all the time, and there’s no jurisprudence to that trade-off. We live in the preventive state,” says Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. “We are moving more and more toward replacin...
A 33-year-old researcher and her 34-year-old boyfriend, both Chinese nationals, were recently charged with allegedly smuggling into America a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, a potential bioterrorism weapon. This recent case is just the tip of the iceberg, says investigative reporter Sam Cooper. He played a key part in uncovering a similar case in Winnipeg, Canada. “A married couple from China had been allegedly—according to the documents we now have access to—working with the highest levels ...
Dr. Kirk Milhoan is a pediatric cardiologist and senior fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance. He has been treating children with myocarditis and other cardiovascular issues associated with COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccines. “Four years later, five years later, I’m seeing this constant and dramatic change in who I’m seeing coming to see me. They’re complaining their heart doesn’t beat normally. And it beats fast for no reason at all,” says Dr. Milhoan. “Specifically after the second dose o...
“You can essentially divide the region between two sets of players. You have the, broadly speaking, Western-aligned players, which essentially consist of Israel and the non-Islamist Arab countries—countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE—and then, on the other hand, you have the axis of Islamism—of support for Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and jihadism. And that, these days, is mostly the Iranian regime of course, Turkey unfortunately under Tayyip Erdogan, and Qatar, Qatar being the lead financie...
“When we are dispersed and we interact with other human beings only online, and the algorithms feed back our preferences and desires to us, what it effectively does is kind-of isolate us in these multiple sub caves.” Jacob Howland is the provost of the University of Austin, a new, private liberal arts university that is pushing back against censorship and politically popular narratives in higher education. As dean of the Intellectual Foundations program, Howland gives students a comprehensive ed...
Few people understand artificial intelligence and machine learning as well as MIT physics professor Max Tegmark. Founder of the Future of Life Institute, he is the author of “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” “The painful truth that’s really beginning to sink in is that we’re much closer to figuring out how to build this stuff than we are figuring out how to control it,” he says. Where is the U.S.–China AI race headed? How close are we to science fiction-type scenario...
“It’s now been revealed that the Chinese—who manufacture virtually all of our solar panels, both in the United States and Europe—have been installing cellular radios inside the inverters, which can act as kill switches,” says Michael Shellenberger, an investigative journalist, author, founder of Public, and CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at the University of Austin. Shellenberger is the author of the books “San Fransicko” and “Apocalypse Never.” In this wide-ranging interview...
Dr. Lynn Fynn discusses systemic issues in medical research, including conflicts of interest, misallocated funds, and a broken peer review process. She explains how incentives and funding sources can introduce bias and even lead to reversing the scientific method to fit desired conclusions. Dr. Fynn shares her experience with regulatory bodies and proposes solutions like blinded submissions and independent review boards to restore integrity and public trust in science.
“Hollywood is about as left and progressive a community as there is in this country. And unfortunately, part of the box you have to check in that very left, super progressive space is being anti-Israel and being pro-Palestine in an anti-Israel way,” says Jonah Platt. Platt is a jack of all trades in the entertainment industry—an actor, director, producer, and singer. In the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis led by terrorist group Hamas, he launched the podcast “Being Jewish.” H...
“Service … it’s a great healer for a broken heart. It helped me a lot through our fight for our son, and the difficulties and the challenges of fighting for him and then losing him,” says Gary Sinise. An Emmy Award-winning actor, producer, director, and musician, Sinise has dedicated his life to supporting America’s active-duty military, veterans, first responders, and their families. The Gary Sinise Foundation has raised over $500 million in support of these communities, and Sinise has won many...
