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Ava Chen: A Dissident's Reading of the Midterms
Kathleen Winn opened China Watch Wednesday by acknowledging what she called a very disappointing night for Republicans across the country and in Arizona, and asked her co-host Ava Chen of the New Federal State of China for an outsider's perspective. Chen's answer was a reminder that the ability to vote is itself something Chinese citizens do not have. "In China, we don't have that," she said. "Not North Korean people. But today, American people, you still have to vote and you can change the fate of the country."
"Fort Apache"
Chen said she was struck by a phrase she heard from Steve Bannon that morning, comparing the next two years to "Fort Apache," a heavily outnumbered garrison under siege. She said she had to look up the reference, and that it fit her own movement's experience. Taking down a tyrannical regime, she said, means two steps forward and sometimes two steps back, and the setbacks test who is truly committed. "Adversity tests loyalty," Chen said. "The hardship really exposes the true character of someone." She said her own movement has watched supporters drift away and some turn out to be pretenders, and that every departure was followed by new people joining. "True conviction cannot be defeated," she said.
Winn said the message was exactly what she needed. She described calling a friend the night before who joked she was "hanging in my closet," and said the right response to disappointment is focus, not emotion. She noted that Miles Guo is in jail and she is not. "We can still have a voice," she said. "We can still have the freedoms."
Miles Guo's Verdict: The Republic Is Healthy
Chen relayed a message she received that morning from Guo, who she said views the results as a sign of strength. In his reading, a country with two parties can correct itself, with one coming in to reset every two or four years. "This is a self-healing and self-correction ability that you have not lost," Chen said, adding that it is something the rest of the world envies. According to Guo, the real winners and losers are not Republicans or Democrats. "You're American," she said. "You are one nation under God."
From a foreign-policy perspective, Chen said, Guo's evaluation was that the biggest winner of the midterms was the Chinese Communist Party and the biggest loser was Russia. She pointed to Kremlin anxiety about whether ceasefires would hold if a new Congress is more supportive of Ukraine, and to celebrations on Chinese social media. "If everybody understood that the CCP is your biggest enemy, your ballot would look very different," she said. She argued that the CCP will keep working on what she called its long-term plan to infiltrate and divide America, including through influence on media and on public attitudes toward Israel and the Middle East.
The CCP's Long Game
Chen walked through what she described as Guo's 2021 outline of a 50-year strategy for global expansion. The Middle East comes first, with tens of billions of dollars in contracting, Huawei infrastructure and long-term energy deals. She said the CCP signed a 20-year, roughly $500 billion agreement with Saudi Arabia to hold oil prices low, and benefits from cheap Iranian and sanctioned Russian oil as well. Africa is second, she said, through the Belt and Road Initiative's loans, which she called debt diplomacy, and a military base in Djibouti. Third is Hong Kong, which she said lost its common law and legislature in 2019 and now only keeps its free-world access because the U.S. still treats it as free.
She said other targets follow, and that the next two years will decide whether Americans identify the real threat. "You don't have that long," she said. "Communist tyranny is closer than you think."
Winn agreed, saying that each lost seat means the other side builds its team while Republicans lose ground because most people do not see how the pieces connect. "They wait out our elected officials," she said. "They know we have terms and we have rules. So they've taken our rules, our construct, and they use it against us." She ended the segment by praising Chen's work and friendship.
Jack Dona: "This Is Not the End-All, Be-All"
Retired Master Sergeant Jack Dona, a retired Army intelligence and electronic warfare engineer who spent roughly four decades in the intelligence community, five of them with the National Security Agency, joined from Cochise County to offer what he called the view from 40,000 feet. His first message was the same as Chen's. "Everybody needs to just take a breath," he said. "This is a setback. This is not the end-all, be-all."
The Iran War and Pocketbook Politics
Dona said he and his team saw the signs coming. His central criticism was the Iran war, which he said President Trump should have ended months earlier. "The lesson learned here, and we keep learning this lesson, apparently, is from Vietnam: if we go in someplace, you finish it," Dona said. He argued the war pushed up diesel prices and left voters unable to cover basics. One hint, he said, came from his own wife, who told him she was sick of worrying that her sons or grandsons would end up in the Middle East. "That's a mother speaking, a grandmother," he said. "That's a very primal thing." Dona said she also told him that some Republicans voted for Democrats this year without admitting it.
Dona used an Army analogy for the economic piece. Soldiers need mail, religious services, food, water, shelter and pay, he said, and if you deny them any of those, they start to reject you. He applied the same logic to voters worried about diesel, groceries and tariffs. "Where's the relief coming?" he asked, saying the administration's tariff revenue and a steady parade of CEOs signing deals at the White House did not translate into relief for the middle class or for the minority and working-class voters Trump courted in 2016. He said he noticed the "Blacks for Trump" and "Latinos for Trump" signs thinning out at rallies last summer, along with smaller crowds.
The Epstein Fracture
Dona traced the first cracks in the president's base to April 2025, when Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the Jeffrey Epstein investigation would not produce further convictions. Dona said voters had been promised justice. He said the president's response, mocking reporters for asking about "that guy who's been dead for years," made it worse, and that Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other commentators started to abandon him, which gave his critics ammunition. "The president should have seen that and said, I need to fix this," Dona said. He said he thinks Bondi was a misstep and that the administration did not follow through on promises about elections, such as the SAVE Act. Winn said she knows several of the victims from that case and that people care. "When you talk about children being abused, that's a line you just don't cross," Dona said.
Dona also said he was told turnout needed to reach about 60 percent and that it landed around 40. He said that while he respects the president, not everything is about him, and that loyalty matters. "It certainly does appear that they picked winners and losers across the country," he said, "and they didn't get what they wanted."
What Comes Next in Washington
Winn noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would step down as Republican leader following the losses, with the contest likely to be between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan. Dona said former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who controls a super PAC with hundreds of millions of dollars, had already put his weight behind Jordan. He also said a Democratic majority will go after the president, and that if Trump keeps lashing out at his own party, establishment senators like John Thune could join an impeachment vote. "He needs to cool his jets," Dona said. "If you were in charge, if it went bad on your watch, you own it."
Dona pointed to what he saw as silver linings. He said about 100 DSA candidates lost on Tuesday, which he took as proof that voters did not choose socialism, and that Republicans held ground in places such as Cochise County, where he said Carolyn Flowers was leading the Sierra Vista mayor's race by about a thousand votes and the council appeared to remain red. He said Ciscomani's race was still undecided with about 20 percent of precincts out and Democrat Joanna Mendoza ahead, but that he expected late Election Day ballots to favor the congressman. "It's like childbirth," he joked. "Someone says they're in labor, and then you have to wait."
A Message to Independents and Younger Voters
On independents, Dona agreed with Winn that both parties fail to reach them. The economy decides how they vote, he said, citing James Carville's "it's the economy, stupid," and the voters want to see results, not slogans. "You can't say we stand for something and deliver 60 percent," he said. He argued that the establishment wing of the party, including Thune and Mitch McConnell, had slow-rolled the president's agenda, and that without results by 2028 the party will lose again.
Dona's closing message was one of defiance. "The light of freedom is eternal," he said. "Our national cemeteries are filled with men and women who gave the last full measure." He said the movement needs leaders who show up with humility and call things as they are, and that the answer is local action. "Dust yourselves off. You fell down, get back up, get back to work," he said. He also said his father, who fled communism, had warned that crises are used to suppress speech, and that Charlie Kirk understood this better than anyone. "We will never replace Charlie Kirk," he said.
Winn: Counting Continues in Arizona
Winn spent the rest of the hour on the state of play. She said Arizona was still counting Election Day ballots, which come in seven categories, and that several races, especially in the congressional contests, were too close to call. Reports of what she called monkey business at polling places would be covered later in the week. She said tabulation for the party's hand count would take place on Saturday, and that the Pima County Republican Party would elect a new chair on January 9. She thanked the board and the precinct committeemen. "We know that we are outnumbered," she said. Republicans usually win Election Day voting two to one, she noted, and she was hopeful this year's margin would hold.
She said the president must now work with a Democratic House and Senate, which she suggested might help him focus, and called Texas the biggest disappointment of the night. "Does Texas thrive under Democrat leadership or does it not?" she asked. She noted the cities that have lived under those policies. "I'm always surprised when people are living in a certain culture that is failing that they would continue to vote for it," she said. She said the party's choice now was to learn from the loss and raise the next generation of independent thinkers. "We have to figure out what to do with everything we just learned," she said.