Guests - Ava Chen, Scott Greer, Dave Smith
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Justice for Charlie Kirk—and the Fight Over His Legacy
Nearly one year after the assassination of conservative activist and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, the criminal case against the man accused of killing him is moving toward trial. Kathleen Winn opened with the court development: a Utah judge ruled that Tyler Robinson will stand trial, with the death penalty remaining a possibility. Robinson pleaded not guilty to charges that Winn said include aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and committing a violent offense in the presence of a child.
For Winn, the case is about far more than a prosecution. September 10 marks one year since Kirk's death. She remembered him as a friend, a husband and father, and a political organizer who had built a movement capable of reaching young Americans at a time when conservatives were struggling to do so.
Ava Chen of the New Federal State of China said her organization developed a strong relationship with Turning Point USA, attending major events in 2021 and 2023 and serving prominently as a sponsor. She described Kirk as someone who did something increasingly rare in American politics: he connected political engagement to faith.
"He really ignited the fire and the energy of the younger cohort and brought faith and God to politics," Chen said.
That connection, she argued, is a major reason Kirk's influence survived his death. Winn agreed. She recalled Kirk being asked how he wanted to be remembered. His answer centered on his faith.
That mattered, Winn said, because Kirk was reaching young men in particular with a message that political identity was not enough. Family mattered. Faith mattered. God mattered. Human life needed a purpose larger than political victory.
Kirk's style mattered too. Winn said she missed his ability to confront political opponents without reducing the argument to personal insult. He could expose differences between socialism and capitalism, secular ideology and religious conviction, and the political left and right without surrendering either clarity or conviction.
"He took a stand that was way beyond his years," Winn said later. "He had an emotional maturity and an intellectual maturity that you very rarely see in someone his age."
To Winn, that maturity helped make Kirk politically formidable. To Chen, his death may ultimately multiply rather than diminish his influence.
"I think there is a lot of young people who would aspire to be another Charlie," she said.
Chen, speaking from her own Eastern religious perspective, said she believes the soul survives death and continues its journey. Winn approached the question from her Christian faith. Their theology differed, but they arrived at the same political conclusion: Kirk's physical absence does not mean his influence is gone. His ideas are still moving, his words are still being repeated, and young people are still being called to something larger than themselves.
Faith Cannot Be Separated From Freedom
The conversation quickly broadened from Kirk himself to the role of Christians in political life. Chen argued that many Christians have traditionally resisted political engagement because they consider politics divisive, corrupting or somehow outside the proper realm of faith.
That withdrawal carries consequences.
"If you don't participate in politics," Chen said, "the freedom for you to worship your God may be gone."
Her argument was simple: religious liberty cannot defend itself. A society may begin with freedom of worship, freedom of speech and freedom of association. But if the people who value those rights permanently withdraw from politics, they surrender the institutions responsible for protecting them.
Winn said the current political fight therefore cannot be separated from a deeper spiritual struggle. She acknowledged the exhaustion many conservatives feel heading into another election cycle. Political battles have been relentless. Voters have been told repeatedly that every election is the most important of their lifetimes. Activists are tired.
Her answer was not to disengage. It was to return to first principles.
"You have to turn to God and you have to have faith and you have to understand that this is bigger than us," Winn said.
That framework would return repeatedly throughout the discussion: politics matters, but politics is downstream from belief. A political movement without a moral foundation will eventually lose its bearings. For Winn and Chen, that is one of the central dividing lines in the current American struggle.
Ava Chen: The Contradiction at the Heart of "Democratic Socialism"
Chen then shared a conversation involving Miles Guo, the Chinese businessman and CCP critic whose case has become a continuing focus for the New Federal State of China.
According to Chen, Guo was asked by another inmate how he would explain the Democratic Socialists of America to the man's younger daughter, who viewed the DSA favorably and disliked the conservative movement. Guo's answer focused on the name itself.
The organization combines the words democratic and socialism. Chen argued that those concepts pull in opposite directions.
Democratic government, in her formulation, disperses authority. It recognizes the individual as the basic political unit. Rights belong to citizens. Power is divided, and government remains accountable to the governed.
Socialism centralizes. Under the socialist model Chen described, government or another central authority controls major means of production and gains greater power over the distribution of the wealth produced by individual labor.
Her analogy was deliberately simple. A central authority collects the apples, then decides who receives them.
"You behave very good, you get ten apples," Chen said in describing the model. "You're a bad guy, I don't give you any apples."
That is not merely an economic difference, she argued. It changes the relationship between the citizen and the state.
"So now you look at democrat is decentralized. Socialist is centralized. How do you put these two systems together?" Chen asked. "It's just like, how do you mix water and fire?"
Winn added her own formulation: in her view, the DSA's real emphasis is not on the words surrounding socialism.
"They don't care about Democrat or America," Winn said. "So the socialism in the middle is really what they're all about."
Chen said the inmate took Guo's explanation back to his daughter. Whether or not it changed her mind immediately was less important than creating doubt and encouraging her to investigate the ideology more deeply.
"Maybe just to leave a question mark there is good enough for people to continue to explore," Chen said.
That may be the larger conservative challenge with young voters. The objective is not necessarily to win an ideological argument in 30 seconds. It is to make people ask whether political promises that sound compassionate will actually produce the freedom, prosperity and individual dignity being promised.
Miles Guo's Transfer and Chen's Allegations of Political Persecution
Chen had recently visited Guo and described a troubling period in his federal detention. According to Chen, Guo left the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn in late July and ultimately arrived at the federal facility in Danbury, Connecticut, near the end of August.
The path between those facilities became the focus of serious concern among Guo's supporters.
Chen said Guo was first taken through a transit facility in Lewisburg, where she said he spent roughly three days under extremely difficult conditions. She alleged that he had inadequate access to drinking water and was housed around inmates accused or convicted of violent crimes.
He was then taken to another facility that Chen characterized as inappropriate for a prisoner convicted in a financial case. She said Guo experienced encounters during the transfer that he considered dangerous.
Chen went further. She and Guo's supporters believe the transfer circumstances were not accidental.
"This is a plotted murder," she said, describing the allegation made by supporters who believe someone wanted Guo killed during the process.
That is an extraordinarily serious allegation, and Chen presented it as the position of Guo and his movement. She said a transfer between federal facilities is not an informal process. It involves multiple agencies, approvals and logistical decisions. That, she argued, makes the question of how Guo arrived in a high-risk environment even more important.
Guo ultimately reached Danbury, where Chen said he had originally hoped to be placed. Despite the ordeal, she described him as being in remarkably good spirits.
According to Chen, Guo joked that the preceding several weeks could provide enough material for a series of Hollywood movies. He compared the danger he believed he faced during the transfer with threats he had experienced throughout nearly a decade of his anti-CCP activities.
Winn asked the obvious question: why would a nonviolent financial offender be moved through environments populated by dangerous criminals? To Winn and Chen, the incident reinforced their belief that Guo's treatment cannot be examined separately from his opposition to Beijing.
Why Guo's Supporters Say His Case Exposes CCP Influence
Chen rejected the characterization of Guo simply as a fraudster who defrauded his own followers.
"We, the followers, say he did not defraud us," she said.
Instead, she argued that Guo was targeted through information originating with the Chinese Communist Party and then amplified or acted upon inside Western institutions. Chen called it the weaponization of justice.
Her broader argument is that Guo has spent years warning Americans about what he calls the CCP's "silent forces" inside Western political, financial and institutional systems.
When Guo began making those claims publicly in 2017, Chen said, many Americans did not know where to look. The alleged influence was not visible in the form most Americans associate with an enemy government. There were no uniforms. No armies marching through Washington. No Soviet-style banners hanging from American institutions.
The influence, she argued, worked through relationships, money, financial structures, lawsuits, media narratives and people positioned inside legitimate institutions.
"Follow Miles, you will know what's going on with your system," Chen said. "Where is the CCP living in your system?"
To his supporters, the attempts to discredit and prosecute Guo have paradoxically increased interest in his warnings.
Winn drew a parallel to Kirk. Efforts to silence people can produce the opposite effect.
"By persecuting him, you've actually grown your group," she told Chen.
Chen agreed. In her view, Guo's enemies have repeatedly exposed their own methods through their attempts to stop him.
Wang Qishan, Wall Street and the Financial Networks Chen Says Americans Should Study
Chen urged Americans to examine former Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan. She described Wang as one of the most important figures identified by Guo years ago.
From 2012 through 2017, Wang headed the Chinese Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Party's powerful internal anti-corruption apparatus. Chen described him more broadly as a Chinese financial power broker with extensive international relationships.
"He is the financial czar of China and he is the Wall Street darling," Chen said.
Her point was not simply about one Chinese official. It was about the intersection of political power and global finance.
Chen argued that Americans looking for the roots of international influence operations should "follow the money." In her telling, powerful political actors do not always need direct control over foreign institutions when financial networks, investments and elite relationships can achieve similar results.
Guo, she said, began naming individuals and describing those networks years before the broader American public became intensely focused on Chinese influence.
Chen also recalled Guo's April 2017 appearance on Voice of America. She said his interview was cut short while he was discussing Wang Qishan, an incident Guo's supporters have long viewed as evidence that powerful interests wanted his accusations suppressed.
For Chen, the lesson is broader than Guo's individual claims. Political movements require money. Institutional influence requires money. Propaganda requires money. When young activists suddenly appear with sophisticated organizations, messaging and infrastructure, she said, conservatives should look beyond the protest signs.
"You need to look beyond those gullible young people," Chen said. "This is organized. You have to go back to the funder. Follow the money."
China’s Economic Weakness and the Cost of Communist Rule
Chen then turned directly to conditions inside China. Her description was stark.
She argued that the CCP has spent decades presenting itself as the architect of Chinese prosperity while denying the Chinese people genuine political authority. Chinese citizens work hard, save, produce and build, she said. But the political system above them can ultimately seize the fruits of that labor.
Chen described a nation facing high youth unemployment, economic deterioration and growing pressure on private assets.
"The economy is melting down right now," she said.
She said new Chinese laws and regulations increasingly give the state mechanisms for taking additional wealth from citizens. This, Chen argued, reveals the contradiction at the center of communist political rhetoric.
The Party governs "in the name of the people," but the people never voted it into power. They cannot freely vote it out. They cannot openly criticize it without risk, and they cannot independently organize against it.
That distinction became the foundation for one of Chen's clearest analogies.
The American Pyramid and the CCP's Upside-Down Pyramid
Chen asked listeners to picture two pyramids.
The American pyramid stands normally. The visible political leadership is at the top, but the enormous base beneath the surface consists of individuals, voters, property owners, businesses, communities and institutions.
That base provides stability.
"You have human rights. You have rule of law," Chen said. "So you're very strong."
A president may sit at the top, but the country does not depend entirely on one individual. Power is spread throughout the system.
The CCP's pyramid, Chen said, is inverted. The Communist Party presents itself as enormous and powerful above the surface. Its propaganda claims legitimacy, public support and national unity. But beneath it there is no democratic foundation.
"We never voted for the CCP," Chen said.
The Party's apparent stability therefore depends upon fear, censorship and coercion rather than genuine public consent.
"People just [are] scared of them," she said. "They're fearful. So they don't have free speech. They can't criticize them."
That makes the CCP formidable but brittle. When a political tsunami hits, Chen argued, the American system has a massive foundation beneath it. The communist system does not.
"If we held an election today," she said of China, "people would vote out the CCP in a heartbeat, if there is no threat and no fear."
Winn asked which system Chen would bet on surviving the conflict.
"It'll be America," Chen replied.
Energy, Iran and the Economic War Against Beijing
Winn then asked whether American pressure on Iran could have secondary effects on China.
Chen's answer was emphatic.
"Absolutely."
She described the international struggle as a chessboard in which energy policy, sanctions, trade and alliances are all connected.
Chen praised the Trump administration's economic strategy and characterized Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as effectively operating in a wartime role. She particularly emphasized energy.
Chen argued that Chinese leaders understood years ago that long-term access to cheap energy would provide a critical strategic advantage. She cited arrangements with Middle Eastern producers that she said allowed China to lock in favorable oil supplies over long periods.
The Trump administration's moves involving Venezuela, she argued, should be understood in similar strategic terms.
For Chen, American access to Western Hemisphere energy is not simply about lowering prices at the pump. It weakens adversaries, protects allies, gives Washington leverage and makes the United States less vulnerable to an international energy system influenced by hostile governments.
Chen also pointed to Bessent's public warnings about Iranian financial networks and offshore assets. Although China was not always named directly in those remarks, Chen argued that pressure on Iranian financial channels inevitably reaches networks supported by Beijing.
In her analysis, weakening Iran financially also weakens the CCP's strategic position.
"They're waging war against the Chinese Communist Party," she said, describing that broader economic campaign.
Winn characterized Trump as a disruptor willing to challenge arrangements that Washington politicians had learned to accept.
"Anything that President Trump can disrupt—the status quo, which is what he's doing—is good for the world," she said.
Prosperity Means Little Without Security
Chen offered an important qualifier to the economic optimism.
Prosperity is useless if citizens are not safe enough to enjoy it.
"You want to make sure you can live," she said. "You can live to enjoy those prosperity."
That meant security had to remain the first priority. Foreign adversaries matter. So do domestic institutions, crime, immigration, political radicalism and the willingness of government to enforce its own laws.
That theme connected Chen's foreign-policy discussion to the domestic subjects that would dominate the rest of the conversation. The central question was no longer simply whether America could become wealthier. It was whether the political order capable of generating that prosperity would survive.
Free Speech as a Weapon Against Authoritarianism
Chen ended her discussion by emphasizing speech.
In her view, authoritarian systems depend on controlling information. The antidote is not merely knowing the truth privately. It is saying it publicly.
Winn agreed.
"Knowing about it isn't enough," she said. "Speaking out about it is necessary."
Chen encouraged listeners to use GETTR, which she described as a free-speech platform without the censorship practices she associates with other social-media companies.
The larger point was not about one website. It was about refusing to surrender the public square.
Winn argued that Americans are increasingly hearing from ordinary citizens—parents, crime victims, activists and voters—who are willing to challenge institutions that once controlled the conversation.
"Average Americans are speaking up," she said. "They're standing up, and we have to give them a voice."
Scott Greer: How the Online Right Remade Conservatism
Scott Greer joined Winn to discuss his book White Pill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump's America and the transformation of conservatism during the Trump era.
Greer said much of the mainstream analysis of the modern right has been written by people hostile to it. His goal was different.
"My book is a story telling how conservatism has transformed over the last decade, along with Trump," Greer said.
The change involved more than a new presidential candidate. The movement's priorities changed. Its language changed. Its relationship with established conservative institutions changed. Online political communities that initially looked obscure or marginal eventually exerted real influence over the Republican Party.
Greer described his account as an insider's history written from a sympathetic perspective rather than another attempt to portray the movement as a pathology.
That matters because Trump did not merely inherit the conservative movement. He helped reorganize it. Now both Republicans and Democrats are dealing with insurgent political bases that increasingly distrust the establishments supposedly leading them.
The DSA Is Becoming a Democratic Primary Force
Winn asked Greer whether the Democratic Socialists of America's growing strength could become an electoral advantage for Republicans.
Greer believes it can.
Democratic primary voters are increasingly embracing candidates whose positions are considerably to the left of the national electorate, he argued. He described the emerging slate as anti-police, anti-capitalist, anti-business and deeply hostile to traditional American institutions.
"The Democrats going so extremist and embracing the DSA" creates an opening for Republicans, Greer said.
The strategic opportunity is contrast. Voters dissatisfied with Trump or the Republican Party may consider voting Democratic. But Republicans can force those voters to confront the alternative actually being placed on the ballot.
"If you want to vote against Trump, if you want to vote against Republicans, here's the only other choice," Greer said. "And it's anti-American radicals who want to fundamentally destroy this country."
The challenge for Republicans is to make that contrast unavoidable before the midterms.
A Florida Primary Shows the Democratic Establishment's Problem
Greer pointed to Florida as evidence that DSA-style candidates can defeat better-funded establishment Democrats even when their positions create serious problems in a statewide general election.
The discussion centered on Angie Nixon's defeat of Alex Vindman. Greer described Vindman as a celebrity of the anti-Trump resistance who became nationally prominent during the first Trump impeachment after his involvement in the controversy over Trump's phone call with Ukraine.
Vindman's public profile generated national media attention and, according to Greer, enormous fundraising.
Yet he lost.
Greer emphasized the financial disparity as evidence of the strength of the ideological current moving through Democratic primaries. Nixon, he said, ran openly on positions including abolishing police and prisons and abolishing ICE.
The significance was not that such a candidate would necessarily win statewide in Florida. Quite the opposite.
"The fact that she was able to win indicates that the DSA message is connecting with Democratic voters all over the country," Greer said.
That presents a dilemma for Democratic leadership. Candidates who excite the activist base may be precisely the candidates who struggle most in statewide general elections.
For Republicans, Greer sees that as an opportunity. In a Florida Senate race, he expects Republican Sen. Ashley Moody to hold an enormous advantage against a socialist opponent.
The DSA Is National, Not Merely a New York Phenomenon
The larger lesson from Greer's analysis is that democratic socialism can no longer be dismissed as a phenomenon confined to New York City or a handful of university communities.
Greer sees DSA influence among primary voters in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Washington and elsewhere. That does not mean every Democratic voter has become a socialist. It means socialist activists have become highly effective at winning internal Democratic Party contests.
That distinction is critical.
Primary electorates are smaller, more ideological and often more politically engaged than the broader population. A movement can therefore become enormously powerful inside a party without representing anything close to a majority of Americans.
That is exactly why Greer thinks Republicans need to pay attention. The DSA does not have to win a national majority today to transform what Democratic candidates will be expected to support tomorrow.
Susan Collins and the Unpredictable Politics of Maine
Winn turned to Maine and Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Collins has repeatedly survived races that polling suggested could end her Senate career. Greer recalled 2020, when surveys indicated she was in serious trouble. She won anyway.
"Maine voters are a strange breed of voters," he said.
The current race, he cautioned, remains complicated. Democrats had gone through turmoil involving Graham Platner and ultimately turned to Troy Jackson. Greer described Jackson as less colorful than Platner but still aligned with several progressive positions, including opposition to ICE and support for substantially more left-wing economic policy.
That gives Collins an ideological contrast. But Greer warned against assuming another easy Republican victory.
The national environment may be more difficult for Republicans, and current polling is not especially favorable to Collins. Still, Maine has made a habit of defying national expectations. Collins has made a career of doing the same.
Have Democratic Moderates Lost Control?
Winn then raised the central institutional question: who is actually leading the Democratic Party?
Her examples were House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
Greer's answer was that traditional leadership still exists—but its ability to command the party has weakened.
"Hakeem Jeffries is a much weaker leader than Nancy Pelosi," Greer said.
Whatever conservatives thought of Pelosi's policies, he argued, she knew how to control a caucus. Jeffries has less authority with the activist base and, in Greer's view, less ability to impose discipline on rebellious members.
Schumer faces a similar problem. The Democratic base does not necessarily see its congressional leadership as the future.
That means establishment Democrats may increasingly find themselves trying to contain members who want confrontation rather than compromise.
Greer said Republicans experienced a similar dynamic after taking the House following the 2022 election. Competing factions made leadership difficult, generated procedural battles and repeatedly produced public conflict.
Democrats may soon experience their own version.
If they regain the House, Greer believes the DSA and progressive wing will push leadership toward increasingly aggressive confrontation with Trump. That could include impeachment.
Nancy Pelosi initially resisted pressure to impeach Trump during his first term until the Ukraine controversy gave Democrats a vehicle to proceed. Greer doubts Jeffries would have the same ability to restrain his caucus.
"You could also see that maybe they decide to immediately impeach Trump," he said.
A Democratic House, in that scenario, would not simply be a return to divided government. It could become a prolonged internal and constitutional confrontation.
The 2028 Democratic Primary Is Already Casting a Shadow
Winn and Greer also looked beyond the midterms.
The Democratic Party is already searching for its next national identity. Winn mentioned figures including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.
Her assessment was that AOC may deserve the closest attention because she represents the socialist insurgency more directly than establishment politicians attempting to reinvent themselves.
Greer believes the ideological battles occurring now will play a major role in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary. The party's activist base will demand a candidate who reflects its priorities.
Congressional fights over Trump, immigration, policing, economics and socialism could become auditions for that contest.
The establishment's problem is that candidates who sound moderate enough to reassure general-election voters may fail to energize the people deciding Democratic primaries.
The party has not resolved that contradiction. It may only be beginning to confront it.
Can Democratic Socialists Win Red States?
On this question, Greer was unequivocal.
"Democratic socialists in red states cannot win," he said.
He does not believe a full DSA candidate can currently win statewide in a genuinely conservative state. They can win individual congressional districts, urban areas and strongly Democratic seats inside otherwise Republican states. But statewide politics is different.
Greer pointed to Democratic candidates in Michigan and Wisconsin as examples of the difficulties the party faces when nominees move too far left for competitive states.
A more traditional Democrat may have a relatively straightforward path in a battleground. A socialist has to defend an entire ideological platform that many swing voters reject.
"If they keep picking these people to run in battleground states, it's going to be a lot more difficult for them to win those seats," Greer said.
That does not mean Republicans can nominate anyone they want. Greer applied the same principle to the right.
A Republican candidate who fits a deeply conservative district might fail badly in a blue or closely divided statewide electorate. Candidate selection still matters.
Latino Voters, Young Voters and the Limits of Ideological Labels
Winn raised Arizona and the continuing fight over Latino voters.
Trump made substantial gains with Latino voters, challenging years of Democratic assumptions that demographic change would automatically produce permanent Democratic majorities.
Winn doubted that Latino voters in Arizona were suddenly going to embrace socialism simply because activists used culturally fashionable language.
Greer largely agreed.
"I don't think a lot of these voters are embracing the full message," he said.
That distinction is especially important with young voters.
Many young voters moved toward Trump in 2024. Some have since shown interest in left-wing economic arguments.
Greer noted that even certain online personalities who previously supported Trump have become open to DSA positions. But he cautioned against reading this as a coherent ideological conversion.
For some voters, politics is less philosophical than reactive. Republicans are currently in power. A dissatisfied voter may therefore look at the party out of power.
That does not mean the voter has read a socialist manifesto or adopted the entire AOC agenda.
Greer described some of these voters as lacking "very clear or coherent politics." They may move between populist figures on the right and economic radicals on the left because both present themselves as enemies of an establishment the voter already distrusts.
The political battle, then, is not merely Republican versus Democrat. It is also a battle over who gets to define populist dissatisfaction.
Trump Changed the Right. The Question Is What Comes After Him.
Winn asked Greer whether the country had arrived at one of those rare moments when political choices become larger than ordinary party politics.
Greer said yes.
"This is definitely a time for choosing," he said.
The conservative movement has already changed. The Republican Party has already changed. Trump's 2024 victory demonstrated that millions of Americans wanted that transformation to continue.
But no political movement can depend on one man forever.
The elections ahead will determine whether Trumpism becomes an enduring political philosophy or an unusually successful political era tied mainly to Donald Trump himself.
Greer expects Vice President J.D. Vance to be a leading candidate to inherit that coalition in 2028. Whoever carries the Republican banner, he believes the Democratic nominee could be significantly more aligned with the democratic-socialist movement than Democrats of previous generations.
That will force Americans to decide what type of country they want.
"I don't think that there's any time where you can just sit on the sidelines and say, you know, just wait around and hope for the best," Greer said. "It's a time for choosing and action."
Winn framed the choice in cultural terms. America once treated patriotism, faith and family as ordinary civic virtues. She believes those values have been steadily eroded.
The question now is whether Americans still believe they are worth defending.
Dave Smith: Tucson's Crime Problem Is About More Than Arrest Numbers
The final discussion brought the national argument back to Tucson.
Dave Smith, a former law-enforcement officer with narcotics experience, joined Winn to discuss a major local enforcement action and the deeper problems he believes continue to drive Tucson crime.
Smith began with something no longtime Tucsonan needs explained: the city's proximity to the Mexican border has made narcotics a persistent law-enforcement challenge for decades.
"Tucson has always had a drug problem," he said.
But the problem has changed.
Smith believes local government has de-emphasized proactive policing and complex investigations. He recalled serving with MANTIS, the Metropolitan Area Narcotics Trafficking Interdiction Squad, where multiple agencies worked together on cases that required time, training and intelligence.
Emergency response will always consume police resources first. But a functioning police department cannot stop there.
Narcotics trafficking, organized crime, auto theft and other complex offenses require experienced investigators.
"The problem is I don't see that as a priority," Smith said.
Tucson has another problem: retaining those officers.
"When you get somebody who's really good at it, they end up in Marana, Oro Valley, Sahuarita or DPS," he said. "They get cherry-picked away."
That leaves Tucson repeatedly rebuilding expertise while neighboring agencies recruit officers who already have it.
"Tucson has got to clean up its act and get back refocused," Smith said.
Thirty Arrests Are Good. What Happens Next Matters More.
Winn cited reports that more than 30 people had been arrested in a targeted Tucson operation.
That sounds encouraging. Smith's question was what happens after the arrests.
Police can identify suspects, conduct investigations and fill transport vans. But the criminal-justice system does not end at booking.
Prosecutors decide what cases move forward. Judges impose conditions. Local officials determine whether repeat offenders encounter meaningful consequences.
Winn specifically questioned what Pima County Attorney Laura Conover's office would do with people caught in the operation.
Smith did not dismiss the arrests.
"This arrest yesterday, you know, that's nice," he said.
But he warned against confusing one enforcement action with systemic reform.
Drive farther down Speedway, Broadway, Campbell or other major Tucson corridors, he argued, and the visible signs of addiction remain. People impaired by drugs still occupy bus stops and street corners.
The cycle continues because enforcement alone cannot work when every other part of the system is moving in the opposite direction.
Addiction Feeds Property Crime
Smith connected visible drug use with another quality-of-life issue: property crime.
Addicts need money. They are not necessarily earning it through conventional employment. That creates predictable incentives.
"They're getting on the bus and burglarizing the house or getting on the bus or shoplifting stuff to sell," Smith said.
Winn immediately dubbed it the "getaway bus."
The joke had a serious point. Public transit is obviously used by enormous numbers of law-abiding citizens. But when officials tolerate open drug activity around transportation corridors, they create a network that can also facilitate movement by offenders.
The deeper issue is not the bus. It is a city that begins treating visible lawlessness as background scenery.
Once that happens, the public adjusts. People stop reporting behavior. Businesses accept theft as an operating cost. Police are told to prioritize only the most urgent calls. Prosecutors reduce consequences.
Eventually, the extraordinary becomes ordinary.
The Victim Has Disappeared From Criminal Justice
Winn moved from Tucson to the murder of a young New York banker, Erin Piacente.
Winn described Piacente as a 32-year-old Ivy League-educated banker who had recently returned from maternity leave and was fatally stabbed in Times Square. She left behind a husband and a baby.
The details enraged Smith because they fit a broader argument he has made for years.
"The system no longer cares about the victim, period," he said.
Smith said Americans have forgotten the original purpose of criminal justice.
"We created the criminal justice system to protect and punish," he said. "It protects the people who are innocent. It punishes the guilty."
He believes that purpose has been systematically inverted. The offender has become the central moral concern. The victim becomes an afterthought.
Smith argued that the transformation did not happen overnight. It grew through decades of academic theories that migrated from universities into criminology programs, law schools, prosecutors' offices and eventually the judiciary.
"The victim's invisible," Smith said. "The victim is just, well, it's just collateral damage."
For him, the consequences are visible in grieving families.
A baby will grow up without a mother. Parents testify before Congress about children killed or injured. Families lose loved ones in attacks that might have been prevented had repeat offenders been incapacitated.
Those victims cannot be restored through another academic theory about the social conditions that influenced the offender.
Smith Blames Social Conflict Theory for the Ideological Shift
Smith specifically identified social conflict theory as one intellectual source of what he considers the corruption of modern criminal justice.
He characterized it as Marxist in origin.
Under the version Smith described, crime is interpreted primarily through structures of power and inequality. The law itself becomes suspect because the dominant social class created it. The criminal can then be interpreted less as a morally responsible individual and more as a victim of the economic and social order.
"They put fancy names on it," Smith said. "But social conflict theory says that you're not a criminal. You're a victim of a society that bourgeois create these laws."
The terminology evolves.
Instead of always speaking explicitly about bourgeois oppression, Smith said, contemporary activists talk about patriarchy, white supremacy, whiteness and other structures of power.
To Smith, those are updated labels for the same basic worldview.
He argued that the philosophy has now moved beyond criminology departments.
"It doesn't just permeate your attorneys," he said. "It permeates the judiciary itself."
Judges have been educated in it. Lawyers have been educated in it. Prosecutors have been educated in it. Policy organizations promote it.
When enough people inside the system adopt the same underlying assumptions, public policy changes even if voters never consciously approve the philosophy behind it.
That is why Smith considers the criminal-justice debate inseparable from the broader fight over socialism.
Crime, Immigration and the Americans Who Pay the Price
Winn also returned to congressional testimony from families harmed by illegal immigrants and by commercial drivers who, she argued, should not have received licenses without sufficient English proficiency.
Her question was direct: when does government responsibility to American citizens come first?
The testimony affected Winn because it personalized policies usually discussed through statistics. A border policy is not merely a number. A commercial driver's license is not merely a bureaucratic form. A prosecutorial decision is not merely a line in an annual report.
Every policy eventually reaches a human being.
Smith's answer returned to the victim.
Once an institution becomes more concerned with explaining, excusing or accommodating the person who violated the law than protecting the person who obeyed it, the moral order has been reversed.
That same principle applies whether the offender is a citizen or an illegal immigrant. Citizenship does not excuse crime. But neither should ideological discomfort with immigration enforcement prevent government from removing foreign nationals who are unlawfully present and dangerous.
For Winn, political hatred of Trump is not an argument against enforcing American law.
Voter Registration Is a Civic Responsibility
The crime discussion soon returned to politics for a practical reason: voters choose the people who run these systems.
Winn urged Arizonans to check their voter registrations well before the November 3 election.
Do not assume everything is correct because it was correct last time. Verify it.
Make sure the party affiliation is what you intended. Make sure the county is correct. Make sure the address is correct. Make sure an early ballot is coming if you expect one.
Winn described voters who discovered unexpected registration changes, including people associated with a second residence who later found themselves recorded in another county. She also recalled people calling on Election Day because an expected early ballot never arrived.
At that point, options are limited.
Her message was not complicated: check now.
"You go to the dentist twice a year. You go to the doctor. You get your car checked out," Winn said. "You go and take care of the things that matter."
Government matters too.
"The health of our government is also important, and it's up to you to do your part."
Smith agreed.
His argument was that constitutional government contains a democratic mechanism through which citizens choose lawmakers and executive officials. If conservatives refuse to participate, the left does not need to defeat them philosophically.
It can defeat them numerically.
"They're going to win by literally getting you to passively let them elect their leftists," Smith said.
The Fight Over the Meaning of Socialism, Communism and the Political Spectrum
Smith returned to democratic socialism and accused the American left of winning political battles by controlling language.
"We have allowed the left to take control of our linguistics," he said.
In Smith's framework, democratic socialism cannot be cleanly separated from the Marxist intellectual tradition from which it emerged.
He rejected attempts to portray socialism and communism as entirely unrelated systems.
"Marx himself said socialism leads to communism," Smith argued.
He also disputed conventional descriptions that place fascism and Nazism on the political right. Smith instead grouped fascism, Nazism and communism together as authoritarian and totalitarian systems based on expansive state power.
That, he argued, is fundamentally different from the American constitutional right, which defines itself around smaller government, individual liberty and limits on state authority.
"They're all totalitarian. They're all authoritarian," Smith said of the ideologies. "They are no way related to the right in America, which is a constitutional freedom group on the right."
Whatever label is used, Smith said the practical question is simpler: Does a political movement want more concentrated power over the citizen, or less? Does it want government controlling more economic and social life, or does it want individuals retaining more freedom?
Smith believes conservatives lose when they debate labels rather than forcing the discussion back to that fundamental distinction.
America Is a Constitutional Republic—and It Requires Participation
Smith objected to the casual description of the United States simply as a democracy.
"We are not a democracy," he said. "We're a republic. And it's a constitutional republic."
The distinction matters because the Constitution places limits on what transient political majorities may do. Rights are not supposed to disappear because 51 percent of voters suddenly dislike them.
But a republic still depends on democratic participation.
Citizens choose representatives. They choose executives. They choose many local officials. They influence prosecutors, judges and the people who oversee public institutions.
That means constitutional safeguards alone cannot rescue a population that has stopped paying attention. A self-governing people must actually govern itself.
Winn's recurring message was therefore intensely practical: vote, check your registration, know who is running, understand the ideologies behind policies, and do not assume someone else will preserve the system for you.
Arizona's Political Accountability Battles Continue
Winn and Smith briefly discussed the continuing political fight surrounding Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes.
Their comments reflected the deep mistrust many Arizona conservatives have toward the state's current Democratic leadership.
Smith noted that even where one prosecutorial path may end, other legal or investigative avenues can remain open, specifically mentioning Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell.
His larger point was that accountability does not depend on one office. Legislatures investigate. County attorneys have jurisdiction over certain matters. Elections provide another form of judgment.
Political controversies do not necessarily disappear simply because one official declines to pursue them.
For conservatives frustrated with Arizona's institutions, Smith's answer was again participation rather than resignation.
A $15 Fingernail Repair, a Gun and the Collapse of Deterrence
The discussion ended with a crime story so absurd that it almost sounded fictional.
Winn described an Arizona woman accused of opening fire at a Phoenix nail salon after an argument over a $15 fingernail repair.
According to the account Winn discussed, 26-year-old Essence Meyer allegedly argued with employees at Element Nail Bar near 16th Street and Bethany Home Road. She allegedly left, retrieved a gun and fired toward the business, where approximately 18 people were inside.
No one was injured.
She was later arrested and, Winn said, held on $100,000 bond.
"From $15 to $100,000 in less than a day," Winn observed.
The humor surrounding the absurdity did not obscure Smith's larger point.
This is what happens when deterrence disappears.
Criminality Is Contagious When Consequences Disappear
Smith cited the work of criminologist James Q. Wilson while explaining why consequences matter beyond the individual defendant.
"Criminality is contagious," Smith said.
People watch one another. Even people who are not strongly inclined toward crime observe what happens when someone breaks the law.
Did the offender get caught? If caught, was the offender punished? Was there a cost? Or did nothing happen?
When the perceived reward becomes high and the perceived cost becomes low, behavior changes.
"Where's the deterrent?" Smith asked. "There's no deterrence to it."
He described the process in rational-choice terms. If someone believes crime can produce substantial gains with little liability, crime becomes more attractive.
That effect becomes even stronger in a culture where moral restraints have weakened.
Smith pointed to incidents in which groups of young people enter businesses, cause destruction or simply take merchandise. He sees those events as evidence of an increasingly amoral environment in which feelings and immediate desires have displaced internalized rules about right and wrong.
"Until we punish, until we establish an unconscious control in their brains, you're going to have this stuff," he said.
Punishment, in that framework, is not vengeance. It is communication.
It tells the offender that an action has a price. It tells potential offenders that the law is real. It tells the victim that society recognizes the wrong committed against him.
And it tells law-abiding citizens that their restraint is not foolish.
Order Is Not Oppression
That is the thread connecting the seemingly unrelated subjects: Charlie Kirk's assassination, faith, the DSA, Miles Guo and the Chinese Communist Party, Trump's foreign policy, Democratic primaries, Tucson drug crime, illegal immigration, criminal-justice reform, voter registration and even a shooting over a fingernail.
Every subject eventually returns to one question: What kind of society are Americans willing to defend?
A free society requires liberty. But liberty is not lawlessness. A constitutional government limits its own power while still enforcing legitimate laws. A criminal-justice system protects the rights of the accused while remembering the victim. An immigration system can welcome people while still maintaining borders. A political system can tolerate radical ideas without pretending those ideas are harmless.
A nation can protect individual freedom without surrendering the moral confidence required to say that some things are simply wrong.
Greer called this "a time for choosing." Chen described two political systems locked in a global contest. Smith warned that Americans lose their republic when they passively allow others to govern it for them.
Winn's message tied them together: citizens cannot outsource the defense of their civilization—not to a president, Congress, police, a political party or even the next election.
Freedom survives when ordinary people believe it is worth protecting—and then act like it.