Guests - Brad Thayer, Kelly Walker, Jay Tolkoff, Alex Kolodin
Brad Thayer: China, Taiwan and the War America Never Finished
The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Communism did not.
That was Dr. Bradley Thayer’s central message as Kathleen Winn turned her attention back toward China following President Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Thayer, author of America’s 100 Years’ War: How to Win Against Communism, argued that Americans should view China not simply as an economic competitor but as the latest and most powerful front in a century-long ideological struggle.
Thayer saw three immediate takeaways from the Trump-Xi meeting. First, he believed the meeting did no obvious harm to the bilateral relationship. Second, Taiwan received less public attention than he expected, making the fate of a planned $14 billion Taiwan defense package especially important to watch. Third, he viewed the military display surrounding Xi’s visit and the decision to expose the Chinese leader to America’s founding documents as a form of political warfare: a deliberate contrast between communist authoritarianism and the American constitutional tradition. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Xi Jinping’s Purges and a “Neo-Stalinist” China
The discussion quickly turned to Xi’s continued purging of senior Chinese military officers.
Thayer stressed that the People’s Liberation Army does not ultimately answer to a neutral Chinese state. “It serves the Communist Party of China,” he said.
That distinction matters. In Thayer’s analysis, Xi can use anti-corruption campaigns both to remove genuinely corrupt officers and to eliminate political enemies and officials associated with previous leadership factions.
“I always see Xi Jinping’s action as kind of a neo-Stalinism,” Thayer said.
The difference is technology. Stalin required an enormous secret-police apparatus to monitor and purge potential opponents. Xi presides over what Thayer called a “surveillance superpower,” allowing the regime to watch its own population and political class on a scale previous dictators could only imagine. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Why Taiwan Matters to Every American
For Thayer, Taiwan is not an obscure territorial dispute on the other side of the Pacific.
It is an American economic and national-security issue.
He identified three reasons.
First is semiconductor production. A Chinese blockade or attack that disrupted Taiwan’s chip industry could cripple everything from computers and automobiles to phones and advanced military systems. Thayer warned the consequences could be severe enough to push the United States into “depression—not recession, but depression.”
Second, Taiwan occupies critical geopolitical space, acting as what Thayer called a “cork in the bottle” limiting China’s access to the wider Pacific.
Third, Taiwan represents something ideologically dangerous to Beijing: evidence that a culturally Chinese society can be prosperous, democratic and free without Communist Party rule.
“It shows what China can be and will be, hopefully, when the Chinese Communist Party has fallen from power,” Thayer said. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
America’s 100-Year Fight With Communism
Thayer’s larger argument is that Americans made a mistake when they assumed communism had been defeated in 1991.
“We’ve been fighting this ideology for over 100 years,” he said, tracing the conflict back to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
His prescription begins with confidence. Americans, he argued, need to remember the principles that built their civilization rather than accepting the premise that their political system is uniquely defective.
“We’re going to win this fight,” Thayer said, “because we’re going to remember who we are.”
He contrasted America’s tradition of individual liberty with communist regimes responsible for enormous human suffering and argued that Western civilization remains the source of the scientific, political and cultural institutions Americans too often take for granted. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Winn connected the subject to America’s increasingly poisonous internal politics. Political disagreement once meant argument and debate. Today, she said, disagreement is too often treated as moral treason.
Thayer went further, arguing that Marxist and Leninist impulses have migrated into American political institutions. Whether Americans accept that characterization or not, his warning was unmistakable: do not assume ideological movements disappear simply because their original flag comes down.
His answer was not despair.
It was participation.
“Vote and take two of your friends and take your family with you,” Thayer said. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Kelly Walker: Crime, District 5 and a Demand for Different Leadership
Kelly Walker brought the conversation from Beijing directly back to Tucson.
Walker said he has been closely following Pima County’s Supervisor District 5 race, where Republican Jeff Rhodes is challenging appointed Supervisor Andres Cano. For Walker and Winn, the special election is about much more than changing one name on the Board of Supervisors. It is an opportunity to disrupt a governing structure in which most controversial decisions currently break along predictable partisan lines.
Walker argued that Tucson has been moving in the wrong direction for years.
“It is time for a change,” he said.
Winn’s hope is that adding a second conservative voice to the board would at least force more debate instead of allowing routine 4-1 decisions. Walker agreed that a significant portion of Pima County’s population feels politically unrepresented. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Walker Questions Cano’s Priorities
Walker criticized reports surrounding Cano’s appointment and swearing-in, including an event that Winn and Walker discussed as costing taxpayers roughly $5,000. Walker acknowledged that he was still verifying some details, but questioned why taxpayers should finance a celebration for an official who had been appointed rather than elected.
“Shouldn’t he roll up his sleeves and get to work?” Walker asked. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
The sharper criticism concerned public safety.
Winn and Walker pointed to recent violent incidents in and around District 5 and complained that local political leaders seem more willing to discuss gun restrictions than the people committing crimes.
Walker rejected the idea that public safety should be treated as a partisan concern.
“We need to look at this at a community level and say, what’s happening?” he said.
He remembers a Tucson of the 1980s and 1990s that he described as cleaner, safer and more vibrant.
“It’s not the same Tucson,” Walker said. “And we need a change.” 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
When Crime Drives Away Customers
The human cost became clearer when Winn raised the experience of a local restaurant whose owners had dealt with repeated vandalism, broken windows and damage to vehicles.
Walker sympathized with the family and said businesses already face enough challenges simply trying to stay profitable.
For Winn, public safety is the first test of local government. It makes little sense to spend millions on programs and development initiatives while business owners cannot reliably protect the property for which they pay taxes, permits and operating costs.
Walker connected that failure to a larger national debate over criminal justice. He discussed information he had received about Pima County’s participation in the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, which is intended to reduce unnecessary jail incarceration. Walker said he planned to investigate the program further and its local effects rather than draw conclusions before completing his reporting.
The underlying question was larger: has the pendulum swung so far toward reducing incarceration that consequences for criminal behavior have weakened?
Walker believes it has.
“If there’s no real penalty, the criminals are just going to keep doing it again and again,” he said.
Republicans, Democrats and a City That Still Has to Function
Walker repeatedly resisted reducing everything to a simple party label.
He pointed to traditional Democrats and Hispanic voters who may not identify as Republicans but disagree with progressive positions on crime, family and culture.
“The Republican versus Democrat at some point breaks down into an abstraction,” Walker said.
His pitch was aimed at anyone unhappy with the condition of the community: look around, measure the results and decide whether the current leadership deserves another term.
“Look at the condition of our county,” Walker said. “We’re not the same Tucson that we were.”
For Walker, the minimum standard should not be ideological agreement. It should be a functioning community with safe streets where families and businesses can live without fear.
Jay Tolkoff: Proposition 425 Is a “Blank Check”
If Walker’s concern was public safety, Jay Tolkoff’s was the public checkbook.
Tolkoff joined Winn for a sustained attack on Proposition 425, the Pima County expenditure-limit measure that would give county government substantially greater spending authority.
His frustration starts with a habit he sees throughout government: failure is routinely treated as evidence that a program needs more money.
“I find it troubling when the answer to all our ills is more money,” Tolkoff said. “They don’t have the ability to look at things that aren’t working and say, well, we need to put an end to it.”
He used affordable housing as an example. Tolkoff recalled criticizing publicly funded projects whose per-unit construction costs exceeded those of private luxury developments.
As a businessman, he said, the disconnect is difficult to understand.
Government should still have a bottom line.
“There is an end to the money,” Tolkoff said. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
A 75 Percent Increase in Spending Authority
Tolkoff characterized Proposition 425 as one of the largest expansions of county spending authority he has seen.
“Prop 425, this is just the biggest money grab ever in Pima County,” he said.
His comparison was deliberately simple: imagine an employer announcing a 75 percent raise because business had been good.
Tolkoff noted that Maricopa County sought an expenditure-limit adjustment decades ago, but argued its increase was far smaller. His objection is not to ever revisiting an old spending formula. He said he could understand an increase of 10 or 15 percent to account for technological and governmental changes since the original limit was established.
“But 75 percent,” he said, “this is just a money grab.” 8700227_2026-09-28-185727 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
The Difference Between Permission to Spend and Money to Spend
One of Tolkoff’s central points was that Proposition 425 does not magically create hundreds of millions of dollars.
It expands the amount county government is permitted to spend.
That distinction matters because permanent new programs create permanent obligations. Once government adds staff, projects and recurring expenses, Tolkoff argued, officials will eventually come back to taxpayers for the revenue needed to sustain them.
His fear is that the politically popular services voters value most—roads, parks and law enforcement—could then become leverage for future tax increases.
“It’s also what they’re saying is, hand over the checkbook,” Tolkoff said. “We’re going to write the checks from here on out and you’re just going to have to like it.” 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
He also objected to the permanent nature of the change. A bond eventually expires. Proposition 425, as discussed by Tolkoff, would change the county’s spending baseline indefinitely.
Support From People Whose Paychecks Depend on Government
Tolkoff and Winn also examined the public arguments submitted for and against Proposition 425.
Tolkoff said most of the written arguments supporting it came from elected officials or people associated with publicly funded institutions.
That, he argued, should tell voters something.
“If you look at all the local propositions, almost every single one out there is asking for money,” he said. “It just doesn’t quit.” 8700227_2026-09-28-185727 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
His final recommendation left no ambiguity: vote no.
Spending More and Getting Less
Tolkoff broadened the same critique to Tucson city government.
He compared statements from Mayor Regina Romero about investments in police and public safety with police staffing figures he had found from mayoral forums several years apart. His takeaway was that spending more is meaningless if the measurable result is fewer officers or worse service.
“That’s the point, Kathleen,” Tolkoff said. “They’re spending money telling you that that’s what they’re doing, but they’re not getting the results.”
That is the metric he wants applied throughout local government: not intentions, not press releases, not the size of the appropriation.
Results. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Higher Minimum Wages, Higher Costs and More Poverty
The conversation eventually moved to Tucson’s economy and minimum wage.
Tolkoff contrasted Tucson’s rising wage mandates with Tennessee, arguing that a higher statutory minimum wage does not automatically translate into less poverty.
His concern is that businesses forced to absorb higher entry-level labor costs will respond through higher prices, fewer employees or greater automation. Workers may earn more per hour while families simultaneously pay more for food, housing and services.
“We’re creating poverty here,” Tolkoff said. “We’re not getting rid of it.”
For Tolkoff, Proposition 425 fits into the same pattern: government repeatedly responds to economic problems by increasing the amount of money it controls rather than questioning whether its original intervention worked.
Alex Kolodin: Felony Records, Election Law and the Secretary of State Race
State Rep. Alex Kolodin, the Republican candidate for Arizona secretary of state, closed with a direct attack on incumbent Adrian Fontes over the handling of federal felony-conviction information used to maintain voter rolls.
Winn cited Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s contention that Justice Department officials had made federal felony reports available to Arizona, contradicting claims attributed to Fontes.
Kolodin accused Fontes of failing to carry out his statutory responsibilities and then misleading voters about what happened.
“Because of Adrian Fontes, we have potentially a year’s worth of ineligible felons—or even more—who are going to potentially be able to vote in this upcoming election,” Kolodin argued.
The allegation centers on whether felony information was properly obtained, transmitted and incorporated into Arizona’s statewide voter-registration system. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Kolodin Says Rural Counties Were Given an Impossible Task
Kolodin said the problem was not merely missing information.
Even when some felony data was made available, he argued, it was not integrated into the statewide database in the manner required by law. Instead, he said counties were directed to retrieve files and process information themselves.
For Maricopa County, that may be burdensome.
For small rural counties with tiny elections staffs, Kolodin said, it can be practically impossible while those same employees are trying to administer an election.
He pointed to Navajo County as an example, describing an elections office with only a handful of employees.
Kolodin called it another attempt to push responsibility downward while leaving counties to absorb the consequences.
“Deflect blame, fail to take responsibility, and fail to follow the law,” he said. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Jail Voting: Eligible Voters Still Need Safeguards
Winn then raised reports that tablets had been made available in Pima County jails to allow inmates to register to vote.
Kolodin drew an important distinction.
A person being held in custody but not yet convicted of a disqualifying felony may still be an eligible voter.
His objection was not to that person voting. In fact, Kolodin said he previously sponsored legislation intended to create a secure process allowing eligible inmates to exercise their voting rights.
His proposed system, he said, would have included observers, chain-of-custody protections and safeguards against coercion.
He accused Fontes of opposing that approach while favoring an administrative system Kolodin believes lacks sufficient protections.
“Could you imagine people voting in a jailhouse environment with zero safeguards?” Kolodin asked. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
The distinction matters. Election integrity, Kolodin argued, is not about preventing lawful voters from voting. It is about making sure lawful votes are cast securely while ineligible registrations are removed as the law requires.
A Legal Record Against Fontes
Kolodin also pointed to his history of litigation involving the secretary of state.
Asked about his record, he said he believed he had prevailed against Fontes in every case they had litigated against one another, while adding the caveat that he could be forgetting one.
The broader point was that Kolodin views the secretary of state’s office as an institution that must operate within statutory boundaries rather than allowing administrative discretion to become election law by another name.
He singled out previous litigation involving the Elections Procedures Manual as another example of the conflict. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
The Fight Over Citizenship and the Voter Rolls
Kolodin also sharply criticized Attorney General Kris Mayes over a dispute involving the Justice Department and voter-roll citizenship verification.
His characterization was that Arizona’s Democratic statewide officials are resisting federal efforts intended to ensure noncitizens are not registered.
“What they’re complaining about,” Kolodin said, “is [the Department of Justice] trying to make sure that there aren’t non-citizens on our voter rolls.”
The accusations are politically charged, but Kolodin sees them as part of a consistent philosophical divide: election officials should make participation easy for eligible voters while aggressively enforcing the eligibility rules already written into law. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Why Kolodin Says Pima County Could Decide the Race
Kolodin’s closing message was aimed directly at Southern Arizona.
Republicans in Pima County may live in a heavily Democratic county and assume their votes cannot change local government. Kolodin argued that statewide races operate differently.
“This all comes down to Pima County,” he said.
A Republican vote cast in Tucson counts exactly as much in a statewide contest as one cast in Mohave or Yavapai County. Historically lower Republican turnout in Pima County therefore represents an enormous pool of potential statewide votes.
Kolodin said Pima County Republicans overperformed expectations during the primary and urged them to do it again in November.
“Pima County voters this election cycle are the most powerful that you’ve ever been,” he said. 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
Mobile Voting Centers and Equal Rules for Every Ballot
Winn raised another Pima County election issue: mobile voting centers whose locations may change and be announced on relatively short notice.
Kolodin said he has no philosophical objection to mobile voting.
In fact, he supports expanding access to secure in-person voting.
The condition is transparency.
Mobile centers, he argued, should operate with the same advance notice, observer access, chain of custody and security standards applied to conventional polling locations.
“When you are using them as a way to hide the ball,” Kolodin said, including last-minute announcements or barriers to observers, “that’s completely unacceptable.”
His promise as a candidate was that voters should receive the same protections regardless of how they cast a ballot.
“When I’m Secretary of State,” Kolodin said, “we’re going to make sure that every voter—whether they vote at a mobile voting center, whether they vote in person at the polls, whether they vote by mail—that every voter enjoys the same protections.” 8700227_2026-09-28-185727
The Common Thread: Consequences
The subjects ranged from Xi Jinping and Taiwan to Tucson crime, Proposition 425 and Arizona election law, but one theme connected them all: consequences.
Thayer warned about the consequences of ignoring communist ideology and Taiwan’s strategic importance. Walker argued Tucson is experiencing the consequences of local leadership that has failed to make public safety its first responsibility. Tolkoff said taxpayers are living with the consequences of government programs that receive more money regardless of performance. Kolodin argued election officials must face consequences when they fail to follow the laws governing voter registration and election administration.
For Winn, the approaching election is where those arguments ultimately meet.
Government is not abstract. Neither is leadership.
Voters decide who receives power, who spends their money, who enforces their laws and who is held responsible when the system fails.