The Adult in the Room Podcast with Victoria Taft

J. Michael Waller is Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy, and a leading expert in the fields of foreign propaganda, political warfare, psychological warfare, and subversion. But he never thought he'd have to be exercising that expertise within his own country. He once worked for the CIA in Central America and provided essential analysis in the wake of the fall of the USSR, and he joins the program in the aftermath of the attempt on the life of former President Donald Trump to discuss the failures of the country's intel infrastructure at multiple levels -- the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service. He explains the history of the modern CIA and its connections to the origins of critical race & gender theory, as well as how government has been turning these assets against its own citizens, including politicians who don't toe their line. Buy J. Michael Waller's newest book, Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Intel-Heroes-State-Villains-ebook/dp/B0CB1QJJFJ?tag=victoriataft-20

Newsmax Chief White House Correspondent James Rosen joins Victoria with a fun and enlightening conversation about life in the White House briefing room, what it's like to be the de facto arch-nemesis of Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and his career as an author, namely his multi-volume biography of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as well as his research into the facts beyond the conspiracy theories relating to the Watergate Scandal. BUY JAMES ROSEN'S BOOKS ON AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/stores/James-Rosen/author/B001JRYIKG?tag=victoriataft-20

Gregg Schumacher's family started one of the first and most prestigious furrier companies in the Pacific Northwest, Portland's Schumacher Furs. Now it no longer exists as a business in the city of its birth, thanks to a targeted harassment campaign from mainstream activists like PeTA and their violently extremist cousins, the Animal Liberation Front. The city government refused to help. The police refused to help. The courts refused to help, and even demanded he and his wife pay tens of thousands of dollars in the activists' legal fees. Now, Schumacher has launched a new initiative, Restore Law & Order. Its purpose? To use the legal system to force municipal governments who fail to protect their citizens from groups like those common in the PNW who destroy property and threaten lives to send an extremist political message. Gregg Schumacher joins the program to talk about the organization & its strategy, and to discuss his personal experience with the fringe left and how it has caused the city he once called home to rapidly deteriorate. Home Base: https://www.VictoriaTaft.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wXeX3JZdws Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5kSgsyoj29afLVgwGScPbx Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-adult-in-the-room/id1535902952 And everywhere you get your podcasts!

Studies by government agencies and academic institutions insist that crime is dropping, but for many Americans it sure doesn't seem that way. Major cities are becoming retail deserts as grocery stores, pharmacies & major brand stores flee rising retail theft. City street "takeovers" result in property damage and violence. Police departments are outmanned and underfunded, with lengthy response times endangering lives. Prosecutors are declaring that they're going to stop filing charges for certain crimes, in the name of "equity." And all the while, state & city government continuously seek ways to restrict citizens' rights to defend themselves...a right that even the Supreme Court's liberal wing has repeatedly upheld. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center joins the show to discuss why the perception of crime simply doesn't line up with the federal government's numbers.

The Article III Project's Mike Davis returns for a wild episode, all about the New York trial against former President Donald Trump for allegedly falsifying corporate financial records so that his lawyer & "fixer," Michael Cohen, could deliver secret hush-money payments to adult actress Stormy Daniels. Davis explains (in very colorful terms) why he thinks the charges are bogus and another example of the Democrats' strategy of lawfare against the former President, and why he believes Trump will ultimately be vindicated.

More than half a year has passed since terrorists operating from Gaza raided border settlements in Israel, killing hundreds as they lay in their homes and on the grounds of a music festival organized to promote peaceful coexistence. 132 people still remain counted as hostages of Hamas. Meanwhile, in the US, entitled college students have taken to college campuses to denounce Israel and even call for its annihilation. On this very special episode, Victoria speaks with Jerusalem's Deputy Mayor, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum regarding the situation in both Israel & Gaza, and how activists are being misled by a Palestinian government that promotes terror and blood libel while also using its own citizens as human shields.

Publisher. Author. Raconteur. These are all terms that apply to the guest of this episode, but to his peers in the UK's House of Lords, he is Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour. The former publisher of the Daily Telegraph (UK), the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post, and the National Post (Canada), he has a unique perspective both as a northerly neighbor and a British Lord. On this episode he discusses his thoughts on the upcoming US elections, his longtime friendship with Donald Trump, and the unique world that is the UK news industry. Join us for a chat that is sometimes controversial, often enlightening, and certainly riveting.

Attorney & author Jeffrey Stephens (https://jeffreystephens.com) is the creator of the Nick Reagan & Jordan Sandor espionage book series. As a writer of spy thrillers, he has a unique perspective on spycraft, America's intelligence sector, and the roles that both government and business are increasingly playing in the personal lives of citizens & consumers. He joins the program to discuss is fiction work and how it's been affected by the negative perception that US intelligence has acquired, and how abuse of power hurts the dedicated men & women who work every day to neutralize threats before they make it to our shores.

John Cameron, a mild-mannered real estate agent from Seattle, now has a criminal record thanks to his presence at the disastrous January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol. On this episode of the Adult In The Room, hear in his words why he decided to cross the country for the certification day rally that evolved into one of the darkest days in modern American political history, what he saw personally that day, and how his arrest and subsequent sentencing ignited his desire to get even more active in the political process.

Joe Kent is a retired Green Beret, so you know he's as tough as they come. But now he's taking on a whole new battlefield: the American political process. He's taking on Marie Gluesenkamp Perez for Washington's 3rd Congressional District seat, and today he returns to the show to talk more about his platform, America's conflict with the Iranian-backed Houthi pirates, his experiences in Iraq, and life as a Gold Star husband after the tragic loss of his wife in Syria in 2019.

The federal case against Hunter Biden made its way to Capitol Hill last week with hearings investigating his drug & gun charges. But for former White House Stenographer Mike McCormick, the bigger story continues to be the Biden family's connections to Burisma, the energy firm on whose board Hunter Biden sat. McCormick tells the story on this episode of a flight to Kiev that he himself was part of, and discusses the connections between the Bidens, the Klitschko Brothers, Burisma, and corruption that he believes still goes to the highest level of American government. Get Mike's latest book, The Case to Impeach & Imprison Joe Biden - ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Case-Impeach-Imprison-Joe-Biden/dp/B0CQRKXVFH&tag=victoriataft-20⁠ Visit Mike's Substack, Midnight in the Laptop of Good & Evil - ⁠https://mmccormick.substack.com⁠

Naomi Wolf's outspokenness landed her jobs within the Clinton & Gore campaigns. But she's also drawn criticism from media elites for her regular challenges to narratives of feminism, sexuality, medicine, politics, and national security. Now, in her new book, Facing the Beast: Courage, Faith, and Resistance in a New Dark Age, Wolf tackles world leaders' failed responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and how their own mismanagement led to curtailed rights, malpractice, and social shaming from moralists (mostly on the left). She joins this episode to discuss the looming challenges we are about to face in America after ceding unprecedented control of our lives to government, media, and big tech & pharmaceutical companies.

This week marks 51 years since the trial began for the five men caught burglarizing the DNC offices at the Watergate Hotel. John O'Connor has been researching the scandal for decades, publishing two books on the subject and even building a relationship with whistleblower Mark Felt, known colloquially as "Deep Throat." On this special episode, he returns to the program to talk even more in-depth on the origins of the scandal, how Nixon's downfall was initiated by rogue elements within multiple levels of government, and how current scandals within the White House relate to this embarrassing and somewhat frightening chapter in American politics.

Xi Van Fleet grew up with China's so-called "Cultural Revolution" exploding around her, transforming her homeland into an authoritarian state where the entire populace was indoctrinated into the belief that poverty was purity, that oppression was freedom, and that liberty was poisonous. After the death of Mao Zedong, she emigrated to the US and embraced the true freedom our country presents. Christmas is a time for generosity, prosperity, and celebration of faith and family, and so on this Christmas Eve edition of The Adult in the Room, Xi joins the program to discuss the dangerous path she believes America's political class are leading our country down, which is directly oppositional to those same core ideals, a topic she tackles in even greater detail in her new book ⁠Mao's America: A Survivor's Warning⁠. BUY XI'S NEW BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Maos-America-Survivors-Van-Fleet-ebook/dp/B0BWY3JV76?tag=victoriataft-20

Spycraft isn't usually what you see in the movies or read about in adventure books. It's gritty, it's ugly, and in modern times often requires just as much history & technology expertise as marksmanship. Intelligence operators are some of the most highly-skilled, dangerous people on the planet. So, when their skills are misused by the political elite against US citizens solely for the gain of political capital, the consequences can ruin careers, lives, and fragile peace. Charles "Sam" Faddis is a former CIA operative who led the first incursion into Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of that country, and headed the WMD unit of the agency's Counter-Terrorism Center. He also served as an officer of the US Army's Judge Advocate General Corps, so he cares a great deal about preserving justice in a world where due process seems to have given way to backroom dealings within agencies that have no Constitutional mandate, and should by all rights be neutral, owing allegiance to the nation itself, not to any one member of the US government. Faddis chats with Victoria on this episode about his thoughts on members of government using American investigatory & intelligence agencies as a political cudgel, and what can be done to heal the rot that continues to grow within these extraconstitutional bureaus.

Author, commentator & podcaster Drew Thomas Allen has genuine concerns about the future of America. In his new book, America’s Last Stand: Will You Vote to Save or Destroy America in 2024?, Allen examines why the 2024 election cycle is one of the most critically important in the history of our country, why he believes the Biden administration has deeply damaged the fabric of the United States, and why he thinks it’s not too late to turn things around.

Seattle radio host Jason Rantz (https://jasonrantz.com) has witnessed firsthand how the governing policies of large, liberal-run cities have left chaos reigning. Stores closed due to rampant theft. The mentally ill, homeless and addicted left to ravage the streets and harass residents and visitors. The graft of local governments, who are latched onto the teat of government and pour billions into ineffective programs that only create more misery. It's all the subject of his new book, What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left's Tragic Destruction of Our Cities. Today, Jason joins Victoria to talk about the mayhem unfolding in urban centers across the country, and what can be done about it. BUY JASON'S BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Killing-America-Radical-Destruction/dp/B0BWGQCNFY?tag=victoriataft-20

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is the director of the American Center for Democracy and its Economic Warfare Institute. A native of Israel, she has seen firsthand the devastation the Mideast turmoil has brought to that embattled nation, both through conventional war and the horror of terrorism. She also has extensively studied how western money from the US and its allies -- much of it extracted from taxpayers -- has ended up lining the pockets of the same fundamentalists who slaughter men, women & children with equal glee. Her research into the economics of international crime & violence have led to the publication of four books on the matter including her latest, The Soros Agenda, in which she traces how both naïveté & malice have led to prominent figures in business, government, and professional activism funding the very fundamentalists, terrorists and cartels that are out to destroy them. Dr. Ehrenfeld joins the program to discuss exactly what is going on in Israel, and how foreign aid and well-intentioned charity feeds brutal jihadist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah all the way up to Al Qaeda and ISIS.

NOTE: THIS EPISODE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE MITCH RAPP NOVEL SERIES. New York Times bestselling author Don Bentley spent over a decade flying Apache helicopters for the US Army, including facing down Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan. For his service, he can count among his accolades the Bronze Star and the Air Medal with V Device. He's worked in the private sector for military contractors, spent time as a foreign intelligence and counterintelligence agent for the FBI, and served as a SWAT officer. But despite his dangerous career up until now, he's facing down perhaps his most harrowing challenge...pleasing extremely rabid literary fans. Having previously written novels set in the late Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series, as well as his own series of thrillers starring his own character Matt Drake, Don has been named the newest successor to Vince Flynn's incredibly popular Mitch Rapp series of novels, taking over for his friend and departing author Kyle Mills. On today's episode, Don talks about his experience on the war front, and gives his thoughts on America's exit from Afghanistan and the recent tragedy in Israel. But the mood will certainly lighten as he talks about his career as a writer, navigating the pitfalls of continuity management as a legacy series author, and hilarious interactions with his colleagues. PURCHASE OFFICIAL "MITCH RAPP LIVES" APPAREL: https://cadetmaker.myshopify.com PURCHASE DON BENTLEY'S BOOKS ON AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Bentley/author/B07VQJQX1P?tag=victoriataft-20

“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” ― Golda Meir, A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography Early this past Saturday morning in Israel, while most Americans were turning in for the night or already in bed, a coordinated offensive launched from the Palestinian territory of Gaza into towns and communes near its border with Jewish-controlled Israeli territory. Their targets? Sleeping families and hundreds of revelers at a music & dance festival promoting peace. The attack is being called by some “Israel’s 9/11.” The death toll, as of this episode’s publishing, is over 1,200 Israelis, with over 2,700 wounded. Now, Israel is mobilizing for what some believe will be an overwhelming and decisive counteroffensive. The first guest on today’s special episode of The Adult in the Room Podcast is Wayne Black, a security consultant and expert who previously managed the security detail for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Black explains why he worries an attack like the one seen out of Gaza this weekend can’t be ruled out here in the US, and what individuals can do to maximize their own safety and security in the event of danger. Then, Victoria is joined to close the show by Major General Paul E. Vallely, who gives his own analysis of the situation in Israel, and opines on the US government’s response to the crisis.

Mark Twain, allegedly quoting Disraeli, once said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." California politicians led by Gavin Newsom seem determined to apply all three in their crusade against firearms and those who own them. They're using traditional strategies like the demonization of so-called "assault weapons" and bans of upsized magazines, but are also employing bizarre legal maneuvers such as environmental policy and exploiting stereotypes surrounding mental illness and cannabis use to crack down on what they falsely claim is the nations leading cause of death for children. C.D. "Chuck" Michel is leading the charge as the President and General Counsel for the California Rifle & Pistol Association. Today, he joins the program to talk about Newsom's recent legislative actions against gun rights and why the secret weapon to defeat them may lie within, of all places, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Adult in the Room Podcast returns with a deep dive into recent gun rights developments including the overturning of California's extended magazine ban, and a critical trial in Oregon over the constitutionality of Ballot Measure 114, an onerous gun control bill passed last year that similarly bands high-capacity magazines and creates additional background check and paperwork requirements for buyers. Is the progressive left using societal violence and chaos as a weapon against the Judicial Branch? Then, we have a brief but fascinating talk with J. Christian Adams of the Public Interest Legal Foundation about the election integrity report cards going into primary season, and where he still has concerns, including a case in Maine involving suppression of speech.

Victoria is joined on the program by author & journalist Joe Allen, whose latest book "DARK ÆON: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity" examines both the physical and metaphysical dangers humanity faces as we stand at the precipice of artificial general intelligence. Allen believes the transhumanist movement seeks not only to leap headfirst into critically dangerous technology, but to supplant all faith and belief with themselves as a new pantheon to a new generation of intelligent machines. What are the risks, and how can we mitigate them?

Former White House stenographer Mike McCormick returns with more from the infamous Hunter Biden laptop files. What role did he play in connecting his father to Ukrainian firm Burisma? Why did he seemingly ditch his Secret Service detail while visiting family? And what is the Biden family's connection to a vicious Honduran cartel? Check out this episode of The Adult in the Room to hear all the details.

"Tucker" author Chadwick Moore returns to the program to talk the book's release, and to share more stories from his research of Tucker Carlson, including stories of his faith, his sense of honor, and even a few revelations about Carlson's relationship with the controversial Hunter Biden, a man that Carlson once counted as a friend before Biden's spiral into addiction and corruption. Pick up your copy of "Tucker" on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Tucker/dp/B0CD9JLHTS?tag=victoriataft-20