Schweizer argued that both President Donald Trump and Reagan before understood how taking a hard line in negotiations often breeds dissension and feuds among the other side.

In Iran, he noted, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, Senior Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, was reported to say that Iran needed to negotiate with the US to avoid destroying itself. He was loudly contradicted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which represents the most hardline elements in the regime. “Now, members of parliament have jumped in and accused the IRGC of destroying the country. This is happening openly in the Iranian public,” Schweizer said.

“If you look at China, in the last two years, more than 45 generals in China’s military have gone missing. They’ve been ‘disappeared.’ Six of them sat on the Central Military Commission, which is the most important political body in the entire country,” Schweizer said. Chinese President Xi Jinping had two members of that commission arrested right before he left for the summit talks in Washington last week.

“The only two [commission members] left are Xi himself, and the guy that he had investigating the other people,” Schweizer told Watters. “So, the hard line is working. It’s leading to fragmentation in the leadership, very similar to what Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s, disorienting the Kremlin. And we all know how that ended.”

Watters notes that Reagan got a lot of criticism at the time for taking a hardline stance with the Soviet Union, which mirrors in Trump’s sagging job approval numbers today.

“Yeah, [Trump’s] not getting political credit right now,” Schweizer agreed. Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter, actually got a kiss from Leonid Brezhnev in 1979 when they signed the SALT agreements, and he was praised by the media,” he added. “The media does not give credit in the short term to political leaders, especially conservatives. But I think what you’re going to see in the medium-to-long term, is this will yield enormous dividends. It’s reshaping the Middle East and it’s creating a huge problem for China.”

Schweizer also believes Xi’s primary goal for the summit was to press Trump for some kind of agreement reining in the fast development of artificial intelligence (AI) models. Trump, however, didn’t bite.

“China desperately needs some kind of restrictions on American AI because they are falling increasingly behind. And that’s just intolerable to them, just like when the Soviets fell behind the United States during the arms race in the 1980s.”

The purity tests never stop.

Eggers started with the Last Ditch bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts, which relaxed its mask requirement for one night a week as it struggled financially, then apologized after backlash — only to face a new round of criticism because the apology lacked alt text.

The Boston Globe reported that the bar’s mask-optional Saturday policy triggered hundreds of comments and accusations of ableism before the apology created another fight.

“They literally can’t stop making people mad,” Eggers said. “This story is the best story this year.”

He then turned to Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who rejected the socialist label while arguing that wealthy Americans should be taxed more heavily to fund broader public investment.

“Let me check my notes. Wait. That’s socialism, Dan,” Eggers said. “He might be a socialist, but he’s definitely a liar.”

Eggers also criticized El-Sayed for not directly answering a Persian-American student who asked him to condemn Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, saying the exchange showed a gap between El-Sayed’s public posture and what he was willing to say in the moment.

At Stanford, Eggers seized on another controversy: the university removed a promotional image after acknowledging that an AI-generated Black woman had replaced a Hispanic male student in violation of Stanford policy.

Eggers’ takeaway: even institutions already steeped in diversity politics can still fail the next ideological test. “Being woke is enough,” he said. “We have to be, like, specifically woke to this elite standard.”

He closed with a broader point after President Xi Jinping’s state visit: Americans who believe the U.S. is uniquely oppressive should try the same aggressive protest style in China.

“Go try protesting over there,” Eggers said. “See how it goes for you.”

Watch the clip above.

Just before leaving for his summit meeting in Washington, Eggers noted, Xi purged two generals from the country’s Central Military Commission. He appeared on OAN’s “The Anchormen” show with OAN newscasters Dan Ball and Riley Lewis.

“Right now, it’s only got two because the other six [commission] members have been removed by President Xi for not being sufficiently politically reliable,” Eggers said.

Asked if he thought the Chinese would use any means possible to destabilize the US, Eggers said, “China thinks in terms of dynasties, not decades, so it’s consistent with their history.”

“They got rid of Winnie the Pooh images for a while in China because people kept kind of comparing President Xi to Winnie the Pooh,” Eggers noted, before adding that Xi “is now in the business of replacing and disappearing his top military aides. I think it’s about 45 Chinese generals” that have been replaced in the past two years, with the two most recently from the country’s top military commission.

Xi’s purges were also the topic of the most recent episode of The Drill Down, the GAI podcast Eggers co-hosts with GAI President Peter Schweizer.

The conversation with Ball and Owens was wide-ranging and often humorous. Eggers relates the story of how in the Fall of 2011 he was working at a talk radio station in Tallahassee when he first met Schweizer.

“We have on as a guest this guy named Peter Schweizer, who had just written a book called Throw Them All Out and that book exposed insider trading by Congress. “And I said, ‘what are you going to do next?’ And he says, ‘Well, I’m going to start up an institute, a think tank, and we’re going to we’re going to look into federal government corruption,’” Eggers recalled.

“And I was, as you noted, one of his original hires,” Eggers told the hosts.

“The hidden story here is that Donald Trump did President Xi a big favor,” Schweizer said. “But keep in mind that, coming into the summit, President Xi is facing a vast amount of instability within China. As he got on the plane to come to the United States, he announced the arrest and the purging of two members of the Central Military Commission of China, which, if you want to lead China, the most important position is to be chairman of the Central Military Commission.”

“There’s a lot of turmoil because Xi has tried to concentrate power and he’s trying to eliminate opposition,” Schweizer said.

Schweizer also addressed China’s designs on Taiwan, where he believes the threat is not as much about a full-scale invasion, but “without firing a shot,” Schweizer said. “What China really wants to do is take Taiwan without a fight, and it may not be that difficult to do. The second most popular political party in Taiwan is the KMT, which used to be the old Chiang Kai-shek party,” he noted. “Boy, have times changed. That party is now pro-Beijing. They do not want independence. In fact, the leader of that party was just in Beijing a couple of weeks ago, getting a red-carpet welcome.”

With US reliance on Taiwan for advanced semiconductors, “we need to prepare for a war, but we need to bolster Taiwan domestically and politically, because they are a long-time ally. They are an important economic component to us, and we need to stand by them and their independence,” Schweizer told Kudlow.

Kudlow said, “the Chinese economy is in lousy shape. The Chinese stock market hasn’t moved in years, whereas our stock market is booming. We’re pulling away from them in superintelligence or AI.”

Schweizer agreed and also discussed why the developing need for Beijing to buy its oil on the open market, now that Venezuelan and Iranian oil is unavailable to them, means Xi needs for Trump to make a deal with Iran. China imports 90 percent of its petroleum and has been draining its reserves since the US – Iran conflict began.

Schweizer closed by expressing doubt about China’s honoring any agreement it might agree to sign regarding AI or trade, noting the country violated similar promises on the coronavirus research that led to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.

“We will find out on Monday from our trade reps about the commodity purchases, and the trade deal has been extended a couple of months,” Kudlow said. “I was engaged in China trade when I worked for Mr. Trump in the first term, and quite frankly, China never really delivered on the promises that they kept.”

Appearing on The Ingraham Angle, Schweizer argued that Trump entered the meeting from a position of strength because Xi has been purging senior military leaders while China’s economy shows signs of strain.

“When President Xi flew to the United States for this meeting, he signed the orders to detain and arrest two members of the Central Military Commission of China,” Schweizer said.

That commission matters, Schweizer argued, because it sits at the heart of Chinese military power.

“This is the most important body in all of China,” he said. “More important than heading up the Communist Party. More important than being president is being head of this commission.”

Reuters reported last week that China expelled two top military leaders, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, from the Communist Party and military over allegations that included disloyalty and corruption. Zhang had served as a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission.

Schweizer said the shake-up goes much deeper.

“He’s purged six of the eight members,” Schweizer said of Xi. “Why? Because he said they’re politically unreliable.”

Schweizer also said 45 Chinese generals have disappeared over the last several years because Beijing no longer considered them politically dependable.

His larger point: Xi’s grip on power may look formidable from the outside, but repeated military purges suggest serious distrust inside the system.

China has also been releasing less economic data as growth slows, Schweizer noted, adding another pressure point for Beijing.

“So yes, Trump has the upper hand,” he said.

Schweizer praised Trump’s handling of Xi as firm without being reckless.

“You want to be respectful. You want to communicate. You want to maintain lines of communication,” he said. “You don’t want to give anything away.”

He called Trump’s decision to walk Xi through the U.S. Constitution before his departure a “masterstroke.”

“This is what the First Amendment says. This is what the Second Amendment says,” Schweizer recalled. “It sends a message about the battle of ideas.”

Schweizer also pointed to the symbolism surrounding Xi’s visit.

After Ingraham noted that Christian-themed songs were performed at the state dinner, Schweizer compared the moment to Ronald Reagan’s Cold War strategy of confronting the Soviet Union ideologically while keeping diplomatic channels open.

“That symbolism is powerful,” he said, recalling Reagan’s “evil empire” rhetoric and meetings with Soviet dissidents.

Schweizer also highlighted Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s decision to announce a new crackdown on birth tourism just hours before Xi arrived.

Rubio said the administration would restrict visas for people who “engage in or facilitate” birth tourism, including those who profit from operations designed to secure U.S. citizenship for children born here. Chinese-run birth-tourism networks have been a particular focus of federal enforcement.

To Schweizer, the timing mattered.

“He played strength,” he said of Trump. “He did it respectfully.”

Watch the clip above.