Joel Rosenberg: "The Beijing Betrayal"
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It's Live in the Bream with the host of Fox News Sunday, Shannon Bream. We are welcoming back one of my all-time favorite people and authors to Live in the Bream because he's got a new book coming out, which as we have talked about in the past, when this happens, the minute I open the cover, you're not going to hear from me for at least three or four days until it's done.

So I have to read these books strategically, but I'm so excited for this new one. I want to welcome back my friend Joel Rosenberg. He's a New York Times bestselling author, 18 novels, five nonfiction. He's got nearly five million copies in print. You've seen him on our air at Fox News. He's also editor in chief of All Israel News. He lives life in a very exciting way from a couple of parches. He is in Jerusalem. He is all over the world. And today he is on Live in the Bream. Joel, welcome back.

Hey, Shannon, great to be with you. I'm just so grateful for your friendship. And I love that you love these novels. It's one of the things I well, that's what originally connected us. I'm glad the friendship. But I'm so grateful. And Marcus Riker, you have seemed to really taken most to him maybe than more than the other characters.

Listen, Marcus and I, I mean, I need to know every detail of his life and I'm going to find out in the Beijing Beach Trail. This is the last of the Marcus Riker novels, if I'm correct. This is the explosive finale. Yes, this is literally he has never been in so much danger as this. And I'm not telling you whether he makes it.

You know, I made it a thing where my characters, even the best of them can die. And yes, they can. People get mad at me. You've gotten mad at me. My wife's gotten mad at me at times. I'm not saying about this one, but I love Marcus. But he lives, you know, he lives on the edge. Yes, he does. He does. So his mother, right from the first book, The Kremlin Conspiracy.

she used to say to him as he was growing up, don't die and don't get arrested. This was her. Too late for. Yeah. For at least one part of that. He's been in more scrapes and more and more, you know, custody and more all kinds of crazy things, life defying, death defying activities. And the great thing about these books is not only are they fascinating fiction reads, but like we always talk about, they are very much like,

Woven through them is all kinds of politics of current events. This one deals with a lot of these actors. It's got China. It's got Pakistan. The Middle East is always part of the focus. And you write so convincingly as if you yourself have been a Marcus Riker type. I don't know. Maybe you're a secret agent that I don't know about. No, I'm not.

But the politics and the current events are always woven through in a way that makes you stop and think, oh, my goodness, what does Joel know that we don't know? How do you write with such detail and insight? Well, as you know, Shannon, I lived in Washington for 24 years. That's where we got to know each other. We talked about this before we came on. But, you know, I am a failed political consultant. Everyone I work for.

100% failure rate, all my candidates lost and or or even got so disgusted that they retired from politics entirely or they went on to do good things. But long after me, right? So but the benefit of that was not that I was so helpful to them, but they were actually quite helpful to me. I learned a lot about Washington, a lot about politics, a lot about geopolitics.

living in DC, working on these presidential campaigns, working briefly for a while for then former prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. And I got to know their teams. I got to know their advisors. I got to know their world. And that is what I've tried to take and make into really compelling political thrillers. I don't think you have to have worked in politics

in any senior level or at all to write good political thrillers. But I think that has been an advantage that I've had. And it's why presidents and prime ministers and kings and crown princes, I think, do find them interesting because, you know, as you know, because you're obviously the ultimate Washingtonian in this sense, not in your soul, but it's certainly a

in my profession in your profession absolutely yeah is is when you when you see a movie and a and

and Marine One lands on the South Lawn of the White House, when they have the wrong helicopter, it throws you, right? When you see things that are happening in political life that you're like, it just, it irks you and it can throw you out of the story. Now, for most people, they don't see it. When CIA directors are reading my books, when members of Congress are reading my books, when, you know, the King of Jordan is reading the book, you can't get those details wrong, right?

they may not they may not agree with my political point of view or my spiritual point of view or or even the premise but if they get hooked they don't want to get thrown out because they're like oh my gosh if i have to read one more thing that's completely unrealistic or just lazy then you know that's gonna be a problem and i think my my failed life in politics actually helped it helped me get out of one sphere but but at least have that that you know the the

the feeling of the ecosystem and trying to make that come to life in these books. Well, I'm glad that it drove you into these books because fiction and nonfiction alike, you've written so many fascinating, entertaining, but educational books at the same time. So in this one where we meet Marcus, I mean, he's tracking down something that's going on in Pakistan.

But you get to at the heart of the book, something that a lot of folks here in Washington and really around the world are worried about, which is China ultimately deciding to make a move on Taiwan. There was the head of the Indo-Pacific Command just a couple of weeks ago. He said these drills that they're running around Taiwan, China's running right now, these aren't rehearsals. These are actually them getting ready to do this. And he was very concerned about the timeline.

And because the U.S. has been so distracted and invested in places like Ukraine, like the Middle East, I mean, we have a lot of places we've got to pay attention and have got to be worried about outcomes. China is having a moment of not being in the spotlight as much when it comes to this threat to Taiwan, but it is very much potentially on the cusp of action there as China is really throwing its weight around in that region.

Yeah, that's true, Shannon. And I think this was particularly true over the last four years as the Biden-Harris team inadvertently set into motion a lot of global warfare by surrendering Afghanistan, by pulling the Jenga stick, as it were, out of the game, pulling all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. And President Biden at the time told us, no, it's fine. The Afghan government and the military will be fine. And everybody seemed to be telling him, no, if you do this,

the whole system will collapse like a Jenga game and the Taliban will take over. He didn't agree with it. He didn't believe it, but that's exactly what happened. And that strategic and terrible miscalculation caused Russian President Vladimir Putin to go, all right, I'm dealing with a snowflake. Biden doesn't know what he's doing and I can go take Ukraine and he won't stop me. I think the Afghan debacle led the Iranian regime

to think we can open a seven front war against Israel. And what will Biden do to really stop us? The one actor of the big three danger points is communist China. And Xi Jinping did not yet decide during the Biden years to, you know, pull the trigger as it were and go after Taiwan. I think he was tempted, Shannon. I really, the people I've talked to say, and if Harris had won,

he may have felt that it's time, that the U.S. is not capable or doesn't know how at the political leadership side to stop communist China. However, I do think President Trump's reemergence on the scene has changed the game, right? Because even though we're not hearing the word China every day in the news, underneath a lot of Trump's first month decisions geopolitically, it was China, right? When he said, we're not giving Panama...

We're not giving the Panama Canal to China. You know, we'll take it back if we have to. Right. He sends secretaries. Sorry for the bad Trump impression. But sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio then down to Panama. And what happened? The Panamanian president said, we surrender. We surrender. Like we'll shift away from China. We'll be back in the American the U.S. sphere. That was big. The whole issue of Greenland, that

That's about China and countering Chinese threats to the United States. So we're seeing that, but it's true at the core of what you're saying is I don't even think in the first month, five, six weeks that the Trump administration has gotten their China focus 100%. They're dealing with Ukraine and Russia. They're dealing with Israel and the Middle East and Saudi Arabia.

And they're dealing with some friends, trying to get the friends back into the look, we're the superpower of the world. You need to support us. We'll support you, but they're not gonna be a bunch of freebies. This is JD Vance going to Europe, right? This is Mexico. This is Canada.

A lot of these things are sending signals to China and Trump's basically telegraphing them as, "Don't mess with me." But could they move? They could. I think Taiwan and our Pacific allies have a bit of a reprieve for the moment

But the Beijing betrayal is about a series of American miscalculations and how much China is dead set, not just against taking a little island of Taiwan. That's just a stepping stone. They want to unravel the American alliance in the Pacific, knowing that if communist China were to invade Taiwan and the U.S. doesn't go to full-on war to protect this little democracy, then every ally in the Pacific, every American ally,

is going to be unnerved and think, all right, we don't have an alliance. The South Koreans, the Japanese, Singapore, Australia, the Philippines, everybody's going to freak. And then you won't have an alliance. And then it will be open season for Xi Jinping in the Pacific.

which is terrifying on so many different levels and something that we've talked about on fox news sunday multiple times and with multiple different administration officials and lawmakers is that taiwan has had orders into the u.s for defense materials for you know weapons and missiles and all kinds of things but

to the tunes of billions of dollars that we are backlogged on. We have not been able to provide them and people will debate, is that because of what we've sent to Ukraine and the Middle East, the defense production situation here in the US? But it's clear that Taiwan has tried to get some of what they need to be prepared for what many people are beginning to believe is inevitable. And we just haven't been able to deliver on those contracts.

And, you know, there's another analysis here by one think tank in D.C. that said if China does go in, we are so short just as the U.S. on certain missiles and other weaponry that we would need that we are in danger of not being able to directly defend Taiwan if that's the position that we go in and take.

So there are real questions about what options Taiwan has and what our options are to help them. And as you said, how far would the U.S. go? So Taiwan has got to be feeling very vulnerable at this point. Yeah, it's chilling, actually. But wait, it gets worse. Oh, great. We'll have more live in the Bream in a moment.

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At least in the Beijing betrayal, fictional scenario, I'll say that first and then we'll tie it to real world events. In the Beijing betrayal, it's not just that Marcus Riker stumbles upon in a sense, he's not even looking for this intelligence, but as he's hunting for the world's worst radical Islamist terrorist, he inadvertently essentially comes into the intelligence that communist China is about to invade Taiwan, not in years or in months, but in days and hours.

Now, as that's happening, however, he also uncovers the plot that Communist China has been working with radical Islamist groups in the Middle East to develop a new and very, very deadly biological toxin to unleash inside the United States so that the U.S., aside from what our actual military capabilities are in the Pacific and our intent and our political will, aside from that,

If a biological toxin was released that was exponentially worse than COVID,

uh and and millions of people start dying inside the united states that's going to create an implosion of focus right the united states will not be able to or potentially not be able to focus on fighting a war in the pacific while dealing with almost an ebola virus-like outbreak of you know almost instant death to everybody who gets this disease now that's the that's a fictional premise

But we actually know that the COVID-19 virus, which some called the Wuhan virus, was developed in a Chinese state-run lab, a biotoxin lab. Was it accidentally released? Maybe. Was it purposefully released? I don't know. I'm not sure anyone knows, or at least no one said it on the record. But 7 million people died.

from COVID-19. And we watched even American state governments shut down churches and schools. And, you know, if you if you ran a strip club, no, that's no, that wasn't a problem. Yeah. In some jurisdictions, that was just fine. Exactly. But but your church know that had to shut down. So as a religious liberty issue, as a civil liberty issue, as

At so many levels, the communist Chinese are operating in terms of cyber warfare, flooding the social media universe with anti-American propaganda, anti-Israel propaganda, anti-Semitic propaganda. And they're building up their military and they're building up these biological weapons. And of course, they have nuclear weapons.

So all of that converges in this political thriller, The Beijing Betrayal. Now, in real life, yes, I'm lifting, I'm, I'm,

All this is happening in real life, but I'm projecting it forward in what the Pentagon would call a war game. Right. That's what these novels are. I write about worst case scenarios. I'm not predicting them. I certainly. But just just for a note, for those who may not be familiar with your work, as as I am and as all of your devoted followers are, you have been very prescient about things in the past in your writing.

Well, that has been uncanny. The first novel, The Last Jihad, written in 2001, opened with a kamikaze attack by a radical Islamist terror group coming in on a kamikaze attack into an American city. That was written eight to almost nine months before 9-11. Not because I knew 9-11 was going to happen, but because I was

And studying the thinking and the patterns of terror in the Middle East, where is my focus, and thinking when someone like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Congress and warns, if you don't deal with radical Islamism in the Middle East, it's coming here to your shores. I thought, well, what might that look like?

And that's how that novel started. And as you recall, that kamikaze attack leads to my fictional American president

declaring war on Saddam Hussein to remove him from power because of his support for terrorism, as well as his use of chemical weapons in the past. Now, again, I did not say I was not trying to predict it. And if I was trying to predict it, then I failed because the book came out after 9-11. But it did come out before that second Gulf War. Again, I'm not

you know, some psychic or some, you know, I don't, you know, I can't, I don't read tarot cards and I don't look into the future like some sort of eight, 900 number, you know, kind of lunatic. I'm studying the lives and the thinking and the speeches and the writings and the psychology of our worst enemies. And then I'm saying, okay, this is who they are. This is what they think. This is what they say, at least in private quarters and their own private writings. This is what they say they're going to do.

What if they did it? What if they did it? Why don't I write a novel based, just pick one of these enemies and just play it out, play it forward, see what happens and how would America respond? How would Israel respond? How would the world respond?

And time after time, you know, again, the Kremlin conspiracy, I mentioned that a moment ago, that was written several years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it's about a Russian dictator rising to power in Moscow who's trying to decide at the beginning of the book, am I going to invade Ukraine or maybe I should invade the three NATO Baltic states, Estonia, Ukraine?

Latvia, Lithuania. That's the setup. Which one is he going to do? And how is America going to find out and try to stop him? That wasn't because I knew that Putin was going to go into Ukraine, but because I have spent a lot of time studying Putin. And when you do that, you realize that as dangerous as China is, as Xi Jinping is, Xi Jinping is not actually invading any countries yet.

but vladimir putin has been for the last 20 years and that's why he's so dangerous and i i will say i'm i'm very concerned right now how president trump who's doing so well on so many fronts in my view but i think he is mistaken on i mean terribly mistaken on saying that zielinski could have handled this better

Trump is almost implying that Zelensky set the war into motion, which is 180 degrees out of phase. Yeah. And I wonder how much of that is public rhetoric for Putin's benefit.

We'll see. As you and I are talking, it looks like they're just about to a deal on rare earth minerals between the U.S. and Ukraine. Much more to come on a broader peace deal. We hope for ending Russia's war on Ukraine. All right, Joel, where can people find the book and what's coming next? Because, you know, I got to have a tease for where we go after Marcus. Well, I appreciate it.

Well, in terms of finding The Beijing Betrayal, you can preorder anywhere you like to get books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, anywhere. And it'll be in bookstores on March 11th in hardcover, e-book format and on audio. So that's and you can go to Joel Rosenberg dot com to find out more about me and the book. So that's that. Now I'm going to share a little news. I'm taking a sabbatical from writing novels for a little while.

This is the last one in my contract, and I'm going to take a bit of a break. And the reason is because it's hard for me and Lynn living in Israel, living in Jerusalem, going through the worst war in Israel's modern history to think about worst case scenarios when we're trying to deal with this worst case scenario. We just had, you know, Hamas terrorists.

strangle two beautiful baby boys and then pummel their bodies with rocks to make it look like they died in an Israeli airstrike. This is...

- It's evil. - It's so sickening. And I think we're going back to war, Shannon. We're in a ceasefire at the moment as you and I speak in Gaza and in Lebanon. I hope the Lebanon ceasefire holds, but President Trump has given Prime Minister Netanyahu the full green light to go back to war, to vanquish Hamas once and for all.

And the anger level is rising so rapidly, even Netanyahu's worst detractors are thinking, OK, enough. We've got to go back in and we want to get every hostage, live hostage we can out. Yes. But once Netanyahu and his government thinks we've gotten as many as we can or hopefully all of them,

I think the Israeli military is rolling back in because we cannot let this this genocidal army of terrorists remain in Gaza any longer. Yeah. And the Arab world also where I know that you cover that for all Arab news as well and have many, many deep contacts there as they

now meet and have their own conversations about what comes next in Gaza. So much in the world. Well, you have earned a well-deserved break from this. You run so many other businesses and charitable endeavors in the Middle East and beyond. So we're grateful for all the good things that you put into the world. I cannot wait.

to see what happens to Marcus. The Beijing Betrayal is out March 11th. Check it out, folks. And listen, if you're looking for a good read, a good series, go back to the beginning and take this whole adventure with Marcus. You will not regret it. You're only going to be mad at me because you're going to miss sleep and, you know, other activities in your life when you start reading the books.

But congratulations on this, Joel. And we can't wait to see what comes next. All our love and blessings to you and Lynn and your family. Bless you and Sheldon. And thank you so much. I just love that you love these novels. It really means a lot to me. Well, thanks for writing them. That's it for this week's Live in the Bream. Thanks, Joel. Thank you. Listen ad free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple podcasts and Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad free on the Amazon Music app.

I'm Dana Perino. This week on Perino on Politics, I'm joined by former GOP strategist and host of The Rich Zioli Show, Rich Zioli. Available now on FoxNewsPodcast.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Must listen to podcasts from Fox News Audio.