We’ve gotta preserve our republic, constitution. They wanna destroy it. — Major General Paul E. Vallely (Ret.)
On The Red Threat, the retired Army major general joins D.W. Wilber to trace foreign influence from 1960s Berkeley to today’s DSA, and lays out what he believes is at stake.
Retired U.S. Army Major General Paul E. Vallely doesn’t think America’s gravest danger comes from overseas. In the second episode of The Red Threat on Proud American Studios, he told host D.W. Wilber that “the enemy within is our biggest threat right now.”
Vallely graduated from West Point and was commissioned in 1961. He completed infantry, Ranger, airborne, and jumpmaster training, along with senior military education that included the Army War College. He retired in 1991 as Deputy Commanding General of U.S. Army Pacific in Hawaii. He later served as Military Committee Chairman for the Center for Security Policy and now runs Stand Up America US. He is also on the advisory council of Turning Point USA. Vallely told Wilber he was the first military analyst Roger Ailes hired at Fox News, one week after 9/11. He said he built the network’s military team and stayed for eight years.
An Internal Threat With Outside Help
Asked about the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America, Vallely answered from an intelligence perspective. He said threats exist both outside and inside the country, and that the internal ones are the most dangerous right now. He cited Chinese infiltration of American society and colleges, including funding for left-wing organizations. He added that combined with radical Islam, this “creates this internal threat now of the United States, particularly in our politics.”
“We’ve gotta preserve our republic, constitution,” Vallely said. “They wanna destroy it.”
Wilber called the DSA and radical Islamist elements “allies of convenience” that share a goal of dominating the United States. He said the DSA is hiding its true ideology. He pointed to his earlier Red Threat interview with a New York woman who secretly filmed a DSA recruitment meeting, where a host “flat out said, ‘We are a Marxist organization.’”
The Campus Battlefield
Vallely said “wokeism” reached West Point, largely through left-wing professors brought into the service academies in the late 1980s and a shift away from engineering toward social programs. That led him and others to form the MacArthur Society to push back at West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy.
He also spoke about campus unrest from experience. After his second tour in Vietnam in 1967, Vallely was assigned to the Presidio of San Francisco as aide to a three-star general. He described visiting UC Berkeley, then the center of the Students for a Democratic Society movement, and seeing demonstrations reach the Presidio in 1967 and 1968.
Wilber, a former intelligence officer, said the communist Chinese and the Soviet Union were behind much of the campus unrest of the Vietnam era. He said he “can guarantee” foreign adversaries are behind much of today’s unrest as well.
Vallely’s prescription for universities was direct: “Cut off their money.” He said many big donors have already stopped giving to Ivy League schools, and that schools will change “when they don’t have all that money to spend.”
“A Reality Prism”
Vallely shared the story behind his book Reality Prism, which blends memoir and current events with predictive fiction. He led a group to Cairo, where he met with General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, then head of Egypt’s armed forces, and ten of his generals. Vallely recalled al-Sisi asking him: “Why does America always seem to want to solve its problems looking through a political prism? I have to look through a reality prism.”
Al-Sisi listed his challenges: the economy, the armed forces, failing states on his borders, the Suez Canal, and security in the Sinai. Vallely said he decided to write the book on the flight home. His takeaway: “You can’t solve these things politically.” He argued that America needs a strong executive who can execute, not just legislate.
Russia, Through Vallely’s Lens
Vallely, who said he has become something of a Russia specialist from his years in intelligence, gave a view of Russia that differs from most Western coverage. He said Russia’s economy is strong and that Western audiences shouldn’t “listen to the Western propaganda.” He also said Russia moved into four eastern Ukrainian provinces to protect pro-Russian populations. He recounted a March 2017 meeting at Russia’s foreign ministry with Ambassador Bogdanov, Putin’s top Middle East official, where he proposed a Putin-Trump summit. Vallely said that conversation led to the leaders’ first meeting.
Wilber pushed back on some points. He said his concern is that Putin would try to rebuild the former Soviet empire without a strong military deterrent. He drew on his first assignment out of spy school, in divided Berlin, to describe the contrast between “a little island of freedom” in West Berlin and life under the Stasi in the East. “That’s what communism is,” Wilber said, warning that a communist America would bring the same surveillance state.
The Western Hemisphere and Beyond
On Cuba, Vallely said the regime has “completely fallen apart” and is “next after Venezuela.” He described the administration’s goal as clearing the Western Hemisphere “from the Arctic to the Antarctic” of communism, radical Islam, and drug traffickers. He raised a Puerto Rico-style arrangement as one option for Cuba’s future.
Wilber added that the communist Chinese have gained influence in Caribbean island nations, some of which sell citizenship. He said Chinese nationals traveling on those passports face less scrutiny entering the United States than they would on Chinese passports.
Both men said the Iranian people are ready for new leadership. Wilber warned that the IRGC “are not gonna just fade away,” and Vallely noted that Iran is home to six different ethnic groups.
Looking to November
With the election less than 30 days away, Wilber warned that the DSA is gaining ground “piece by piece and inch by inch.” Vallely said he is confident Republicans can hold the House and Senate, though it will be close. He urged Americans to “wake up this election and we’ve gotta do the right thing.”
Vallely pointed viewers to the Stand Up America US Foundation at standupamericaus.org, where its books and weekly Saturday-morning newsletter are available. He stressed the “US” in the name to distinguish it from a separate group called Stand Up America.
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