Kash Patel didn't waste any time. He opened with a stat that most Americans have probably never heard—and it was a big one.

During Trump's first term, Patel was in charge of counterterrorism for the White House and National Security Council. In that role, he helped lead one of the administration's most overlooked achievements.

"Hostages, we can talk about that forever too," Patel said. "Counterterrorism was a big portfolio, I ran it for the White House and National Security Council in the first Trump administration."

Then he dropped the number: "We brought home—people don't know this—President Trump in his first term, brought home and rescued over 50 hostages and detainees from around the world." He added, "That's more than every president before him combined."

Rogan looked stunned. "Wow," he said.

Patel explained that hardly anyone knows these rescues even happened. The missions weren't covered in the headlines, and the stories of families being reunited after dangerous operations in places like Africa and the Middle East were mostly ignored.

"Did you hear about the successes of reuniting families with lost loved ones from Africa or the Middle East?" he asked.

He then described how Trump personally signed off on high-risk missions—sending elite forces into hostile territory to bring people home. "These operations, that the president was courageous enough to green light to go into places like Afghanistan and do these hostage rescue ops, and use Seal Team Six and Delta," he said.

From there, the conversation shifted to a very different kind of crisis—one playing out right here in the U.S. and claiming tens of thousands of lives: fentanyl.

Patel didn't mince words about who's behind it. "So where's the root of the problem? The CCP," he said, pointing directly at the Chinese Communist Party.

This part of the discussion took a darker turn.

Patel explained that while China isn't producing the fentanyl itself, it's playing a central role by supplying the raw chemical ingredients used to manufacture it. "The fentanyl precursors, the stuff you need to make fentanyl comes from mainland China. That's it."

He said there are hundreds of Chinese companies involved—mass-producing and exporting these precursors around the world. Most of them land in Mexico, where cartels convert the chemicals into fentanyl and smuggle it across the border.

"They're like 'we don't make fentanyl.' They're right, they don't," Patel said. "They just give you all the ingredients for it and ship it to Mexico."