Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 367 ｜ China’s Real Threat & Dems’ Fake Impeachment ｜ Guest： Melissa Chen

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a great first half of your

00:00:15.880 week. Today I have an awesome interview ahead with Melissa Chin of Spectator USA. She is an

00:00:23.060 expert on China. She grew up in Singapore, so she is very familiar with this authoritarian regime,

00:00:31.980 having grown up in proximity to it, and even under some authoritarian laws herself. And so she just

00:00:39.360 has an amazing perspective on not just the threat of China, but specifically how she sees Biden being

00:00:45.060 soft on China and what we can do about it, why we should be hopeful, why we should be concerned.

00:00:50.040 So I'm excited for you to listen to that conversation. And then I'm going to tell you

00:00:53.600 what is going on with this impeachment trial. I'm going to be honest, guys, didn't really know that

00:00:59.000 was going on yesterday. I just slipped my mind. I am not on Twitter as much. Maybe that's why,

00:01:06.280 but also this just seems so pointless, but I'll get all into that in just a little bit. So first,

00:01:14.040 let me talk to Melissa Chin. Without further ado, here she is. 1.00

00:01:20.040 Melissa, thank you so much for joining me. I want to talk to you about the Biden administration

00:01:28.960 and their take on China. You write about this a lot for the spectator, and I just want to kind

00:01:36.260 of get first your general take. What do you think the Biden administration approach is going to be

00:01:42.020 to the threat of China. You know, I think so. Firstly, to kind of frame this, I think the Trump

00:01:50.720 administration ushered in a very new bipartisan attitude towards China, which sees it not as a

00:01:58.220 potential collaborator, a partner any longer, but more as a strategic threat or rival.

00:02:03.800 And this position did push Biden quite sharply to the right, at least compared to where Biden was as

00:02:13.880 vice president. And so you've seen even during the campaign trail, Biden was actually very hawkish

00:02:21.960 on China. He called Xi Jinping a thug. He actually, I think in August, said that, yes, 0.57

00:02:29.160 what's going on in Xinjiang is a genocide. So he has adopted a very hawkish stance on China,

00:02:35.140 and that was very apparent since he started campaigning for the 2020 elections. And in

00:02:41.120 terms of, you know, it's still early days in the Biden administration. And, you know, looking back

00:02:46.120 in the first three weeks, people are hopeful that that has, you know, he's going to follow through

00:02:53.640 on his rhetoric. But I'm a bit more skeptical, because he's presenting that he's very tough on

00:02:58.420 China. And in part, it's not just that it's become bipartisan consensus, but also because that's where

00:03:03.840 American public opinion is. So in a way, you know, it's it's he has to kind of meet the American

00:03:09.800 public where they are. But in terms of actions, there have been some very questionable actions,

00:03:16.180 or and in some cases, non actions by Biden in the first three weeks. So I could, you know,

00:03:23.800 you know, parse it out in terms of where he was more hawkish, where he was more like appeasing.

00:03:30.840 But a very good example of this sort of say, OK, let's let's talk about where he what he actually

00:03:36.540 has been hawkish. Yeah. So recently, you know, they beefed up military presence in the South China

00:03:43.060 Sea. But this was about two weeks after China sent about two dozen jets into Taiwanese airspace to

00:03:49.860 provoke the Taiwanese. But there has that that's all that has happened. There hasn't been any verbal

00:03:55.420 condemnation. He hasn't even met with Xi Jinping since he took office or even spoken to him. And,

00:04:02.360 you know, that's probably one of the probably the only good sign from the Biden administration so

00:04:08.460 far is this beefed up military presence there. But other than that, if you look at his actions in

00:04:13.120 terms of executive order sign, it looks very much more like appeasement. So one of the EOs that he

00:04:19.180 resigned it was pertaining to the Keystone Pipeline embedded in one of the clauses was was was a clause

00:04:27.520 that blocked China from supplying electrical equipment to the US to the US power grid. And so

00:04:33.700 he basically blocked this this clause. So now, you know, the possibility of China being involved in

00:04:41.480 the US power grid is is is open. So just to clarify, so I understand he rescinded an executive order by

00:04:51.320 Donald Trump on the Keystone Pipeline. And by rescinding that he also rescinded a clause which

00:04:58.340 prevented China from having any control over our power grid. So now China does have the potential 0.96

00:05:04.680 to have control over our power grid. Thanks. China and Russia. Perfect. So so that's what happened when 0.53

00:05:12.700 Joe Biden decided to rescind this. It wasn't just the Keystone Pipeline. It also has to do with our power

00:05:17.360 grid. Exactly. Which is a huge national security threat, I think. That's, you know, just that's

00:05:24.440 just some one of the things that he has done in the last in the last two weeks. The other one was

00:05:28.360 that he rejoined the WHO and the UN Human Rights Council. And, you know, for me personally, that

00:05:34.900 that's like tacitly accepting Chinese corruption in these institutions, especially because he also

00:05:40.620 rejoined the WHO before the investigation. There is a WHO investigation going on right now

00:05:46.140 into the origins of the coronavirus epidemic. And they have a team for the first time on the ground

00:05:51.600 in China, of course, overseen by the Chinese government, probably 24 hours a day. And and so,

00:06:00.020 you know, he we're back now with the WHO and and almost like what has come out of this awareness now

00:06:07.940 that the world has come to about Chinese influence in the WHO and how, you know, they have essentially

00:06:14.120 co-opted some of these global institutions to to parrot their narrative to, you know, to kind of

00:06:21.580 close one eye about about Chinese actions and how they were culpable in in in spreading COVID. 0.96

00:06:29.500 Yeah. A lot of people don't know that Dr. Tedros, who is the head of the WHO, actually has a very

00:06:36.180 he's he's also a communist himself. He comes from the the Communist Party. He has a very long history,

00:06:42.120 not just of personal corruption when he was the health director of his country and covering up a

00:06:47.960 cholera outbreak in Ethiopia, but also being in bed with China. He has had a long relationship, 0.59

00:06:53.940 not just with the Chinese Communist Party, but with other communist leaders like Robert Mugabe,

00:06:59.020 who he tapped as his goodwill ambassador before there was a ton of backlash about that because of

00:07:04.680 how unfortunately tyrannical Robert Mugabe was in his leadership of Zimbabwe. And so the head of the

00:07:11.800 WHO is very corrupt himself. He's a corrupt communist who has been in bed with other corrupt communists in 0.98

00:07:17.140 the Chinese Communist Party. And so for us to for Trump to get out of the WHO, I thought was a really 0.96

00:07:22.880 good move. And for Biden to get in, like you said, it just seems like a tacit approval of the Chinese 1.00

00:07:29.900 influence and Chinese corruption in the WHO. And I think a lot of people just don't they don't know

00:07:34.920 that World Health Organization. The name sounds really good. I don't know. I guess it's just a lot

00:07:39.380 of ignorance. But surely the Biden administration isn't ignorant of all of that. Right, right. And and 0.91

00:07:46.540 then the other the other thing that the Biden administration has done is to roll back this

00:07:50.740 transparency rule on this Confucius Institutes, which are yeah, which are almost like outposts see the

00:07:57.880 Confucius Institutes as outposts of the Chinese Communist Party's information exchange kind of

00:08:04.460 operations. So they're basically like, they're billed as language learning programs that are usually

00:08:12.620 affiliated with either a K to 12 school, or a college. If you enroll, you'll get to learn Mandarin, you'll get

00:08:20.320 to learn about Chinese culture. And it's, it's that's what it's billed as. And a lot of people have taken, you

00:08:26.360 know, lessons there to learn the language. But, but one of the one of the more subversive kind of

00:08:34.140 purposes of this, this kind of organization is to spread communist, communist propaganda, and also

00:08:42.860 affect or use or pressure universities to, for example, not discuss Taiwan, not discuss Tibet. And so

00:08:50.860 they're, they're using that as leverage to, to control what can be discussed in universities and,

00:08:55.680 and professors there, there've been faculty groups, national faculty groups that have sounded the

00:08:59.880 alarm on this problem saying that, you know, university is supposed to stand for freedom of

00:09:03.660 speech, but, but, you know, the Confucius Institute at my institution is, is, is actually controlling

00:09:10.080 speech and determining or trying to mold what I can and cannot say in class. And so, you know,

00:09:17.320 the, the Trump administration actually required these schools to actually start reporting and be

00:09:24.760 more transparent and disclose details in the contracts, who is funding these institutes and,

00:09:30.940 you know, little details like that. And the Biden administration just yesterday kind of quietly

00:09:35.640 rescinded this, this executive order.

00:09:38.200 Is it, is it just an anti-Trump stance? Is he's just trying to rescind all the measures

00:09:42.880 that were put forward while Trump was president? Or is there some kind of like ideological agreement

00:09:49.320 between the Biden administration and the values of the CCP?

00:09:53.420 Now, I think, so I think it's two things. The first one you mentioned, I think is, is,

00:09:56.860 is, you know, pretty spot on. He did come in saying that he wanted to reverse, I mean, a lot of,

00:10:03.440 you know, Trump's executive orders. And in part, that's what he campaigned on, right? I'm not Trump.

00:10:08.480 The second thing is, I suspect also that there's this notion that any, anything that promotes cultural

00:10:17.860 exchange is good. Anything that suppresses it is racist and bad. And I think, I think that's where

00:10:25.800 that comes from. There is a push to kind of recognize such, you know, that, that Trump sort of being

00:10:32.800 conservative on immigration, for example, for, for, uh, taking down spaces where different cultures can

00:10:38.520 actually integrate and exchange ideas, um, is, is racist basically. And, and this goes also along

00:10:45.920 with, uh, you know, Tom Cotton's suggestion that we should be scrutinizing, um, the visas that we give

00:10:51.500 to Chinese students, especially at the post-grad level when it comes to, um, like, like STEM fields.

00:10:58.640 So like say nuclear physics, a PhD in nuclear physics, maybe we should be, you know, be, uh,

00:11:04.060 be a bit more, uh, scrutinize the incoming students that are Chinese to have Chinese passports.

00:11:08.900 And of course, such a thing when Trump, when, uh, Cotton suggested it, uh, I think last year

00:11:14.620 really erupted, um, the press erupted with like accusations of, of racism. So you can see that,

00:11:21.820 you know, this is the kind of, uh, approach they're taking, I think, even with the Confucius

00:11:26.580 Institutes because that's the kind of place where people get to meet and learn about a different

00:11:31.080 culture. And so, um, anything that that's trying to, you know, take that away is, it's just a racist

00:11:37.080 force in society. That's, that's my, my guess.

00:11:48.680 You can really see how, and you hear how, um, uh, the Chinese Communist Party has kind of like

00:11:55.460 used the charge of racism against the United States, which is so popular, especially right 1.00

00:12:01.140 now to say that America is just terribly systemically racist, that racism is our biggest

00:12:06.320 problem. The Chinese Communist Party loves that. And they use that to their benefit to one, make 0.99

00:12:13.380 people here kind of look away from their sins. They can, for example, get the support of the NBA,

00:12:19.300 um, and, you know, kind of turn the NBA social justice passion towards the racist problems in

00:12:28.040 America. And I think the same goes for academia, the same goes for some Democrats and some progressives.

00:12:32.640 If they can kind of turn their attention towards how racist America is, they can kind of be shielded.

00:12:38.980 Um, they can be shielded by that kind of social justice cause in a way to say that any criticism of

00:12:44.680 China is actually just, you know, America's very racist roots manifesting themselves.

00:12:51.620 Actually, I don't know if you notice a similarity between, you know, the criticism of Islamophobia,

00:12:57.260 because criticizing, say, the theocracy of Iran, and say, their very poor record of human rights,

00:13:03.180 for example, can be considered Islamophobic, which is racist, right, by proxy. It's become a synonym for

00:13:10.420 racism. And by doing that, you are shielding, um, Iranian theocracy from criticism, which is exactly 0.83

00:13:18.400 the same race card that the Chinese Communist Party wants to play because it shields them from 0.87

00:13:24.700 any sort of criticism and, and they, they know what they're doing. Right. So, right. The other,

00:13:30.620 the other thing, sorry. No, go ahead. Well, the other thing that the Biden administration has,

00:13:35.700 has done is in the first week actually was to issue a memorandum effectively banning the phrases

00:13:41.720 China virus or Wuhan flu, um, in the federal government, um, that, that seemed to be his

00:13:48.360 priority, which, which is strange, right? Because it happened in the week that Taiwan was basically

00:13:52.760 menacing Chinese airspace jets. And, you know, again, this for me was, was a very classic case of

00:14:01.200 moral posturing because, you know, in the first place, um, this naming convention of, of tying a

00:14:09.700 virus to its geo geographical location, where it was either detected or where it came from has been

00:14:16.100 pretty much consensus, scientific consensus for the last hundred years. So nobody was up in arms about

00:14:21.940 the Zika virus or the Middle East respiratory syndrome, um, or even Lyme disease, which, which is

00:14:28.660 a place in, in Connecticut. Um, this has been just how, you know, epidemiology and, and, and virology,

00:14:35.380 like this has been a common practice, but all of a sudden when it came to Chinese virus, there was

00:14:40.040 this huge uproar about, about, uh, this kind of being a xenophobic statement that, um, is causing,

00:14:48.720 um, violence against Asians in America. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think one of, again, this,

00:14:56.960 this is very much in line with what the Chinese Communist Party wants to portray. They want to 0.65

00:15:01.200 de-link China from the virus. I mean, you know, just their actions in terms of trying to steer the, 0.94

00:15:08.960 the theory of how, of how this virus originated, um, very much in line. Like they've actually,

00:15:15.400 state media has actually parroted the claim that, that COVID was actually created by the CIA or

00:15:21.140 released by the U S military. Um, so, you know, so this only helps the Chinese government now,

00:15:27.500 whether or not the rhetoric actually directly causes any violence or harassment, yeah, that's

00:15:34.360 up in the air. As far as I can see, you know, I don't think there's been any proof that of, of

00:15:39.960 correlation of causation. You do see correlation, right? It seems that, um, in the last year that,

00:15:46.160 that hate crimes against Asian Americans who are on the rise that said crime in general has been on

00:15:51.380 the rise in 2020. I mean, I think murder rates and, you know, robberies have all gone up in almost

00:15:56.160 every major city. So how much of that is ambient racism and how much of that is directly caused

00:16:03.020 because of COVID, um, is very difficult to establish, but of course there are going to be 0.97

00:16:09.100 people who are, you know, just regular run of the mill assholes who are going to take it out 0.99

00:16:16.160 and attack Asians for this. Um, but it's just never been proven to me that rhetoric is directly 0.98

00:16:22.760 causing this because everybody knows where this is from. Everybody does like, you know, just because

00:16:27.900 you shifted words and, and called it something else doesn't, doesn't really change the knowledge

00:16:33.940 that this came from China. So I don't know what, you know, I mean, and also like how effective is

00:16:40.460 this memorandum given that Trump is no longer in office. He's also been removed from every social

00:16:45.660 media platform. So I don't understand why this was a priority for the, for the Biden administration.

00:16:52.360 And by the way, if this was racist, if China virus is racist, we really have to revamp everything.

00:16:58.060 Like we shouldn't be calling it the UK variant or the South African variant because apparently

00:17:02.840 linking a geographic location to a virus is racist. So we, we just, we're just going to have to change

00:17:07.940 everything if we're going to be consistent. Yeah. But it's, um, you know, it's, it's that worldview

00:17:13.480 of intersectionality and critical race theory that the only people that are allowed to have any kind

00:17:18.140 of negative connotation, um, associated with them, according to many progressives is, oh, the Western

00:17:25.700 world, white people, and any kind of criticism of non-white, non-Western people is automatically

00:17:31.940 seen as racist and wrong. And nevermind the fact that the CCP is the most racist regime and actually 0.61

00:17:39.080 was ousting, um, African people during, you know, the height of COVID trying to say that they were 1.00

00:17:45.200 actually the vectors for the virus, kicking them out of the apartments, kicking, kicking them out of

00:17:50.140 restaurants, of course, colonizing South America and colonizing Africa. Um, but this, it's a very

00:17:57.100 limiting worldview, this kind of racialized worldview, white, bad, non-white, good. It kind of causes you 0.59

00:18:05.260 to not see evil and right and wrong correctly. Correct. And it only empowers tyrants, you know,

00:18:13.040 everyone from Xi Jinping to Erdogan to, you know, other world leaders that basically have almost

00:18:20.100 carte blanche to, to be a tyrant and not be criticized simply because they're, the amount of

00:18:25.980 melanin and their skin color is a shield. This is why, you know, this ideology is so, is so dangerous 0.93

00:18:31.980 because it, it prohibits us from, from viewing this issue with moral clarity.

00:18:36.940 Absolutely right. And moral clarity is what we need, but we also need it from the Biden

00:18:40.800 administration. And I, I hope, I'm, I mean, I can't say that I'm optimistic, but I hope and I pray that

00:18:47.680 their actions on China actually show that kind of hawkishness and, um, that kind of toughness. And I will be

00:18:55.380 glad and ready to praise any tough moves against China, even by the administration that,

00:19:01.800 you know, I didn't vote for and whose policies I don't really support.

00:19:06.380 Yeah. I hope the Biden administration is successful. I would say two things to look out

00:19:10.140 for in terms of the difference also is that, um, Biden definitely has, you know, paid a lot of lip

00:19:16.200 service to multilateralism. He's going to work with a lot of allies. He wants to plug us back into the

00:19:22.080 international rules-based order and, and work with, um, you know, global institutions. And the other

00:19:27.780 thing is actually Biden, you know, is, is probably going to rely a lot more on diplomacy to, to try

00:19:33.160 to engage. Um, I'm very skeptical because, um, returning to that era of foreign policy seemed to

00:19:40.280 have is what brought us to this point anyway, but I really, really hope that he's successful in

00:19:47.020 challenging China because this is really existential for the United States and actually really for freedom 1.00

00:19:52.040 around the world. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you for the work that you do and

00:19:57.140 bringing awareness to these issues. Can you tell everyone for talking about it? Of course. Of

00:20:01.920 course. Can you tell everyone where they can find you, how they can support you? Um, you can read my

00:20:06.200 articles, um, at, um, just find my page, Melissa Chen on, uh, Spectator USA. It's a, it's a website,

00:20:13.420 Spectator.us, or you can, um, just find me on Twitter, which is at, at sign, Ms. M-S. Mel Chen, M-E-L-C-H-E-N.

00:20:21.060 Wonderful. Thank you so much, Melissa. Ellie, thank you so much for having me on.

00:20:34.280 Okay. So President Trump getting impeached once again, exciting. The media just couldn't,

00:20:42.580 they just, they missed, they missed Trump so much. Their rating certainly missed Trump so much

00:20:49.480 that they were like, how, how can we get the ratings back up? How can we talk about our

00:20:54.260 favorite subject, our favorite person we'd love to hate? Oh, we can impeach it. And so that's

00:21:00.120 exactly what's happening right now. It is, um, just a show. It's, I feel like it is very

00:21:07.060 unconsequential. It's very unsubstantial. The Senate has voted 56 to 44 that the impeachment trial

00:21:13.840 is constitutional and that it should proceed. Obviously there's a lot of disagreement on that.

00:21:19.760 The six Republicans that voted with Democrats were Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski, Sass, Romney,

00:21:26.480 and Toomey. Not too surprising there for Trump to actually be convicted. There would have to be 67

00:21:33.460 plus votes in his favor, uh, which is unlikely. Uh, the Washington examiner is summarizing the

00:21:42.420 impeachment trial like this. The vote to proceed with the trial means it will continue

00:21:46.280 for at least a week. Um, so that's what, uh, the vote that said that the trial is constitutional

00:21:53.060 did. The trial is going to continue to go on. Democratic impeachment managers will present

00:21:58.120 evidence that Trump provoked the January 6th attack on the Capitol. You guys know, we've talked about

00:22:03.940 this many times. I have been very clear about, uh, my stance on the Capitol and how it was wrong and

00:22:11.800 how it was bad and how I believed that Trump could have been more responsible in his rhetoric and that

00:22:17.060 everything that he has pushed or everything that he did push in the months after the election,

00:22:23.200 in some cases just wasn't helpful. At the same time, uh, that can be a very slippery slope of

00:22:31.040 saying someone incited violence, incited an insurrection, um, without them actually explicitly

00:22:38.180 saying the words and actually visit or actually, uh, explicitly encouraging people to use violence and,

00:22:47.280 uh, to storm the Capitol. Uh, it is a very slippery slope trying to accuse

00:22:53.200 that person of inciting violence. Like you can see the consequences of that, right? Of basically

00:22:58.440 saying all kinds of rhetoric or talking about election fraud in general, that that is all an

00:23:04.520 incitement of violence and incitement of terrorism. Please, if you are on the left, just put, uh, put

00:23:10.740 the shoes on, on your feet and think about what it would be like if you had an unpopular opinion

00:23:16.980 or you were stating what everyone thought was a conspiracy theory, but what you believed is true.

00:23:21.300 Like for example, um, the, the Russian collusion conspiracy theory, uh, think about if you were

00:23:27.680 held liable for any violence, um, or any quote insurrection that was supposedly motivated because

00:23:36.660 of something you believed in. I mean, we can look at that. We can look at a lot of the rhetoric

00:23:40.480 of democratic lawmakers and Democrats in the media who carry false narratives about racialized police

00:23:49.620 brutality. Um, in particular, in some cases that, uh, they jumped the gun and they say that a person

00:23:56.760 was unarmed, for example, when he wasn't unarmed that then incite the kind of chaos and violence

00:24:02.820 that we've seen in cities across the country. How would you like it if you say reposted, um,

00:24:09.420 some kind of false narrative surrounding a police shooting, or you have pushed these false narratives

00:24:14.440 that are propagated by groups like BLM and you were held liable for any violence that was seen

00:24:20.600 as a consequence of that speech? Like that would be a problem, right? You see that how we really need

00:24:27.380 to take a step back and think about, uh, the repercussions of saying someone incited violence

00:24:32.980 if they did not explicitly incite violence. Like we have to have a very firm definition of what that

00:24:40.140 actually means. You can say what you, what president Trump said was wrong. Uh, you can say

00:24:46.260 that you didn't like what he said, or you don't like president Trump, or you don't like certain

00:24:49.880 speech, or you hated what happened at the Capitol. I hated what happened at the Capitol too. I'm right

00:24:55.040 there with you, but we have to be objective when we lay down these standards of what speech is actually

00:25:01.420 condemnable, like, uh, through a conviction like this of a president and, uh, what is not,

00:25:09.680 what should just be chastised. Uh, there's a big difference and there should be a big difference.

00:25:14.580 Chief Justice Roberts presided over Trump's 2020 impeachment trial, but this time Senator Patrick

00:25:20.160 Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont is presiding. He will also serve as a juror too. And he's already

00:25:25.360 said he believes the president is guilty of inciting an insurrection. Uh, house impeachment

00:25:30.900 managers showed a gripping video carefully edited to show Trump provoked the violent attack on the

00:25:37.220 Capitol. Trump's defense team showed a video montage of house Democrats repeatedly calling

00:25:41.080 for Trump's impeachment beginning soon after he took office in 2017, which of course, I mean,

00:25:46.460 that's a good point. They have been calling for his impeachment for a very long time. The whole

00:25:51.020 Ukrainian quid pro quo story also wasn't impeachable, but they have been wanting to impeach him and they

00:25:57.120 have been calling him an illegitimate president, uh, since 2016. And it's just interesting that today the

00:26:04.940 Democrats are saying how dangerous and how violence inciting it is to question the credibility of the

00:26:11.680 2020 election. And I say that as someone who doesn't think that there was enough fraud to have changed

00:26:17.160 the results of the election in favor of Donald Trump. But the people who are saying that it is so wrong,

00:26:22.760 that it's so violence inducing and inciting to question the credibility of the 2020 election

00:26:27.780 also didn't accept the result of the 2016 election for months. They called him a Russian agent. And we spent

00:26:33.860 millions of taxpayer dollars on an investigation into what ended up being and what we knew all

00:26:40.700 along was a conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign only won because he was a Russian agent

00:26:47.380 and he was working with Russia in order to rig the election to win. I mean, that was a conspiracy

00:26:53.300 theory that again, we spent hundreds of thousands, millions of taxpayer dollars on investigating for

00:27:01.440 years, uh, in order to try to get Trump out of office that was led by the Democrats. And so for

00:27:07.620 them to say, Oh, it is just so dangerous. It is just so wrong. It is just so ignorant and imbecilic of

00:27:14.400 all of you to question at all the results of the election after they questioned the results of the 1.00

00:27:19.300 election for years and spent our money investigating into their pet conspiracy theory. Are you kidding?

00:27:25.040 Like, I just, I'm sorry. I just can't take their, uh, their integrity seriously. I just can't. I think

00:27:31.840 there's every reason for people to kind of roll their eyes at what's going on now. Um, like I said,

00:27:38.800 you can condemn Trump in a thousand different ways. You can criticize him in a thousand different ways.

00:27:43.220 I think that's fine, but you do have to ask yourself what kind of precedent this sets. Like,

00:27:48.520 are we just going to keep on exchanging power and using the power and the capital that we have

00:27:55.000 to ruin political opponents based on very little, uh, very little reasoning, very little grounding

00:28:02.840 that just doesn't seem very sustainable to me. That doesn't seem like a country that we really want

00:28:08.680 to live in. It doesn't seem like that is creating any sort of, of progress. And so, um,

00:28:14.840 it's a national embarrassment that we are, um, that we're even having this conversation about a

00:28:23.780 retroactive impeachment that really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Um, it just, it, it, it doesn't

00:28:32.120 make to me any constitutional sense. It doesn't make to me any sort of legal sense. And again, you can

00:28:39.260 be as against Trump as you want to. I'm totally fine with that. I'm fine with criticism of Trump.

00:28:44.840 Um, but to say that this is justified, but it doesn't, the standards don't apply to your side

00:28:52.220 when you could be saying that, uh, plenty, plenty of Democrats rhetoric did in some ways

00:28:59.400 encourage violence or perpetuate false narratives and conspiracy theories that have encouraged the

00:29:04.460 violence that we've seen completely ruin cities over the past few months. I don't know. It's just,

00:29:09.280 it's, it's hard for me. It's hard for me to see that. It's hard for me to see the consistency

00:29:13.460 and the logic and the logic there. Um, like I said, I think that this is just a way for

00:29:20.060 Democrats to bring back their punching bag to try to distract people from the far left

00:29:25.960 progressivism that the Biden administration has been pushing. It's a way for media to get

00:29:29.940 their ratings back up. I mean, the democratic party and the media, yes, they hate Trump, but they love

00:29:35.980 Trump because Trump gives them, um, a way to be virtuous without having to be virtuous. I was

00:29:42.540 talking about, um, the other day on Twitter about how hating Trump became a personality trait for a lot

00:29:49.560 of people. It became like their most interesting fact that they would tell when they were introduced

00:29:54.240 to a group. And it also became kind of an arrow in their quiver, like a virtue arrow in their quiver.

00:30:01.320 Um, and that they would kind of use their hatred of Trump as a signal of their virtue. They could be

00:30:08.580 a terrible person in every other way, but if they hated Trump enough, that means that you're really

00:30:14.740 tolerant, that you're really compassionate, that you're really a loving person. I mean, we've seen

00:30:19.580 that over and over again. People get all the points in the world for hating Donald Trump. Um, even if the

00:30:25.240 rest of their life is in shambles and they're actually a very selfish, grotesque person. We saw that. 0.98

00:30:29.760 We've seen that a lot. Unfortunately, with some of the leaders of the Lincoln Project, they are

00:30:34.780 bowed down to by a ton of people on the left. Not everyone. There are a lot of true progressives that

00:30:39.680 still don't like the Lincoln Project and see them as the grifters that they are. But there are a lot 0.53

00:30:43.720 of people who bow down to the Lincoln Project for being so virtuous and for being so great and for being

00:30:48.400 true Republicans, um, because they hated Donald Trump and they hated all the Republicans that the

00:30:54.580 left hates. Well, as it turns out, one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project has, has been, um,

00:31:03.300 trying to, has been harassing, sexually harassing, uh, young men for years and has, uh, offered

00:31:12.160 professional favors. This is according to the New York Times in exchange for sex. And so just realize 0.83

00:31:18.620 that hating Donald Trump is not a signal of virtue. Like it doesn't make you more moral than other

00:31:23.780 people. You can still be a really terrible person and hate Donald Trump. You can be a really terrible 0.97

00:31:28.940 person and love Donald Trump as well. Um, but I think for whatever reason, the standards of morality

00:31:35.400 and virtue in this country have become so politicized that people unfortunately see it as this virtue and

00:31:42.360 the signal of tolerance and love if you hate Donald Trump. Not so, not so. And I think that's probably

00:31:48.360 part of what this whole impeachment thing is about to show just how virtuous and, uh, peaceful and

00:31:54.980 wonderful Democrats in the media are and how bad Trump and his supporters are to let all of this

00:32:00.260 linger and to remind people of what they got rid of when, in the words of Bruce Springsteen,

00:32:06.580 we exercised the White House of its demonic force that is Donald Trump. So that's what's going on.

00:32:13.940 Some of you might disagree with me. Some of you might be all in favor of impeachment, but remember

00:32:18.860 impeachment is not reserved for just presidents that you don't like, or who said something that

00:32:23.340 you don't like. There needs to be a very exact, and I think a very narrow standard of what actually

00:32:30.400 incites violence and incites a quote insurrection. That's all my argument is not to justify anything

00:32:37.700 at all. Not to excuse or to condone or to encourage anything that was said, but just to say what

00:32:43.680 actually is impeachable and convictable when it comes to speech. I think that the bar needs to be

00:32:49.400 very, very, very, very, very high in a country with the First Amendment. All right, that's all I have to

00:32:54.920 say about that. I've got one more thing for you guys. I don't know if you guys saw the cat lawyer

00:33:00.640 that appeared in a viral video on Twitter. So this is according to The Guardian. The coronavirus has

00:33:08.480 been responsible for a series of video calls, stumbles and mishaps, and the phenomenon seemingly

00:33:12.840 reached its zenith this week with a Texas lawyer appearing before a judge as a cat after being unable

00:33:19.420 to change a video filter. If you guys are not watching on YouTube, you are missing out. The YouTube

00:33:28.480 version of this, if you're listening, comes out later in the evening. And so you have to watch this if

00:33:33.960 you haven't already. I'll go ahead and play it. I believe you have a filter turned on in the video

00:33:40.840 settings. You might want to. Can you hear me, Judge? I can hear you. I think it's a filter.

00:33:51.540 It is, and I don't know how to remove it. I've got my assistant here. She's trying to, but

00:33:57.300 I'm prepared to go forward with it. I'm here live. I'm not a cat.

00:34:08.060 I can see that.

00:34:10.060 Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. I think the panicked look of the kitten is really what made it because

00:34:18.460 I'm sure that this lawyer felt exactly the way that the kitten looked. And so apparently there

00:34:25.300 was like some filter that was on his Zoom camera or on his Zoom that he didn't realize was on there.

00:34:31.500 I don't know if it's because a child had been on there, but he didn't know it was on there. So he

00:34:36.200 gets on the Zoom call and his face is like a kitten's face. Like you can't see him at all if

00:34:40.600 you're just listening to this, but his voice is coming through. I felt bad for the guy. He didn't

00:34:46.460 know how to change it. And the other people on the call were trying to be respectful and serious,

00:34:51.340 but oh my goodness, that was hilarious. And I think a comedic break that all of us needed.

00:34:58.220 All right. That's all I got for today. We will be back here tomorrow. We are going to have

00:35:02.840 that Bible-focused episode that a lot of you have been asking about. It's going to be a

00:35:07.340 Valentine's-themed episode, but you guys are really going to like it. So I will see you back here then.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 11, 2021

Ep 367 ｜ China’s Real Threat & Dems’ Fake Impeachment ｜ Guest： Melissa Chen

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