Ep 811 ｜ How Biden’s Helping China Take Over the World ｜ Guest： Peter Schweizer
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Summary
Peter Schweitzer is President of the Government Accountability Institute and an expert on government corruption. In this episode, he talks about how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are directly funding our government to do their bidding, including our president, and not only that, but corporations and colleges have also become vessels of the CCP.
Transcript
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We all know that government is corrupt, but do you know the extent of the American government's
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corruption? Until reading the work of my guest today, I had no idea how many Democrats and
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Republicans are being directly funded by the Chinese Communist Party to do their bidding,
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including our president. And not only that, but corporations and colleges have also become
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vessels of the CCP. Exposing and explaining all of this is Peter Schweitzer, president of the
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Government Accountability Institute and an expert on government corruption. Fascinating conversation
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that will educate you, equip you on a huge problem that's threatening the safety of our nation. And
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not only that, but also our local communities. This episode is brought to you by our friends
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at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use promo code Allie at checkout. GoodRanchers.com. Code Allie.
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Peter, thank you so much for joining us. For those who have not read one of your many books,
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can you just tell them who you are and what you do? Yeah, I'm a writer, primarily a researcher,
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and I investigate and explore corruption in our government, which is, as a former Air Force
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pilot friend of mine says, is a target rich environment. There's a lot of it to go around,
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but we try to focus on the corruption that's dangerous because it undermines our republic
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by giving us leaders that are really accountable or in hock to people other than the people that
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elected them into office. So that's been primarily my focus. And how long have you been exposing
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government corruption? Probably for 20 years. In a previous life before that, I wrote books on the
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history of the Cold War and foreign policy, but I saw that the biggest threat that our country faced
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was really internal with this corruption. So I switched. And so, yeah, I've been doing it about
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20 years. And I've just got to ask, is it a little bit depressing sometimes? Because I imagine the more
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you dig in and the more you look at just all the different intricacies of Washington and how things
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really work versus how how people think things work, like, do you ever just kind of get demoralized
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and you think, wow, this I mean, this corruption runs deep? You know, it does run deep. I'm not really
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an optimist or a pessimist. I'm a realist. And, you know, my view is very much informed by Judeo-Christian
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values. I myself am a Christian. So, you know, embedded in my worldview is the notion that power
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corrupts. And it doesn't really matter whether the person has a D or an R after their name.
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When you have concentrated power, political power or corporate power, it tends to bring out the worst
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in people. So I don't get surprised anymore. What I'm more concerned about is ensuring that the
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American people hear about this. I looked at the founding fathers when I was young. And my favorite
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among people from that period of our history was Paul Revere, because he warned everybody the British
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were coming. And so I kind of like to believe that we're trying to warn people what is occurring,
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what's going on. And our hope is that that will lead people to, in a sense, you know,
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act like the Continental Army and forge a defense against the threat that we're facing. And so you
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get discouraged sometimes when people don't seem to think it's that of importance or people get
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cynical. But no, I don't lose the faith, because I think ultimately what we're fighting for is worth
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fighting for. And what I'm being asked to do is certainly not as dangerous or as threatening
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as a lot of other people that are defending our country on the battlefield.
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Mm hmm. Mm hmm. We all have our different role to play when it comes to that. I want to talk
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mostly about your most recent book, and it's called Red Handed, How American Elites Get Rich
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Helping China Win. And, you know, that title alone honestly puts together a lot of puzzle pieces for me
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because you do wonder, wow, why why are we in so many ways, not in every way, so soft on China? Why do you
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see glowing reviews of China and how they're dealing with climate change in The New York Times? I mean,
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why wouldn't we take more seriously the threat of China? It's very odd. And yet what you're saying,
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what you've uncovered is actually that there are Americans in charge, American elites that are
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helping China build its military and become stronger?
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Yeah, that's right. I mean, China has an explicit strategy. They call it elite capture,
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and it's pretty brilliant. You know, it's predicated on the notion that we can't go as
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China, we can't go face to face with the United States in a military conflict. Their military is
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stronger and more powerful than ours. Their economy is more dynamic. So instead of going head to head
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with them, why don't we just basically try to buy off part of their political elites? We'll give them
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lucrative commercial deals, or we'll give them access to the Chinese market, we'll make them
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wealthy, and that will buy favor with them. This is a strategy they've employed in smaller countries
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like New Zealand and Singapore and Australia with a lot of success. And they're doing it in the United
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States. And it works. And what a lot of our elites have told us over the last 30 years is that,
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you know, merging closer with China is a good thing, because the Chinese are going to become more
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like us, they'll become less repressive, less Marxist Leninist, they'll become more free market
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oriented. Yeah. The fact of the matter is, that consensus has been there with Republicans and
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Democrats, and they have been categorically wrong. Under the new president, President Xi in China,
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he's been in power, you know, more than 10 years, is far more repressive, far more aggressive
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than it ever was 20 years ago. So the grand, you know, experiment of engagement, as they call it,
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has failed. What it hasn't failed at is making elites in the United States rich. That's what it
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has succeeded at. And that's been the linchpin of China's strategy of elite capture. And this affects
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Washington, it affects Silicon Valley, and Wall Street, and some of the biggest names in those three
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communities, I would argue are essentially captured by Beijing, because of the deals that have been made.
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And before we get into the specifics of who we're talking about, because you do name names in this
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book, I'm looking back at some of the some of the books that you've written, and you wrote a book
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called Reagan's War in 2003. You know, I've been a big fan of Ronald Reagan, I read his autobiography
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was inspired by that. But what you're describing was really part of his political idea that the more
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we export capitalism to China, the less communist they will be. And he was sincerely anti communist.
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But as much as we see him as a freedom fighter, and as much as we see his positive impact,
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in the world, we do see that it was at least in part, Reagan's doing this idea of exporting
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Americanism to China to try to make it less communist. And like you said, it didn't work.
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So what do you think about that as someone who knows a lot about Reagan?
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Yeah, I think, you know, in the 1980s, there was a lot of optimism about where China would go.
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I excuse people more in the 80s. And even in the 90s, Bill Clinton was also a big advocate of this.
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But really, by the early 2000s, with the George W. Bush administration, and then the Obama
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administration, it was already crystal clear, this was not going to become anything resembling
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a liberal democracy. I think in Reagan's case, when he came into office, he saw China as a counter
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measure that could be used against the Soviet Union, which was the main threat at the time.
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And then when the Soviet Union dissipated, a lot of people saw China as somebody to bring in,
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as it were, to the Western world, that it would reform in the way that Gorbachev was trying to
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reform the Soviet Union. That ended up, of course, being incorrect and wrong. So I think we have to
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really rethink some of the assumptions about how we deal with China. I'm a big believer in free markets
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and Americans' system of governance. But we have to recognize that it's not something you can easily
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replicate, and that you have elites in places like China that don't want it. They're not interested
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in it, because they don't want to give up their own political power.
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Yeah. So there is an excuse for the optimism of people like Reagan and people in the 90s,
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because we just didn't know. And I think at that point, it was hard to imagine what had been
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a largely agrarian society becoming what it is today and, you know, having still the communist
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sentiments on that it did then today. So I think, I mean, from my amateur assessment,
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it seems like you're right. There was cause for hope then. But as it seems like you agree,
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there is no excuse. Now we've seen what China is, what they want to do. And yet you write in your book
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that of the five deals the Biden family made in China, every single one was with an individual
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with deep ties to the leadership of the CCP's spy apparatus. What in the world is this? What do you
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mean by this? Yeah, I think that there's been some, unfortunately, some mischaracterizing why the
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Chinese deals that the Bidens have are so important. A lot of the focus has been on influence
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peddling and corruption. And I'm not saying those are unimportant issues. But the real question here
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is, how much money did the Bidens get? What did they do for the money? And who gave them the money?
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Who, my kids would say, who made it rain for the Bidens in China? And when you look at it through that
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prism, it's a pretty shocking and frightening situation. We know that the Bidens received tens of
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millions of dollars from China. That's based on the laptop. I believe the number is at least $31
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million based on actual wire transfers and deals that are discussed in the laptop. We know that
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those deals came from a handful of Chinese businessmen. And when you look at who these
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Chinese businessmen are, it's pretty troubling. One of the first deals and perhaps the biggest deal
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that Hunter Biden got was arranged by a guy named Che Feng. That's his name. And it's identified
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in the laptop. At the time that he is making this deal happen for Hunter Biden, he also happens to be
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business partners with a guy named Ma Jian, who is the vice minister for state security in China.
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The Ministry of State Security is their spy apparatus. It's the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the DIA,
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all rolled into one. So literally a man that is providing millions of dollars to the Biden family
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happens to be business partners with the vice minister of state security at the same time.
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That vice minister's responsibility includes recruiting foreign nationals to spy for China.
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Then you move to another deal that was arranged by Henry Zhao. Henry Zhao transfers $5 million cash
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to a Hunter Biden account. Who is Henry Zhao? Well, when he is arranging that deal for Hunter Biden,
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he is business partners with the family of the former minister of state security who ran the entire
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spy apparatus. In fact, the $5 million that is transferred to Hunter Biden's account comes from
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an account in Hong Kong that is part of that partnership. That entity is one of the entities in
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which the minister of state security's family is partners. Then you look at another deal that was
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put together by Chairman Yee. This is the CEFC Energy Company. What is Chairman Yee's job before he runs
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this energy company? He's running an organization that we know in the West is part of Chinese military
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intelligence. He sends some $6 million to Hunter Biden. All this money is flowing to Hunter Biden and
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the Biden family. It's all being done by individuals that have ties to Chinese intelligence, which is
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highly unusual. Then the question becomes, what did they do for that money? Did Hunter Biden perform a
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discernible business service? Did he bring capital into a joint venture or something? And the answer
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is no. If you look at the emails, none of these deals really require much of anything on the part
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of Hunter Biden. There's no discernible business service that's been provided. So again, businessmen
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linked to Chinese intelligence are sending millions of dollars to the first family of the United States
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before they're the first family. And they perform no discernible business service for that. To me,
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we have to look at this from the standpoint of compromise, possible an effort to recruit,
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you know, in some kind of intelligence scheme. That's the prism through which we need to look at this.
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And that, to me, makes it even more troubling than trying to prove some sort of low rent influence
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peddling scheme. This would be the equivalent in the Cold War of the family of Ronald Reagan or the
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family of Jimmy Carter taking in millions of dollars from Russian businessmen at the height of the Cold War
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who are linked to the KGB. That's what this is the equivalent of. Back then, this would have set
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off alarm bells. It should be setting off alarm bells now as it regards to Biden's.
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And you know, this makes a lot of sense with some of the things that Biden has said and done.
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I remember being alarmed by a story that was reported last year, and this is NBC reporting it.
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The DOJ abandons Trump era program aimed at Chinese spying. So this is Biden's DOJ saying that
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basically the Trump administration wanted to target and then prosecute Chinese threats to national
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security. And under the Biden administration, they said, oh, no, this might cause some anti-Chinese bias
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in America. And so we're just going to drop this. I mean, you just have to wonder. You have to
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scrutinize now all of Biden's policies, not just when it comes to China explicitly,
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but when it comes to his energy policy, what else is he doing to benefit the friends who then benefited
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him? I mean, and it's just funny because Trump was impeached for allegedly quid pro quo. I mean,
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it seems like we've kind of got a lot of that going on here in America. And it seems like
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people just don't care. You care. I'm sure a lot of people do, but people in the press,
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people in Congress. And I think the rest of your book kind of explains why,
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because Biden is not the only one in this business, right? There are other members of
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Congress who are in on similar things. Yeah, that's right. I mean, Beijing doesn't care if
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you have a D or an R after your name. What they're looking for, as they describe it,
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is big help with a little bad mouth. What that means is there are some things that are very,
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very important to them. They want access to our technology. They want access to our financial
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markets. They want access to our general market to be able to sell their goods. If you help them
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in those areas, they understand that you might have to criticize them for human rights or their
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treatment of the Uyghurs. That's the little bad mouth. It's the big help that they are most concerned
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about. And by that measure, Joe Biden has been enormously helpful. But you also have to look
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as some other people that are very powerful in Washington on the other side of the aisle. You
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look at Senator Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao. He's the Republican leader in the
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Senate. Elaine Chao has been a cabinet officer in the George W. Bush administration and also in the
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Trump administration. And her family has a shipping business, Foremost Group, which does enormous
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business with the Chinese government. And it really traces back to 1993 when Mitch McConnell and Elaine
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Chao go to Beijing, China as guests of the Chinese state shipbuilding corporation. And they basically
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strike a deal with them. The Chinese state shipbuilding corporation says, we'll build all your ships.
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We'll finance the construction of those ships. We'll find crews to help you put, you know, to operate
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the ships and we'll get you contracts with Chinese state owned companies to send Chinese goods across
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the Asia Pacific region. And you'll make a lot of money. And they actually have. The problem is you
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now have the Republican leader in the Senate who were he to do something that Beijing really did not like.
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They could destroy the family business overnight. In other words, China has control and leverage over
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them, which is exactly what this elite capture strategy is all about. You look at former members of
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Congress. There's some 23 former members of Congress who have left Congress, but are now lobbyists, not just
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for Chinese companies, but for Chinese military and intelligence linked companies. So there are all kinds of
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ways that this happens in Washington, D.C. The Bidens are the biggest concern because they're the first
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family. But there are many other political figures that fit this category as well.
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Yeah. And when it comes to the situation, like the one with Senator Mitch McConnell, we're not just
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talking about having a business that does business in China. Yeah, there's a lot of people who might do
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business in China that aren't necessarily compromised. We're talking about doing business
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with the Chinese Communist Party. That's a whole different ballgame. We're not talking about China in
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general. We're talking about what the Chinese Communist Party. You also talk about, though, it's not just
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members of Congress. You talk about LeBron James and how the NBA, while they're bowing down here to BLM
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saying, oh, we have so many social justice issues. They look the other way when it comes to the human
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rights atrocities in China, refuse to criticize China. Same with a lot of celebrities here in
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Hollywood. Why is that? What's going on there? Yeah, it's the same thing. You know, LeBron James
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is and wants to be a global brand. And China now actually has more NBA fans than the United States.
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Obviously, their population is much bigger, but the NBA is huge in China. LeBron James understands
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this, and he's been on this trajectory for more than a decade. As I recount in the book, back in 2008,
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there's a petition drive concerning the situation in Darfur, where the Chinese-backed government in
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Sudan is killing black Christians in the southern part of that country. And there's a petition drive
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that comes out to condemn China for supporting this repressive war that killed some 200,000 black
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Christians in southern Sudan. LeBron James refused to sign that petition because he did not want to
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offend China. So it really leads one to question when he says black lives matter. In his mind, it seems
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like some matter more than others. If they're going to cost him commercial opportunities, he's not so
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interested in jumping on board. And so, you know, he obviously wants to play basketball, but he has media
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company. That media company has joint venture deals in China with Chinese state-backed companies.
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He travels to China all the time. He has a special brand of his shoes. We know about the Nikes in the
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United States, but he has special ones made by Nike simply for fans in China. So it's a huge part of
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LeBron James's business empire. And that business empire has basically led him to shut up and avoid
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criticizing China in any material way. The same thing applies to other people in Hollywood as well.
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Wow. There was also just going back to politics, I just remembered, and as we're recording this,
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he hasn't actually been approved yet, but Eric Garcetti, he's Joe Biden's nominee right now for
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ambassador to India. He's the former LA mayor. It's been revealed by the Daily Caller News Foundation
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that he also has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, that he has received apparently well over
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a million in donations during Garcetti's tenure from two wealthy individuals tied to alleged CCP
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influence and intelligence fronts. I mean, the only reason we know about that is because he is now
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Biden's nominee. But I just wonder, okay, how many mayors? He was just a mayor.
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How many mayors? How many governors? How many local officials? They just can't say no to the money.
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I mean, the love of money, not money itself, but the love of money, Jesus says, is the root of all kinds
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of evil. Doesn't mean that it's evil in itself, but people motivated, as you said, by power and money,
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they will literally sell out anyone and anything, including their own country for it. That's scary.
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Yeah, no, you're exactly right. This is part of the genius of the way China approaches this. They
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understand that it's not red or blue, it's green. That's what motivates a lot of people that are in
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public service. And so they use that motivation, that human weakness to their benefit. And, you know,
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a lot of these people are smart. They convince themselves that what they're doing is going to
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bring about closer relationships between the United States and China. But in fact, what they're
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doing is effectively helping to disarm the United States by making the United States less resistant
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to what China is doing. So when China engages in aggressive action, whether it's in the South China
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Sea or, you know, involving, you know, military confrontations, the people that have been captured
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by Beijing with these commercial deals, their answer is always greater engagement. So when China
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does something good, when China does something bad, the answer is always to get closer to them.
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And the problem is that this getting closer to China has not really made China more like us.
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In a lot of respects, it has made us more like China. If you look at a lot of the things that have
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happened in the surveillance state, the credit system that they have created in China to surveil
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and control their population, elements of that have been adopted by big tech firms in the United
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States when it comes to censorship and the control of information. So when you get closer to a power
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like China, the dream, the idea was they're going to become more like us. The reality is,
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unfortunately, that we have become more like them.
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And, you know, one thing that maybe is is positive, or I would just like to I would like
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to hear your take on this. So this is a news story as we're recording this. This is from the Wall Street
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Journal. The title of the article is U.S. threatens ban if TikTok's Chinese owners don't sell steak. So
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for people who don't know, TikTok owned mostly by China, huge national security issues, just
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constantly collecting the data of its users here in the United States in ways beyond I think most
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of us average non-technological people can even understand. And the Biden administration,
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according to the Wall Street Journal, is demanding that TikTok's Chinese owners sell their steaks in
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the video sharing app or face a possible U.S. ban of the app, according to people familiar with
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the matter. Now, I'm not I'm not sure if I believe that this is actually going to happen. Not only
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would this be wildly unpopular with a lot of young liberal voters, but I have a hard time believing
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that the Biden administration would make this kind of strong move. What do you think?
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Oh, yeah, it's a great question. I mean, let's remember Trump called for a ban, a forced sailor ban
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back in 2020. Joe Biden in 2020 refused to allow members of his own campaign to use TikTok because
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of security concerns. But then when he came into office in the spring of 2021, he reversed the Trump
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decision and said, we're going to study it for a while, which is really what's been going on now
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for a couple of years. The decision that you're talking about is being pushed by CFIUS, which is
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the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. These are the various government agencies
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that are involved, like Treasury, the Pentagon, et cetera. It's ultimately going to be the president's
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decision to make it. A ban makes complete sense. TikTok not only collects a lot of data,
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it has been demonstrated. It is a known avenue of propaganda for the CCP. They use it to control
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information. They use it to manipulate information. And the notion that we are somehow going to allow
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a Chinese company that is linked to the hip with the Chinese state into the minds and hearts of our
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children unfiltered is absurdly ridiculous. So I hope optimistically that they ban TikTok,
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but I'm going to hold my breath until it's actually done.
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Yeah. Wow. Wow. You just retweeted a story, a national review about how at Yale, Chinese students
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that are critical of Beijing on an American college campus where they're supposed to be
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First Amendment protection and some form of American patriotism, they're actually,
00:26:41.900
they face harassment and their families back home can be targeted. So tell me a little bit about that.
00:26:52.440
I mean, how pervasive of an issue is that, that actually people's First Amendment rights here when
00:26:56.700
they criticize China are in some way being trampled on? That's a great question. And it's a huge
00:27:03.340
problem. And again, you need to follow the money. What's happened at Yale and it's happened at other
00:27:08.060
universities is they are taking in a large amount of money from Chinese nationals who are donating,
00:27:14.900
but oftentimes it was strings attached. I actually have an entire chapter on this in my book, Red
00:27:20.420
Handed. And Yale is the focus. Joe Tsai, who is the co-founder of Alibaba, which is kind of the Amazon
00:27:27.940
of China, is worth some 20 to 30 billion dollars. He's been donating hundreds of millions of dollars to
00:27:36.660
American universities. Yale being the largest recipient. And this is a gentleman who is very
00:27:43.200
pro-CCP. He loves the credit score system. He talks about how great the Chinese government is.
00:27:50.480
The human rights criticisms are ridiculous. So we know where he stands politically. The problem is
00:27:56.600
that Yale University set up the Psy Center at Yale and they put out a lot of material that's pro-CCP
00:28:05.400
and they are engaged at Yale in preventing people who are critical of Joe Tsai and critical of the
00:28:12.900
CCP from speaking. Students that are from Tibet or students that are Uyghurs, these are the oppressed
00:28:19.620
minorities in China, talk repeatedly about how they're not welcome at Yale, even though they're
00:28:25.760
students at Yale. So again, it's about the money. And it's also about the fact that the universities are
00:28:31.240
trying to hide the source of this money. They're supposed to, they're required by federal law to
00:28:37.380
disclose who's sending them the money, but they oftentimes try to obscure it and hide the fact
00:28:43.000
that it's coming from China. It's a huge problem and not just at Yale. Wow. So, so many of our
00:28:49.460
institutions in this country are at least in part influenced by a foreign hostile regime that is
00:28:58.480
openly and explicitly hostile to America being the world's superpower. And what's interesting is that
00:29:06.020
so many of these institutions and politicians, not all of them, like you said, this happens on the
00:29:10.240
other, on the Republican side of the aisle too, but they claim to be progressive. They claim to be for
00:29:16.160
equality. They're anti-racist. They've got all of these DEI initiatives and they are partnering with
00:29:23.180
the regime that is explicitly against the things that they say that they're for. This is true of
00:29:27.800
the NBA. This is true of a lot of the corporations that are working with China yet, you know, after
00:29:32.600
George Floyd happened, apparently became champions of social justice. And I think people don't realize
00:29:38.400
how much propaganda is spun by the Chinese communist party. Like we actually saw after George Floyd,
00:29:45.480
a lot of the tweets going out, a lot of the stories that were actually being pushed by the CCP
00:29:50.780
because they wanted to latch onto this narrative that America is bad, that America is racist. Yes,
00:29:55.780
look over here. The real human rights atrocities are happening in America. I actually saw a study
00:30:01.100
the other day that a lot of people on the left were sharing, talking about the importance of gender
00:30:06.620
diverse families and gender diverse children and breaking those stereotypes of man, woman. And then when
00:30:12.260
we dug into it, it was actually funded by the Chinese communist party who does not allow that kind of
00:30:18.580
behavior at all, really, in China, certainly on a public sphere. And then if you look at something
00:30:25.180
like TikTok, they heavily restrict the usage of TikTok by their youth there and what content they're
00:30:31.900
able to access. Yet they push that stuff here. So a lot of the progressive values, actually, that I
00:30:37.800
think that we see manifesting themselves in the United States are, I won't say they're originated by
00:30:42.780
China, but they're actively pushed by China because I think China knows that those kinds of progressive
00:30:48.360
programs, DEI and all of that, make us a lot weaker and helps them then get stronger.
00:30:56.420
Yeah, I mean, it's really important for people to understand that what's happened, unfortunately,
00:31:01.380
with some progressive leaders is they have what I would call this sort of dictatorial impulse.
00:31:08.120
And they've talked about this. I mean, Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, was asked 10 years
00:31:14.260
ago which political system he admired the most. And his answer was quite surprising and candid. He said,
00:31:21.640
I admire the Chinese system because you can just kind of get things done. There are people in Silicon
00:31:28.280
Valley, people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, who have said on the record that they admire the
00:31:34.200
quote-unquote efficiency of the Chinese system. Well, if you don't have an independent judiciary,
00:31:40.540
if you don't have a legislative process, if you don't have public elections, it's pretty easy to
00:31:44.880
be efficient. So what's happened, I think the point that you're raising here is really important,
00:31:50.140
is that their goals, their goals of dealing with climate change or dealing with, you know,
00:31:57.000
oppression-related agenda or whatever they want to say, those are so important to them that they are
00:32:02.500
willing to jettison any notion of representative government. And in some cases, they're even
00:32:08.780
willing to partner with a foreign state that rejects their progressive values, but they admire
00:32:14.880
the fact that they can get things done with brutal efficiency. So they're willing to toss aside all their
00:32:20.520
principles and get into bed with them. It's really an atrocious situation. My hope is that there are going
00:32:26.600
to be some honest people on the left who will call them out on it. I'm not holding my breath,
00:32:32.940
but my hope is that that's going to happen because there have got to be people on the left who acknowledge
00:32:38.040
I think even some people on the left, they're just, they're almost so cozy with communism or
00:32:56.480
they're, they don't call themselves communists. But then when you look at the socialists, which is not
00:33:00.300
far from communists, or open socialists in Congress, I think that is part of the reason,
00:33:05.520
it's a superficial reason, but part of the reason why they are scared to criticize the Chinese
00:33:10.440
Communist Party, because they're afraid that it would indict their own belief system. All right,
00:33:15.300
what do we, what do we do? This seems like a really, really big problem that seems beyond
00:33:19.640
our control, just as regular voters. But is there anything that we can do to help expose this problem,
00:33:28.300
Absolutely. I mean, a couple of things I would say is, first of all, you need to let your elected
00:33:32.440
officials know that you actually care about this. You know, I know people that are in elected office.
00:33:37.960
I don't know a lot of them because of the nature of the investigative work I do, but they will tell
00:33:42.860
you, I mean, they pay attention to emails and phone calls to their office. A lot of members of Congress,
00:33:48.680
I would say on both sides of the aisle, basically have the view that most voters only care about
00:33:53.780
themselves. They care about what the tax rate is. They care about, you know, their, if they're work for
00:34:00.580
the government, what their salary is, they only care about their schools. I don't think that's
00:34:04.680
true. People care about their country. They care about these kinds of issues. So you need to let
00:34:09.220
your elected officials know you care about it. Second thing I would say is, make sure that you
00:34:14.920
yourself are not funding the Chinese war against the United States. So what do I mean by that?
00:34:21.280
There are a lot of Wall Street investment firms that are investing in companies right now
00:34:27.320
that are part of the Chinese military industrial complex. I have my retirement accounts through
00:34:33.900
Fidelity and I went and looked at, I think it was the Fidelity worldwide account and found stunningly
00:34:40.660
that 30% of the companies in that worldwide fund were Chinese and a number of them were Chinese
00:34:48.660
military industrial complex companies. So look at your own investments. It doesn't mean you have to
00:34:55.760
have a huge mountain of money, but just make sure you are not investing in entities that are funding
00:35:01.760
the Chinese military industrial complex in their competition with us. And then the third thing I
00:35:07.280
would say is pay attention, be mindful of the forces that are at work. A lot of the media coverage,
00:35:13.960
unfortunately, is very superficial. It focuses at the surface. There are a lot of things going on below
00:35:20.000
the surface that I think help explain the sort of things that are going on. And the hand of China
00:35:26.840
and some of the decisions that are being made in Washington, D.C. is undeniably an important force.
00:35:32.860
And we need to be aware of that. We need to expose it. And we need to let other people know
00:35:37.780
that this is a key factor in how decisions are being made in Washington today.
00:35:42.180
Yes. And get off TikTok. Get your kids off TikTok. China is a brutal regime. It doesn't believe in
00:35:49.980
human rights. It doesn't have an idea of innate human worth the way that we do. It is a systematically
00:35:55.440
atheistic regime. And it follows the worldview and the morality of atheism, which basically people are
00:36:02.440
valued by how much they can offer, how much power they have, how much productivity they have that is
00:36:08.040
fundamentally opposed to what the West and specifically America is supposed to be.
00:36:12.620
We cannot even imagine the widespread atrocities that will take place if and when America or China
00:36:18.560
becomes the world's greatest superpower. And with every bit of corrupted connections that they have
00:36:26.840
here in the U.S., it gets closer to that. That's why our voice matters while it still does. Let's make
00:36:31.980
sure. Thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time. I really encourage everyone to go out and get
00:36:36.060
your book. We'll link to it red-handed in the description of this episode so people can get it.
00:36:40.600
Thank you so much, Peter. Thanks for having me.