The Great America Show - DOES BIDEN WANT WAR？

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs, and this is The Great America Show. Welcome. It's great

00:00:07.900 to have you with us. And unfortunately, we have to begin with an important and disturbing

00:00:13.200 public health development, a deeply concerning government report that reveals nearly half

00:00:19.020 of the drinking water in this country contains highly toxic, so-called forever chemicals,

00:00:25.100 chemicals that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, infertility, and hormone issues,

00:00:32.000 ordinary home products, nonstick cookware, pesticides, food wrapping paper, packaging

00:00:38.300 containing toxins that leach into our water supply. The research was conducted by the U.S.

00:00:45.300 Geological Survey from 2016 to 2021. They tested both public water systems and private wells.

00:00:53.560 They found urban areas are three times as likely to be contaminated with these forever chemicals

00:01:00.860 as rural areas, the hardest-hit regions in the Northeast, the Eastern Seaboard, the Great

00:01:08.020 Lakes, and the Great Plains states. The Daily Mail reports that makers of the forever chemicals

00:01:14.260 have for years covered up studies that showed these toxins cause cancers and birth defects,

00:01:21.060 all raising the question, why didn't Congress act to protect the lives of Americans? Why didn't

00:01:28.040 regulators and those who've done the research over the years? Why no public alarm? We'll take that up

00:01:35.280 here on the Great America Show in the weeks ahead. Turning to the swamp, it's day five of the Biden

00:01:42.940 cocaine scandal, and no culprit has been named, even though security cameras cover every inch of the

00:01:50.920 White House. The search for the absent-minded coke junkie continues as Secret Service is vowing to 1.00

00:01:58.660 get to the bottom of it. So how is the White House press corps handling Joe Biden's latest scandal?

00:02:06.760 Kelly, the big change is where this was found. It was found, by my observation, in a much more secure

00:02:14.480 place, limited-access place than that West Wing reception area. It's still a frequently trafficked

00:02:21.580 place, but it's down near the Situation Room, right off West Executive, down below. And normal people,

00:02:28.420 just average people, just can't get in there, even with the entry from the Northwest Gate.

00:02:32.640 Well, let me bring you up to date with the reporting that I have. What we have learned

00:02:37.840 is that there are, in fact, two West Wing entrances. You know that, I know that, but for the benefit of

00:02:42.600 our audience. And now the investigation has progressed, and so they're saying the West Executive

00:02:47.560 entrance, which, as you noted, is closer to the Situation Room and closer to the Navy Mess,

00:02:55.120 where there's the facilities for food and so forth. It is also next to West Executive Drive.

00:03:00.800 That's where, for example, the vice president's vehicle is parked.

00:03:04.380 MSNBC reporter Kelly O'Donnell suggesting the cocaine was found close to where the vice

00:03:10.500 president's vehicle parks. What does that mean? But already there have been three separate areas

00:03:17.280 where the cocaine was supposedly found. Somebody is wrong. Somebody is lying. And it doesn't look good

00:03:26.420 for the Secret Service. Not a bit. And the governor of North Carolina supporting sex changes for minors,

00:03:34.580 refusing to restrict men from participating in women's sports, and limiting gender instruction

00:03:40.920 for young students. North Carolina's Democrat governor, Roy Cooper, vetoing three bills this week

00:03:48.240 that would ban sex changes for minors, restrict men from participating in women's sports,

00:03:54.120 and limit classroom instruction about gender identity and sexuality for young students.

00:04:01.720 There's no room, in my opinion, for indoctrination of any kind in our classrooms.

00:04:07.780 And now, wrapping up developments in foreign policy this week,

00:04:11.860 the State Department issuing travel warnings to Americans going to China because of China's

00:04:18.320 targeting of Americans and wrongful detentions. Here now to take that up and much more is the

00:04:24.740 host of the Hard Truth podcast, Tony Schaefer, and author, radio host, and China expert, Gordon Chang.

00:04:31.840 Welcome back, gentlemen, and thanks for being here. Let's start with first the idea

00:04:35.940 that there's a travel ban of sorts on Americans going to China. Tony.

00:04:41.640 Well, this is a continuation of the back and forth that we're seeing right now with Tony Blinken

00:04:47.920 making a complete ass of himself with his visit over there, genuflecting to Xi, and then Joe Biden

00:04:56.840 calling him a dictator, kind of promoting the anger that the Chinese want. So this is just another 0.96

00:05:03.560 antagonistic move by them. There's a series of things that are in motion right now. The Chinese 1.00

00:05:10.220 are doing what they can to antagonize and provoke the U.S. to overreact in some instances or underreact

00:05:17.100 in others. For the most part, the Biden administration, I think, is compromised. I was just earlier today

00:05:24.440 talking to my friend, Congressman Crane from Arizona. And Eli was talking to the FBI a while back about

00:05:36.420 something called elite capture. Elite captures policy and technique of the PRC, CCP, to target

00:05:45.060 senior leaders of foreign countries. And so I believe they were successful in targeting Joe Biden

00:05:51.940 be a hunter. I think by the fact that you see that level of compromise at the senior level,

00:05:58.340 things like this, these antagonisms going back and forth are simply designed to create in the mind

00:06:05.420 of the world, not U.S., but the world, that we are a feckless tiger because there's going to be

00:06:09.840 virtually no pushback by Joe Biden or anyone else on this, because I think they're compromised. And so

00:06:15.900 therefore, the idea is to make us, the United States, look weak when they do things like this

00:06:21.680 and we'll do nothing back. It makes us look weak. Well, I don't know how much effort is required to

00:06:28.320 make us look weak with Joe Biden running the country. Your reaction, Gordon?

00:06:36.300 I thought it was ironic that as soon as the State Department issued its travel advisory about

00:06:42.560 urging Americans to reconsider travel to China, that Janet Yellen gets on the plane for Beijing.

00:06:51.200 And I think that the trip really is ill-advised. I mean, basically, the administration is saying,

00:06:58.880 look, we don't expect anything to come from this except for reestablishing channels of communication.

00:07:04.720 In other words, talking about talking. The problem here is that we're Americans. We think talking is

00:07:10.960 very important. So we think what we're doing is responsible. And this is the attitude, not just

00:07:17.080 of the Biden administration, but its predecessors. However, the Chinese see this very differently.

00:07:23.620 They know that they've engaged in belligerent and provocative behavior, and they know that they

00:07:29.060 should be the ones trying to mend relations, not us. So when they see the Biden administration send

00:07:35.120 senior officials to Beijing, it confirms in their mind that this is a vassal that is acknowledging its

00:07:42.140 subordinate position. So what we're doing by trying to talk is really feeding their already inflated

00:07:49.360 sense of self-importance. So this is just going to make problems worse. And it just is basically,

00:07:56.280 she should stay home. Blinken should never have gone. And no American officials should go.

00:08:01.160 If the Chinese want to talk to us, well, fine, but make them come to Washington. 1.00

00:08:07.620 Let's dissect that just a bit, if we may, gentlemen. You're talking about we shouldn't

00:08:13.720 send anyone. But there may be a number of reasons why we shouldn't send anyone. And that's because we

00:08:19.120 have no one who seems to be sufficiently talented, knowledgeable, or skillful in foreign relations or

00:08:27.380 diplomacy. I can't think of a single person in the national security team I would want representing

00:08:34.160 the United States in any capital anywhere in the world. Can you?

00:08:39.060 Well, no, I can't. And to Gordon's point and your point, Lou, the Biden folks consider a successful

00:08:47.400 engagement progress. They don't care if anything positive comes out of it. I mean, Blinken said this

00:08:53.280 regarding his last visit, that he was simply happy that they talked to him. So if that's your standard

00:09:02.080 success, then the Biden administration will continue to play right into the hands of China,

00:09:06.880 as Gordon just said.

00:09:08.320 Gordon, your thoughts? Because again, just on the quality of the people that are in important posts,

00:09:16.240 they simply shouldn't be, in my opinion, representing the United States in any capacity.

00:09:20.900 Yeah, the problem with the Biden administration, in addition to all the things that Tony talked

00:09:26.620 about, is that we have given China valuable things, made valuable concessions in order to get the

00:09:33.400 conversation going. I mean, there's the reporting that we agreed not to impose certain restrictions on

00:09:40.040 Huawei technologies in order to get Blinken's right to go to Beijing. Well, that's ridiculous. 0.74

00:09:46.900 And we know that the State Department, just days after the spy balloon was shot down,

00:09:53.500 decided not to impose measures that had been previously scheduled. This is the Reuters reporting.

00:09:59.760 And really what this says, Lou, is that we have provided incentives for China to act more

00:10:05.180 belligerently, because the Chinese know that they violated our sovereignty, and yet they got the State 1.00

00:10:10.300 Department to back down on things that were completely unrelated that were going to go forward

00:10:14.540 anyway. So what we're doing is, we are just making the situation worse. And this is the real problem

00:10:21.420 with engagement, the way that it's worked out from administration to administration. The one great

00:10:26.540 thing Trump did on China, you know, you can talk about specific measures, but the one great thing he did

00:10:32.560 was he broke the concept of engagement, that the idea was that we're supposed to talk with China for the

00:10:38.500 sake of talking. And what Trump did was, well, he said, yeah, I'll talk to China, but I want to get

00:10:44.940 X, Y, and Z. And he made those preconditions. So those are really important things for the

00:10:50.600 administration to do, and they're not doing them. They're going back to the failed engagement policy

00:10:55.220 of five decades, which have, they sound like they should work, but these policies had in fact created

00:11:01.300 this disastrous situation that we now find ourselves in. It's the kind of diplomacy that is

00:11:07.360 pure process and no result. And I think you're exactly right. What is the point of it all other

00:11:15.300 than the prospect that maybe the captured corporate media will, you know, push it through back in some

00:11:25.300 in some form to the public as a success. Let's turn to another development this week. And that is

00:11:33.940 the attempted capture by Iran of two oil tankers in the Gulf of Hormuz. Ultimately, the US Navy pushed

00:11:46.060 them away. And but again, they are back to old tricks trying their best to pirate and possess other

00:11:56.340 people's crude oil tankers. Your thoughts, Tony? So this goes back to a number of incidents going

00:12:04.140 since the Iranians have become a provocative power under the mullahs. The requirements of the, 0.93

00:12:13.700 I guess, the guarantee of navigation through that area has always been something we, the United

00:12:20.580 States and our allies have helped guarantee. This has required some pretty aggressive actions

00:12:26.340 by multiple administrations. That includes Democrat and Republican both. I remember under President

00:12:32.800 Clinton, Tony Zinni and Central Command, General Zinni had to basically do some pretty aggressive things

00:12:38.840 to maintain the lines of commerce to be open. This is no different. I think the Iranians see an 0.99

00:12:46.100 opportunity here to begin acting out, to gain influence. Again, one of their biggest allies

00:12:51.880 that's going to support them in this is going to be China, because China is going to let them do

00:12:55.060 whatever they want, essentially, as the guarantor of Iranian mischief, misdeeds. And so it's going to be an 0.98

00:13:06.640 interesting point to see if we, the United States, come and do something about it this time. Because

00:13:11.180 again, even during the Clinton years, Lou, they actually took very aggressive actions to promote

00:13:17.000 and protect the lines of communication and commerce through that area. And perhaps the Iranians are 0.99

00:13:22.080 counting on big brother China backing off the United States, or the United States just being so

00:13:28.380 feckless we won't do anything about it. Remind us what Zinni did that was a strong response.

00:13:35.180 So during that time, there was some attempted takeovers of U.S. ships, where there was actually

00:13:41.380 a requirement by U.S. Navy ships to fire in response, to basically to fire a warning shot,

00:13:47.300 to say, you know, you can't do this. As a matter of fact, they re-flagged U.S. ships a couple times

00:13:52.640 to make sure that the ships went through with the idea that if a ship is with a U.S. flag,

00:13:59.640 you will be fired upon directly. So the U.S. Navy went about actually helping to re-flag

00:14:04.980 several ships that were going through the straits to just dare them to do something to attack them.

00:14:10.640 And that successfully, the combination of intimidation and re-flagging actually did

00:14:15.860 back the Iranians off back during the 90s. 1.00

00:14:17.780 And Gordon, Iran seems to get away with far more than they should under successive administrations,

00:14:29.340 except for a four-year gap where a fellow by the name of Donald Trump was president.

00:14:34.040 We are back to trying to buy a relationship with Iran. 1.00

00:14:39.240 We are back to negotiating with them.

00:14:43.360 And no one seems to know to what purpose.

00:14:47.680 Right. And also, clearly, the end goal that the Biden administration wants is a treaty,

00:14:55.380 but they won't submit it to the Senate because they know they can't get approval.

00:14:59.280 So they're going to try some sort of runaround with an executive agreement.

00:15:03.200 And this is going to be something that Congress is going to be upset about because Congress has

00:15:09.280 required administrations to actually submit portions of agreements to Congress for approval.

00:15:18.360 And the Biden administration doesn't want to do that.

00:15:20.800 So it's not just the Republicans in Congress.

00:15:22.620 It's also the Democrats, because this is a congressional prerogative.

00:15:26.200 But stepping back from the technical aspects of what the Biden administration is trying to do,

00:15:32.620 this is just wrong.

00:15:34.160 You know, we're trying to put money into the hands of people who see us as an enemy

00:15:40.160 and who will use that money to attack us.

00:15:43.200 So just fundamentally, morally, strategically, this is the wrong approach.

00:15:48.740 And clearly, the American people should do all they possibly can to stop this.

00:15:53.560 And we may be able to stop a lot of this in Congress.

00:15:57.520 We're talking with Tony Schaefer and Gordon Chang about the Biden foreign policy misadventures.

00:16:05.280 There are too many to cover in one show, but we're going to give it our very best effort

00:16:10.160 as we continue.

00:16:11.540 Stay with us through these messages.

00:16:13.300 We'll be right back.

00:16:14.340 We're back now with Tony Schaefer and Gordon Chang.

00:16:23.540 I want to talk about Iran and why in the world the United States government,

00:16:27.720 or for that matter, any Western power puts up with their aggression

00:16:32.120 and doesn't just simply respond when they're in the Gulf of Hormuz or wherever

00:16:38.700 and fire on the enemy, because that's what they seem to want to be.

00:16:45.080 Gordon?

00:16:46.360 Absolutely.

00:16:47.300 And President Trump did that when he called the strike in on Soleimani,

00:16:51.560 and that put Iran back in the box.

00:16:55.180 And that's what's needed.

00:16:56.440 And the Biden administration won't do that.

00:17:00.340 Remember, we had a president who advised against the strike on Osama bin Laden

00:17:05.180 and the raid on his compound.

00:17:07.660 So, you know, as Robert Gates, the former defense secretary, said in his 2014 memoir,

00:17:13.220 and this has become famous, he said,

00:17:15.460 Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security matter

00:17:20.920 of the past four decades.

00:17:23.740 And being president, he's still wrong on everything.

00:17:27.180 So, you know, clearly when you look at Iran, that's just a subset of the problem.

00:17:30.800 The major problem is that Biden does not want to acknowledge that the world has indeed cleaved into two.

00:17:37.980 There are two opposing camps.

00:17:39.900 This is like the Cold War, and we have to prevail.

00:17:44.880 Iran is a proxy of China and Russia, and we are not willing to acknowledge that. 0.87

00:17:50.580 So this is going to be a problem that runs through every Biden foreign policy decision,

00:17:56.360 because as Confucius said, and the most important thing I think Confucius ever said was,

00:18:01.480 you have to call things by their proper names.

00:18:04.300 And we are not calling the international system by its proper name.

00:18:08.260 It is now Cold War II.

00:18:11.020 Yeah, and as Davy Crockett said, say what you mean and mean what you say.

00:18:16.700 We have an administration that has, I don't think, has a clear idea of what it does mean,

00:18:22.560 other than to destroy this great constitutional republic of ours and our system of government.

00:18:30.000 In terms of foreign policy, there is an ambiguity that hangs over every relationship,

00:18:36.320 whether it's Russia, except for Ukraine.

00:18:39.720 Biden is very explicit about Ukraine.

00:18:43.180 He will put as much money into Ukraine as is necessary.

00:18:48.200 And he proves it once again, coming up with another half billion dollars to ship off to Ukraine.

00:18:56.180 It's incredible to watch this unfold.

00:19:00.860 Tony, your thoughts?

00:19:01.600 Well, on Ukraine, it's clear that there's no strategy.

00:19:07.600 To quote Sun Tzu, another great quote is,

00:19:11.360 tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

00:19:16.480 And that's exactly what they're doing.

00:19:18.060 They're basically layering every weapon system they add to the battlefield.

00:19:23.000 It's the wonder weapon.

00:19:24.100 Oh, this is going to do it.

00:19:25.140 It's like, no, it's not going to do it.

00:19:26.940 They lost upwards of 50 Bradleys, our latest Bradleys, M2A2s. 1.00

00:19:32.340 The latest Bradleys lost 50 of those.

00:19:34.300 We're going to replace 30.

00:19:35.580 And yeah, no big deal.

00:19:36.460 They're just trying to probe right now.

00:19:38.420 The unimaginable loss of life and expenditure of resources uselessly is mind boggling at this point.

00:19:44.900 And when I look at this as a serious, I spend a lot of time in uniform doing things which I'd like to believe meant something relating to helping our leadership understand and deal with threat, counter threats.

00:19:59.980 And what I see right now is a travesty because we have supposedly Mark Milley, and I know Mark, and Lloyd Austin.

00:20:08.980 I worked for Lloyd Austin, regular General Austin, when he was in Afghanistan.

00:20:12.220 And knowing these men directly, it is disappointing to see the mess that they've made by advising Ukraine to do what they're doing right now.

00:20:24.860 There is no military prerogative or strategy that I can make sense of because all they're doing right now is literally throwing military equipment against the wall and hoping for the best.

00:20:35.120 And hope is not a strategy.

00:20:36.280 Yeah, Gordon, what do you make of the fact that Lloyd Austin is the Secretary of Defense, Mark Milley is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and frankly, I can't think of two greater oaths in the military over the past 20 years.

00:20:55.920 And by the way, I can think of quite a number of untalented members of the general staff.

00:21:03.920 Yes, and there have been actually a lot of talented Secretaries of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who've made a bunch of it.

00:21:13.400 So, you know, you add that on to it.

00:21:16.400 But clearly what we have seen is the Pentagon not prepare for the war that it needs to, which is the one with China, not prepared to win in Ukraine, although they are willing to commit resources.

00:21:29.400 And it's partly, I think, the failure of the Pentagon to advise the president.

00:21:35.080 But it's mostly the problem of the president who has been wrong on these issues regarding Ukraine.

00:21:40.960 Remember, Ukraine would have never— 0.88

00:21:43.400 May I interrupt just for one second?

00:21:45.100 Because you said the president.

00:21:47.180 And I have to just question this.

00:21:50.520 We talk about the president, but we all know he is not the president of the United States.

00:21:58.940 He is some sort of facade for some power that is driving this administration.

00:22:07.180 This man doesn't have the intellect to get across the stage.

00:22:11.100 He doesn't have the capacity to put one foot in front of another.

00:22:16.160 He is—for whatever reason, there is a mass psychosis in this country that is allowing us to say this man is the president.

00:22:25.520 And by the way, I'm guilty of it as well.

00:22:28.140 He is not the president.

00:22:30.680 Someone is driving this man.

00:22:32.620 Someone is making these decisions.

00:22:34.700 It sure as hell is not Joe Biden.

00:22:38.980 Well, you're not going to get an argument out of me for that, Lou.

00:22:42.920 That's certainly right.

00:22:44.160 But you have a national security establishment that has been making one fundamental mistake after another.

00:22:50.320 When you start with the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, leading to Putin thinking that he could invade Ukraine,

00:22:58.140 and the mistakes that have followed after that.

00:23:01.180 This has been—this would be a very difficult period for any president,

00:23:05.180 but it's become so much more challenging for who's ever running foreign policy now,

00:23:10.960 because they are making one mistake after another.

00:23:14.540 And some of these are critical mistakes.

00:23:17.800 Can you think, Tony, of anything this administration is doing in foreign policy that isn't a mistake?

00:23:23.520 Can you think of any position in this country's foreign policy that is not the mirror image of what was the Obama foreign policy?

00:23:33.720 No, I think two-part answer to that question.

00:23:38.500 First, I think it is Obama's third term.

00:23:42.060 Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice are there in the White House on a daily basis.

00:23:46.900 They are the brainstem that informs Biden and his staff what to do.

00:23:51.240 So I think that's what this is.

00:23:52.500 And if it's that, which I think most people would agree,

00:23:55.900 then it's focused on continuing Obama's policies.

00:23:59.240 Part two of my answer is this.

00:24:02.320 There's a fundamental difference of how they approach the world.

00:24:06.920 And one of my principle—one of the principle of policies I personally live by

00:24:11.640 is looking at measures of effectiveness, MOE, versus measures of performance, MOP.

00:24:20.300 And this is a military thing.

00:24:21.340 I actually lecture on this at the War College, Army War College.

00:24:24.040 You can set up any performance standard you want.

00:24:28.580 It's artificial.

00:24:29.780 It doesn't necessarily relate to the world of how you interact.

00:24:32.780 That's why, to your point, Lou, that you've had all these generals, as Gordon said,

00:24:38.040 you've had all these people, some marginal, some not.

00:24:40.400 Man, they all get promoted.

00:24:41.540 They all get medals.

00:24:42.460 Yet we're losing.

00:24:43.140 Because they set up, they themselves set up measures of performance that have no relationship

00:24:49.200 to the outcome, to the reality, to effects.

00:24:53.020 I believe we should be looking at, like all the Reagan guys.

00:24:56.220 And, you know, I just saw Ed Meese a few weeks ago.

00:24:58.460 I'm still close to the Reagan folks.

00:25:00.340 I love the Reagan folks because they focused on measures of effectiveness.

00:25:04.380 What will be the effect of these series of actions?

00:25:07.160 This administration has no interest in linking their actions to a positive outcome.

00:25:14.360 That's part of the problem.

00:25:15.360 So that's why you see this performance, like Blinken, just showing up and having the meeting.

00:25:20.120 That's a success.

00:25:21.900 And if you're measuring yourself based on the fact that activity is success without any regard to outcome,

00:25:28.120 then you're going to fail.

00:25:29.080 That's why the entire foreign policy establishment fails constantly, because they are not tied.

00:25:35.700 They're not tying their actions to any measurable, achievable objective.

00:25:40.440 We're talking about success and failure in foreign policy, and specifically the Biden foreign policy.

00:25:46.660 We're talking with Tony Schaefer and Gordon Chang.

00:25:49.620 And we're talking about what happened this week, worthy of note in foreign policy.

00:25:55.780 We'll be right back.

00:25:59.080 We're back with Tony Schaefer and Gordon Chang.

00:26:05.160 And I'd like to turn to Iran again. 0.90

00:26:08.740 The Biden-Iran policy now under scrutiny, in part because the U.S. envoy to Iran has been suspended.

00:26:19.120 And by the way, for mishandling classified documents.

00:26:24.840 But there seems to be much more to the story.

00:26:27.360 And much of it we still don't know.

00:26:29.920 But, Gordon, your thoughts on what is happening.

00:26:33.200 As with one hand, the Biden administration is trying to close a deal to give Iran a nuclear weapon.

00:26:40.980 And with the other hand, a little more than embarrassed to find that its envoy has been clumsy with classified information.

00:26:49.740 And we still don't know just how clumsy or to whose advantage.

00:26:54.700 Yeah, this is really a developing story.

00:26:57.600 And we don't know the facts.

00:27:00.200 But, yeah, the allegation is mishandling classified information.

00:27:05.300 But it probably goes more than that.

00:27:07.660 But the problem here is, I'll say it again, the president's, but, OK, the national security establishment's strategy about Iran, because it is flawed from the very beginning.

00:27:21.540 We had four years of successful Iran policy, but that was under President Trump.

00:27:27.100 And we've had the disasters both before and after the Trump years.

00:27:32.440 President Trump did something which, you know, you never see Biden do.

00:27:37.620 He saw that Iran was violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and he terminated it because he couldn't make the card and certification that Iran was in compliance because it wasn't in compliance.

00:27:51.080 It was actually violating a critical part of the Iran deal.

00:27:55.560 And Iran had been violating it in the Obama years, but Obama wouldn't pull the trigger and Biden certainly wouldn't do so.

00:28:05.240 So really what we have is the making of agreements for the sake of agreements, just taking something from what Tony said about measures of performance.

00:28:14.240 So really, this is a failure of the approach of the Biden team, and we are going to see disastrous results from this because Iran views the United States as an enemy.

00:28:26.380 Iran is backed by China.

00:28:28.280 Iran is engaged in mischief and terrorism and bad acts throughout the region and not only throughout its region, by the way, through our region as well, Lou, in our hemisphere. 0.98

00:28:40.300 So this is going to be a disaster, as we can see from what Biden's been doing.

00:28:46.980 Tony, if I may, I'd like to turn to the issue of Cuba because the president, as we lovingly call him, is saying nothing.

00:28:56.940 His administration is doing nothing, and it looks like that may be their policy.

00:29:03.160 Simply silence, ignore them, and whatever military base the Chinese build on Cuba will be a matter for the next president or iteration of the Obama presidency to deal with. 0.90

00:29:20.000 So the Lourdes Signals Intelligence Communications Intercept site is a significant asset.

00:29:27.480 The Russians used it through the Cold War.

00:29:30.860 It's a location that was much like we have listening posts all over the world for NSA.

00:29:36.500 This was a Russian version.

00:29:38.380 The Russians shut it down, abandoned it after the Cold War, I think in the early 90s.

00:29:43.100 The Chinese came along and said, hey, we want to reopen this. 0.75

00:29:46.100 And I do believe that there was some level of indicator that this was being contemplated during the Trump years.

00:29:51.700 I think there was until it's indicating it was happening, but the trigger was not pulled until the Biden administration came in, and they decided to reactivate it.

00:29:59.360 But the Chinese are lacking some pretty big intelligence pieces regarding our movements.

00:30:04.760 And let me be clear on this.

00:30:05.960 I'm not a neocon, but I am convinced that the Chinese are overrating their own capability. 1.00

00:30:12.640 And they're doing that both to promote esprit de corps and to get folks thinking that they can do things militarily.

00:30:20.880 I think my advice to the Chinese, they study the Japanese Navy a bit more before they get aggressive, just saying, regarding World War II. 0.98

00:30:27.740 And at this point, without understanding us clearly and making miscalculations in their view, I think, they do rightfully seek more intelligence.

00:30:40.640 That's why they did the balloon thing. 0.90

00:30:41.780 The balloon thing provided them some significant semi-static surveillance of some key strategic locations they don't have access to.

00:30:51.440 There's certain blind spots, literally, regarding certain collection capabilities on their satellites.

00:30:58.920 I don't want to get into it because it's classified, but there's things they can't do with satellites that you couldn't do with balloons, and they did it that way.

00:31:06.160 It's, by the way, cheaper to do it by balloons than satellites, just saying.

00:31:09.200 But Lourdes gives another aspect of this, too, signals intelligence, being able to not only look at what we're doing, but intercept communications.

00:31:17.880 Because much of what we learned during the Cold War was called channel analysis.

00:31:22.040 You don't necessarily understand the content of something to understand activity, frequency of contacts, the level of contacts.

00:31:30.760 All these things add up.

00:31:31.720 So that's what they're going for with Lourdes.

00:31:33.160 So this is a major, a major collection center that we're apparently just happy to allow the Cubans to say yes to and let them know them.

00:31:42.920 And what is your thinking, Tony?

00:31:45.860 Because you made it sound as if there's entirely rational and there is sort of a, let's say, an ambiguous sense of what you're saying we should do because they need it.

00:31:59.040 I know what I'd recommend doing, but I don't think they're going to do it.

00:32:02.040 Well, let's try me.

00:32:04.760 So basically, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we essentially established policies that were not necessarily approved by Congress of what we would accept and not accept.

00:32:15.040 John Kennedy, 13 days in October.

00:32:17.660 I think people ought to go back and look at that.

00:32:19.700 We recognize there were certain prerogatives we were willing to accept and not accept regarding activities within the Western Hemisphere.

00:32:26.860 Walk softly, but carry a big stick, as one president said.

00:32:30.180 And I think at this point, recognizing that China is aggressive, behaving aggressively, to Gordon's point, they're doing these things across the board, no pushback. 0.61

00:32:38.780 So the idea is, you know, we've got to draw a line and say enough, no more.

00:32:44.480 Either, you know, either you say it's a policy position of this nation.

00:32:48.660 We will not permit you to expand your military activities in Cuba.

00:32:51.560 And we were willing to do things to counter that or else.

00:32:54.700 I'm not saying we should bomb them, but there's a lot of things we can do to make life very difficult or counter that facility.

00:33:00.220 And that's what the policy should be.

00:33:02.380 And at this point, there's no indication there's any pushback at all against that facility being built by the Chinese in Cuba.

00:33:08.960 To your earlier points, Gordon, possession, really, of the Panama Canal, they have expanded from Brazil to Venezuela to Colombia, Cuba, Central America.

00:33:25.680 They have a, how would we say it, a covert relationship with Mexico, its drug cartels, as well as its government. 0.95

00:33:34.820 But we are being played for fools in the open. 0.96

00:33:39.620 And it's going to be very difficult for us to draw a line here, is it not? 0.98

00:33:45.960 Because we have blurred so many ourselves.

00:33:49.200 Well, the one thing we can do, Lou, is we can start paying attention to the region, which really no American president has done for decades and decades.

00:34:00.600 So what we have to do is start thinking not only about Latin America, but the Caribbean as well, because we haven't been competing.

00:34:08.280 And while we haven't been competing, the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians have been making inroads everywhere.

00:34:15.160 And it's not just Cuba, of course.

00:34:17.360 It's, for instance, the new base that China is trying to establish in Argentina in Tierra del Fuego, which means that they would control the tip of South America.

00:34:26.420 But you go through, it's not just Argentina, it's not just Venezuela, not just Mexico, not just Cuba, it's not just Jamaica, it's not just the Bahamas.

00:34:36.960 We find ourselves not competing at all.

00:34:40.140 We have enormous power, as Tony was intimating.

00:34:43.780 We just have not been using it.

00:34:46.020 And because of that, China has taken advantage of an America that has not been paying attention to the countries that are most critical.

00:34:53.660 And it's, by the way, you know, it's not just the countries to the South.

00:34:58.740 China is actually more influential in Ottawa, or at least it's been until the most recent controversy.

00:35:04.600 So let's say up until the last six months.

00:35:07.240 But China has been more influential in Ottawa than we have been.

00:35:11.300 And so we find ourselves surrounded in the Western Hemisphere.

00:35:15.140 People have no idea, most people, I should say, in Washington, D.C., have no idea of just how embedded the Chinese are in the oil sands in Canada.

00:35:29.200 Their capacity at every port that is important to Canada. 0.93

00:35:37.520 We have been, again, just wondrous fools with our policy, as you put it, in our hemisphere.

00:35:46.940 I want to wrap this up, if I may, with asking one more question of you.

00:35:55.360 And that is, where do we go from here?

00:35:58.440 What are we to make of an administration that says reconsider travel but doesn't have the honesty to be forthright and direct and say it's a travel ban?

00:36:15.680 Give us a sense of where we're headed with this administration in the short term.

00:36:20.300 Gordon, if you will, your concluding thoughts.

00:36:25.140 I'm going to quote somebody that I disagree with all the time because, for once, he was right. 1.00

00:36:30.220 On June 7th, Henry Kissinger gave an interview to the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg, who said that war between the United States and China is, quote-unquote, probable.

00:36:41.640 That's how serious it is.

00:36:43.280 And as a final thought, I would say that we need to have a national security establishment in Washington.

00:36:51.180 President and Valerie Jarrett and everybody else recognize the severity and the urgency of the situation.

00:36:59.260 We just had July 4th, our national holiday.

00:37:02.760 And we need to start thinking about what we have to do this year to maintain our republic and our freedoms and our sovereignty, because we're going to lose them, Lou, unless we start thinking, start looking at the world realistically, the way that it is, not the way that we want it to be, and start exercising political will to defend ourselves.

00:37:24.320 Tony, if you will, your concluding thoughts.

00:37:26.580 Sure, Lou, I think when you examine what should be done versus what will be done, there's a huge gap.

00:37:37.140 The fact is we have to examine this from the perspective of understanding that we are essentially at a state of cold war with China, period.

00:37:46.020 That needs to be the fundamental understanding, that they have decided they're going to undermine our system of governance, our ability to protect the commerce and actions of the world.

00:37:58.480 I'm not saying that I'm not a neocon, but I'm saying that we have guaranteed free access and trade for the globe for a long time, which I think is a good thing.

00:38:06.640 And China has said they're going to dominate the South China Sea and the Pacific first and move on from there.

00:38:11.180 So I think we have to accept them at their word.

00:38:13.660 We and we're not.

00:38:14.400 There's a handful of folks who have a rational understanding of what the Chinese want to do. 0.98

00:38:19.160 I keep hearing from some of my left, you know, my friends, some of who I agree with on Ukraine, disagree with me on China.

00:38:26.540 They think that China is simply out to promote their own ability to do trade.

00:38:31.400 It's not.

00:38:32.600 They keep saying they're not aggressive.

00:38:34.080 Well, I think the people in Tibet would differ with that opinion regarding the fact that they secured Tibet and that region for the purposes of making sure that they had access to certain natural resources, water being one of them.

00:38:46.220 So when you we need to understand that China is going to act in China's interests no matter what.

00:38:51.220 And they may not do it overtly aggressive like a Putin, but they're going to be aggressive and they're going to undermine things.

00:38:57.440 That's the fundamental thing we must do to just start changing the policy, the monolithic policy direction of the Biden administration, which basically pretends that everything is just fine.

00:39:10.380 Well, Donald Rumsfeld once famously said, you have to go to war with the army you have.

00:39:18.980 That's right.

00:39:19.860 And you also, unfortunately, have to go to war with the commander in chief you have.

00:39:26.560 Nothing frightens me more than the prospect of this country having to go to war with this White House, this president as commander in chief.

00:39:36.540 It is it's a terrifying thought and it's one that everyone should get acquainted with because the prospects, as Gordon said, are are growing by, it seems, the day.

00:39:49.860 We thank you both, as always, for wrapping up the week with us here on The Great America Show.

00:39:55.320 Thanks, Lou.

00:39:56.220 Thank you.

00:39:56.760 Always great to join you.

00:39:57.460 Yes, thank you.

00:39:58.840 Tony Schaefer, Gordon Chang, Great Americans, both of you.

00:40:03.020 Thanks, everybody.

00:40:03.860 And our guest here Monday will be the Republican strategist and author Roger Stone on President Trump's commanding lead in the polls, Biden's scandals and the latest JFK assassination document dump.

00:40:18.480 Roger says LBJ did it.

00:40:21.000 Please be with us for all of that and more.

00:40:23.780 Follow me on Twitter and Truth Social at Lou Dobbs.

00:40:27.080 That's at Lou Dobbs and on Facebook and Instagram at Lou Dobbs Tonight.

00:40:32.460 Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

The Great America Show - July 07, 2023

DOES BIDEN WANT WAR？

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