The Great America Show - February 03, 2022


PETER SCHWEIZER TIES THE BIDENS TO RED CHINA


Episode Stats

Length

45 minutes

Words per Minute

145.39922

Word Count

6,594

Sentence Count

394


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great America Podcast with Lou Dobbs,
00:00:04.200 always in the fight for truth, justice, and yes, our American way of life.
00:00:09.180 And now, here he is, the Peabody award-winning voice of truth, the great Lou Dobbs.
00:00:14.740 Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Great America Show, where truth and justice live,
00:00:19.880 and the American way is the only way. Doug, God, it's good of you to be with us today,
00:00:25.400 especially so because we're going to spend some time with the best investigative journalists in
00:00:30.380 the country. No, make that the best in the world. I'm talking, of course, about best-selling author,
00:00:36.740 great American, and friend, Peter Schweitzer. Peter is a fearless investigator. He goes where
00:00:42.680 other journalists and authors fear to go. He takes on the money, the politically powerful and corrupt,
00:00:50.240 and exposes them for what they are to all who want and need to know. Peter has written such
00:00:57.340 bestsellers as Clinton Cash, Throw Them All Out, The Bushes, Secret Empires, Profiles in Corruption,
00:01:04.840 Extortion, and now the blockbuster bestseller, Red-Handed, How American Elites Get Rich Helping
00:01:12.300 China Win. Peter, it is great to have you with us here. Congratulations on your new book and another
00:01:19.380 big bestseller. Oh, thank you very much, Lou. It's always great to sit down with you. We started
00:01:26.260 doing this back when you were at CNN, and I always enjoy our conversation, so I'm just delighted to be
00:01:32.060 here with you. Thanks so much for having me. You bet. And, you know, you've done it again
00:01:37.880 at a time when this country needs to know more about what the corporate-owned left-wing media will
00:01:45.700 not tell them. Here comes Peter Schweitzer with more revelations and far more contributions to
00:01:54.500 the public's need to know, right to know. I want to start with, you know, one of your early chapters,
00:02:02.100 the Bidens, and to see the amount of money that they have wrangled. Tell us about this relationship
00:02:13.100 with the Chinese and how it's even bigger, I think, than even the most cynical Americans might have
00:02:20.880 thought of the Biden family. Absolutely, Lou. You know, I first broke the story of the fact that
00:02:28.160 the Biden family had commercial ties with China back in 2018, and I came on your show and we talked
00:02:34.200 about it. And, you know, at that time, it was simply a story of corruption and cronyism, self-dealing,
00:02:42.240 you know, that obviously China was trying to influence the Bidens in some way. Maybe it was,
00:02:47.180 you know, tantamount to some kind of a bribe. What we did with the new material that's come
00:02:53.760 along, and by that I mean the Hunter Biden laptop, I mean emails from some of Hunter Biden's
00:03:00.160 business partners who shared their email accounts with us. What turns out is it's something more
00:03:05.840 troubling than that. What we found is that the amount of money they got is some $31 million.
00:03:13.360 But what's troubling is who made those deals happen? Using the new sources of information,
00:03:19.120 we traced it back. And what we found is that every one of the businessmen that helped that money flow to
00:03:26.380 the Bidens is linked to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence. So, you know, this is not
00:03:32.820 just a story anymore of cronyism and corruption. It's a story about potential compromise and the fact
00:03:40.480 that the first family of the United States, you know, has a very real China spy problem.
00:03:48.360 And that spy problem is longstanding. Going back to the president's vice president days with the Obama
00:04:00.960 administration. And the word vice and vice president, he gives all the more meaning to. It's disgusting to
00:04:10.700 think what this man has been doing. His brother, Hunter, their connections and their corruption,
00:04:18.020 it's there for all to recognize, to accept for those who are at least willing to take a look at
00:04:27.180 the evidence that you've presented. Yeah, I mean, that's right. I mean, what's interesting is
00:04:32.240 you find that, you know, some of the mainstream reporters will say that, you know, okay, this is
00:04:37.500 a Hunter Biden story. And, you know, Hunter's got all these personal problems. The fact of the matter is,
00:04:43.600 I think when you look at the evidence, the evidence I present in the book, you find out this is not a
00:04:48.800 Hunter Biden problem. This is a Biden family problem. Because there's a couple of things going
00:04:54.420 on here. I mean, one of the things you find in the emails is that the expectation by family members,
00:05:01.400 including Joe Biden, that Hunter is going to collect money on their behalf. There's a message
00:05:08.760 where Hunter Biden is texting with his daughter, where he says, you know, don't worry, I'm not going
00:05:14.200 to ask you to give me half your money, like pop asks me to do. Now you can look at that and say,
00:05:21.920 okay, well, maybe Hunter's just having a bad day. And it's hyperbole. The problem is, Lou, when you start
00:05:26.460 going through the emails, the financial records, you see that Hunter Biden is paying a lot of Joe Biden's
00:05:32.900 expenses while he's vice president of the United States. And not only is that illegal, but it's
00:05:39.440 money that's coming from these very sketchy, troubling foreign sources. And Joe Biden is a
00:05:44.840 beneficiary of it. So this is not a Hunter Biden story. It's not a Hunter Biden problem. It's a Biden
00:05:50.700 family problem. And to a certain extent, I came away a little bit more sympathetic, in all words,
00:05:58.500 for Hunter Biden, because he's under pressure, he's expected to do this by the family. And,
00:06:06.900 you know, I think that's one of the reasons why he's willing to throw in with some of these people,
00:06:11.760 because of the pressure, pressures from the family.
00:06:15.220 Yeah, you portray him as, and you don't say this, but he comes across in your reporting,
00:06:21.780 is a bag man for the entire corrupt family, working between the Chinese, and worse,
00:06:31.360 not just the Chinese, the Chinese government, the Chinese intelligence agencies, and indeed,
00:06:38.880 the uppermost reaches of the communist Chinese intelligence agencies.
00:06:44.560 Yeah, I mean, so, you know, you look at how the deals happened, that $31 million, some $31 million,
00:06:52.580 $20 million of that comes from this private equity deal, he gets an ownership stake in this
00:06:58.700 financial fund, where he's put on the board, of course, he has no experience or background in
00:07:04.380 finance in that way. But we decided, look, well, who made that deal happen? Who actually opened that
00:07:11.380 door for Hunter? And we discovered it's a guy named Che Feng, who's this very sort of mysterious
00:07:17.060 businessman. Turns out that at the time he's hooking Hunter up, his business partner is the
00:07:24.260 vice minister at the Ministry of State Security, which is China's spy agency. And his business partner,
00:07:31.700 whose name is Ma Jian, his responsibilities include recruiting foreign nationals to spy for China.
00:07:38.380 And he also has responsibility for North American intelligence operations. This is the guy that
00:07:45.920 Hunter Biden's business partner is business partners with. And what happens is that, you know, other deals
00:07:53.600 are procured, but many of the deals that that that Hunter's involved in China involve these entities that
00:08:00.460 are doing deals around the world to help China's strategic position. And Hunter Biden is part of those
00:08:07.420 efforts. Part of those efforts and the bank accounts bulge as a result of those efforts. The Chinese
00:08:16.660 have have a long standing relationship. Now, what may surprise some people is you also reveal what has
00:08:25.440 been going on with the Bush family in sequence. First, the Bushes, which became, it seems to me,
00:08:33.760 something of a template for the way in which they worked with the Biden family. Am I am I right about that?
00:08:41.200 Yes, you're absolutely right, Lou. The Chinese government likes arrangements with families. I think part of that's
00:08:48.920 just cultural because of the way that China works. The Chinese family and dynastic elements in political power in
00:08:57.360 China are the way they operate. They see the same thing in the United States. So yes, really for the Bush family,
00:09:04.560 really beginning in the 1980s, when George H.W. Bush is vice president, his brother Prescott starts landing
00:09:11.340 really nice deals in China, courtesy of the Chinese government. Those deals continue in the 1990s. When George
00:09:19.220 W.W. Bush becomes president in 2001, Prescott Bush gets a new round of deals. But George W. Bush's brother
00:09:28.800 Neil starts lining up deals. So for example, he becomes a consultant to a Chinese computer company
00:09:36.300 that is owned by the son of China's premier. And, you know, today, if you look at Neil Bush,
00:09:44.240 he is connected with all these Chinese companies. He has something called the Bush Center for US-China
00:09:51.100 Relations, which is funded by this influence, Chinese influence peddling organization called
00:09:58.460 the United Front Organization. And he goes on China TV and talks about how great the regime is about,
00:10:05.740 you know, the human rights record is misunderstood in the West. So they like these kinds of dynastic
00:10:11.140 relationships. They had one with elements of the Bush family, and they have it certainly
00:10:15.820 with the Biden family as well. I'd love the name of the organization, the United Front Organization.
00:10:23.060 And for those who don't know, that's how our federal agencies refer to organizations, corporations
00:10:32.440 that are in this country, from China, front companies, which are used by the Chinese intelligence
00:10:40.900 to pick up technology, intellectual property, whatever they can, and get it back to the mother
00:10:50.520 country. 3,500 so-called front companies in this country 20 years ago. Lord knows how many
00:10:58.900 there are today. At least you have to say they have a sense of humor about the names they choose.
00:11:07.220 Let's go to the role of big tech here too, because I think that's something that people really
00:11:13.780 don't appreciate is the degree of both proximity and cooperation and shared interests to the point of
00:11:23.140 alignment between big tech, social media, and the Communist Chinese Party, that is to say, China's government.
00:11:33.940 Yeah, I think that's right. And I have a story in the book that I think illustrates that the chief
00:11:41.380 propagandist for the Chinese Communist Party goes to Silicon Valley for a visit. And he stops and visits
00:11:50.020 the headquarters of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg gives him a tour around the entire facility. And then they
00:11:57.060 go to Mark Zuckerberg's office, where the chief propagandist sits down, he's looking at the desk,
00:12:03.380 and he notices a 500-page book sitting on the corner of Mark Zuckerberg's desk. And it looks familiar to
00:12:11.300 him because he helped put it together. It's the collected writings and works of President Xi,
00:12:17.300 China's president, and of course, head of their Communist Party. So the propagandist asks Mark
00:12:22.500 Zuckerberg, oh, you have this book. What's this book doing here? And Mark Zuckerberg tells him,
00:12:28.420 well, I'm reading that book, and I bought copies for the senior management at Facebook because I want
00:12:35.060 them also to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics. Now, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg's a
00:12:43.780 socialist, but I think he likes and a lot of these tech executives like the kind of top-down Leninist
00:12:50.900 dictatorship that China has. They see it as efficient. They see it as quick. They don't see it as messy
00:12:57.860 like our representative government. And they are very attracted to this Chinese model of governance.
00:13:03.940 There is, I think, Peter, a tremendously powerful strain of authoritarianism that is now running
00:13:13.060 through corporate America. When I read the anecdote that you mentioned, to me, there's a chilling aspect to
00:13:22.100 that. The sentence that socialism tinged with Chinese characteristics. It was an embrace of a communist
00:13:33.700 country to me. And when you put that together with Zuckerberg's insistence on spending hundreds of
00:13:40.420 millions of dollars, at least that we know of, in the 2020 election to fund drop boxes and all sorts
00:13:47.860 of actions that were taken to benefit Joe Biden in the race for the presidency, it really does put things
00:13:58.580 in some sharp relief. Yeah, I think it does. And look, when you look at people in big tech,
00:14:07.620 a lot of them say very nice things about China. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, one of the richest
00:14:14.980 men in the world. I mean, I quote him extensively in the book, praising the Xi regime. He says,
00:14:20.740 you know, President Xi works so hard for the Chinese people. Well, of course, he works very hard
00:14:25.700 repressing the Chinese people. But Gates also is an advisor to the Chinese government. I mean,
00:14:32.820 they appoint him to something called the Chinese Academy of Engineering, which, you know, sounds so great
00:14:39.060 and techie and so scientific, until you realize it's run by the Chinese Communist Party. You can
00:14:45.620 see it right on their website. And their stated goal and objective is to enhance the technological prowess
00:14:53.220 of the Chinese state. So what prompts a guy like Bill Gates worth more than $100 billion who, you know,
00:14:59.460 has borne the fruit of this great free market system we have, what prompts him to become a quasi-advisor
00:15:08.980 of sorts to President Xi? What prompts him to invest in Chinese companies that are military,
00:15:16.340 building military technologies, challenging the United States? What prompts him to, you know,
00:15:23.540 get involved in all kinds of efforts that benefit China? You have to wonder what's motivating it.
00:15:29.700 I don't think it's money. I think it's something more than that. Yeah. And I think you're right.
00:15:34.340 Right. And if we look at this in terms of the Russian collusion hoaxes that Hillary Clinton perpetrated
00:15:44.340 with the help of the DNC, with the help of, frankly, the FBI and the Department of Justice,
00:15:52.020 it is appalling to think that all that President Trump went through with those fake claims and false
00:16:00.260 stories and fraudulent dossiers that led to a special counsel investigation and compare that to the
00:16:09.540 relationship between Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, the list goes on in Wall Street, Steve Swartzman.
00:16:19.940 That's that's that's collusion by any other name. Is it treasonous? No, but it is collusion and it bears
00:16:29.220 investigation. And if you're not investigating it, who would? Because it's not going to be the
00:16:35.780 corporate media that has huge investments in China and which is critically importantly aligned with
00:16:44.020 China far more than they are with with, frankly, the leaders of either party in this country.
00:16:51.060 Yeah, I mean, Lou, I think you make a really important point there, which is, you know, that
00:16:56.020 these titans, they know what they're doing. They're they're not naive. It is a collusion. You know,
00:17:03.380 one of the stories I recount in the book is that Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and the guys at Google
00:17:09.940 in 2016 decide they're going to they're going to build this massive cable and they're going to link
00:17:16.100 Hong Kong with San Francisco with this undersea cable and they hire a Chinese company to do it
00:17:22.980 that happens to also be tied to the Chinese state and the Chinese military. And they're off to the races.
00:17:30.340 And it's only because the Trump administration, the Department of Justice and the FBI say, wait a minute,
00:17:36.900 you can't do this. This is going to create, in their words, an unprecedented opportunity for the
00:17:43.700 Chinese to spy on Americans. They stop and halt the project, meaning the federal government does.
00:17:49.780 Now, honestly, Lou, do we really want to believe that the guys at Facebook and Google weren't aware
00:17:55.860 that that was going to happen? They're more tech savvy than anybody at the FBI, anybody in the
00:18:00.740 Department of Justice. They knew precisely what the implications of building that cable would be.
00:18:06.420 I just think they don't care. I think they don't care the consequences of what they do. And for all
00:18:12.900 their kind of wokeness in the United States, they are absolutely not awake and not focused and don't
00:18:21.060 want to focus on the very real threat that China represents to ordinary Americans.
00:18:25.780 Yes. And the question comes up, was Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, whichever one of the
00:18:36.260 elites, the globalist elites, one-worlders in Silicon Valley and big tech, which of them were
00:18:42.820 working to elect Biden at the behest of communist China? We don't know how far and how specific
00:18:51.620 those motivations go. But they're plausible. And there's certainly evidence of significant
00:18:58.420 collusion and a real disconnect between the elites, the establishment of this country,
00:19:05.060 and a disconnect between the government of this country and an embrace of the Chinese
00:19:13.380 way, if you will. Oh, absolutely. There's no question. And Beijing knows this, by the way.
00:19:19.700 I cite in the book a speech by a Chinese academic before several hundred government officials
00:19:28.980 in China, where he lays out the fact. He talks, of course, about the fact that they have a good chuckle
00:19:34.980 over the fact that they've kind of set the Bidens up for business in China. But he also says in that
00:19:40.020 speech that they don't really need to worry about trying to lobby Washington because
00:19:45.940 Wall Street and Silicon Valley will lobby for them. And this is part of the problem. Part of the problem
00:19:53.620 is any time you have somebody, as President Trump tried to do and was successful in many respects,
00:20:01.220 to sort of put a brakes on our embrace of China with tariffs, with cracking down on technology transfer,
00:20:08.820 you don't have to worry about China protesting. They don't need to, because Wall Street and Silicon Valley
00:20:14.660 will immediately have their lobbyists
00:20:17.620 start pressing to undermine those actions in Washington and say, this is a terrible idea. We
00:20:23.380 don't want this done. That's an enormous problem. And I think seeing and understanding that is crucial to
00:20:30.660 knowing the battle that we face with China today, because you've got all these enablers in the most
00:20:36.180 powerful offices in New York and Silicon Valley. You know, you talk about, you called them enablers
00:20:43.780 in the book. You lay this out so clearly. And again, it is a terrific book. I haven't even said this.
00:20:52.180 If it's not obvious to everyone listening, I heartily, highly recommend Peter's new book, Red Handed.
00:21:00.660 You've got to buy it because it is the foundation of everything that is going on amongst the
00:21:07.700 globalist elites, this country. And it lays out so clearly the challenges this country faces,
00:21:15.300 particularly with China, but it goes beyond that. It's a corrupt, elitist structure in this country.
00:21:24.340 Peter calls them enablers and I call them snakes. They are terrible people because they know that
00:21:32.660 they've rationalized immoral and unethical, if not illegal activities that harm this country and help
00:21:41.300 those who mean us great harm. So again, we recommend the book highly. Now I'd like to,
00:21:47.700 I'd like to turn to some of those enablers. Ray Dalio just recently, by the way, telling everybody,
00:21:56.500 he was quoted as saying that the United States is in decline and gave a big rousing cheer for China.
00:22:04.100 I couldn't believe it.
00:22:06.660 Yeah. I mean, Ray Dalio really is, I think, one of the most nefarious people on Wall Street,
00:22:14.900 because not only of what he does, but what he says and the lengths to which he's prepared to go
00:22:22.020 to get deals in China, to get access to the Chinese market. One of the things I do in the book,
00:22:27.460 Lou, is I quote from a book that he ironically named Principles that he wrote back in 2017.
00:22:34.740 And if you read that book, he has a good page and a half on a Chinese official named Wang Qishan.
00:22:42.020 And in that page and a half, he talks about how this man has been a remarkable force for good
00:22:48.900 on the world stage for more than a decade. He describes his long conversations with Wang Qishan
00:22:55.860 as this sort of quasi-religious experience because he's learned so much from this man.
00:23:01.780 So I thought, well, who is this guy, this guy that Ray Dalio likes so much? And I poked around,
00:23:08.260 it didn't take long. It turns out this guy is President Xi's enforcer. This is the guy who
00:23:15.060 throws political opponents in jail. The Economist magazine called Wang Qishan this remarkable force
00:23:22.500 for good, as Ray Dalio calls it. They call him the most feared man in China. Now, what prompts a hedge
00:23:32.180 fund guy, one of the richest Americans, to say something like that? I think part of it is he
00:23:38.020 wants access to the Chinese market. And about a year after he wrote that book and said those words,
00:23:43.620 his firm became the first hedge fund to be able to sell products to ordinary Chinese on the Chinese
00:23:49.780 mainland. But I think beyond that, Ray Dalio has this embrace for authoritarianism. I mean,
00:23:58.740 in other instances, he talks about how efficient the Chinese system is, how messy our system is.
00:24:04.820 He's described the oppressive, brutal nature of the regime as kind of a paternal parent that is just
00:24:11.860 kind of trying to guide their kids along. It's really, really sinister stuff. And it's remarkable to me
00:24:18.740 because when he goes on CNBC and these other networks, he's never asked about this. He's never
00:24:24.820 asked about this at all. It's remarkable to me. It is remarkable. And again, we have to look
00:24:31.220 with some clarity at what is CNBC? What is ABC News? We're talking about mammoth corporate entities,
00:24:41.780 whether it is Disney that owns ABC News, whether it is AT&T for crying out loud, that owns DirecTV and
00:24:52.020 CNN. And by the way, which didn't even hesitate to crush OAN and dismiss it from its DirecTV service,
00:25:00.500 because it's a competitor of CNN. I mean, they're not even subtle any longer. Washington Post run by Jeff
00:25:09.220 Bezos, who is an enabler of China, if ever there were one. Look at what an export market for China Amazon
00:25:19.620 is. My Lord, it goes on and on and on. And our concentration of political and economic power
00:25:29.460 in corporate media in this country, you were talking about effectively a half dozen,
00:25:35.220 you can extend it to perhaps eight, that control 90% of the media in this country.
00:25:41.540 You're right. And all of them, all of them are falling over themselves to get business deals in
00:25:47.700 China. So Disney, like you said, that owns ABC News, they have huge ambitions for their film projects,
00:25:54.820 for more theme parks. If you're talking about, you know, companies like Comcast or others,
00:26:01.460 they all want to enter the Chinese market. And this is the problem. To enter the Chinese market,
00:26:06.980 it comes with a price. I have a big section in the book on Elon Musk. I like a lot of the things
00:26:12.580 that Elon Musk says. The problem is, once he went into business with Beijing, you know,
00:26:19.220 they built him a factory, they staffed it with senior managers, Tesla's turning out cars there. He's
00:26:25.140 become decidedly pro-Beijing. He went on a podcast not too long ago and talked about the fact that he
00:26:33.460 believed that the Chinese government was more responsive to the needs of the Chinese people
00:26:38.740 than the representative democracy that the United States has is to the people in the United States.
00:26:44.740 He, you know, he's a praise to the Chinese Communist Party. You know, it's very sad and troubling while
00:26:53.140 why these very rich people feel the need to kowtow to dictators for the purpose of getting more money.
00:27:01.700 Yeah, in Elon Musk's instance, Tesla's earnings just revealed how dependent Tesla is on China
00:27:13.940 for its revenue and for its earnings and its future market. There's no question about it.
00:27:20.340 The same is true of Apple and Tim Cook doing a, what is it, $275 billion deal with China
00:27:30.260 to assure considered access and continued access to that insanely huge market for years and years to come.
00:27:43.140 And it's paid off in their earnings as well. Just this week being released, record earnings, record profits.
00:27:50.500 It's a, it's again, a very, very just pragmatic story of corporate interest. The future for them
00:28:00.340 is fundamentally rooted in China now.
00:28:04.580 That's exactly right. They see the future. They see that it's there. You know, these corporate
00:28:11.060 executives talk about how concerned they are about social injustice in the United States.
00:28:18.660 Certainly, you know, during the apartheid years, they never would have done business in South Africa,
00:28:23.700 because, of course, the South African market was so tiny. China's this large market. And they have
00:28:29.300 decided, in effect, to make a deal with the devil. And the problem is, it's not just access to the
00:28:35.460 market. Elon Musk's deal with Tesla in China is a case in point. The problem is, is that once you set
00:28:42.580 up shop in China, they start demanding other things. So there's a factory there. But he has agreed that he's
00:28:49.780 going to start shifting the design work that's done for Tesla out of California into China. There are
00:28:57.060 probably going to be no doubt demands if they have not already been made by Beijing to get access to
00:29:03.540 the software that Tesla uses for some of its guidance on the car. And you might think, okay, well, that's
00:29:10.660 just related to the car. The problem is that Tesla uses similar code on its guidance that is also used
00:29:19.540 by another of Elon Musk's companies, which is SpaceX, which launches US military satellites and spy
00:29:26.980 satellites into the sky. And there's a very real concern that he's going to be forced to turn that
00:29:33.220 over. And it's going to allow China to tap into all kinds of secrets about the launching of our military
00:29:40.260 satellites. The bottom line is, they don't just give you access to their market and leave you alone and
00:29:46.420 say just nice things about us. They demand more and more and more and more. Microsoft only got access
00:29:52.820 to the market in the early 2000s, because Bill Gates agreed that he was going to ship thousands of
00:29:59.300 jobs, computer programming jobs, out of Washington State to China. And the demands just keep coming and
00:30:07.380 coming and coming. And these corporate titans never want to say no. They never want to say no. In some
00:30:13.620 cases, they get in so deep that they can't. Because it's just, when we look at what Microsoft has done,
00:30:22.340 Google has done, Apple has done, without exception, these major companies, big tech, have sold out to
00:30:30.900 China in one form or another. And the Chinese actually have a law, as you're aware. But the
00:30:37.220 audience needs to know this. They have a right to all intellectual property for every entity operating
00:30:44.900 in China, every foreign entity. That means, when Peter raises the issue of SpaceX as one of Elon Musk's
00:30:53.620 companies. Think about what SpaceX is. It is the only US launch, launch system available in this country
00:31:05.700 to get our astronauts to the space station. It is the only one, unless we want to buy a seat or a storage
00:31:16.580 capacity on a Russian rocket. But that's where we are. We could very well end up with the Chinese
00:31:24.900 owning the launch facilities for this that were this countries because of SpaceX and the Russians.
00:31:32.100 And the United States will be sitting there. NASA could be sucking its thumb because of the
00:31:37.860 short sightedness that the government brings to all of these issues. You know, Peter, your thoughts
00:31:45.780 about higher education. We saw the FBI backing away from, for example, the chairman of the
00:31:51.860 chemistry department at Harvard, who had not disclosed his relationships with China. We know that's going
00:31:59.060 on in university after university. And there is this sudden reversal of interest in investigating and
00:32:07.060 prosecuting those people who are violating our laws. Yeah, I mean, it's very easy for people to dismiss
00:32:15.300 what's happening on college campuses because there's all these reports of, you know, craziness there.
00:32:20.020 And and but it's vitally important. And China recognizes that. And what you have is, in some
00:32:27.700 instances, violating the law. Chinese linked executives, people of some of the biggest Chinese companies
00:32:36.500 in the world are sending hundreds of millions of dollars to colleges and universities around the
00:32:43.060 country. And oftentimes there are strings attached to those donations. One of the things I talk about
00:32:49.300 in the book is a guy named Joe Tsai, who is a co-founder of Alibaba and enormously successful
00:32:56.980 company. I guess it's kind of the Chinese equivalent of Amazon or eBay in the United States. Alibaba,
00:33:04.340 of course, does a lot of work with the Chinese government, the Chinese military.
00:33:08.340 But Tsai is lives in California. He's an apologist for the regime. He's gone on college campuses to
00:33:15.460 say that, oh, it's you know, people misunderstand what's going on in China. It's not not so bad. The
00:33:20.420 government's great. Never criticizes the regime. Well, he's donated tens of millions of dollars to Yale
00:33:27.220 University. And he established the Tsai Center for Chinese studies, legal studies at Yale University,
00:33:34.180 named it after his father. And when you look at what the Tsai Center does, and I recount it in detail
00:33:40.580 in the book, they're very, very supportive of what Xi has done, very little criticism. They had
00:33:49.460 predicted for a while that Xi was going to bring greater openness to China. It's really shifted and
00:33:55.780 chilled the debate. And I quote from Yale students who are concerned because it becomes increasingly
00:34:02.100 difficult on the Yale campus to be critical of Beijing because of the influence of Mr.
00:34:09.060 Tsai's money. But it gets worse, Lou, in the sense that Yale and these other universities try to hide
00:34:15.460 the origins of this money. So Tsai sent $30 million to set up this center. You are required by federal
00:34:23.060 law as a college or university to list donations from a foreign source. And the reason is pretty simple.
00:34:30.660 They don't want foreign influence on campuses without disclosure. Well, Yale didn't do that.
00:34:35.700 The claim was that this money came from a foundation that Tsai set up in California.
00:34:42.420 We looked at the tax returns of that company, sorry, that foundation. They didn't make those
00:34:47.860 donations. The donations came from one of Joe Tsai's overseas accounts. And yet it was not disclosed to the
00:34:56.340 Department of Education. And this goes on all the time on college campuses. They're hiding these
00:35:02.660 donations. The donations come with strings attached. And it is chilling the debate. People have a hard
00:35:08.820 time criticizing China on campus because of this flow of the money. And it's going to determine how future
00:35:15.940 generations view the Beijing regime. And you know, Peter, you just can't help but wonder how much of
00:35:26.020 the leniency that we're seeing from this administration, the Biden administration toward
00:35:31.620 China. He's had four phone calls with President Xi. We have no transcript of any one of those calls.
00:35:39.860 He has not spoken to the American people about the substance of those calls. He did say that he took
00:35:46.980 up the origin of the Wuhan virus in a press conference, that terrible, disastrous press
00:35:51.620 conference he held. But what he said that not a single one of his staffers at the White House could
00:35:57.620 back it up. We just don't know what the relationship is, the honest relationship, the corrupt relationship,
00:36:06.420 perhaps, between the Bidens and the Chinese Communist Party, and the actions that are being taken,
00:36:14.660 including, as we just discussed, the leniency that's been given those professors and universities all
00:36:20.820 across the country who refuse to disclose their relationship with the Communist Chinese.
00:36:28.020 Yeah, that's exactly right, Lou. And here's the thing that people have to understand
00:36:32.500 when it comes to Joe Biden or other people. The Chinese intelligence has a kind of concept
00:36:40.420 when they engage in what they call elite capture, which is forging these relationships with elites
00:36:45.940 in the United States and elsewhere. And the concept loosely translated into English says,
00:36:53.620 big help with a little bad mouth. Now, what does that mean? What it means is, you know,
00:36:59.140 if Joe Biden says something about the Uyghurs, if Joe Biden says, oh, we're going to have a
00:37:03.700 diplomatic boycott, whatever that means, of the Olympics, they don't really care. They may protest
00:37:10.100 it. They don't really care. That's little bad mouth. What they care about is big help. And what they
00:37:16.420 want and what they are getting from the Biden administration is unfettered access, largely to
00:37:21.860 American capital, unfettered access to American technology, even that stuff that's flowing to the
00:37:28.180 military. And as long as they continue to get that, they are very confident that they are going to
00:37:34.100 defeat the United States in a competition. And who can blame them? Because when you've got Google and
00:37:40.420 Microsoft financing and supporting artificial intelligence research in laboratories in China
00:37:47.780 linked to the Chinese military, when you've got people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett investing in
00:37:54.340 companies that develop technologies to help the launching of missiles in China, who's not going
00:38:02.740 to be optimistic? So the bottom line is, I think you're exactly right. Anytime that he says something
00:38:09.700 about the Uyghurs, or he kind of slaps them on the hand, it's really meaningless in the context of the
00:38:15.940 larger question. And the larger question is, are we going to do something about the fact that our elites and
00:38:22.660 our institutions are giving China access to these resources that are helping them in their competition
00:38:29.140 with us? Or are we not? And Joe Biden has clearly signaled and his administration has shown they are
00:38:35.700 all too happy to continue on with that kind of relationship with China. And in the book, you talk
00:38:43.860 about the relationship on Capitol Hill, whether we're talking about Pelosi or Schumer or Feinstein,
00:38:49.620 the fact of the matter is there is a greater common interest that exists between the radical dims of the
00:39:01.540 left and China, we'll leave Russia out of this for right now, and China than there is with the Republican
00:39:08.980 Party itself. From the centrist Republican Party to the conservative wing of the Republican Party, corporate
00:39:17.060 America has abandoned traditional Republicanism, conservatism in this country, and has embraced,
00:39:25.540 in fact, the left, even the Marxist left, whether it's donations to BLM, whether it be the embrace of a
00:39:32.820 communist nation that now has great influence over their corporate futures. This should disturb every
00:39:41.540 American this level of corruption and in the China connection to whether it's Wall Street, corporate
00:39:49.380 America, or the Democratic Party. Well, I agree, Lou. I mean, look, sometimes people look at the
00:39:57.700 questions related to China and they say, well, you know, I feel bad for what's happening in China, but
00:40:02.260 that's happening over there. That doesn't affect my life. This directly affects your life. It's a question of
00:40:08.260 jobs. It's a question of our standard of living. It's a question of our competition, our very real
00:40:14.820 military competition, the technological race between the countries. This is about the future
00:40:20.420 of the United States. You know, in this book, that is my focus, what the stakes are for the United States.
00:40:26.820 And, you know, the Chinese leadership tells us what the stakes are. I mean, President Xi said in 2012
00:40:33.860 that, you know, technology is a national weapon and the race needs to be run and China needs to win
00:40:41.700 that race so they can achieve what he calls, quote unquote, the commanding heights in the struggle
00:40:48.580 against the United States. So, you know, people cannot rest on the fact that, oh, it's too bad
00:40:54.820 what's happening in China. I feel bad for them, but who cares? It doesn't affect me. This is about the
00:41:00.020 future. And China is very confident that the future belongs to them because they are being granted this
00:41:06.740 assistance by powerful elites in the United States. As you and I conclude here today,
00:41:16.740 are we simply too late to reverse the Chinese destiny, if you will, that they've embraced and that they
00:41:26.420 worked so hard to achieve because Americans now are caught up in the left's concern about
00:41:34.500 diversity and critical race theory and all sorts of socio-psychological
00:41:43.700 shifts that our society doesn't seem to be too willing to engage in. But it is, in point of fact,
00:41:49.460 the interest of much of the country, including corporate America, rather than exceptionalism
00:41:56.420 excellence and empowerment of the American people.
00:42:01.540 Well, Lou, I would say that if this is a baseball game, we're probably at the bottom of the seventh
00:42:07.780 inning. We have time to rally. There is time to change. I'm only going to lose hope when we lose
00:42:15.460 the average American. When the average American decides, who cares? I'm done. Let's just give China
00:42:21.700 what they want. I don't care about the future of the country. I don't care about my liberty. That's
00:42:26.740 when I'm going to lose faith because I believe that overwhelmingly the average American does not
00:42:32.900 want to be governed this way and does not want our elites selling us out in this way. So the question is
00:42:39.860 what we can do. I have several things that I talk about in the book. One of the things we have to simply
00:42:45.380 do, and I hope the book is just the beginning of this, we have to shame these people. We have to
00:42:51.380 shame these people. Ray Dalio, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Nancy Pelosi, LeBron James, Henry Kissinger,
00:42:59.060 they need to be called out for their conduct. Not just shouting and screaming at them, but presenting
00:43:05.380 the facts. So for example, if you're a shareholder in Microsoft or Google, go to the shareholder meeting
00:43:11.860 and ask them, read some of Bill Gates' quotes at the shareholder meeting of what he says about
00:43:17.460 communist China. They don't want these things heard here. They don't want people to know about these
00:43:24.340 deals. They recognize that they could be deeply embarrassing. So that's the beginning of it. The
00:43:30.580 other thing we need to do is we need to elect people who want to take a strong position on China.
00:43:36.820 There are Republicans and there are some Democrats, I have to say, who seem prepared to do that. The
00:43:43.140 problem is that a lot of the political leadership in the House and the Senate don't seem to be
00:43:48.820 particularly interested in fighting this battle. And part of that, Lou, is because so many of them
00:43:54.260 are involved with China. But the bottom line is I'm an optimist by nature. It's the bottom of the seventh
00:44:00.500 inning. We need to rally. And I'm confident that we will if we can get the word out.
00:44:05.860 Peter, thanks so much. I'm hopeful as you are. Am I optimistic? I think I'm like you,
00:44:15.620 clear eyed, but hopeful. And we have to turn this around. And it begins with this election
00:44:24.260 this year, the midterm elections. It's critically important. We appreciate your time. We appreciate
00:44:31.060 your splendid new book. The book is Red Handed, How American Elites Get Rich, Helping China Win.
00:44:40.100 The book is a blockbuster bestseller. I urge you to buy it. Get your friends to buy it. Buy them a few
00:44:48.260 copies. And let's all wake up now before it is too late. Peter Schweitzer, thank you so much, sir.
00:44:57.700 As always, great to see you. It's a pleasure, Lou. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Join us again
00:45:03.380 tomorrow for the Great America Podcast. Stay in the fight. Truth, justice, and the American way
00:45:08.740 will prevail against all enemies, against all odds.