PETER SCHWEIZER TIES THE BIDENS TO RED CHINA
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Summary
Peter Schweitzer is a fearless investigator who goes where other journalists and authors fear to go. He takes on the money, the politically powerful, and corrupt, and exposes them for what they are to all who want and need to know. Peter has written such bestsellers as Clinton Cash, Throw Them All Out, Secret Empires, Profiles in Corruption, Extortion, and now the blockbuster bestseller, Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win.
Transcript
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great America Podcast with Lou Dobbs,
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always in the fight for truth, justice, and yes, our American way of life.
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And now, here he is, the Peabody award-winning voice of truth, the great Lou Dobbs.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Great America Show, where truth and justice live,
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and the American way is the only way. Doug, God, it's good of you to be with us today,
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especially so because we're going to spend some time with the best investigative journalists in
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the country. No, make that the best in the world. I'm talking, of course, about best-selling author,
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great American, and friend, Peter Schweitzer. Peter is a fearless investigator. He goes where
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other journalists and authors fear to go. He takes on the money, the politically powerful and corrupt,
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and exposes them for what they are to all who want and need to know. Peter has written such
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bestsellers as Clinton Cash, Throw Them All Out, The Bushes, Secret Empires, Profiles in Corruption,
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Extortion, and now the blockbuster bestseller, Red-Handed, How American Elites Get Rich Helping
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China Win. Peter, it is great to have you with us here. Congratulations on your new book and another
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big bestseller. Oh, thank you very much, Lou. It's always great to sit down with you. We started
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doing this back when you were at CNN, and I always enjoy our conversation, so I'm just delighted to be
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here with you. Thanks so much for having me. You bet. And, you know, you've done it again
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at a time when this country needs to know more about what the corporate-owned left-wing media will
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not tell them. Here comes Peter Schweitzer with more revelations and far more contributions to
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the public's need to know, right to know. I want to start with, you know, one of your early chapters,
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the Bidens, and to see the amount of money that they have wrangled. Tell us about this relationship
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with the Chinese and how it's even bigger, I think, than even the most cynical Americans might have
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thought of the Biden family. Absolutely, Lou. You know, I first broke the story of the fact that
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the Biden family had commercial ties with China back in 2018, and I came on your show and we talked
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about it. And, you know, at that time, it was simply a story of corruption and cronyism, self-dealing,
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you know, that obviously China was trying to influence the Bidens in some way. Maybe it was,
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you know, tantamount to some kind of a bribe. What we did with the new material that's come
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along, and by that I mean the Hunter Biden laptop, I mean emails from some of Hunter Biden's
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business partners who shared their email accounts with us. What turns out is it's something more
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troubling than that. What we found is that the amount of money they got is some $31 million.
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But what's troubling is who made those deals happen? Using the new sources of information,
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we traced it back. And what we found is that every one of the businessmen that helped that money flow to
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the Bidens is linked to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence. So, you know, this is not
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just a story anymore of cronyism and corruption. It's a story about potential compromise and the fact
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that the first family of the United States, you know, has a very real China spy problem.
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And that spy problem is longstanding. Going back to the president's vice president days with the Obama
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administration. And the word vice and vice president, he gives all the more meaning to. It's disgusting to
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think what this man has been doing. His brother, Hunter, their connections and their corruption,
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it's there for all to recognize, to accept for those who are at least willing to take a look at
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the evidence that you've presented. Yeah, I mean, that's right. I mean, what's interesting is
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you find that, you know, some of the mainstream reporters will say that, you know, okay, this is
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a Hunter Biden story. And, you know, Hunter's got all these personal problems. The fact of the matter is,
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I think when you look at the evidence, the evidence I present in the book, you find out this is not a
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Hunter Biden problem. This is a Biden family problem. Because there's a couple of things going
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on here. I mean, one of the things you find in the emails is that the expectation by family members,
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including Joe Biden, that Hunter is going to collect money on their behalf. There's a message
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where Hunter Biden is texting with his daughter, where he says, you know, don't worry, I'm not going
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to ask you to give me half your money, like pop asks me to do. Now you can look at that and say,
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okay, well, maybe Hunter's just having a bad day. And it's hyperbole. The problem is, Lou, when you start
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going through the emails, the financial records, you see that Hunter Biden is paying a lot of Joe Biden's
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expenses while he's vice president of the United States. And not only is that illegal, but it's
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money that's coming from these very sketchy, troubling foreign sources. And Joe Biden is a
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beneficiary of it. So this is not a Hunter Biden story. It's not a Hunter Biden problem. It's a Biden
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family problem. And to a certain extent, I came away a little bit more sympathetic, in all words,
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for Hunter Biden, because he's under pressure, he's expected to do this by the family. And,
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you know, I think that's one of the reasons why he's willing to throw in with some of these people,
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because of the pressure, pressures from the family.
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Yeah, you portray him as, and you don't say this, but he comes across in your reporting,
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is a bag man for the entire corrupt family, working between the Chinese, and worse,
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not just the Chinese, the Chinese government, the Chinese intelligence agencies, and indeed,
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the uppermost reaches of the communist Chinese intelligence agencies.
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Yeah, I mean, so, you know, you look at how the deals happened, that $31 million, some $31 million,
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$20 million of that comes from this private equity deal, he gets an ownership stake in this
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financial fund, where he's put on the board, of course, he has no experience or background in
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finance in that way. But we decided, look, well, who made that deal happen? Who actually opened that
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door for Hunter? And we discovered it's a guy named Che Feng, who's this very sort of mysterious
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businessman. Turns out that at the time he's hooking Hunter up, his business partner is the
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vice minister at the Ministry of State Security, which is China's spy agency. And his business partner,
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whose name is Ma Jian, his responsibilities include recruiting foreign nationals to spy for China.
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And he also has responsibility for North American intelligence operations. This is the guy that
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Hunter Biden's business partner is business partners with. And what happens is that, you know, other deals
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are procured, but many of the deals that that that Hunter's involved in China involve these entities that
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are doing deals around the world to help China's strategic position. And Hunter Biden is part of those
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efforts. Part of those efforts and the bank accounts bulge as a result of those efforts. The Chinese
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have have a long standing relationship. Now, what may surprise some people is you also reveal what has
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been going on with the Bush family in sequence. First, the Bushes, which became, it seems to me,
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something of a template for the way in which they worked with the Biden family. Am I am I right about that?
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Yes, you're absolutely right, Lou. The Chinese government likes arrangements with families. I think part of that's
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just cultural because of the way that China works. The Chinese family and dynastic elements in political power in
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China are the way they operate. They see the same thing in the United States. So yes, really for the Bush family,
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really beginning in the 1980s, when George H.W. Bush is vice president, his brother Prescott starts landing
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really nice deals in China, courtesy of the Chinese government. Those deals continue in the 1990s. When George
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W.W. Bush becomes president in 2001, Prescott Bush gets a new round of deals. But George W. Bush's brother
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Neil starts lining up deals. So for example, he becomes a consultant to a Chinese computer company
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that is owned by the son of China's premier. And, you know, today, if you look at Neil Bush,
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he is connected with all these Chinese companies. He has something called the Bush Center for US-China
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Relations, which is funded by this influence, Chinese influence peddling organization called
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the United Front Organization. And he goes on China TV and talks about how great the regime is about,
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you know, the human rights record is misunderstood in the West. So they like these kinds of dynastic
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relationships. They had one with elements of the Bush family, and they have it certainly
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with the Biden family as well. I'd love the name of the organization, the United Front Organization.
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And for those who don't know, that's how our federal agencies refer to organizations, corporations
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that are in this country, from China, front companies, which are used by the Chinese intelligence
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to pick up technology, intellectual property, whatever they can, and get it back to the mother
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country. 3,500 so-called front companies in this country 20 years ago. Lord knows how many
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there are today. At least you have to say they have a sense of humor about the names they choose.
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Let's go to the role of big tech here too, because I think that's something that people really
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don't appreciate is the degree of both proximity and cooperation and shared interests to the point of
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alignment between big tech, social media, and the Communist Chinese Party, that is to say, China's government.
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Yeah, I think that's right. And I have a story in the book that I think illustrates that the chief
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propagandist for the Chinese Communist Party goes to Silicon Valley for a visit. And he stops and visits
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the headquarters of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg gives him a tour around the entire facility. And then they
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go to Mark Zuckerberg's office, where the chief propagandist sits down, he's looking at the desk,
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and he notices a 500-page book sitting on the corner of Mark Zuckerberg's desk. And it looks familiar to
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him because he helped put it together. It's the collected writings and works of President Xi,
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China's president, and of course, head of their Communist Party. So the propagandist asks Mark
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Zuckerberg, oh, you have this book. What's this book doing here? And Mark Zuckerberg tells him,
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well, I'm reading that book, and I bought copies for the senior management at Facebook because I want
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them also to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics. Now, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg's a
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socialist, but I think he likes and a lot of these tech executives like the kind of top-down Leninist
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dictatorship that China has. They see it as efficient. They see it as quick. They don't see it as messy
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like our representative government. And they are very attracted to this Chinese model of governance.
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There is, I think, Peter, a tremendously powerful strain of authoritarianism that is now running
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through corporate America. When I read the anecdote that you mentioned, to me, there's a chilling aspect to
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that. The sentence that socialism tinged with Chinese characteristics. It was an embrace of a communist
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country to me. And when you put that together with Zuckerberg's insistence on spending hundreds of
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millions of dollars, at least that we know of, in the 2020 election to fund drop boxes and all sorts
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of actions that were taken to benefit Joe Biden in the race for the presidency, it really does put things
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in some sharp relief. Yeah, I think it does. And look, when you look at people in big tech,
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a lot of them say very nice things about China. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, one of the richest
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men in the world. I mean, I quote him extensively in the book, praising the Xi regime. He says,
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you know, President Xi works so hard for the Chinese people. Well, of course, he works very hard
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repressing the Chinese people. But Gates also is an advisor to the Chinese government. I mean,
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they appoint him to something called the Chinese Academy of Engineering, which, you know, sounds so great
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and techie and so scientific, until you realize it's run by the Chinese Communist Party. You can
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see it right on their website. And their stated goal and objective is to enhance the technological prowess
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of the Chinese state. So what prompts a guy like Bill Gates worth more than $100 billion who, you know,
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has borne the fruit of this great free market system we have, what prompts him to become a quasi-advisor
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of sorts to President Xi? What prompts him to invest in Chinese companies that are military,
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building military technologies, challenging the United States? What prompts him to, you know,
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get involved in all kinds of efforts that benefit China? You have to wonder what's motivating it.
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I don't think it's money. I think it's something more than that. Yeah. And I think you're right.
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Right. And if we look at this in terms of the Russian collusion hoaxes that Hillary Clinton perpetrated
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with the help of the DNC, with the help of, frankly, the FBI and the Department of Justice,
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it is appalling to think that all that President Trump went through with those fake claims and false
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stories and fraudulent dossiers that led to a special counsel investigation and compare that to the
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relationship between Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, the list goes on in Wall Street, Steve Swartzman.
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That's that's that's collusion by any other name. Is it treasonous? No, but it is collusion and it bears
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investigation. And if you're not investigating it, who would? Because it's not going to be the
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corporate media that has huge investments in China and which is critically importantly aligned with
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China far more than they are with with, frankly, the leaders of either party in this country.
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Yeah, I mean, Lou, I think you make a really important point there, which is, you know, that
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these titans, they know what they're doing. They're they're not naive. It is a collusion. You know,
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one of the stories I recount in the book is that Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and the guys at Google
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in 2016 decide they're going to they're going to build this massive cable and they're going to link
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Hong Kong with San Francisco with this undersea cable and they hire a Chinese company to do it
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that happens to also be tied to the Chinese state and the Chinese military. And they're off to the races.
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And it's only because the Trump administration, the Department of Justice and the FBI say, wait a minute,
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you can't do this. This is going to create, in their words, an unprecedented opportunity for the
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Chinese to spy on Americans. They stop and halt the project, meaning the federal government does.
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Now, honestly, Lou, do we really want to believe that the guys at Facebook and Google weren't aware
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that that was going to happen? They're more tech savvy than anybody at the FBI, anybody in the
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Department of Justice. They knew precisely what the implications of building that cable would be.
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I just think they don't care. I think they don't care the consequences of what they do. And for all
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their kind of wokeness in the United States, they are absolutely not awake and not focused and don't
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want to focus on the very real threat that China represents to ordinary Americans.
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Yes. And the question comes up, was Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, whichever one of the
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elites, the globalist elites, one-worlders in Silicon Valley and big tech, which of them were
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working to elect Biden at the behest of communist China? We don't know how far and how specific
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those motivations go. But they're plausible. And there's certainly evidence of significant
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collusion and a real disconnect between the elites, the establishment of this country,
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and a disconnect between the government of this country and an embrace of the Chinese
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way, if you will. Oh, absolutely. There's no question. And Beijing knows this, by the way.
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I cite in the book a speech by a Chinese academic before several hundred government officials
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in China, where he lays out the fact. He talks, of course, about the fact that they have a good chuckle
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over the fact that they've kind of set the Bidens up for business in China. But he also says in that
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speech that they don't really need to worry about trying to lobby Washington because
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Wall Street and Silicon Valley will lobby for them. And this is part of the problem. Part of the problem
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is any time you have somebody, as President Trump tried to do and was successful in many respects,
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to sort of put a brakes on our embrace of China with tariffs, with cracking down on technology transfer,
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you don't have to worry about China protesting. They don't need to, because Wall Street and Silicon Valley
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start pressing to undermine those actions in Washington and say, this is a terrible idea. We
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don't want this done. That's an enormous problem. And I think seeing and understanding that is crucial to
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knowing the battle that we face with China today, because you've got all these enablers in the most
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powerful offices in New York and Silicon Valley. You know, you talk about, you called them enablers
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in the book. You lay this out so clearly. And again, it is a terrific book. I haven't even said this.
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If it's not obvious to everyone listening, I heartily, highly recommend Peter's new book, Red Handed.
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You've got to buy it because it is the foundation of everything that is going on amongst the
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globalist elites, this country. And it lays out so clearly the challenges this country faces,
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particularly with China, but it goes beyond that. It's a corrupt, elitist structure in this country.
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Peter calls them enablers and I call them snakes. They are terrible people because they know that
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they've rationalized immoral and unethical, if not illegal activities that harm this country and help
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those who mean us great harm. So again, we recommend the book highly. Now I'd like to,
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I'd like to turn to some of those enablers. Ray Dalio just recently, by the way, telling everybody,
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he was quoted as saying that the United States is in decline and gave a big rousing cheer for China.
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Yeah. I mean, Ray Dalio really is, I think, one of the most nefarious people on Wall Street,
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because not only of what he does, but what he says and the lengths to which he's prepared to go
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to get deals in China, to get access to the Chinese market. One of the things I do in the book,
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Lou, is I quote from a book that he ironically named Principles that he wrote back in 2017.
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And if you read that book, he has a good page and a half on a Chinese official named Wang Qishan.
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And in that page and a half, he talks about how this man has been a remarkable force for good
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on the world stage for more than a decade. He describes his long conversations with Wang Qishan
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as this sort of quasi-religious experience because he's learned so much from this man.
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So I thought, well, who is this guy, this guy that Ray Dalio likes so much? And I poked around,
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it didn't take long. It turns out this guy is President Xi's enforcer. This is the guy who
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throws political opponents in jail. The Economist magazine called Wang Qishan this remarkable force
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for good, as Ray Dalio calls it. They call him the most feared man in China. Now, what prompts a hedge
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fund guy, one of the richest Americans, to say something like that? I think part of it is he
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wants access to the Chinese market. And about a year after he wrote that book and said those words,
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his firm became the first hedge fund to be able to sell products to ordinary Chinese on the Chinese
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mainland. But I think beyond that, Ray Dalio has this embrace for authoritarianism. I mean,
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in other instances, he talks about how efficient the Chinese system is, how messy our system is.
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He's described the oppressive, brutal nature of the regime as kind of a paternal parent that is just
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kind of trying to guide their kids along. It's really, really sinister stuff. And it's remarkable to me
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because when he goes on CNBC and these other networks, he's never asked about this. He's never
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asked about this at all. It's remarkable to me. It is remarkable. And again, we have to look
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with some clarity at what is CNBC? What is ABC News? We're talking about mammoth corporate entities,
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whether it is Disney that owns ABC News, whether it is AT&T for crying out loud, that owns DirecTV and
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CNN. And by the way, which didn't even hesitate to crush OAN and dismiss it from its DirecTV service,
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because it's a competitor of CNN. I mean, they're not even subtle any longer. Washington Post run by Jeff
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Bezos, who is an enabler of China, if ever there were one. Look at what an export market for China Amazon
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is. My Lord, it goes on and on and on. And our concentration of political and economic power
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in corporate media in this country, you were talking about effectively a half dozen,
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you can extend it to perhaps eight, that control 90% of the media in this country.
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You're right. And all of them, all of them are falling over themselves to get business deals in
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China. So Disney, like you said, that owns ABC News, they have huge ambitions for their film projects,
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for more theme parks. If you're talking about, you know, companies like Comcast or others,
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they all want to enter the Chinese market. And this is the problem. To enter the Chinese market,
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it comes with a price. I have a big section in the book on Elon Musk. I like a lot of the things
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that Elon Musk says. The problem is, once he went into business with Beijing, you know,
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they built him a factory, they staffed it with senior managers, Tesla's turning out cars there. He's
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become decidedly pro-Beijing. He went on a podcast not too long ago and talked about the fact that he
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believed that the Chinese government was more responsive to the needs of the Chinese people
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than the representative democracy that the United States has is to the people in the United States.
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He, you know, he's a praise to the Chinese Communist Party. You know, it's very sad and troubling while
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why these very rich people feel the need to kowtow to dictators for the purpose of getting more money.
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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.
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The same is true of Apple and Tim Cook doing a, what is it, $275 billion deal with China
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to assure considered access and continued access to that insanely huge market for years and years to come.
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And it's paid off in their earnings as well. Just this week being released, record earnings, record profits.
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It's a, it's again, a very, very just pragmatic story of corporate interest. The future for them
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That's exactly right. They see the future. They see that it's there. You know, these corporate
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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
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decided, in effect, to make a deal with the devil. And the problem is, it's not just access to the
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market. Elon Musk's deal with Tesla in China is a case in point. The problem is, is that once you set
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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
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probably going to be no doubt demands if they have not already been made by Beijing to get access to
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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
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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.