All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
July 20, 2022 - The Charlie Kirk Show
33:15
Is China a Paper Tiger Afterall? With Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Kyle Bass
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Charlie Kirk Show China Update 00:01:47
Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, a comprehensive episode about China.
If you're confused about what's happening to the Chinese Communist Party, this is the episode for you.
If you want clarity about what's happening to the Chinese Communist Party, this is the episode for you.
Senator Marsha Blackburn and Kyle Bass, join us.
As always, you can email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com, and take out your podcast app and type in Charlie Kirk Show and hit the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner.
Get involved with TurningPointUSA at tpusa.com.
Join us for our student action summit at tpusa.com/slash sas.
That is tpusa.com/slash sas.
The biggest speakers in the entire movement will be there.
Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis will be there, brought to you by Turning Point Action.
We have Kaylee McEnany.
We have Greg Gutfeld, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and more.
So go to tpusa.com slash SAS for our big freedom extravaganza coming up this weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, tpusa.com/slash SAS.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country.
He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
Western Banks Face Loan Slowdown 00:09:05
There's so much news happening with China right now.
And so I wanted to bring who I consider to be the preeminent expert on all things China, Kyle Bass, great American patriot.
He's the CIO of Heyman Capital and Conservation Equity Management and a China scholar and also a member on the Council of Foreign Relations.
Kyle Bass, welcome back to the program.
Pleasure to be here, Charlie.
So Kyle, there's a lot of news surrounding China right now.
Let's take a 35,000-foot view.
What should we be looking at?
China is openly threatening Nancy Pelosi for a visit to Taiwan.
Do you think they're going to make an approach on Taiwan anytime soon?
What's your take on this?
Yeah, you know, Charlie, it looks to me if you just, if you get out of whiteboard and you take into account many of the things that she's done in the last, call it, four or five months.
First thing he did is he told his banks to run a stress test, an aggressive stress test, in how they might deal with the asset side of their balance sheet in the event of extremely restrictive U.S. sanctions.
Well, the only thing the U.S. has never sanctioned Chinese SOE banks or joint stock banks, right?
There are four big banks.
There are 12 super regionals and they're about 10,000 local banks.
But we've never really sanctioned any of their big banks or even talked about it for that matter.
We should have long ago, given their malign activities and money laundering and funding terrorism and dealing with the enemies of the United States.
But irrespective of that, I think it's important to note that he ordered a stress test on the banks to deal with U.S. sanctions.
And then the next thing he did is he told the 90 million Communist Party members to divest of any of their personal assets they have in the U.S. and the West.
And then they revamped a couple of the laws that are on their books that deal with their national security.
The first one enables them to nationalize any assets in China that are currently owned by Western investors or Western corporate interests in the event of what they deem to be special circumstances, which include war.
And then they actually brought into law, Chinese law, a new law about dealing with compliance of foreign sanctions, i.e., if the U.S. sanctions China and a U.S. company based in China simply adheres to those sanctions, the expats can be arrested and the assets can be nationalized.
So when you look at the kind of flowchart on the wall, it's all there.
It's all there that they're moving towards a wartime footing.
And just in the last few days, we've been talking to some friends that have people that own factories all over China, and they're being forced to set plans for, again, wartime production.
So it sure looks to me like in the last few months and then literally in the last few days, you've probably seen that the rhetoric, whether it's coming out of General Milley yesterday or whether it was Janet Yellen doing the about face on the Chinese submitting themselves to Western audits, I've seen a sea change in the recent time that tell me that things are worsening, not getting better.
So just from a probability standpoint, what happens if China makes a move?
I mean, is Taiwan, how easy is it for them to take over, if at all?
I'm not a military expert by any means.
I know you know the region far better than most.
Is this going to be an easy endeavor for them if they are indeed preparing to go on war footing?
Yeah, I don't think it's going to be an easy, an easy, call it amphibious assault if that's the way they do it.
I think that I think everybody knows that the best window for the Chinese to cross the Taiwan Strait for an invasion happens basically in the autumn between call it the end of August and the end of September or the end of October.
And so here we are approaching those times.
We have Pelosi saying she's going to visit Taiwan, I think in August.
And so, you know, Charlie, the way that wars happen, no one can predict what's going to spark one of these wars, but it's easy to see the frictions build over time.
And whether you're talking about World War I or World War II or any of the major wars, these frictions build over long periods of time.
And then all of a sudden, something unpredictable happens, which kicks it off.
I have no idea of knowing what that's going to be, but I can tell you the frictions are at a boil.
So something that you've always said that has fascinated me that I want to make sure our audience hears is the fundamentals of China.
They're actually a lot weaker than a lot of the West realizes, that their banking system, their financial system is actually largely built on a house of cards.
Can you elaborate on that for us, please?
Sure.
So, you know, without diving too deep into kind of how the financial architecture is, it's important to note that basically the U.S. banking system, let's say going into our financial crisis in 2008, we had about 17.5 trillion of GDP.
We had about 17.5 trillion of bank loans on balance sheet in the system.
So call it one times our GDP in our bank loans.
And if you remember in the financial crisis and the aftermath, if you remember how Iceland and Ireland and Greece fell like dominoes, Iceland and Ireland had 10 times their GDP in banking assets.
So when the assets turn bad, let's just say a number of, let's say 5% of the loans go bad.
Well, if 10 times your economy has 5% of its loans go bad, you are completely broke as a country, right?
Your sovereign goes broke.
And that's what happened to Iceland and Ireland and Greece.
And it's important to note that China is three and a half, 350% more levered than the United States is levered.
And they've only been at this capitalism game for what, 20 years since they ascended the WTO in 2001.
So I think that the Chinese are really smart.
They're cunning.
They run a grand strategy, but they've got too many plates spinning, Charlie, and they've got way too many loans in their system.
You think about this also.
Almost 40% of the loans in the Chinese banking system are lent to real estate, which is in major crisis.
You've had 91 downgrades of Chinese property developers this year alone.
And in the last 10 years, you've only had about 50 downgrades over the last decade.
So you have property developers collapsing.
You have Chinese property prices collapsing.
You have people in China boycotting their mortgages because they've been lining up at their banks to get money out or cash out and the banks won't give it to them.
So you've seen bank runs and even the SOE banks in Hawaii.
You saw a Bank of China bank run.
So when you think about their economy, it has been hyper growth, hyper-levered for a long time.
And now the world's having a bit of a slowdown and they're going to have to deal with the ramifications of that.
They are a paper tiger.
Xi Ji Peng wrote in one of his musings at some point or a speech that he gave all about how the theory of Western capitalism is the ultimate force and it's being shaken to its core.
Socialist development has experienced a miracle.
Western capitalism has suffered reversals, a financial crisis, a credit crisis, a crisis of confidence, and their self-conviction has wavered.
Western countries have begun to reflect and openly or secretively compare themselves against China's politics, economy, and path.
Xi Ji Ping, on the inevitability of socialism.
About your immediate reaction to Xi Ji Ping's musings on the inevitable Chinese future.
It brings a smile to my face.
We all know communism has never worked.
And they are the second largest economy in the world today.
If we give them the benefit of the doubt of the conversion of their currency into ours, but they still have a closed capital account.
They have to build a wall to keep their own people in.
They have to rinse the internet of anything that's not Chinese propaganda that's going to their people.
You know, China is really a joke to the world, and yet they pretend to be the model for stability and prosperity.
And we're going to see going forward that that's just not the case.
And we're right on the precipice of that.
How many years have I been telling you about Relief Factor?
Producer Andrew's right here doing an Iron Man thanks to Relief Factor.
And truth is, I know there are millions of people.
In fact, some say over 100 million people struggle with some kind of pain, maybe from exercise or just getting older.
That can do it, getting older, which is why I'm so impressed with the people at relieffactor.com.
They are on a mission.
You rarely see this kind of focus and commitment.
They recently shared with me that they are doubling down and want to literally double their total number of happy customers in the next year.
And I believe they'll do it.
So here's the deal.
If you're struggling with back pain, neck pain, shoulder, hip, or knee pain, even general muscle aches and pain, then I'm suggesting you order their three-week quick start, still discounted, only $19.95.
Special Access and Market Deals 00:06:37
Go to relieffactor.com.
That's relieffactor.com.
Check it out right now, relieffactor.com.
You should order the three-week quick start too.
Discount only $19.95 to see if it will work for you.
I think it possibly could.
Give your body what it needs to heal itself.
Go to relieffactor.com.
That's relieffactor.com.
Check it out right now.
Kyle, what should we do, especially on a state-by-state basis right now, to prevent the incursion of the Chinese Communist Party into our way of life, whether it be buying farmland or hacking into our grid?
You did something in Texas that I think can be scaled across the country.
Yeah.
You know, and Charlie, it's a great question.
And it's important to note that what Texas did with the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act that we helped a lot with, what we were trying to do is stop malign actors as kind of defined by the annual threat assessment by the Director of National Intelligence from acquiring, not actually from acquiring, from basically interfacing directly with what we deem to be critical infrastructure.
So that is the power grid, the water treatment, the nuclear facilities, the teleco facilities.
But what we didn't do, what we were unable to do with that bill, is simply stop outright malign foreign actors from acquiring land, whether it be farmland or land near our critical infrastructure.
Imagine if we tried to acquire several hundred acres of land next to China's largest nuclear power plant or next to their largest military base, their largest military training base for their pilots.
That will never happen.
And yet we in our open society are constantly infiltrated by these actors that create U.S. companies, fund them with U.S. dollars, and buy them with malign intentions.
And in this case, there's 200 square miles of Texas was bought just 25, 30 miles from our largest Air Force training base and next to our border.
And they've filed applications to build 700-foot-tall windmills.
So imagine a Washington monument with blades on it and over-the-top mapping that allows them to map everything over the horizon with precision.
So they'll be able to map every single airplane or maybe not airplane that flies by there on our base.
And it's all under the auspices of, hey, they can own land just like anyone else.
We must have a revamp.
Yeah.
This is, you said, you said it's states.
You know, states could do it, but our federal government needs to revamp Cypius and say foreign ownership of lands near anything strategic or critical is simply off base.
It's not going to happen.
But Kyle, the reason I said states is we had a senator on this program last week.
We had a good conversation.
We disagreed, but we had clarity.
Senator from North Dakota, Senator Kramer, and he agreed that this was a problem, but I couldn't get him to just say bluntly that the Chinese Communist Party should not be able to own land in America.
I just think it should be that simple.
Now, that's probably going to be too much for the Washington, D.C. to stomach.
That's kind of my starting point.
But how about within 100 square miles of, I don't know, Grand Forks Air Force Base, right?
I don't even think 100 miles is enough, Charlie.
I mean, their technology is going to get better and better and better.
Why should we allow them to own anything anywhere near these basic cases?
Well, you don't have to define, you know, you and I both spend a lot of time focused on the Chinese Communist Party.
But every year, the Director of National Intelligence issues a report.
And the report is, you can Google this.
It is basically the threats against U.S. national security.
And in there, DNI names the malign actors that we're most concerned about.
And, you know, it's interesting, even though with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China is still the number one threat.
It's China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
So you could define it as the malign actors in the DNI threat assessment reports over the last 10 years, right?
You could define it that way and really write the bill properly.
You don't want to just single out one malign actor.
You want to catch them all.
And someone's got to sponsor a bill like this and get it through.
The problem is the Chinese Communist Party has huge amounts of lobbying money in the U.S. Congress.
I mean, that's a separate issue.
Why is it our elites are so cowardly on the issue of China?
And the easy answer is they're bought and paid for.
But there's another one, which is, and I told you this when I saw you privately two weeks ago, they whisper in your ear, well, Charlie, a Chinese future is inevitable.
They're parroting Xi Jinping's talking points because I think they don't have the stomach for confrontation.
And you can't have a country that way.
You can't.
It's true.
It's true.
You know, what the Chinese do so well is they create, they create, they make billionaires larger billionaires.
They give special access to their markets.
Those people become cheerleaders.
They become evangelical about the benefits of doing business with China.
But then China doesn't allow anyone else to make money.
So it's a brilliant strategy.
We've got to wake up to it.
Elite capture, I think is what they call it.
Kyle Bass, thank you so much for being generous with your time.
Enjoy wherever you are because that looks awesome.
So thanks so much, Kyle.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Pleasure to see you.
Thanks, you too.
Look, as you know, our friend Mike Lindell has amazing passion and especially has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life.
He didn't stop by simply creating the best pillow.
Now Mike has done it again by introducing MySlippers.
For unlimited time, you'll save $90 on a pair of my slippers.
This blowout sale of the year won't last, so order now.
Mike has taken over two years to develop this.
The MySlippers are designed to wear indoors out all day long, made with MyPillow foam and impact gel to help prevent fatigue, made with quality leather suede.
Call 800-875-0425 or click on promo code Kirk or mypillow.com.
Click on the Radio Listener Square and use promo code Kirk.
This offer will not last long.
So order now with promo code Kirk at mypillow.com, promo code Kirk at mypillow.com.
With us now is the great senator from the wonderful state of Tennessee, Senator Marsha Blackburn.
Senator, welcome back to the program.
Good to be with you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
I want to talk to you about China in particular.
Biden Administration Holds China Account 00:15:45
You have been leading on this issue for quite some time now, where it seems as if the current regime, the Biden administration, is putting our country last and China first.
There's so much news happening with China almost in real time.
Give our listeners an update.
You are so accurate when you say there is news happening in real time.
And that's what makes it so difficult to keep up with.
And Charlie, I think it's also why people are saying, well, really, all of this can't possibly be going on, but it is.
And we know of the problems around COVID, the denial that was there, how they cornered the market on PPE for over 50 days while they tried to keep quiet, that they had a pandemic.
We know what they have done with producing fentanyl and working with the Mexican cartels and pushing it over the border and into the cartel hubs that are actually on U.S. soil.
And that killed over 71,000 Americans last year, in addition to thousands that have become addicted to these synthetic opioids.
We know what China is doing to the Uyghurs and how they're using them as slave labor and how American companies are continuing to manufacture in Xinjiang province using this slave labor.
We know also that the Chinese Communist Party is active in just about every company that is doing business there in China, and they continue to reverse engineer American products and they continue to steal our intellectual property.
At the same time, when you look at big tech and not only are they manufacturing many of their products there in China, but big tech social media platforms such as TikTok are gathering data on the American public and they're doing it every single day.
They're building digital virtual use of our children.
Then, Charlie, as we look at our military, and what we term great power competition, we know that the communist Chinese are using their Belt and Road initiative debt diplomacy to bring other countries under their influence and into their sphere.
And China partners with Russia, Iran, and North Korea in creating what I call the new axis of the evil.
That's exactly.
And they're kind of the leaders of that.
And of course, we see what they're doing in the Horn of Africa.
We see what they're doing in South America.
We have watched in real time what they're doing in Afghanistan as they're going in and pulling all the rare earth minerals and lithium that we charted and mapped using that and flying all of that out of Bagram airfield every day and into China,
where they're using it for component parts, for telecommunications, for different electronics and for electric vehicle batteries.
And that's just part of it, not to mention they're buying farmland here.
So part of what I want to ask you about, Senator, is this theme of how they're able to do what they do domestically here, which is the great frustration, irritation.
The TikTok thing is super important.
I think we should have banned TikTok a long time ago.
I also think it's increasing depression, anxiety, and other issues in our nation's young people, something that I could speak to personally and also, you know, based on the scientific data.
But Senator, you're such a clear voice on this.
Few are.
I mean, we've had other senators that kind of tip dance as a tiptoe around this and tap dance around, I'll be honest.
Why is it that we kind of all know what's happening, but it's hard to build consensus to do something about it?
I mean, you listed off all these things, fentanyl and TikTok and farmland.
Why is it that there is this gap between the understanding of the problem and actually getting something done about it?
And Charlie, I think that many times people think, well, it can't really be that bad.
And when I started over a decade ago working on this issue of holding China to account for the piracy that they were conducting, for the way they tried to work here in our country outside of the same rules that we hold our companies to.
People just thought, well, it can't really be that bad.
You know, we've sent all of this manufacturing over there.
Well, fine, let's bring it back and let's put it in place here.
But you mentioned something that is so very important.
You look at how the Communist Chinese Party is buying property in the U.S.
They like to buy property and farmland that is in proximity to our military bases.
They like to buy big buildings in big cities, like they did with the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.
We see them being aggressive there.
We also see them being very aggressive on college campuses.
Now, as you know, and Turning Point has been so good on these issues, what you see with the Chinese on college campuses is their push to do Confucius Institutes.
And many colleges have now ended those institutes, but the communist Chinese continue to try to get their researchers and professors, many of whom are spies. onto these campuses.
But we have to realize and be clear-minded about this because the communist Chinese look at this as a 100-year marathon.
And they look at this as these are the steps we need to take in order to be globally dominant by 2050.
They want to be the only superpower on the face of the earth.
So what are they trying to do?
Sister city programs, Confucius classrooms in high schools, Confucius Institutes on college campuses, getting in there, getting people to like them, to say, oh, you know, Chinese people, we like them and we all do.
We have to realize this is not the Chinese people.
This is the Chinese Communist Party.
That's exactly right.
The Chinese Communist Party is every day carrying out atrocious acts against the Chinese people.
And that nuance is important.
It's like saying Mexican people in the cartel, right?
It's two totally different things.
Now, the cartel controls a lot of Mexican villages and governments.
The CCP controls the entire country.
And so I guess I'm just super frustrated, Senator, because we see what's happening.
We see the damage that's being done to our own citizens.
And there is just kind of this bureaucratic process where we just can't seem to get what is done necessary.
Donald Trump got stuff done, thankfully, just through executive orders and decisions.
I mean, is it fair to say that the reason that this regime isn't doing anything, Joe Biden is just, he's just completely captured by China?
I mean, we know the financial ties to some extent.
I mean, this is, there's some very serious words that we could use to describe this.
I'm not going to say that.
I'll let our audience infer it.
But if you're not acting against an enemy where they're buying up farmland and buying up reconnaissance technology and dumping fentanyl and manufacturing because you're purchased or they have blackmail on you, then what exactly, how are we supposed to think about that?
And think about it like this.
You take some of us that are in the Senate.
I've been banned by China.
I've been sanctioned by China.
I can't go to China.
And then I find out that they are carrying out a malign influence campaign against me because they don't like that I think they should be held to account.
We should, in sanctioning the Chinese Communist Party and some of these Chinese businessmen who are Chinese Communist Party leadership, we should prohibit them from buying buildings and farmland here in this country.
Chinese-based companies should have to abide by the same rules that U.S. companies abide by if they're going to be publicly traded in the United States.
And what we need this administration to do is to admit that the Chinese Communist Party is our adversary.
They are not our friend and they do not wish us well.
And Donald Trump, as you said, was very successful in holding them to account and in making certain that they came to the table on trade deals.
And what we find out now with this Biden administration, when it comes to ag products with our farmers in Tennessee, China is not buying what they promised to buy.
They are not fulfilling their obligation because Joe Biden is not going to make them fulfill their obligation.
Yeah, and you brought up such an important point, which is, look, we have some people that are speaking out against it, you being one of them.
The Chinese Communist Party, they're a bunch of snakes.
They're deceitful.
And this is what drives me nuts, Senator, is when I hear people in the Biden administration, even some Republicans are like, well, China's a rival or China's a competitor.
No, they're not a competitor.
It's not a rival, an enemy, or an adversary.
Choose one of those words, okay?
I mean, rivals don't dump fentanyl into rival countries, okay?
They don't hack cyber grids.
They don't deploy mind control technology such as TikTok.
And by the way, you look at Chinese TikTok versus American TikTok.
It's totally different.
So they're teaching their children about art and poetry.
Tucker had a great segment on this last evening, where our TikTok is kind of a steaming pile of garbage, as if you wanted to destroy the hearts and minds of an entire youthful population.
Senator, you voted no for the $40 billion of aid to Ukraine, of which I want to thank you for that.
I got very fired up about that story where we can't build a border wall.
We don't know where this money's going.
And it turns out that that $40 billion has really not been traced to specific armament deals.
It's unclear.
So just explain that vote and kind of how should we think about what's happening in Russia and Ukraine, all the while there's all this drama with our greatest enemy happening in the Far East.
Yes.
And when you look at what is happening in Ukraine, we're all supportive of the Ukrainian people and making certain that they have what they need to defend themselves.
And last fall, I wrote the White House and pointed out that Putin was beginning to assemble troops and armaments and equipment on the border.
And just as in 2008, when he went into Georgia and 2014, he went into Crimea, he did it in the Olympics during that period of time.
And then we find out that Putin has gone over and had a personal meeting with Xi Jinping.
And we know that they are partnering up through this Axis abievil.
So my recommendation to the White House was take this seriously.
Look at what he's done in the past, what he's planning to do in the future.
Look at who these alliances are with and between.
And then go ahead and put some sanctions on the oligarchs and on Putin, his family, and on the country.
Be sure that you keep the sanctions on Nord Stream 2.
And if they go in, go after Nord Stream 1.
And then to begin sales of arms, sales, very important, of arms and equipment to the Ukrainian people so that they would be able to be prepared.
And Charlie, I have been with our troops in Ukraine and in Poland prior to all of this.
Now, the administration chose to wait and not to do anything until Putin made a move.
But this just shows you the difference between strength and weakness.
So after the fact, they get start saying we have to get things into Ukraine, but then it's more difficult with your supply lines to get it where it needs to go.
So we hesitated.
That caused Biden and the U.S. to look weak.
We know that already there is a slow process of getting this equipment to the Ukrainian army and the humanitarian aid into the country.
And with the $40 billion, we said, okay, tell us exactly what goes into equipment and goes into this.
And what is humanitarian aid?
And we couldn't get that transparency.
Yeah, we don't get an answer.
It's just like, oh, yeah, $40 billion.
That's an extraordinary amount of money, as you know, Senator.
I mean, we've sent more than the GDP of North Dakota over there.
And so, look, I understand the heart for the Ukrainian people.
I sympathize with that, obviously, but we have so many problems here that it just seems like our own leaders are stumbling over.
In closing here, Senator, what races are you looking at to involve yourself in?
Do you feel as if we're on track to win back the Senate this November?
I think we're going to see the House and the Senate.
And as my friend Tim Scott says, this isn't a red wave.
This is a tsunami.
And people are tired of being broke.
They are fearful of what is happening with the economy, with the southern border.
They don't like the crime uptick, the drugs that are on our streets.
They want to see adults back in charge of this government.
And they want the federal government to do what they're supposed to do to protect the people, provide for the common defense, and defend our freedom and liberty.
That's well said.
Senator Blackburn, thank you for your leadership, especially on China.
And look, there's only 11 Republicans that voted against that massive aid package to Ukraine.
I think that was a litmus test.
And so thank you for that, truly.
Thank you, Senator, for being generous to your time.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
Email me your thoughts.
As always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening.
God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.
Export Selection