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April 29, 2020 - Rudy Giuliani
01:07:04
COMMUNIST CHINA COMPLICIT? 'We have to assume the worst-case' | Ep. 32
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It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
There was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought us to the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776, one of the first American bestsellers, in which Thomas Paine explained by rational principles the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate from the powerful Kingdom of England and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, freedom, freedom of religion, Freedom of speech, and he explained it in ways that were understandable to the people, to all of the people.
A great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we are able to reason, we're able to talk to each other, we're able to listen to each other, and we're able to analyze.
We are able to apply our God-given common sense.
So let's do it.
Welcome back to Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Today we have two really extraordinary guests.
is an expert on China, Gordon Chang, and I think you've seen him on television, you've heard him on radio, and hopefully you read his book, Collapse of China, which is a very insightful analysis of China that now all seems to be happening, even though it was criticized at the time.
It turns out, it looks like Gordon may have been right, and you'll see why.
And then we have Anna Paulina Luna, who's running for Congress in Florida, She's one of—really one of the most exciting young Republicans that we have running.
She's an Air Force veteran.
Her husband serves in the Air Force, was wounded, actually, and is a woman who has a great dedication to the country.
She served it already, wants to serve it again.
She has a background that really informs her about the problems that are happening.
She came from a very difficult background, worked her way through it, got to the very top, and you're going to see, very articulate, very smart, very thoughtful, and one of the real hopes for the future of the Republican Party, one of the really top stars, I predict.
So I think you stay tuned, and you keep watching, and I think you're going to enjoy both of these interviews.
Hello, this is Rudy Giuliani, and I'm back with Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Today, I have the honor of having a man who is an expert in many things, but an expert in something that is very, very important to us right now, China, and someone who's thought about, written about, been involved in business in.
He's a lawyer, businessman, journalist, And a very, very thoughtful person who wrote a book now almost 20 years ago called The Collapse of China that was a bestseller.
Very, very interesting book because it talks about a lot of the things now that a lot of people didn't see back then.
So I am honored to have him with me and will tell you that if you want to follow him, you can follow him on Gordon.
Chang.
And that's his Twitter handle.
Gordon.
I think it's Gordon G Chang.
That's the Twitter handle.
We'll have it up on the screen for you.
So Gordon, thank you very much for being with us.
Oh, well, it's an honor for me to be here.
And I'm thrilled.
I'm actually thrilled to be on your podcast.
So thank you.
Well, you know, I've listened to you, I've listened to you over the last couple of weeks, and I thought of all the people that have been commenting on China, and I mean this, you were by far the most informative, most knowledgeable, the one who was able to prove very quickly what he was saying, as opposed to just having, just having like political biases.
And that's why I was really anxious to talk to you at more length than I did on radio.
So I'll begin with your, Answering for me a question that I get asked by everyone, and I— Why?
Let's assume, for a moment, China did this, meaning somehow this virus got out.
Let's assume accidentally, somehow.
Then they found out.
They got a tremendous number of deaths in Wuhan.
And then they let people travel all over the world to spread it all over the world.
Why would they do that?
Yeah, Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, has this belief that China should rule the world.
And actually, he is promoting the notion that China is the only legitimate state.
Well, it would be very difficult for him to actually implement that idea, as audacious as it is, if China were the only one that was suffered from coronavirus, if it was the only society that was crippled.
So I think that he actually made a decision that he wanted the rest of the world to suffer as well, to level the playing field.
And so that, I think, explains some actions which otherwise are just—there's no explanation for them.
He did two things, Mr. Mayor.
First of all, he tried to convince the world for about five and a half, maybe six weeks, that the coronavirus was not human-to-human transmissible, H-to-H, when he knew that it was.
And as you pointed out, he wanted countries to not impose restrictions and quarantines on arrivals from China.
If you look at what he did, if he wanted to level the playing field, he would have done exactly what, in fact, he did.
And he, because it's a closed society, it's going to be very hard to find proof that he did it directly.
So you have to rely on, I guess, what we call circumstantial evidence, which is pretty strong.
Yeah, we can infer from what he did, because when you look at what he did, there's no other explanation.
I mean, you could say maybe it was reckless, but really it was malicious when you consider some of the other things that he's done in conjunction with this.
So as far as you can tell, and I know it's probably not known exactly, who is Patient Zero?
Where's the beginning of this?
Is it in December?
Is it in November?
Is it earlier than that?
Patient Zero was probably November or earlier.
Some people are saying that Patient Zero is actually a lab worker at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is a P4 biosafety lab about 20 miles south of the wet market that other people suspect.
So there's the thought that Patient Zero then took this disease, spread it unintentionally, Well, the original story was almost uncontradicted.
The original story was, correct me if I have it wrong, but that someone bought like a bat at the market, ate the bat, developed the virus, and then spread it.
That's exactly right.
That was Beijing's story.
Now, they don't sell bats at that market.
I understand.
Correct.
They don't sell bats at that market.
And also, the Lancet, which is the authoritative British medical journal, on January 24th posted an article which said that many of the initial coronavirus cases could not be traced back to the wet market, which means that the wet market is not the source of the coronavirus.
So there's some other source and the wet market got involved somehow.
That source transmitted it to a number of people and it ended up also infecting the wet market.
And then some people were infected from the wet market.
Yes, that is the probable chain of infection.
So this is also this laboratory I think a year or two years before, there had been a group of complaints by the State Department about how it was operating, including, if I recall correctly, a memorandum that was worried about this exact thing, that they might be producing a form of virus that could be transmitted human to human.
And is there any indication that we did anything about that?
No, there's no indication that we did anything except to warn China.
You're referring to an early 2018 State Department investigative team that was alarmed, actually, by the failure to adhere to protocols.
Remember, this is a P4 lab, the most highest level of security.
They were conducting risky experiments, but it appears that they were adhering only to essentially P2 levels of security.
And so the State Department team came back and actually sent out a memo in the federal government which warned that there could be a SARS-like pandemic.
Now, the coronavirus today is like SARS in a sense because that was also a coronavirus.
And also, Mr. Mayor, this is not just the State Department warning.
China Daily, which is an official Chinese publication, newspaper, posted pictures at the end of March which were supposed to show how safe things were at the
Wuhan Institute.
And what they showed was a refrigerator where vials of coronavirus were stored.
And it was clear from those photographs that the seals on the refrigerator door were broken.
Now, China Daily quickly took down those photographs.
But this is Beijing's own damning evidence of its failure to adhere to safety protocols.
So we have that.
We also go back a little bit further, and we have the United States putting money into that lab.
After the Obama administration, somewhere in I think 2014, the Obama administration came to some kind of conclusion that you shouldn't do experiments like this, and you shouldn't fund labs like this.
Despite that, we sent them $3.7 million through the NIH.
How could that have happened?
That to me is inexplicable.
This is something that the United States did, Canada did it, and France actually helped them build that lab.
This was a failure among several democracies.
But you're absolutely right.
It was inexplicable that the Obama administration would think of actually funding what really looks like a bioweapons lab of China.
We can't say that for sure, but we've got to be very concerned about these risky experiments that they had with coronavirus.
Remember, Mr. Mayor, that this lab actually had posted on its website that they were storing more than 1,500 types of coronavirus.
They were doing these experiments, which were risky, as we know from the State Department's investigative team two years ago.
And the question is, why would we have anything to do with this lab, especially because of the potential of China for using the results as bioweapons?
So, at the time that this broke, We knew, in our government somewhere, that this lab existed, that we had funded it, to a very large extent funded it, that there had been issues raised about the operation of the lab, even to the point of creating the possibility that the virus they created could be transmitted human to human.
Now, that never came out.
We kept that—we, the U.S.—kept that silent.
So it had to be somewhere within the deep state they knew that.
Had to be.
Had to be.
I mean, if it were me, my first—the minute—or you, I think—the minute you heard that this virus was spreading around that area, you'd say, oh my gosh, you know, there's that laboratory that had the problem two years ago.
That sounds like a pretty good candidate.
And actually, the Trump administration, I think, was suspicious because what they did from the very beginning of this is that they offered to send U.S.
that or very suspicious about that.
And actually, the Trump administration, I think, was suspicious because what they did
from the very beginning of this is that they offered to send U.S. CDC personnel to China.
And those offers were continually rebuffed, which is a real indication that China had
something to hide.
This is a sensitive location.
It's now under control of the People's Liberation Army.
You've got to be really concerned about what's going on inside of that facility, Mr. Mayor.
Now did they also, after this came out, did they put a ban on people from Wuhan traveling
within China?
Yes.
Late January, about 22nd, 23rd, if I remember correctly, they put Wuhan and several other cities in Hubei province under a strict quarantine.
Were they still sending people out of China at that point?
Well, yes.
If you remember, President Trump imposed his travel restrictions and the quarantines on arrivals from China on January 31st.
And he took incredible incoming from Beijing about this.
I remember, I remember.
So China has been very consistent up until a little while ago that there should be open travel.
Now, what's really interesting is that when China started to see that people were coming into China from other countries, they imposed a strict quarantine and travel restrictions.
No foreigner could travel to China.
Which was much stricter than ours, for instance.
So that shows bad intent on the part of Chinese officials.
So the damage looks like it was done from the time that China found out about it until the time that we put the ban on.
Because during that period of time, anybody from China was free to travel anywhere in the world.
Yeah.
Chinese officials on January 20 was the first time that they were willing to say in public that this was human-to-human transmissible.
But they knew about this from maybe the second week in December, because that's when doctors in Wuhan are starting to see human-to-human transmissibility, and maybe even before that, which means that we have a big block of time where Chinese officials knew what was going on, and at the same time, they were just trying to keep other countries' borders open.
So this is something that the rest of the world's going to have to start to think about.
Because of all the death and all the infections that we have seen in other countries.
So what possible options are open to us about how we deal with this, assuming this is true, or even on the present state of circumstantial evidence, we have to protect ourselves, assume that it's true?
Oh, we absolutely have to assume that this is the worst case, because that's where the inferences point.
And what we're going to have to do as an initial matter is to reduce our contacts with China.
Now, this is not something that we want to do, but we've got to remember that China's communist regime is unreformable.
I mean, its actions this time are worse than they were in 2002, 2003 with the SARS epidemic.
So even with all of this engagement, all of the generous policies the U.S.
has maintained over the course of four and a half decades, We just can't move China in the right direction, which means we've got to protect ourselves, which means we've got to reduce commerce, we've got to reduce investment, we've got to reduce travel across the Pacific.
And this is, as I said, this is not something which would be at the top of any administration's policy list, menu of policy choices, but unfortunately we've got to do that.
We also probably have to do a very strict analysis of where we're dependent on China From a national security point of view and get ourselves to the point where whatever else we do, we are at least sufficiently independent, like with all of a sudden we find out that 80% or something of our medicines, at least in one way or another come from China.
I never knew that.
Yeah.
Pharmaceuticals are, are the critical vulnerability at this particular time.
And behind that would be medical protective equipment and other things, which were extraordinarily dependent on China.
It takes longer to move the pharmaceutical supply chain than the medical protective chain, but we've got to do both of those.
But also, this is just other simple things that we may not think about.
So, for instance, security cameras.
Those security cameras probably are transmitting information back to Beijing, the ones you find on a street corner.
Drones.
China, there's a company, a private company in Shenzhen in China that makes something like 80% of the world's, maybe 90% of the world's drones.
That clearly is not acceptable because those drones send information to the cloud unless the user makes an option not to do that.
And most users aren't going to think about this.
So this is, as we go across the board, these products we either have to make in our country, within our own borders, For instance, pharmaceuticals, or in countries that are close to us or close that are allies.
And as I said, this is just an absolute minimum of what we need to do.
And then we've got to think about the other things.
And if I can, Mr. Mayor, one of the points here is that this is not going to be the only bug that escapes from China.
We have to deter Chinese leaders from taking malicious actions the next time.
And the only way to do that is to impose costs on them now, so they realize that they will not spread this like they did.
Because right now, our society is stricken.
We're going to bury tens of thousands of Americans before this is finished, and our economy, our society is at a standstill.
So we've got to do something to protect ourselves, because this is not the last time that we will face this situation.
Well, at the very beginning, when this first happened, I talked to a doctor who is an expert in this area, and he said this isn't the first time that China has spread viruses here either.
I mean, you can go back to some we knew about, but he said this is happening all the time, except some of them aren't as contagious as this, and some of them, it turns out, we have some degree of immunity to.
But this has been going on for some time.
Absolutely.
I don't know how true that is, but it sounds like it could be correct.
Now, the laboratory, why are they doing all these experiments?
What would be the scientific benign reason, good reason, for trying to make the virus more potent, more dangerous?
I can't think of any why they would do that.
And this raises an issue, because both China and the United States are signatories to the Biological Weapons Convention.
And under that convention, no country may maintain a bioweapons program.
But there's also no inspections regime in this convention.
What we're seeing right now are suspicions that there were very dangerous activities being conducted in that lab.
which look like a bioweapon.
And even if they aren't, Mr. Mayor, we've got to understand that although this probably wasn't a bioweapon to start out with, this does not look like it was engineered.
But let's assume for the moment it wasn't engineered.
What the Chinese leadership has seen is that this virus has become a perfect weapon to paralyze the United States and other societies, because we are paralyzed.
And so... They shut down... virtually, Gordon, they shut down... they shut the world down.
They shut the world down.
They certainly shut... the most productive part of the world has been shut down now for five or six weeks because of what escaped or was sent out of China.
And so whether you call it a bioweapon or not, if you produced a bioweapon, it probably wouldn't be as effective as this.
Yes.
This has now been shown to the Chinese military leadership that this is the perfect way to paralyze a potential adversary before a war starts.
Because as you point out, large parts of the United States, including where I am right now, are in lockdown.
Our economy is paralyzed.
Our society is at a standstill.
This is a This is a grave situation for the United States.
And this is 184 countries around the world, Mr. Mayor, and there's only about 195.
So this is spread virtually everywhere.
Do you think that this will get us the support of some of the Western European countries that so often seem to, like when we're dealing with Iran or we're dealing with Russia, they seem to back away from us?
The fact that China, let's even say negligently, but obviously more than that, kills so many of their people.
Will that give them some kind of a toughness so they will work with us to try to limit China and try to punish China?
I think so.
You can see that opinion in Western Europe is changing very fast.
I mean, just to give an example of that, we had the French President Macron actually criticize China in public, which is something that we would not have heard before.
We have seen Build, which is the German tabloid, actually produce an invoice to China of 149 billion euros.
Most significantly, there is move in the Conservative Party in Britain to reverse the decision to buy Huawei Technologies equipment.
Yeah, for their 5G network, a decision which was made just before the outbreak of the coronavirus.
You know, I don't know whether they'll actually go forward with this, but this is really the view right now of the majority of conservative MPs, so it probably will occur.
What's possible is changing by the day, Mr. Mayor, and I think that if we look at maybe a month or two from now, We will see that Europe will understand what President Trump has been saying all along, and they'll be behind him on the measures that President Trump has been taking.
All of a sudden, a lot of the things that he was saying about trade, even, start to make a lot more sense.
Absolutely.
Why it might be worth it to pay a little bit more, but keep the manufacturing here.
Because, number one, you keep people employed, President Trump has consistently talked about this.
Also, you keep a little more control of your own destiny.
We have become so much of a free-trading country that we stopped thinking of the other considerations
that sometimes have to moderate free trade.
So maybe at least that'll help.
President Trump has consistently talked about this.
He talked about it in the campaign trail in 2016.
But also, one of the first things that his administration did was to issue that executive
order on supply chain robustness.
This was July 21, 2017.
It has been a hallmark of his career, his tenure in the White House.
And so I think that people are starting to see, yeah, President Trump was right about this.
Gordon, just a brief detour and then I'll let you go, because you're also an expert on Korea, and we don't know if the head of state of Korea is alive, dead, in a coma, or stuffed like a mummy somewhere.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
It's been four or five days.
First, he was dead.
Then he's in a coma.
Then he was okay.
Now we don't know.
What's going on?
What's going on?
Yeah, we don't know.
I mean, the range of options really runs from dead to he's just messing with us.
I actually think it's toward the more serious range of the spectrum.
And the reason is, He missed participation in the Day of the Sun celebration, April 15th, which commemorates the birth of regime founder Kim Il-sung, his grandfather.
As ruler, Kim Jong-un has never missed an April 15th celebration.
Also, on Saturday, he missed the celebration for the founding of the Korean People's Army, so that's also unusual.
So I don't think that this is just merely Kim just trying to create a sense of mystery, which is something that his father, Kim Jong-il, did from time to time.
There's also just indications about the way the regime is acting that seems to indicate that something is wrong.
I mean, we don't know.
I mean, there's a lot of different stories out there about a botched cardiac surgery, which may be true.
But there's also a story which has some circumstantial evidence supporting it.
that there was an accident on April 14, which was the launch of cruise missiles. And perhaps
one of them exploded, wounding Kim Jong-un, who actually, you know, he stands very close
to these missiles before they're launched. And so something could have gone wrong.
Well, I mean, eventually we'll find out, but it does give you an indication of what kind
of government that is, that for four, five, six days, you don't know and they don't care
whether their leader is alive, dead, or, I guess the successor will be his sister.
But I'm sure that's not, since we know so little about them, I'm sure that's not for sure. I'm
sure there's going to be some infighting about that. Most probably there will be a Kim leading
the regime, either as a figurehead or actually as a power behind the throne.
Because the regime feels it needs a Kim family member for legitimacy.
There's two leading candidates in the Kim family.
There's the sister that you talk about, Kim Yo-jong.
And she's only 32, isn't that right?
We don't know exactly how old she is.
She's very young.
31, 32.
And she is, I think, in my book at least, the leading candidate to take over.
But there's also Kim Jong-un's uncle, Kim Pyong-il.
who is a son of Kim Il-sung, who had wanted to be the ruler of North Korea, but Kim Il-sung
picked Kim Jong-il instead of him. Now, Kim Pyong-il, the uncle, has now returned to North
Korea. We believe he's there. And I'm sure that he still has some support among regime elements.
Now, Kim Yo-jong is probably the leading candidate because she's in control of the
propaganda apparatus, which is important for a regime of that sort. But she, as everyone points
out, this is a Confucian regime. She's She's young, she's female, and so therefore those are two points against her.
But we'll just have to see.
Mr. Mayor, I think that we won't know for quite some time, and the reason is that the regime is going to try to pick the successor before they announce the death.
When Kim Jong-il, the father, died, it was only two days, but that was because they knew it was going to be Kim Jong-un succeeding.
This time, there's no chosen successor.
There's no succession plan from all that we can tell, which means they're going to fight it out before they announce Kim Jong-un's condition.
Well, it sounds like our concentration on the president is going to have to be considerable on that part of the world for a while.
And we still have to figure out exactly what happened here and try to figure out how to deter it in the future.
I just want to tell you, Gordon, that I think you've made a tremendous contribution.
To explaining to people what this is all about.
This is a period of time, the last five weeks, where people have relied on television probably more than ever.
They don't have baseball.
They don't have football.
They don't have other forms of entertainment, plays.
They can't go out.
Of course, they are mesmerized by this story.
And a lot of people talk just for the purpose of talking.
I found that you give us very, very valuable information, and this is a real service to the country, Gordon, and I want to thank you very much.
And once again, I want to make sure that people know your Twitter handle, so you give it to them the right way, and we'll put it up on the screen.
What is it?
It's Gordon G Chang.
G-O-R-D-O-N-G-C-H-A-N-G.
And get a copy of Collapse of China.
It'll sound like you wrote it last year.
It does.
Thank you very much, Gordon, and stay safe and your family.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and you too.
Well, that was a very, very interesting interview with a very knowledgeable man.
And as I said to him, he performs a real service for this country by very, very sensibly and very logically pointing out the options that we have and the situation that we're in.
So we're going to take a short break, and we'll be back with you in a little while.
Thank you.
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Hello again.
This is Rudy Giuliani and this is Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
And we have with us a very, very good candidate now at this point
and a really terrific American who served our country very, very honorably in the United States Air Force
and is now running for a very important congressional seat in Florida,
Anna Paulina Lena.
And she is...
I think one of the more dynamic candidates out there in the congressional races.
So I would like an opportunity to get you to know her and see how broad a field she covers and how excellent she'll be in that position.
So Anna, it's really a pleasure to have you with us.
Thank you for having me on.
So Anna, just first tell us your background a little bit so people can get to know you.
I'm a United States Air Force veteran.
I am pro-life, pro-God, pro-gun, and anti-socialist, and I'm running for Congress against Charlie Criss in Florida's 13th Congressional District.
Well, I just voted for you.
Say again?
I just voted for you, based on that.
Oh, yes, there you go.
And if you're listening and you're in Florida, you need to vote for me as well.
I just put it down, or I don't know how they do it in Florida now, like this little check.
So, tell us what motivated you.
So, you served in the United States Air Force.
What motivated you to want to run for office?
Since I remember way back when I made that decision, there's a lot that goes into that, because this isn't where you were going originally.
No, in fact, I actually am probably the least likely person that anyone would ever expect to run for office.
Actually, even going way back, I'd grown up in the welfare system, I had a young single mother, and I didn't even think I was going to be able to go to college.
So I enlisted in the military, and I had heard that the military would pay for your schooling, and so my end goal was to become a doctor.
I actually ended up accomplishing all of that and more, and I was accepted into the medical school program.
But in between my gap year, I started really working with different veteran non-profits that were focusing on different issues that I felt needed a spotlight on.
Is this after you were out of the military?
This was in between my gap year between me graduating from college and me applying to medical school.
So I actually served one active duty term of four years or five years.
And then I did one year at the guard.
So during my gap year, I relisted with the guard and I, you know, my goal was to become an aero flight surgeon for the military.
So it kind of helped with applications and then also to getting your foot in the door with a unit.
And, um, I ended up coming across this organization called Veterans for Child Rescue.
And it was a counter-trafficking organization that dealt with child sex trafficking at the US-Mexico border.
And I think like most people, up until really 2015-2016 timeframe, I didn't even know that this was a problem.
And you don't really see the news talking about it all that much.
And so the more that I started researching this and really talking to Craig Sawyer, who's the founder of the organization, the more I realized that this needed to be talked about.
And so I started Working with the organization to use my digital media platform to shed light on this.
And, you know, mind you, I was still on track to go to medical school.
And then I think my light bulb clarity moment was I was actually watching CNN and I had heard the commentator come on and talk about a train that had been stopped in Mexico City by the federal police there.
And immediately as I'm kind of cuing into this, you know, being in the military, you know that there's not always things that, you know, the general public might know.
So I was already kind of cued into the fact that there's sometimes the news will portray things differently.
But what caught my attention is on this train, this commentator saying, oh, well, the federal police had stopped this train due to MS-13 gang members being on it.
And there's women and children that are refugees.
And so I'm thinking back to what Craig was telling me, you're never gonna see women and children with MS-13 and these hardcore criminals.
And so I immediately stopped what I'm doing, started focusing, and I realized in watching that, I was actually horrified, that this was propaganda.
That they were using these women and children, and CNN had actually put together money to bring this train to the border, and then they put a film crew on it, Got their segment where they said that you know this this Donald Trump character was apparently xenophobic and racist and then they cut the segment didn't care about what happened to the kids or the women and then it went to a pillow commercial and I sat there and I was so awestruck and just dumbfounded by what had happened I actually filmed a video and I never thought that I'm gonna use my cell phone to film a video talking about this and I did I said look I'm I'm Hispanic American I'm United States Air Force veteran I'm not racist and I'm really not even political and
But what they're doing is wrong.
This is propaganda.
And I don't agree with an open border because of human trafficking.
And then I listed all the reasons and the things that I found out.
And that video, I got a lot of pushback on it.
It actually went a little bit viral.
And then a few months later, Turning Point USA came across me.
And Charlie actually reached out a day before I was supposed to go to medical school.
And Charlie Kirk.
And he called me.
He goes, um, you might not know me.
My name is Charlie, but I'd like to offer you a job.
And so I'm thinking, Rudy, I was supposed to get on this plane to go to school and I had 24 hours to decide on it.
And so one of my mentors, um, he's a neurosurgeon, Dr. Epstein.
He founded a nonprofit called Global Surgical, a medical support group.
That's a humanitarian nonprofit that works overseas.
And he goes, Ana, if you don't take this, you're an idiot.
He said, you have the opportunity to affect more people's lives in a positive way as a policymaker than your entire lifetime as a doctor.
He goes, and you know, your plan B is you can always go back to medical school, but you can't always take this opportunity to help.
And so I with, I basically called my admissions.
I told them I would not be attending.
And then I signed with Turning Point.
And as I started going into the media cycle, I realized that they had too much control that, you know, if they didn't like what I was talking about on Talking Points, that they didn't have to give me a platform.
But the one thing that people were talking about was what was happening in DC and what the legislators were doing.
So I realized about two months into that job that I would be running for office.
And so I called my husband and I go, babe, we're running for office.
He goes, what do you mean?
And then so I started laying the foundation and groundwork to run for office.
So when did you first go to Turning Point?
What year was that?
I went to, I joined Turning Point about two years ago.
So my first event with them was the Young Women's Leadership Summit and that was in May of 2018.
So that is really what got you involved in then wanting to run for office.
Yeah, it was, no pun intended, but it was a turning point for me because I realized that, you know, you have so many people that don't realize that it's your responsibility, it's your obligation as an American to engage in the process.
And if you're not actively choosing to educate and to speak up on things that you're seeing not right in this country, then you're only part of the problem.
And I realized that because of the cards that I'd been dealt in life, that I had a certain, I guess, armor that I could say, That made me kind of invincible against some of the identity politics that the left, that the Democrat Party really uses against conservatives and Republicans.
You know, I'm not supposed to, according to their theory, I'm not supposed to be conservative.
I'm not supposed to be Republican.
But, you know, I experienced certain things growing up.
I grew up in the welfare system.
I walked into an armed robbery.
I experienced a school shooting on my campus.
That showed me that these policies don't work.
That it's the conservative ideology and the founding principles of the Constitution of this country that are there in place for a reason.
And just because you have people who have been in office for 20, 30 something years that forget really why they're serving the people, it doesn't necessarily make them right.
It doesn't make them celebrities.
And it's our obligation to call them out when we see it wrong.
So that's what I'm doing.
So you're running during probably one of the most unique years in American history.
I think when they look back on this year of 2020, not only will the election, but the fact that the entire country was closed down for some period of time, it looks like at least six weeks, maybe more.
I can't think in American history of any time in which the entire country was closed down.
We produce almost nothing at this point, and that's also true of most of Western Europe.
Now, what I'd like to ask you is, If you were in office, what would your position on this be?
How do we work our way through this or get ourselves out of it or get ourselves back to a normal existence again?
We need to start by slowly reopening.
And I think that there are a lot of people in office that are really afraid about speaking out against China.
It's not our friend.
They've never been our friend.
In fact, geopolitically speaking, we don't even have to trade with China.
The fact is, is that China had the opportunity to warn us.
They hid information.
They basically went to the World Health Organization, which is about as useful as a wet towel.
And basically, all the information that we were receiving, had it not been for President Trump, Senator Tom Cotton back in January, Speaking out and basically protecting the American people
by closing off travel to China. We'd be in a lot worse situation
People don't want to talk about that because now the media is so partisan
That if you support what the president says then all of a sudden you're betraying your party
That's not right.
No one should want to have the United States of America, the greatest country on the face of the planet, fail.
It doesn't matter who the leadership is.
And so to irresponsibly come out against the president for that is wrong.
And it just shows how far our country's really fallen in regards to the people that we've elected to do good diligence by its people.
And frankly, I think that, you know, unless we bring our manufacturing back, unless we cut off a dependency to China, we're only going to continue to set herself up for failure in the future.
And I can say that, you know, Breitbart just ran an article in March of this year talking about how China, after they were the ones that caused this, China was threatening to cut off our medical supplies to the United States and to leave us out on our own.
In no way, shape, or form after that article came out should the media have been endearing China in the way that it did.
And frankly, it's disgusting because China, still to this day, they're organ harvesting, they have concentration camps, and you want to talk about crimes against humanity, look at what's happening in China's backyard.
Yeah, I mean, this is a country that just a short while ago encouraged and permitted the killing of female babies.
I mean, you almost can't say that.
I mean, it's hard to fathom who they are or what they are if they would do something like that.
And the reality is that we've just given China freedom to do almost anything they want because we don't check them.
I think that's going to have to change.
But that's going to cost us.
Americans are going to have to be taught that we may have to pay more for things.
We may have to pay a little bit more.
But on the other side of it, we get American workers instead of Chinese workers, and we get a certain amount of control of our own destiny.
Control and quality, right?
Yes, sure.
American goods manufacturing around the world are still known as some of the best manufactured products.
And I can say that, you know, I was asked about this by someone actually.
They go, well, so you're telling me you would rather pay more for an American good than something bought in China.
I said, absolutely.
I know where it's coming from.
I know that you want to talk about this virtue signaling of how people need to worry about what's happening in other countries.
China has sweatshops.
People don't talk about that.
The reason why the goods are so cheap is because look at who's manufacturing it.
I mean, you want to help out the environment, you want to help out humanity, you want to help out the United States of America, you bring manufacturing back home.
Well, you know, that's another thing.
If you buy into climate change, then China's probably the biggest offender by far in the world, by a factor of 10 times more than the U.S., even more than India.
But nobody ever goes after China for it.
And it was crazy because I believe it was in the Paris Climate Accord that they were allowed to have all of these coal-manufactured manufacturing facilities, yet the United States were fighting one hand behind our back.
You know, China It's even with their CO2 emissions are off the charts with
it, but they're also destroying the oceans And so you talk about these big metric islands of trash
that are floating floating around in the seas and China's you know
A huge part to blame for that So, you know, I actually have had this debate with people
that say that they care about the environment I'm saying you realize that you know, it's not the United
States. That's a problem It's the places that we're sending our manufacturing to.
If we could bring our industry back, not only will that help out our economy, but it's also going to help out the environment.
So, you might laugh at this, but actually, and I don't think you will.
I call myself a green conservative.
It means that I care about the environment.
I don't believe in a carbon tax.
I don't think that the world's going to end in 12 years.
But I do think that there's a responsible way to tackle this issue and what's not conservative about conserving the environment for future generations?
I actually think it's a much more complex issue than the way in which the media presents it.
You're either in favor of a carbon tax or you're in favor of really draconian regulations that destroy our industries but allow China and other places to flourish.
Or otherwise you're anti-environment.
I think I'm more pro-environment than they are.
I think I'm worried about the things that affect the environment that are much more realistic than what they're worried about.
I want to see the earth flourish and my children have as beautiful a world as I have.
And I think that it is not inconsistent with the conservative position to be an environmentalist.
There's a difference between being an environmentalist and being a nut.
Well, and the thing is, too, is, you know, to go on a massive platform and tell future generations that they're all going to die in 12 years, that's irresponsible.
It's wrong.
Why are they never called on this?
I mean, I think Gore had the world gone in 2010.
And, you know, I remember that.
We're living on borrowed time.
I remember that.
And I actually, I had a very, I had a great professor.
He was actually, when I was in, um, Organic chemistry for my undergrad.
I majored in biology, by the way.
For college... Because you wanted to be a doctor.
Yes.
So I went through organic chemistry.
I did it all.
But I had this amazing professor and he was actually a scientist at Monsanto for 20 years.
And I remember we were talking about climate change and we were talking about the environment.
And he pulled out news clippings from the 1970s.
And these news clippings talked about the Great Freeze.
And then he pulled out news clippings from the 90s and it was during Al Gore's time, 90s and 2000s, it was talking about global warming and now it's climate change.
The climate's always going to change.
I don't understand what that means, climate change.
The climate changed overnight.
I'm in New York and yesterday it was very cold.
It's warmer today and cloudy.
It's like Florida.
If you don't like the environment, it'll change in, you know, a couple— give it a couple hours.
It'll be sunny.
You know what occurs to me about your candidacy, and maybe there are others in your— I'm sure there are others in your position.
I really think the American people are going to want people in Washington, whether it's the House, the Senate, with a new perspective.
Somehow, we've been operating— I think this is how Trump got elected— on the wrong premises for a long time.
The wrong policies.
When I ran for mayor of New York City, and New York City had over 2,000 murders, 1,000,000 on welfare, 10% on employment, I used to say, it's not the fault of New York City.
It's the fault of the policies that New York City follows.
They actually have results.
These are the results.
And since there hadn't been a Republican mayor, and I was only the third Republican mayor in 100 years, Nobody ever changes those policies.
So I changed them all.
And this is what we need to have now.
I mean, we have a president who wants to do that.
And unfortunately, in his first term, even though the House was Republican, the leadership of the House, the Republican leadership blocked him, about which I am very angry.
That was—it's still awful.
They're still trying to do it.
Yeah.
People think, well, he had control of the House and Senate.
No, he didn't.
He got double-crossed in the House.
Then, of course, the second part of his first term was made up of every illegitimate attempt to remove him that they
could come up with.
That was—it's still awful.
They're still trying to do it.
Yeah.
So we need now—we need now to carry out that purge in the Congress so that we have a bunch of new young people who
are going to look at this fresh.
Let's not be impressed with where China was during the Cold War or wasn't, but where is China right now today, and how should we—how important are they to us, and how should we react to it?
So I think this is a wonderful opportunity for someone like you, you know, to replace somebody who—well, first of all, Charlie doesn't really have any ideas, but any ideas he has will come off a poll or something that one of his people write out for him.
As opposed to somebody who's obviously very thoughtful.
So one of the things that you're going to have to do, there's going to have to be an investigation, a real one, of China's role in this, so that we can point it out, get support from the European governments, where China is responsible for killing many of them, and then institute a very, very strict set of policies so that we quickly get ourselves independent of China.
So that's going to require a lot of leadership.
I would absolutely be willing to push that because it's not even just us.
I mean, what China's done to the world is wrong.
And I think that, you know, sometimes you might feel like you're the only one fighting for something good, but you realize that it only takes you speaking out.
And then the moment you speak out, it has such a ripple effect that other people will be inclined to get behind you.
And that's true leadership.
And I think that if we can get Trump elected into office again and lead that out, I think it has massive implications, not just for the United States and people of the United States, but for the world.
Well, I'll make a prediction.
If Trump gets reelected, but we don't get a new house with a lot of people who are new, not tied into the Washington lobbyists, they're going to block everything he tries to do with China.
Because China's lobbying is enormously effective.
That's why you hear people—and China's support in the corporate community is very effective.
I mean, Bill Gates says we really shouldn't be concerned about China.
I mean, what?
I mean, OK, he's great with computers, but maybe he should stick to computers.
That's about as dumb.
I mean, I know everyone thinks he's a genius.
That's about as dumb a remark as I've ever heard.
We should not be concerned about China right now.
You go tell that to somebody who lost a grandmother, or a grandfather, or a child, or me, who lost a very good friend, 68 years old, Phil Foley, who was a great prosecutor, a great man.
His family is distraught.
You tell me that China, I should just forget about it.
It was okay for them to let that thing spread all over the world.
So we need people like you with a new perspective that aren't... I mean half these people are already bought and sold in the house and probably I'm being kind when I say half.
My campaign slogan is built not bought.
Yeah, you see, and I also think there's a feeling in the country that we like electing people that have had military service, because it says that somewhere in their background there was this feeling they had to serve the country.
So it's not just about them, or maybe a police officer or a firefighter.
That gives you a sense that they like to serve the country.
So tell me where you are on some of the other big issues, like taxes.
I'm a huge fan of the saying taxation is theft.
I think that when you have businesses especially, and this is something that we're dealing with in my district, is that you have people that say that they want to push an environmental tax.
Well, when you push environmental taxes onto small businesses, it makes them not as able to pay employees, keep people employed.
So what ends up happening is those businesses close, and then you have some of these harder impacted communities.
Basically, their only other option is to ask for government help and assistance.
And so I think that in the instance where people say, oh, well, we need to raise taxes, keep raising taxes,
that's a mistake.
I think the best thing that you can do for any business, for any country, is to lower the taxes
and let people decide where that money goes.
And so it was interesting.
I actually made a posting about it and I said, I'm for limited taxes.
And people were like, that's an old school way of thinking.
I'm like, not really.
It's not the old school.
It's the proven.
We did it.
We did it probably.
We did it on a major way three times in our history.
And each time it led to enormous economic growth.
We did it under Kennedy.
A Democrat who cut taxes.
We did it under the president I work for, Ronald Reagan, who's my hero.
And a massive boom for 10 years.
And we did it under Donald Trump.
And until this thing happened, we probably had a better recovery than the other two.
This was probably the most effective of the three tax cuts.
The other thing is, now that this awful thing happened to us, I am so comfortable with the idea that Donald Trump is in the presidency.
He already got us to be the most productive country in the world.
He can easily do it again.
But he needs people that will at least not block him and hopefully support him.
He needs reinforcements.
And I say this, you know, people ask me, how can I get involved?
I might not be in your district.
I might not be in your state.
But how do I get involved?
And I always say, Help the people that you believe will help the president and help further his legacy in this agenda.
Because the thing is, is that you have to get involved.
It's so hard.
I think a lot of people think that running for office is easy and that you just get—it's a lot of work.
I've seen a lot of people—usually people come to me, you know, who want to—in New York, who are thinking of running, and I tell them, it's not what you think.
I mean, you're on the phone every single day.
You're going to different events.
There are not enough hours in the day to deal with a very successful campaign.
So I tell people, you know, not only do you do that, but then you're putting yourself out there, you're putting your family out there, and you're getting attacked while this is all happening.
So you need people that are in it for the right reasons, that are passionate about fighting for this country, and that truly believe in what they're saying.
Not just someone who's been handed talking points, And wants to get a cozy job and hang out at the, you know, the DC clubs.
That's not what it is to be an elected representative and to be a true public servant, in my opinion.
I think so many people, you know, they see this fancy title and that's what they want to do it for.
And I'm tired of people doing that.
You know, I've dealt with enough, I think, in my life to realize that people need to be a little bit more humble and realize that this is not, you know, going to be around forever unless we fight for it.
So tell me, you really have, but just so we make it clear, your position on immigration, because it is so important.
I'm a thousand percent against illegal immigration.
And for the amount that I've actually worked with different trafficking organizations, I've read the 2018-2019 Human Trafficking Report that the State Department put out.
I've done extensive research.
I've talked to Border Patrol agents.
I've talked to DEA agents.
I've talked to Yeah, it's hard to understand how you can be for an open border when there are evil, horrible, terrible people out there that want to come into this country.
It doesn't mean most of them are.
you're literally getting a payout on the back end. That's what I think.
Yeah, it's hard to understand how you can be for an open border when there are evil,
horrible, terrible people out there that want to come into this country. It doesn't mean most of
them are. All you need is one. I mean, I did prosecuting and investigating for more of my
life than I did politics. And it was in the days of the Colombian cartels.
Well, of course they're going to take advantage.
If they see 100 people coming in illegally, MS-13 are going to grab 10 people and stick them right in the middle of that.
And since nobody's being checked, they're all here.
Well, and there's also two connections between those organizations and terrorist organizations.
People forget that.
100%.
Yeah.
I've been down to the border three times.
And, you know, in the open sector of the border that I'd gone to, You know, not only do you see remnants of, like, you can find children's shoes, I mean, you find everything, but the stat that the Border Patrol office had put out is that in the sector of the border that I was at, there was over 3,000 bodies littering the desert from people dying making that crossing, and then in addition to that, you have people coming in unchecked.
You know, people forget that there are terrorist cells in this country, and I can tell you, for as many briefings as I sat through, for as many things that I saw happen with my friends overseas, Terrorism is alive and well, and if you think that people don't want to stop this way of life here in the United States and are fans of the country, I mean, then you're just out of touch.
There are people that will do 9-11 all over again.
Absolutely correct.
And with something like this happening, some people can kind of put that aside and not realize that it's still, you know, a really, really major threat to this country.
I'd like you, in conclusion, just to tell us a little bit about your district.
So I'm running in Florida's 13th congressional district.
We're right across from Tampa.
So it encompasses a majority of Pinellas County, and it's also right off the I-4 corridor.
So it is an amazing... It's one of my favorite places in the country, and I'm not just saying that because I'm running here.
It has a very nice beach town.
There's a lot in regards to... Isn't Tampa itself and St.
Pete?
No.
So we're right over the bridge from Tampa.
So we're this little finger that comes off.
And it's, I think, Tampa Bay's best kept secret is what I like to call it.
It's an incredible community.
There's a lot of people here that I think are conservative.
You know, we obviously are here.
We care about the environment.
We want clean water.
We want clean beaches.
But also, too, people realize that I think, you know, this place is unique and that President Trump needs this area to get elected.
And if there's one thing to be said, I know that no matter what I do in this race, that I'm going to be helping with that mission.
And so I look at this as a win-win, no matter what.
And tell us about your personal life.
You're married?
I am.
I am married to a United States Air Force combat controller.
So actually, the horse soldier statue in New York City, that is a combat controller, and that's what my husband does.
And he's still in the military?
He's still in the military, and he's been in for over 10 years now, and in 2014 he was actually shot in Afghanistan.
He made a full recovery.
God bless him.
But when he got shot, I mean, you talk about what the VA system needs and reform in that way, and really what our men and women can go through, and it gave me a different perspective.
So when I heard that President Trump was going out to Walter Reed, which is the military hospital in Maryland, That actually really resonated with me because we've had friends go there that President Trump actually stopped in on and there was no publicity on it.
He just did it because it was the right thing to do.
And then also, too, my husband was one of those guys there.
And so I have an immense amount of respect for that.
Were you married at that point?
In 2014?
Yes, in 2014.
We got married when I was 20 years old and he was 21.
So we've been married for 10 years.
Well, God bless you.
And he is supportive?
Yes, he is.
So it sounds like the family is dedicated to serving the country.
Yes.
Well, Anna, I'm very, very impressed, and I'm sure everyone who hears this interview will be.
How can they help you?
You can donate, and I do need donations still, at VoteAnnaPaulina.com, that's A-N-N-A, and then P-A-U-L-I-N-A.com, and then also, too, because I am being censored on different platforms, especially Twitter, If you get an email from me, if you see a tweet or information that I'm putting out, please share it because it is, you know, as much as I am trying, digital media is working against me and it's happened.
To date, Instagram had removed my donation link 29 times.
Twitter won't verify me and they suppressed my page immensely.
They won't verify me either.
Oh, well, you know, we're... I've been working on it for months and months and months.
Gosh, I'm willing to give him a blood test.
I'll let him check DNA.
It's so crazy.
What a bunch of phonies, huh?
It's crazy.
But you know what?
The way I look at it, if you're not verified on one platform, at least that means you know you're doing something good.
Well, good luck.
It sounds like you've got the energy and the stamina for it.
The primary is in August.
Yes, August 18th.
And then the general election.
So we'll keep in touch.
I'm very excited about your candidacy for the party.
It's wonderful to see young people with this kind of knowledge and background and particularly with this kind of dedication to our country.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
So that was a very interesting interview with a very, very exciting candidate and someone that hopefully we're going to have a lot of candidates like this, and this will be the future of the Republican Party.
And if this is the future of the Republican Party, we will be in good shape.
So I'll be back with you in a short while.
I believe you, like me, learned a great deal from that interview with Gordon Chang.
I feel that Gordon not only has a deep knowledge of China, which goes back, you know, years of research, but also has an extraordinary ability to explain things in a way that's understandable.
And has quite a balanced view, where he considers both sides and explains to you how he gets to the position he gets to.
And those can be some of the most educational interviews that you can do, and it gives you a chance to make your own decision.
You may agree with him completely or not, but it does follow the concept of this podcast, which is, let's reason together and let's talk together to see if we can come to the right solutions.
I think Gordon made a big contribution to that.
Anna Paulina Luna is one of the most exciting candidates we have for Congress.
Newcomer, but we need newcomers.
We surely need newcomers.
When you look at the American people's lack of respect for Congress, it tells you we've got to change them.
And now more than ever, when Donald Trump gets reelected, he's going to have to make fundamental changes, for example, in the way we deal with China.
All of that will be opposed by the lobbyists, and China spends millions on lobbyists.
And we know we have members of Congress who are bought by the Chinese.
That's why we get stupid statements like, they're not a threat, they're not really dangerous, they really want to be a friend.
We need people that can come in there without that clouding their judgment and who can look at it like the president does, America first.
Let's fix things for America first, and then we'll worry about China.
And we're going to have to fix our dependency on China, and there's going to be so much corporate lobbying against that.
It's not going to be as easy as you think.
The president is going to need a Republican Congress, and he's going to need Republican Republican Congressmen and women like Anna who know what they stand for and aren't bought by anyone.
So that was a very interesting interview.
We got a lot of candidates like that, and we'll try to introduce you to some of them.
We can't do all of them, but we'll try to introduce you to some of them as an example of the other candidates that are out there.
But think about her and think about helping her with her campaign with a contribution because Charlie Crist, who I know for a long time, could be, as I said when I campaigned for Governor Scott, one of the most dishonest people I ever met in politics.
So this is a place where we really do need a change.
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