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July 26, 2024 - Rudy Giuliani
01:12:59
America's Mayor Live (E460): How Deep is the CCP Infiltration in the US?
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We're going to focus on the Olympics, of course, but on China in general, and there's no one better to talk to than Gordon Chang.
You all know Gordon.
Gordon is an author.
Gordon happens to be a lawyer.
You may not know that, but a very accomplished lawyer.
He's been an author on China for several decades now.
One of the people who really saw through The Dual Nature of China.
If there ever was a dual nature, I'm going to ask him that question because I'm not sure.
And his most recent book on technology, you really have to read it because just like the Collapse book, which was written about a decade ago, Gordon has seen things in advance that others have not.
And I'm talking about people in good faith now, who I really believe there are a lot of people in good faith who made a mistake about China.
And they're the ones who are acknowledging it now.
The ones who aren't, well, that's a different story.
But I want to talk to them about China in general, but I want to start with what's on all of our minds, the Olympics.
So, Gordon, how do we...
How do we, as a decent country, who has a Declaration of Independence that's one of the oldest great documents of liberty in the world, we're not consistent as we should be, but we stand for liberty and freedom.
This nation is the outlier.
I don't think there's any nation, certainly in the current world, that's slaughtered as many of its own people.
It continues to do it right in our face.
With genocide going on, and it's hard to even count.
How can we participate in this?
It almost seems like it's, I hate to use the word, sinful to do it.
How do you understand why we're doing it, and the arguments for and against it, and then your conclusion on it, if you wouldn't mind?
The Biden administration certainly is conflicted.
They want a long term relationship with China.
They want China's cooperation on things like climate change and Iran.
And so they're doing the bare minimum when it comes to issues involving human rights.
And that means the Biden administration tried to cut the baby in half with this diplomatic boycott.
American diplomats not going to the opening and closing ceremonies of the games.
President Biden not going to Beijing.
But we're allowing our athletes to participate.
This is a difficult case for the United States because, of course, everyone wants to have the athletes have that opportunity to participate, to compete, and for some of them, you know, the opportunity of a lifetime.
But on the other hand, we got to remember, as you pointed out, China is committing genocides, and we're a party, as is China, to the Genocide Convention of 1948, which requires us to prevent and to punish acts of genocide.
Now, there are two big genocides that are occurring now.
One of them is we've talked about with the Uyghurs, the Kazakhs, and the other Turkic minorities.
I mean, they've been detained in the millions.
People in those concentration camps have been killed.
We know that, Mr. Mayor, because China actually built a crematorium between two of these camps.
But there's also officially sanctioned rape, basically organ harvesting, torture, and the Chinese government has organized the slavery of Turkic minorities.
So there is genocide and there are crimes against humanity, and these atrocities are comparable to those of the Third Reich Prior to the mass exterminations of 1941.
But there's another genocide that's occurring.
And that is, although we don't know 100% the origins of the COVID-19, though it looks like it came from a lab, we do know 100% one thing, Mr. Mayor, and that is that Chinese leaders deliberately spread this beyond China's borders.
They lied about contagiousness.
And while they were locking down their own country, they were pressuring other countries not to impose travel restrictions and quarantines on arrivals from China.
You put those two things together, and it's clear that they wanted to spread this disease around the world.
That's 5.7 million people who have died from this disease outside China, and that includes more than 900,000 Americans.
We crossed the 900,000 mark a couple days ago.
So those are two genocides. And as much as we'd like to have the athletes participate,
nonetheless, we can't ignore the mass killing both inside and outside China.
So inside China, the genocides that we know about, the most prominent are the Uyghur people.
And that's usually reported that about two million are in various forms of concentration camps,
camps ranging to death camps.
Bye.
slavery camps. The others are also subject, the ones who aren't imprisoned are subject to all
forms of degradation and slavery. So how many roughly are there of Uyghurs in China that could
be subjected to this kind of torture? The estimates are that there have been between
one and 3.3 million Uyghurs who either are in the camps or have been in the camps. And these numbers
have been derived from satellite imagery by looking at the number of facilities and by trying
to guess the number of people coming in and going out.
So it is a big range, but we're talking about people in the millions, not the hundred thousands, but the millions.
And the idea is to eliminate them as a people so that they would no longer be a problem for China.
Yes, it's to eliminate all cultural identity.
And this is true not just for Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic minorities.
It's true for the Tibetans and for Mongolians and for other peoples.
You know, China has this notion that there are 56 ethnic groups in China.
In other words, 55 minorities.
China wants to eliminate all minority consciousness.
And that's why there is sterilization, forced abortions, extreme birth control.
And those measures constitute genocide as defined in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention.
So the largest focus is the Uyghurs, but then when you get to these smaller groups, it's their desire to eliminate them as well.
You said Turkish people.
How do they define Turkish?
I mean, Turkish is a pretty broad subject.
Turkic minorities is the phrase, and that includes, of course, the Uyghurs, who are the largest of the Turkic minorities in China.
But it also includes Kazakhs, who are a fair number in China, and there are others.
And these are people who live in what China calls the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, what China believes is the northwestern part of the country.
Which was once independent, East Turkestan, and there are many Uyghurs who desire to retain, to go back to that independent status.
Are they also in other parts of the country?
They are.
For instance, you can find them in the central parts of the country, in Xi'an, when my wife and I were traveling through China, because we worked there for five years.
We went to Xi'an and our dinner of the night we were there was actually in one of these very small kitchens, basically outdoor stove, just a few seats around a table under the stars.
And we had all sorts of meats and breads.
These were Uyghurs.
But for the most part, they're in the northwestern part in Xinjiang.
And are they subjected to the same problems when they're outside of that area?
Outside the area, the restrictions are not so severe because they don't have the concentration camps.
But China, especially since 2017, has been imposing these extraordinary measures on Uyghurs.
And this will spread to minorities outside of Xinjiang and Tibet as well.
Does it include other Muslims and does it include Christians?
Not to the same extent as we're seeing the crimes against humanity.
But we do know that, for instance, Christians are being held in black jails throughout China.
And the persecution of Christians, which was already severe under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, the previous leaders, has been stepped up considerably under Xi Jinping.
Hui Muslims, H-U-I, Hui Muslims who are indistinguishable from Han have been subject to repression recently under Xi Jinping.
And this is generally a stepped up measures of coercion, not only against minorities, but also against everybody.
China is moving back to totalitarianism under Xi Jinping.
So it affects everyone in China.
But especially those special groups like the minorities and like believers.
And one other thing, Mr. Mayor, Buddhism is considered to be in China a local religion and has been left alone.
And many people, including Communist Party members, have been Buddhist, although they shouldn't be.
They're supposed to be atheists.
But under Xi Jinping, for the first time, we see persecution of Buddhists.
Which means that Xi Jinping is going not just after people who are Muslims, not just after Christians.
They're going after all people of any faith.
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Absolutely.
Xi Jinping demands absolute obedience.
in God, belief in religion, would interfere with the higher authority, which would be your
loyalty to the government, that it will interfere with your blind loyalty to socialism and communism.
Absolutely. Xi Jinping demands absolute obedience. There is no tolerance for anything that is not
doctrinaire communism and atheism. And so that's why he has stepped up his campaign against people
of all faiths. Now, the Olympics, although very much constrained by, you know,
all the protests against it, etc., it's still a multi-billion dollar event for China and a
great asset in terms of their building their reputation as a legitimate country, particularly
in Asia.
So even though here in the United States, we're basically covering, to some extent, these genocides and a lot of the world sees this just as a great event where the Chinese government proves its development, its prowess, how it can put on such a grand game.
I think overall, this will be a plus for China, would it not?
That's going to be a very interesting question, Mr. Mayor.
If we go back to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, which were the first Olympic Games, this was considered to be China's coming out party.
It was an unvarnished success, and it propelled Xi Jinping, who was responsible for the Games, he was the official responsible for the Games, it propelled him into the highest spot as General Secretary of the Communist Party, which he was named in November 2012.
These Games, Chinese is a different message.
It's not like we've emerged.
Their message is, we're going to do whatever we want and we're proud of it.
We're proud of our genocide.
We're proud of our aggression towards India.
I mentioned those two because you had, for instance, one of the two athletes who lit the torch, the cauldron, is a Uyghur.
I was very curious about that, Gordon.
So what was the thinking behind that?
She was paired with a Han majority athlete, and the idea was to express national unity.
Now, she's a cross-country skier, she came in 43rd, and she's been quietly disappeared from view by the authority.
That's a Uyghur athlete.
That's a Uyghur athlete.
And the second thing, I mentioned that China is proud of its aggression against India.
Well, one of the torchbearers who delivered the flame to other torchbearers is a guy named Chief Abao, who was a regimental commander who participated in the surprise attack against Indian troopers on the night of June 15, 2020.
So by having him as a torchbearer, what Beijing did was it said, look, we're very proud of committing aggression against India.
And by the way, this was counterproductive for China because India, which was going to participate in the opening ceremony, sending their diplomats there and to the closing ceremonies, have pulled out.
They pulled out of both the opening ceremony and they will not attend the closing ceremonies.
And this really is counterproductive.
I think one of the things, to go back to your original question, will this be good for China?
China is showing an ugly face at these games that the world abhors.
We Americans and others, we don't think about China all the time, so we don't see much of this.
But with the Olympic Games, it becomes, you have to see it, you have to hear about it.
And what it's doing is it's reinforcing negative perceptions about China, not just in America, but around the world.
And to answer your question, we don't know how these games come out for China.
But it's entirely possible that China blackens its own reputation with the things it's doing.
Now, is my perception incorrect because it's not covered really correctly in America?
In other words, I'm not reading an awful lot about things that are going wrong or people that I mean, I know that people are in substandard housing.
Some of them are described almost as inhumane.
But you have to go to secondary publications to find that you don't find that in The New York Times and the Washington Post and NBC and CBS.
We don't have a special on NBC.
Look how terrible the athletes are being treated.
But in fact, that's happening to the athletes.
That is happening and we'll learn more about it.
One of the things that's really surprised me, Mr. Mayor, is that the coverage, the NBC coverage so far has record low ratings.
I would have thought that, you know, everyone would be tuning in because it is the Olympics and also because it's China.
But I think that there's a revulsion in American society and especially a lot of the negative publicity and the run up to the games, I think it's convinced Americans just to, just not to watch out of principle.
Like I'm not watching out of principle, although I love looking at, you know, planting myself in front of a TV and watching Olympics.
I'm not doing that just because I believe that I do not want to show any sort of support for these games.
Gordon, I enjoy the Winter Olympics more than the Summer Olympics.
Always have.
I attended the one in Italy.
I attended the one in Canada.
I almost attended the other one.
And I would have watched this.
If I thought I was going to get a full, I think the main reason I'm not watching it is I realize it's a, it's a propaganda event because I'm not getting a full picture.
If they would cover the bad things that were happening along with the good, I might watch it because then I'd be learning something.
But here I'm just being brainwashed.
Yes.
NBC's coverage has put China in the best light.
On the opening ceremonies on Friday, one of the commentators for NBC did mention the word genocide, but it was a very muted reference.
And so basically, NBC's coverage has really put China in the light that Beijing wants.
Now, NBC News has continued with good coverage of China, which has criticized Beijing.
But, you know, this is the type of thing that I think the world does not like, to see China coerce a news organization in this way.
Now, we should not be broadcasting those games.
We shouldn't have American companies sponsoring them.
It's just a horrifying, ghastly event.
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Gordon, if I could take you back a bit.
To me, you are one of the few people that saw At a very, very early stage, that the fantasy that we had about China was exactly that, a fantasy.
Because without getting very specific about the years, when you come out of the Kissinger-Nixon, developing the relationship, using it as a wedge against the Soviet Union, You come to a point where people are starting to notice, and would write that there are two Chinas.
They're almost like the hawks and the doves.
The Chinese that believe that military power, raw economic power, is a way to be the leader of the world, the dominant nation in the world, and to suppress the United States.
Then there's the argument that there are people who are more Who are more dovish and they believe that a great economic relationship with either the United States or the world power Powers is what they want, but they're not militaristic If that was ever true That ended a long time before we noticed it So you've written about this.
So I have two questions for you.
Was it ever true?
What I what I said was that ever true?
And then if it was true, how did it break off?
So that dovish part is a distant memory.
Those are great questions.
China, of course, is a big place.
You've got the Communist Party, which has always been militant.
Sometimes it hasn't expressed its militancy, but it has always had this view that it should rule the world.
And it has been brutal, not only to foreigners, but especially to its own people.
We don't know exactly how many Chinese people have died, but it's in the tens of millions.
Low estimates, 30 million.
Higher estimates, 80 million.
This is the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the anti-rightist campaigns, anti-landlord campaigns.
The toll on the Chinese people is the highest in history.
So the Communist Party has blood on its hands.
Now, the Chinese people, of course, we have seen the best of humanity in China, but we've also seen the worst.
For us Americans, you know, it's been complicated.
It's been hard to see, largely because Beijing is a master in propaganda and because they've closed their country off.
So it's difficult to understand a lot of this.
I had the advantage of having a father who lived in China, was born in China, who went through some, you know, World War II, was fortunate to leave to come to this country, was fortunate to be able to stay in this country.
And the other thing that I've had advantage of is that Lydia, my wife, and I actually lived and worked in China for five years.
From August 1996 to May 2001.
And when you live there, you get a very different view of the country than if you just come in.
I can remember both Lydia and I were really, really optimistic about China when we arrived in August of 1996.
And I can remember her on the phone saying, Mom, China's not communist anymore.
And I agreed with her.
And this is what my clients would say as they, you know, they buzzed into Shanghai, they stayed at the Grand Hyatt, which is one of the most spectacular hotels in the world, and would say China's not communist anymore.
But you know, we lived and worked there, we traveled around the country, we talked to people, we saw things.
And it was evident to us that China was still communist, and that it was fragile.
And so we saw a very different side of the country.
For decades, we had this engagement policy where we tried to integrate China into the international system because we thought that as it became powerful, it would become benign.
It would see that it would have a stake in the existing order.
Robert Zoellick, when he was Deputy Secretary of State, gave that famous speech in 2005 about China becoming a responsible stakeholder, quote unquote, in the international system.
And there was hope that this would occur.
Also, at the end of the Cold War, we said history had ended.
That was Francis Fukuyama, the famous political scientist, saying that, yes, events would continue to occur, but humankind's ideological evolution had ended in modern liberal democracy and market-oriented capitalism.
So when you have that view, then you can say, oh, well, you know, China's going to come around.
But Xi Jinping has made it clear that he not only wants to compete with the United States.
I mean, I don't grudge him that he wants to be number one.
Every country wants to be number one.
But the difference is that Xi Jinping wants to take down the existing international system, which is based on the Westphalian principles of mutual recognition of sovereignty.
And he's replacing it with the notion that China not only has the right to rule Tianxia We're all under heaven.
It has the obligation to rule all under heaven.
And Xi Jinping has taken this further because since 2018, his officials have been talking about the moon and Mars as a part of the People's Republic of China.
So this is the most ambitious ruler in history.
He not only wants to rule the entire planet Earth, he wants to rule the near parts of the solar system as well.
Now, this Olympics was said to be, if it comes off right, it was said to catapult him then into a third term, which would essentially be president, party secretary, whatever else you call him, for life.
Almost like the usual Banana Republic, all over South America, this was the key to communism and socialism.
The third term was a joke, you just declared, I'm running for a third term, and then you become Putin.
Is that going to happen?
Is that almost a foregone conclusion that there's no opposition to this within whatever exists in the Chinese political structure?
That is a question that some people are asking, because a third term as General Secretary of the Communist Party would break precedent.
And the 20th National Congress of the party is slated to meet sometime this fall, October or November.
Where his second term ends.
So everyone is looking at that.
If you go back about six months, I think everyone would have said, oh, yeah, he's definitely going to get his third term.
He will be dictator for life.
I've always concentrated on the fragility of Xi Jinping's position.
And the reason is that, and if I can give a little context, prior to Xi Jinping, No general secretary of the party, in other words, no ruler of China, ever got too much credit or too much blame because every decision of consequence was shared by every top leader.
Xi Jinping changed that because he grabbed power from everybody else.
And as he did that, he grabbed accountability.
And that means that in 2017, which you mentioned where things were going well for China, it was great being Xi Jinping because you got all the credit because you were responsible for everything.
2021, 2022, when things are not going well for China, he's being blamed.
And people who have been disadvantaged by Xi Jinping in various ways are now coming out of the woodwork, and we're seeing signs of discord at the top of the Communist Party.
We don't know exactly what's going on, Mr. Mayor, because it is an opaque system, but we are seeing things that do not occur in the absence of intense infighting.
And so therefore, I think it is not.
It is not a foregone conclusion that he's going to get his third term.
Probably he will, but I think there is a lot that can happen between now and the end of this year.
That's very encouraging, actually, and a change from where things were, let's say, six months ago.
Now, you have always, from way back, taken the position, which, by the way, I agree with more by instinct than the knowledge that you have, that China will not survive the way it is.
It may do an awful lot of damage the way it is before it collapses, but do you still see that?
Is that still something that you can see within the structures of what's going on in China, that inevitably it has to collapse?
I think so, and I've been wrong on timing because I thought it would occur earlier, but right now...
If we left Al Gore, we wouldn't be here.
Right.
Climate change would have killed the human species.
Only the cockroaches would be living.
China right now faces simultaneous crisis.
It's got a debt crisis, which we've heard the company called Evergrande Group, China's largest property developer at one time, now not so large, but it has a staggering $305 billion in liabilities.
And since September, it has not been able to meet its bond and other obligations.
We've seen about a dozen other Chinese property developers also default or not make payments.
And because China has too much debt, I don't think that it can get past this debt crisis.
You know, by some estimates, it has its debt equals 350 percent of its gross domestic product.
Some people say more, some people say less.
But the point is, it's got too much debt.
It's got a stagnant economy, so it's not producing the output to be able to service its debt.
There's worsening food shortages, a depleted environment, and accelerated COVID-19 outbreaks, and China is not able to deal with those because it doesn't have those.
Those are suppressed generally, so we wouldn't find out about the COVID outbreaks in China, at least not when they happen.
Right.
thoroughly managed reports of this. China for more than a year has had no deaths from COVID,
according to official sources. Its total deaths for the entire epidemic is 4,636, which is
ludicrous. But they don't have an effective vaccine.
And so their only real defense against this is isolation, which means draconian lockdowns, which undermines their economy.
And one other thing, Mr. Mayor, and that is China faces the steepest demographic decline in history in the absence of war or disease.
Chinese demographers say that within by 2065, China will lose one-half of its population.
That means by, let's say, the end of the century, doing the arithmetic and carrying it out, China will be one-third as populous as it is today.
I don't know how they're going to manage that because this is unprecedented.
So you put all this together, I don't think the Communist Party is able to deal with these challenges, especially simultaneously.
Is that the reason for the almost now obsessive concentration on military buildup?
It seems to me in the last four or five years, much more than ever before, China is deliberately trying to challenge our Navy, our Air Force, we're the second biggest Navy, we're the first biggest Navy, we're the second biggest Army.
You hear them putting that out all the time.
It's got to take concentration away from the underbelly, which is in essence rotting.
I think so.
I think Chinese leaders are starting to see a closing window of opportunity to achieve what they consider to be historic goals.
We started to see this in Chinese propaganda in the beginning of 2020.
And I think it's affecting their mentality.
So, you know, this is, as some people call it, the decade of concern.
This is the decade where China has got the incentives to do something that will take us by surprise.
Some active aggression someplace.
And that's why we've got to be concerned.
You know, we have a Pentagon who says, well, you know, if we have a fight with China, it'll be in the 2027-2035 timeframe.
They're taking out their retiring planes, their retiring ships.
They shouldn't be doing that because if there's going to be a conflict with China, I think it's going to be now.
And we need every ship.
We need every plane.
We need more stores.
We need to harden our facilities in Asia.
We need to understand the nature of the challenge, because we come from a democracy.
We're Americans.
We don't understand the nature of evil.
And the regime, unfortunately, is evil and malicious, and it is willing to kill in great numbers to achieve its aims.
Now, what is their appetite for war?
That is a great question.
China tells us that one of its advantages over America is that it is tolerant of casualties.
Now, I actually don't think so.
I look at it the other way.
I think they're more casualty adverse than we are.
And I'll give you an example.
I mentioned that surprise attack in the Himalayas against India on the night of June 15, 2020.
India quickly admitted 20 of its troopers were killed.
China didn't say anything until February of last year, and then they said they were four.
It has come out in a press release that there were about 45 Chinese who were killed that night.
This is confirmed by a report in Australia.
And that torchbearer that I mentioned, Qi Faobao, he was a regimental commander.
He led that attack.
He ran away in panic.
And because of that, the reports are that his troopers then panicked and they drowned in a river, you know, a couple dozen.
So we believe that there was about 40 to 45 Chinese who were killed that night, but Beijing won't admit it.
Which means that they are extremely casualty adverse.
And this is one of the reasons why I have some hope for Taiwan and other places.
But nonetheless, we've got to remember that Xi Jinping has a very low threshold of risk.
And because he's got full accountability, because he's made a lot of enemies.
And if he feels he's going to die anyway, he could do something which we consider to be irrational.
And so we got to be really concerned about China and what it would do, even though it's casualty adverse, they can still take us by surprise.
Now, how aware are they?
Of course, it would mean see going down the line of the weaknesses that they have that you just pointed out.
Are they in denial of that?
Are they quite aware of it or is it somewhere in the middle?
I don't know the answer to that question.
Got to remember that although, you know, they have been very successful in preventing news from coming out.
Now, this not only limits our ability to understand China, it limits the ability of senior leaders in Beijing to understand China, because officials underneath them are afraid to report bad news.
So if you're talking about a lower level official, like some county or some township guy, they know everything.
But if you're talking about Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party, the president of the Chinese state, his access to information is quite limited.
I mean, this has always been a weakness of top-down systems, but it's even more so under Xi Jinping because he's been imposing these great punishments on people who give him bad news.
So they may not be as aware of the fact that they have a time frame, in essence, and that this is going the wrong way.
The other thing that's confusing, their level of poverty, of abject third world poverty.
How do we get a good fix on?
I mean, it's almost as if China is two countries, a developed country and a completely underdeveloped country.
What's the breakdown there?
Well, you know, in tier one cities like Beijing and Shanghai, I mean, these are very prosperous places.
Not everybody there is prosperous, but it is extremely impressive.
But if you go to places like where my dad came from, which is not that far from Shanghai, it's across the Yangtze River.
It's developing, but there's still a lot of poverty there.
And you know, this is interesting, because we were talking about what does Xi Jinping know, and does he see a closing window of opportunity?
It's interesting that he has declared that there is no longer any poverty in China, because that's politically dictated, because he needs to show success.
He set a goal of eliminating poverty, so of course they had to meet it.
So, you know, I don't know how much he knows about poverty, but poverty still exists when you start to look at some of the numbers and you start to travel around to some of the more remote places.
But what would be a good fix on it?
A third of the country, half the country in terms of population of the 1.4 billion?
Yeah.
In terms of people who are really poor, We really don't know, but I would say that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 15% maybe.
Really, really poor, even by third world standards.
And then you have people who are moderately well off, and then you have the fabulously wealthy.
China's produced a lot of billionaires recently.
Which is, of course, a contradiction on the communist model, although not much of a contradiction, because every communist country has at the top multi-billionaires from the very beginning.
It's a contradiction of the whole process of communism.
Well, what do you think our response to this should be in the US, given all of these changing factors?
What would be your advice To an administration, and I'm saying this, you're not, that seems to be paralyzed in being able to do anything about China.
And I don't know if it's ideological, if it's corruption, or it's a combination of both.
Yeah, I agree with your assessment of the administration, by the way.
My advice would be we've got to cut our contacts with China.
We've got to cut trade, we've got to cut investment, we've got to cut technical cooperation, and by cut I mean sever And the reason I say this is because China uses every point of contact to try to overthrow our government.
During 2020, they were very active in trying to change the outcome of the presidential election.
They were in this from the very beginning.
They were supporting Biden over Sanders in the Democratic primary.
They were very much in support of Biden during the general election.
And they were fomenting violence on our streets.
They were actually surreptitiously and even openly encouraging Americans to commit violent acts.
And that's an attempt to overthrow our government.
And we have been overwhelmed.
Our FBI is overwhelmed.
Our local law enforcement is overwhelmed.
Our institutions are being overwhelmed by China.
And until we can understand and manage our contacts with China, We have to cut those contacts in order to save our republic.
I know this sounds extreme, but we can go through the things that China has done to try to actually advocate the violent overthrow of our government, using its contacts in all of our communities to do that.
And so we haven't adequately defended ourselves.
And until we get to that point, we need to end our relations with China.
Would you agree that we really, until now, didn't have any sense of how deeply entrenched they had become, both through corruption, public relations, lobbying, and also even in our society?
I agree.
And I'll give you an example.
And this is true of both parties, and it's true of liberals and conservatives.
But I'll take the example of Eric Swalwell, because it's graphic.
The first time the Ministry of State Security contacted Swalwell was not when he was sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, where of course he'd be great value for China.
They first contacted him when he sat on the City Council of Dublin City, California.
That means he was not the only one that Beijing was grooming.
They were grooming, had to be, hundreds if not thousands of Americans in the hope that one or two of them would be of value to China.
Now, the thing about Swalwell that I find extremely disturbing is not that China tried to contact him or was successful in establishing a friend of his.
I mean, if that were the case, we'd have nobody in Congress.
We'd have nobody in the White House.
The point is that Swalwell will not talk about this.
I would be comforted if he were to say, yeah, my name is Eric Swalwell.
I was contacted by a member of the Ministry of State Security.
I had sex with her.
So what?
I mean, if he says that, it means that they don't have a hold over him.
But by maintaining silence, he's indicating to us that he has something to be afraid of, that's something he doesn't want to talk about.
Swalwell, as I mentioned, is only one of hundreds or thousands that the Ministry of State Security has groomed.
So yes, the penetration is throughout American society.
And that's the reason why I say we need to cut our contacts with China, because we don't have a handle on this, Mr. Mayor.
Yeah, and of course he was one of the main, what would you call them, hitmen on Trump, one of the main Spears.
Not the main one, but he was consistently, every opportunity he had at a microphone, he would propagate some theory of Russian collusion or some form of treason or impeachment.
So he definitely had a very, very strong agenda.
It wasn't as if he was kind of neutral.
Yeah, his agenda was the same as the Communist Party.
And I'm not saying that he was doing it on behalf of the Communist Party or in coordination with them.
But what I'm saying is that his goals were the same goals of China's Communist Party.
So this is something that we have got to think about.
And as I said, Swalwell is not the only person.
I mean, there are Republicans who fall into this camp as well, but his is the example that has been documented.
And so it's the one that I talk about.
Well, I think you've been very, very generous with your time, Gordon, and your writings on this have been probably some of the most illuminating.
And when we finally get through it, I think you're going to be one of the people who is seen as, boy, he saw it earlier than anybody else.
And thank you very, very much for your wisdom and hope to talk to you very soon again.
Our country needs you right now.
You know that.
Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor, and our country has always needed you, and you stood up and defended us at a critical time in our history.
Well, thank you, sir.
And you stay healthy.
God bless you.
Well, I know you found that interview as illuminating and as fascinating as I did.
There are very few people, if any, that have as much insight into China as Gordon Chang Or as much balance about what they see that tends to be an overreaction either way about China, becoming very, very defensive about it because of your prior support for it, or very, very hostile because of your prior opposition to it.
And Gordon seems to have put that out of the process of just rational analysis.
So I find his analysis Right near the top in terms of giving you a good balance of what's going on in a country that is inscrutable.
I mean, they do make it, on purpose, impossible for us to find out what's going on there.
Now, we get beyond impossible.
But we have to qualify everything we say, as you notice Gordon did, with saying, we think, or it seems.
Well, from what we get to see, because we don't get to see everything.
We've got to stay close to Gordon because I think he can be a good guide to where China is going, so therefore we don't fail to react and therefore we don't overreact.
His analysis that we should break ties with China is exactly right.
We saw that during the pandemic, didn't we?
I mean, I know I was shocked.
I'm sure you were.
In some cases, 90 to 95 to 98% of what we needed came from China.
Now, I knew a lot of it came from China, but I never thought we'd put ourselves in a hole where our biggest enemy virtually could destroy us.
Thank you very much for listening and God bless America.
God bless America.
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🎵 🎵 If tomorrow all the things were gone, I'd work for all
my life 🎵 🎵 And I had to start again, just my children and my wife
🎵 Thank my lucky stars to be living here today.
Cause our flag still stands for freedom And they can't take that away
And I'm proud to be an American Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.
Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land.
Sing it!
God bless the U.S.A.
Yeah, oh, oh, oh From the lakes of Minnesota
To the hills of Tennessee Across the plains of Texas
From sea to shining sea From Detroit to Houston
From New York to L.A.
With pride in our hearts Every American heart and it's time we stand and say
That I'm proud to be an American Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died Who gave that right to me
And I gladly stand up next to you And defend her still today
There ain't no doubt I love this land God bless the USA
And I'm proud to be an American Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died Who gave that right to me
And I gladly stand up next to you And defend her still today
There ain't no doubt I love this land God bless the USA
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
Thank you very much.
Thank you very, very much.
Wow.
And thank you, Dana.
Thank you, Kid Rock, sometimes referred to as Bob.
And thank you, Lee, right from the beginning.
Thank you very much.
What a talent.
What a beautiful, beautiful song.
Thank you.
Friends, delegates, and fellow citizens, I stand before you this evening with a message of confidence, strength, and hope.
Four months from now, we will have an incredible victory.
And we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country.
Together, we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity, and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.
The discord and division in our society must be healed.
We must heal it quickly.
As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny.
We rise together or we fall apart.
I am running to be President for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.
So, tonight, With faith and devotion, I proudly accept your nomination for President of the United States.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Crowd chanting, Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!
Thank you very much.
And we will do it right.
We're going to do it right.
Let me begin this evening by expressing my gratitude to the American people for your outpouring of love and support
following the assassination attempt at my rally on Saturday.
As you already know, the assassin's bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life.
So many people have asked me, what happened?
Tell us what happened, please.
And therefore, I will tell you exactly what happened, and you'll never hear it from me a second time because it's actually too painful to tell.
It was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening in Butler Township in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Music was loudly playing.
And the campaign was doing really well.
I went to the stage, and the crowd was cheering wildly.
Everybody was happy.
I began speaking very strongly, powerfully, and happily.
Because I was discussing the great job my administration did on immigration at the southern border.
We were very proud of it.
Behind me and to the right was a large screen that was displaying a chart of border crossings
under my leadership.
Thank you.
The numbers were absolutely amazing.
In order to see the chart, I started to, like this, turn to my right.
And was ready to begin a little bit further turn, which I'm very lucky I didn't do, when I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear.
I said to myself, wow, what was that?
It can only be a bullet.
and moved my right hand to my ear, brought it down.
My hand was covered with blood, just absolutely blood all over the place.
I immediately knew it was very serious, that we were under attack.
And in one movement, proceeded to drop to the ground.
Bullets were continuing to fly.
As very brave Secret Service agents rushed to the stage, and they really did.
They rushed to the stage.
These are great people.
At great risk, I will tell you.
And pounced on top of me so that I would be protected.
There was blood pouring everywhere, and yet, in a certain way, I felt very safe because I had God on my side.
I felt that.
Thank you.
The amazing thing is that prior to the shot, if I had not moved my head at that very last instant,
the assassin's bullet would have perfectly hit its mark, and I would have been shot.
And I'm going to tell you, I was not going to believe it.
I was not going to believe it.
And I would not be here tonight.
We would not be together.
The most incredible aspect of what took place on that terrible evening in the fading sun was actually seen later.
In almost all cases, as you probably know, and when even a single bullet is fired, just a single bullet, and we had many bullets that were being fired, crowds run for the exits or stampede, but not in this case.
It was very unusual.
This massive crowd of tens of thousands of people stood by and didn't move an inch.
In fact, many of them bravely but automatically stood up looking for where the sniper would be.
They knew immediately it was a sniper.
And then began pointing at him.
You can see that if you look at the group behind me.
That was just a small group compared to what was in front.
Nobody ran, and by not stampeding, many lives were saved.
But that isn't the reason that they didn't move.
The reason is that they knew I was in very serious trouble.
They saw it.
They saw me go down.
They saw the blood and thought — actually, most did — that I was dead.
They knew it was a shot to the head.
They saw the blood.
And there's an interesting statistic.
The ears are the bloodiest part.
If something happens with the ears, they bleed more than any other part of the body.
For whatever reason, the doctors told me that.
And I said, why is there so much blood?
He said, it's the ears.
They bleed more.
So we learned something.
But they just...
They just — this beautiful crowd.
They didn't want to leave me.
They knew I was in trouble.
They didn't want to leave me.
And you can see that love written all over their faces.
Incredible people.
They're incredible people.
Bullets were flying over us, yet I felt serene.
But now the Secret Service agents were putting themselves in peril.
They were in very — Dangerous territory.
Bullets were flying right over them, missing them by a very small amount of inches.
And then it all stopped.
Our Secret Service sniper, from a much greater distance and with only one bullet used, took the assassin's life.
took them out.
I'm not supposed to be here tonight.
Not supposed to be here.
Audience Members Chanting, Thank you, Barack! Thank you, Barack!
Thank you.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
But I'm not.
And I'll tell you, I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of
Almighty God.
In watching the reports over the last few days, many people say it was a providential moment.
and the end.
Probably was.
When I rose, surrounded by Secret Service, The crowd was confused because they thought I was dead.
And there was great, great sorrow.
I could see that on their faces as I looked out.
They didn't know I was looking out.
They thought it was over.
But I could see it, and I wanted to do something to let them know I was okay.
I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting, and started shouting, Fight!
Fight!
fight. Thank you. Once we're done, we're done. Thank you.
Once my clenched fist went up, and it was high into the air — you've all seen that — the crowd realized I was okay and roared with pride for our country like no crowd I have ever heard before.
Never heard anything like it.
For the rest of my life, I will be grateful for the love shown by that giant audience of patriots that stood bravely on that fateful evening in Pennsylvania.
Tragically, the shooter claimed the life of one of our fellow Americans.
Cory, comparator, unbelievable person, everybody tells me.
Unbelievable.
And seriously wounded.
Thank you.
Two other great warriors.
I spoke to them today.
David Dutch and James Copenhaver.
Two great people.
I also spoke to all three families of these tremendous people.
Our love and prayers are with them, and always will be.
We're never going to forget them.
They came for a great rally.
They were serious Trumpsters, I want to tell you.
They were serious Trumpsters, and still are.
But Cory, unfortunately, we have to use the past tense.
He was incredible.
He was a highly respected former fire chief.
Respected by everybody.
Was accompanied by his wife, Helen.
Incredible woman.
I spoke to her today.
Devastated.
And two precious daughters.
He lost his life selflessly, acting as a human shield to protect them from flying bullets.
He went right over the top of them and was hit.
What a fine man he was.
Applause.
Applause.
I want to thank the fire department and the family for sending his helmet, his outfit,
And it was just something — and they're going to do something very special when they get it.
But we did something which cannot match what happened.
Not even close.
But I am very proud to say that over the past few days, we've raised $6.3 million
for the families of David, James, and Corey, including from a friend of mine just called up.
He sent me a check right here.
I just got it.
One million dollars.
From Dan Newland.
Thank you, Dan.
And again, when speaking to the family, I told them, I said, well, I'm going to be sending you a lot of money, but I can't compensate.
They all said the same thing.
You're right, sir.
We appreciate so much what you're doing, but nothing can take the place, in the case of Corey and the other two.
By the way, they were very, very seriously injured, but now they're doing very well.
They're going to be okay.
They're going to be doing very well.
They're warriors.
So now, I thank you.
I ask that we observe a moment of silence in honor of our friend, Cory.
There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for others.
This is the spirit that forged America in her darkest hours, and this is the love that will lead America back to the summit of human achievement and greatness.
This is what we need.
Despite such a heinous attack, we unite this evening more determined than ever.
I am more determined than ever, and so are you.
So is everybody in this room.
They are the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
It was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought to us 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 Kingdom of Great Britain and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, for freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the ability to select the people who govern them.
And he explained it in ways that were understandable to all the people,
not just the elite.
Because the desire for freedom is universal.
The desire for freedom adheres in the human mind, and it is part of the human soul.
This is exactly the time we should consult our history.
Look at what we've done in the past, And see if we can't use it to help us now.
We understand that our founders created the greatest country in the history of the world.
The greatest democracy, the freest country.
A country that has taken more people out of poverty than any country ever.
All of us are so fortunate to be Americans.
But a great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we're able to reason.
We're able to talk.
We're able to analyze.
We are able to apply our God-given common sense.
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