Faith Still Moves Mountains - December 12th, Hour 3
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Well, still as people are risking their lives around the globe, not one word of solidarity from your president Joey.
You know, where is the Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall moment?
It's never gonna happen.
You know, how connected this is to the Biden family syndicate.
How many people I know that get five million dollar no interest forgivable loans the way the Bidens did from China, or a hundred thousand dollar shopping spree from a Chinese national, or one point five billion dollar deal with the Bank of China ten days after you flew with uh Daddy, the vice president, over to Asia, over to China, and you get one point five billion dollar deal with the Bank of China.
Uh, I think you'd be better off if you're uh China dealing with Deutsche Bank or Goldman Sachs or any one of the big financial firms in New York or around the country or wherever, anywhere around the world for that matter.
Uh it's kind of sad.
Um, but you have this never-ending ignoring of what's going on in China.
Here's Karine Zhong Pierre uh saying the White House has nothing to repro uh preview regarding China.
Has the White House communicated to Beijing any possible consequences of its crackdown on protesters?
And also is the White House considering saying something or using existing US government tools to help Chinese citizens get around internet blocks.
So I I don't have anything to preview for you at this time on um uh on the you know anything uh connected to the social media, your first your second question.
Uh I don't have any calls to preview to you for you at this time.
Look, we've been very clear uh that people have a right to peacefully protest without fear.
Oh, okay.
Say nothing, do nothing, ignore it, see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil.
Okay, Tim Cook.
Uh now I didn't know this until my staff did a lot of research on this that they produce a lot of their products in in places like China.
Uh correct me if I'm wrong, Linda.
I believe we did a segment that Apple also was doing some of or having some of their production in Iran for of all places, where by the way, there are ongoing protests all over the country there too, and not a word from Joe Biden.
Just to gently push back on that, not not production, but they actually opened a store in Tehran, and there was widespread response to that because they felt that it was not in keeping with their standards because of the amount of people that are hurt because of their personal uh lifestyles and what have you, and Tim Cook is obviously been very outspoken on that.
and tim cook has been asked repeatedly about the china connections with apple and he gives no response mr cook do you support the chinese people's right to protest Do you have any reaction to the factory workers that were beaten and detained for protesting COVID lockdowns?
Do you regret restricting airdrop access that protesters used to evade surveillance from the Chinese government?
Do you think it's problematic to do business with the communist Chinese party when they suppress human rights?
I mean, the the silence is deafening.
Is the bottom line really all that important?
Anyway, joining us now is uh Dr. Wei Feng Zong.
He's a senior research fellow uh at George Mason University, and he's gonna help us unpack what's really happening behind the communist curtain in China.
Now we are getting limited information, although they're trying to to censor it as much as possible, but they're not capable of doing all of it, are they?
Thanks for having me, Sean.
I I think, yeah, this is a very interesting phenomenon that we are seeing in the uh recent base, uh, because despite the strong control on the internet, we are actually getting some, I mean, some information coming out, uh, especially protesters now they are sharing uh footage of their protesting on Twitter, which is uh software that's been in China.
So I think there's some limited amount of information.
Uh the big picture, however, is that uh uh the Communist Party under Xi Jinping has increasingly uh put all the uh state media under very tight control.
There are some media outlets that used to be a little bit more open minded, a little bit more uh liberal in terms of what they say, uh liberal minded content, but now they're increasingly towing the party line, unfortunately.
Is the same thing happening as it relates to Hong Kong?
Hong Kong, absolutely.
So Hong Kong used to have pro democracy outlets, uh media outlets, they no longer exist, and obviously the Apple Daily is the most prominent example that's being cracked down.
Hong Kong used to have about a third of legislators who are um pro who were pro democracy, now there's none.
So I think the trend in Hong Kong is pretty much the same as what's happening in mainland China.
It's Hong Kong used to be relatively freer, uh used to live in Hong Kong in the late uh uh two thousand, but um it's increasingly getting uh more and more uh tightly uh more tightly controlled by the Communist Party after the handover from the British government.
So you can't I've always said you can't win revolutions with with slingshots, but you see every major city inside of China now with mass protesting going on.
Um do you believe there's any hope or any opportunity of even liberalization in some ways and less oppression of the Chinese people by President Qi and his regime, or do you see more of a crackdown more as the like the conclusion of this?
I think uh it depends on how the um the the event is gonna unfold in the next few months because uh early signs seems to suggest that Xi Jinping is backing down from zero COVID uh because of the people uh protesting, and some even chanted uh down with Xi Jinping.
So that's uh sort of a first since he uh he came to power uh ten years ago.
But I think it uh it also sends a signal, uh concerning signal to Xi Jinping himself, being that uh protest could actually get people what they wanted, and that might actually encourage more protests later on, and that would be a reason for more uh the the we should expect more crackdowns from the uh communist party.
So I think the dynamics between the dynamics between protesting and cracking down would be uh fascinating and also very important to monitor in the next few months.
What is it about China that the US doesn't understand?
They've been building up a massive military presence.
Uh they have been threatening the United States directly.
Uh I talked about a story how China is demanding the US dismantle their nuclear arsenal, while we know that in China they've been growing the number of nuclear warheads they have.
Um what is your reaction to those hostilities and also the threat of quote reunification with Taiwan, which we know would be taking over Taiwan.
That's a very important you brought up uh uh important issue you brought up, Sean, because I think Taiwan will be in the forefront of US China uh tensions at least, if not conflict, in the next few years.
Because w one thing that American uh public seem to not understand w very well about China is where the legitimacy of the communist party comes from, because if we if you think about democracy, people vote, right?
So that's where uh elected leaders have the legitimacy.
But in the communist party like China, uh in a communist country like China, the party still needs some legitimacy to govern, and for a long time that has been about performance.
So growing the economy or even just containing some public health crisis.
Uh, neither is working very well in China at this moment, which suggests that uh, you know, overtaking Taiwan might be the next step for uh President Xi.
And I think uh it's Disappointing to see the the United States not signaling a more stronger position with with regard to Taiwan in uh in terms of whether we would defend Taiwan should China invade the island because ambiguity, which is the long held policy for decades, I don't think it's working anymore in terms of whether uh our policy to work Taiwan would be stronger.
So we had on Governor Christy Nome from South Dakota, and she's put a ban on for staying employees on downloading TikTok uh because they believe it is a spying mechanism of the communist Chinese government.
Do you believe that's true?
It's absolutely true.
There's uh there's a lot of evidence actually in the open source domain where so China is known for leaving a lot of uh data on the internet on guarded, and there's some analysis about these kind of available data showing how China is surveilling or collecting information about foreigners all around the world, including in the US.
So I think it's it sounds kind of uh ironic that when former President Trump was trying to crack down on TikTok, people uh frame that as a conspiracy.
But I think it's true, it's people now are coming around to recognize that TikTok is a uh security problem.
Uh some people just did not want to realize that or recognize that when to what level do you believe China is uh is spying on Americans?
I think that so there's some data that show uh that some uh smart devices in the United States they are collecting information, smart coffee machines, for example, where you just say a words to the machine and then it makes a doctoral coffee for you in the morning.
And sometimes machines like that record conversations at your own home and send that back to China.
And uh some of the uh the companies or state affiliated agencies would have those data so that they will analyze the uh foreign population or the trends overseas.
So there are some examples like that, and that's why I think it's a good idea for US government to ban a lot of companies uh on the entities uh entity list uh with the commerce department.
I think that's a right move because the Chinese uh uh technique of collecting information is also something overlooked.
Uh, because this is not something we do you here in America, we tend to think that the Chinese don't do that either.
But actually they do.
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Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sas.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
All right, we continue with Dr. Wei Fang Zong.
He is a senior fellow at George Mason University.
Let me ask you this last question.
Why do you think the communist Chinese are buying up through other entities?
All of this land around America, farmland, ranch land, often it's near our military bases.
Uh now they're looking to get what work with a Canadian company uh to get minerals from the United States.
Uh I know former Secretary of State Pompeo said that's a really dumb bad idea.
Why do you think we're number one?
Why do you think they're doing it and why do you think we're stupid enough to allow it?
Well, we uh the second question is easier, Sean, Because we have a free market, right?
So uh any uh one acting uh on their own.
Well why why do we have a free market for an enemy state, a hostile regime that has, you know, shown their hostility.
They have no problem with intellectual property theft from the U.S., they have no problem with unfair trade practices with the U.S. Uh we know how they oppress the minority Uyghur population in China.
So why would we allow them to buy land here?
When I can I go buy land in China?
I doubt it.
Well, it's it's it's gonna be very hard uh for you personally, perhaps not.
But I think you pointed out, Sean, a very important issue here that so uh Chinese agents sometimes they are private entities.
It used to be uh in at least earlier on in under the economic reform that state-owned enterprises are very different from private companies in China.
Private companies in China did not used to have to listen to the communist party all the time.
I think this is totally different under Xi Jinping.
But it used to be private sec uh private companies are uh freer.
So if you think of Huawei, nobody has every uh has any evidence that shows Huawei is owned or directly controlled by the Chinese government, but everybody knows that it's actually working for the Chinese government.
So the line between state and the private sector is increasingly blurred, and that's a trend uh very different from even what it used to be ten years ago.
Don't you think we ought to demand that land back and say no, you're not allowed to ba buy American farmland, American ranch land, uh you're not allowed to buy any land in the U.S. Wouldn't that be a good law for the United States to adopt?
But it would it would be hard because uh it would if we say any investments originating from China will be banned, that's effectively cutting off a lot of investment from China, right?
And so where do you join the so it's more important that we have their money and ignore their human rights abuses uh and their unfair trade practices and their uh let's see, intellectual property theft.
It's more important that we get their money, so we'll turn a blind eye to it.
No, that's not that's not what I meant, Sean.
But I I think the the key here is the cost and into and uh benefit.
The engaging with China now is increasingly costly as you rightly pointed out.
There's uh forced labor issue and other human rights abuses.
But also the uh I think we we we actually don't have the habit or the the in situ uh the the institution to actually conduct a uh good cost and benefit analysis in terms of engaging with China.
I think full decoupling with China is too costly.
Uh the romantic engagement with China we used to have is also too costly.
But we need to find somewhere in between, and it's it's a very tough challenge for policymakers to actually find out what degree of engagement with China is the optimal one for America.
Well, that doesn't sound optimal to me that they get to buy land in this country and we don't get reciprocity in their country.
Uh it doesn't sound fair to me that there's no consequences for intellectual property theft.
I have a very good friend of mine that was a victim of this, and it has cost him millions and millions of dollars.
He happens to be an incredible inventor.
And he came up with a way to spray the inside of engine blocks uh at a very high temperature that could withstand the combustion engine, and it's used by all the major manufacturers of automobiles, and meanwhile, China just came in, copied the technology, stole it, and they don't give them a penny for it.
It's unbelievable.
Uh anyway, I appreciate you being with us.
Thanks for the uh update.
Uh Wei Fang Zong, thank you so much.
Thank you, Sean, for having me.
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So my friend and colleague Harris Faulkner has a number one New York Times best selling.
You know, we often you often think about prayer as uh here's my wish list.
Can you please give me everything that I want from my life because I think that I know better than say the person that created me or knew me before I was born.
Um and it's just could kind of it just made me laugh in a lot of different ways.
You know, here we are with the holiday season upon us, and it's a time I think for most people.
I know when I take my long vacation, which I start at the end of this week, it's my time to really try and reset myself, re-center myself and put in perspective the things that you do have not the things you always wish that you had and a certain gratefulness for all the gifts that we all have in life.
Anyway Harris Faulkner uh joins us now of course the she has her own show on the Fox News channel as well as outnumbered.
Uh how are you?
I'm doing well and you put that so beautifully I I love that I wrote down I said Sean recenters this time of of the year.
I I think a lot of people are into Sean New Year's resolutions and trying to figure out what they're going to change at the beginning of the year but they very seldom include what we know truly can change everything and that's our relationship with the Lord.
And the fact that you recognize that you need time away from the daily responsibilities and expectations for you as a broadcaster as a dad is everything.
and you need to take time to recalibrate because you know really what works, that's something that a lot of people don't think about.
But if we do lean in to our faith this time of the year, and it becomes more than going to church so that we can be part of the festivities and all that, we do give ourselves a chance to tap into this river of powerful prayer all around us and to participate in that ourselves and to really have the ability to see clearly that we can, can move mountains in our own lives.
I mean the reason that I I titled the book Faith Still Moves Mountains is because it's an alert.
It's an alarm.
It's a Fox News alert to me that tough times call for warriors and sometimes we can't wait for them to appear and we as you so beautifully put Sean we have to recenter, recalibrate and become the warriors and in this instance this is our season to be spiritual warriors.
People don't want people of faith to speak up they want us to be quiet.
They want us to sit down they want us to doubt the miracles um I call that the devil and I don't answer that call with anything other than proof of miracles and that is the book that I've written.
It's 19 stories about people praying and the darkest hours, lowest moments and watching what God can do and their lives recentering us, reminding us, helping us to renew a spirit that can do some of the same things in our lives.
So when I get to this time of year and and I d I try to drive myself down and get away from the day to day hectic life that I live you know usually at some point there are two things that kick in personally one is a sense of embarrassment that I I don't take enough time uh to be around the ones I love.
I don't take enough time to reflect on my own life and that dovetails into the other one which is gratefulness because when I look at my life I realize that I have so much to be grateful for and I think there's a tendency throughout our lives to complain about the things we don't have and not appreciate the things that you do have.
Well you are absolutely right about that and we're all guilty of doing what you say and that is leaning out with the urgency of prayer because there's no current storm.
We we have to have the discipline and the urgency in our lives to pray with gratitude before the storm.
We we pray during the storm because we're doing what you described that my mother always accused six year old little Harris of doing stop treating God like he's Santa Claus.
Stop asking for stuff you know I see you over there with the list I I see we we grew up with the same parent um I got the same lecture and then and then if you don't get everything you won't but you you're upset about the one thing you didn't get exactly exactly and you know these days I guess Santa has to navigate um you know links that we send him and I guess we're we're sending the Lord links too if you could just click on this it'll take you to Amazon to what I really want.
And we've gotten so malfunctional in the way that we pray that we just stop praying.
And what I say is jump right back into that malfunction and keep going and then push through.
Because what we don't want to do is stop connecting to God because you know what the storm's coming I don't care who you are.
I mean Sean you are you are a friend.
You're someone that I admire mightily in the industry but I do know you're human.
And I know that you have your challenges too.
Of course we all have everybody does we have children who've gotten sick.
We've had children who maybe needed us to direct them or we've gotten sick ourselves who've lost parents.
Whatever our situation, whatever our season is in life, we're human.
We're not called to be perfect.
So what happens is all those moments in between, well, I don't really need to pray right now.
I'm so busy.
I'll go to church and I'll pray when they call us to pray, but I won't set aside a special time with the Lord to express my gratitude and to praise him.
And then the storm hits, and you're you're on your knees on your face, begging the Lord to hear your prayer.
And then after the storm, we get that part too, because we say thank you, and oh Lord, you bless us.
And then there is what I call the the silent season between the storm.
And we have to be building up the power in our lives such that we can thwart the little storms that come our way every day.
Do you do we even realize the small miracles God is working in our life such that when the gossip comes and the cruelty comes from others, because you know, y'all people can be cruel with the things that they do, cutting us off in traffic, with all of that.
Every time somebody cuts me off in traffic, and it ends up fine, a quick prayer.
Lord, thank you so much.
Thank you, Lord, that I didn't run into somebody that wanted to get out of their car and yell at me because of the wheel.
Well, you are you're you're a way better person than I am, uh having grown up in New York, other words come flying out of my mouth a lot faster.
Just don't get out of the car.
When you think about um I had this experience all it over the years with all the the military people that I met, for example, um, and people that have their legs blown off and their arms blown off and their lives transformed in ways that they never imagined, and they all did it to sacrifice for other people that put themselves in harm's way for other people.
And it w without exception, Harris, I walk away embarrassed, thinking that I even have problems in life, which gives you understanding.
Now, you said something else, you know, taking a little bit of time every day to stop, pray, reflect, appreciate all that we do have.
And I think that, you know, the more that I do that in my life, the happier I am in my life.
Well, and it's okay to say, God, I I have a job interview today.
Lord, I need for you to put the right words in my mouth and to be present.
I gotta go on this guy Hannity show.
I don't really want to do it, but I'm doing it.
Oh no, nobody ever says that.
You know what someone does, like today I prayed before we went on the air, and your team kept checking in, he's coming, he's coming, and I'm thinking, no, you don't understand.
This is my time to make sure that when we reach Sean's audience with this message of hope, it's sticks because that's what this is all about.
If we're going to make a change for people who desperately need it right now, we're fighting like like people are addicted to fighting.
We need to be addicted to something that takes us innovatively closer to where we need to be.
Like we're the blessed nation that everybody wants to break into.
We need to act like it.
So I'm gonna I'm gonna tell your your listeners that when they pick up faith still moves mountains, whether for themselves this Christmas season, or is the greatest gift we give each other is faith.
Um there's a glossy insert of original prayers that can get you started no matter what season you are in life.
It's just a few of them.
And then I put in the scriptural inspiration for each prayer.
There's one on lamenting, uh, I lost my father Christmas Day 2020.
And I I really had a tough time understanding why God would put me in that position.
My divine assignment, Sean, is not to prophesyze.
I I'm a storyteller.
I'm a witness.
And so that's what I've done in this book.
When Danny met Doug is one of those stories that reminded me of what you said when our military men and women come home and they've been injured mightily.
She was a young woman who couldn't walk.
Doctors had given up on her ability to ever get out of a wheelchair and have a normal life.
She had a lot of health difficulties.
And when Danny met Doug is one of my favorite chapters in the book, it shows that miracles unfold in God's timing, not ours.
And I the whole chapter is something that she inspired me by.
Danny Laurian, she's from Michigan.
She and her husband, she leaned in on Ephesians 2, 8 through 9.
For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.
And this is not from yourselves.
It is a gift of God, not by work, so that no one may boast.
She was like that.
They put her in her twenties, Sean, in nursing home, hospice palliative care.
And said, Look, you know, you're gonna be here for a while, probably longer than a lot of the people around you, but we just can't um imagine a more supportive environment for somebody who doesn't have a good ending.
Well, you flash forward not too much time.
She was deep in prayer all the time.
She believed in the Lord.
The Lord brought her the man of her dream named Doug.
He was a tech, a medical tech at one of the nursing homes where she had lived.
They met, dated, got married, started going to a church, and through prayer at that church.
This is recently in the last couple of years.
It's a story that I had covered.
She stood up one day in church and walked.
Pretty amazing.
Yeah, but it's his timing, though.
Other things had to be in place.
It wasn't going to be enough for the Lord just to pop her into a situation where she still has some medical issues.
She needed somebody around her who would understand that, who would embrace all of her for what she is and what she is not capable of, and then go forth in a faith-based way, and she walked.
And now they're walking through life together.
There are so many miracles around us all the time.
And we need to tell each other our faith testimony so that when the lamenting comes, when you lose a parent or two in a four-year span like I did, you can work with the Lord and say, Look, I I'm my heart is heavy.
I need for you to to work with me to make this right.
Use me.
And I have been.
I have been that tool, and I certainly, you know me.
I'm not perfect.
And so this book is part of this.
You're right up there.
I'm definitely on the lower side of the spectrum in this case.
But you know, you you mentioned, for example, the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
Uh I don't think we've ever discussed this, but I actually went to Haiti not long after that, and I was with Samaritan's purse, and we actually did a flyover of the entire country, and I've never seen such devastation ever.
And that would be an example.
Or if the aftermath in the after the shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and believers testifying to how God inspired hope, even when everything seems lost in a moment like this.
You know, I love when atheists call this program.
I and I don't come I I don't argue with them on a on a scriptural basis.
I'll ask them, so let me let me be clear here.
So you think that we had a big bang and all of this all of these molecules collided, and I will ask them, where did all that energy come from?
Because you're arguing as an atheist in particular that something can come from nothing, which doesn't make sense to me.
Well, you know, if you've ever had a very sick child, and um there's a woman of the book, the chapter is called It Takes a Mom.
Her child had spina bifida age three.
It was an excruciating experience and a deadly one.
If you've ever had a child who is ill, and I have, and doctors say to you, you know, we're not quite so sure what it's gonna take to get that child to be better.
This mom was told in what I write about, you'd have to come up with something on your own.
So she prayed to the good Lord, and she, as she said, just a regular old mom, came up with a medical device that helps children and people all over the world.
And sometimes what happens with people and and why they believe in the spontaneity, but they don't know what causes the spontaneity, and they can't imagine anything being great enough, is exposure.
And I pray for that they can see that it is beyond them.
Because moments will come in their lives too where they won't need a miracle.
I don't know what people without faith do.
I just know that they judge us.
The book is phenomenal.
It's called Faith Still Moves Mountains, miraculous stories uh of the healing power of prayer.
My friend, my colleague Harris Faulkner, it's on Amazon.com, Hannity.com, bookstores everywhere.
Uh great job, Harris.
Congratulations on being number one on the New York Times list.
What?
I'm I didn't know it was on Handy.com.
I'm putting it up on right now.
It's on Hetty.
I'm gonna put that link all over my social.
Sean, you are the biggest part I know.
You know how much I admire you.
You are a friend.
I love you.
Thank you so very much.
Oh, the feelings mutual.
You've been a dear friend, and we're so happy for all your success, and it's great to have such wonderful colleagues to work with every day.
Thank you, Harris.
Thank you, Sean.
Take care.
All right.
Thirteen days, Christmas.
Pretty solid message and a great gift for Christmas.
All right, that's gonna wrap things up for today.
Hannity Tonight Nine Eastern Fox News Channel.
Democrats ready to declare war on any Biden investigation.
Uh Jonathan Turley wrote a great column about it.
He'll join us along with Congressman Jim Jordan.
He will be leading up the House Judiciary Committee investigation into the FBI and the DOJ.
New Gingrich, Dr. Ben Carson.
Wait a second about him when they took away his name from a school.
Wow.
Anyway, Ari Fleischer, Clay Travis, Jim Failia, all coming up nine Eastern tonight on Hannity.
See you then back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show possible.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
And I'm Carol Markovich.
And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
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