Sean Hannity Show - China Threat Is Real - December 19th, Hour 2

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Dec. 20, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show

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China Threat Is Real - December 19th, Hour 2

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	Good afternoon.
	It's hour number two, the Sean Hannity program.
	Eric Eggers and Peter Schweitzer filling in for Sean.
	We're with the Government Accountability Institute and the co-host of the drill down podcast, where we drill down and expose cronism and corruption in the federal government.
	We have an incredible guest today, Congressman Mike Garcia, he's the co-chair of the China Task Force.
	He's been, along with Peter Schweitzer helping to expose the true threat that China poses.
	Congressman Garcia, we're so excited to have you on.
	How are you doing?
	Yeah, thanks for having me.
	So uh China is an interesting topic.
	You are very much engaged on it.
	I certainly think it's important.
	I've written about it.
	Eric and I have both done work on it.
	Um you're the co-chair of the China Task Force.
	Tell us why China is so important to you.
	I mean, not to be cynical, but but most people, when they look at their congressman or elected official, they look at committee assignments or they look at issues that they're passionate about and they think, okay, well, this has something to do with getting something for his constituents, or this has something to do with you know helping out certain donors.
	China is certainly not one of those subjects.
	So why are you so passionate about it and why is it so important?
	Yeah, I think the reason is is because the uh the average American is not treating uh China as the threat that it that it is.
	It truly is an existential threat.
	And whether whether we recognize it or not, we're we're already at war with China and and and so far, at least in the last call it 10 years, it's been a very lopsided war, and it's one where we we as Americans are the primary victims.
	Uh and so we do need to pay more attention to this, and and and as a legislator and as someone who's not only served in the military, but now in the halls of Congress and have taken an oath since the age of 18 to support and defend the Constitution and the security and defense of our beautiful nation.
	You can't uh, you know, only focus on all of the other committees and jobs that we have while the existential threat that that 800-pound gorilla in the room uh is frankly not being dealt with and in many ways is being ignored by by many of the uh the bureaucrats and elected officials.
	So uh this is something that I've taken on.
	Uh, you know, Mike Gallagher will be the new chair of the uh China task force uh will be leading our efforts and uh what we're doing in this uh in this China task force in the House is uh is very important.
	This is the strategy, but also and more importantly, the tactics and the legislative measures that we can take to hopefully uh start bolstering the defense against China.
	Well, let's talk tactics and let's talk threat because you said it's a war, right?
	And you know, and you've served in the military, you've flown uh combat missions in war, so you certainly don't use that term lightly.
	What is it about China that you think presents the most grave threat?
	And then what's one thing you think your China task force might be able to do that can offer the most protection from that threat?
	Yeah, it's uh so multifaceted, Eric.
	It's hard to say there's one that is the most, but I think the one that's manifesting itself right now, the most clear and present danger, if you will, is this uh fentanyl crisis coming through our southern border.
	Uh two years ago, I would have said it was COVID, you know, a virus that was actually developed in a Wuhan Institute uh uh in China, released.
	Uh we're getting now information from the intelligence communities and various sources that uh this virus was indeed being developed as a biological weapon.
	Uh they may not have released it on purpose, but it but it ultimately did get released and caused the death of millions of uh people to include uh millions of Americans uh globally.
	Uh and so now we're seeing the second wave of death come in the form of this fentanyl crisis.
	It's it's a it's a byproduct of our open southern borders, obviously, which is a direct result of this administration's uh policies on the southern border.
	But the fundamental building blocks and the uh the this the the source uh material for fentanyl is coming out of China.
	And so right now we are literally realizing A scenario where we are losing what, a hundred thousand, a hundred and fifty thousand Americans every year uh due to fentanyl uh overdoses.
	This is about a twelve hundred percent increase uh versus maybe what three or four years ago.
	So this is not trivial.
	This is leading to the deaths of our kids.
	It's it's not overdose, these are poisonings, and and it's uh, you know, the source of these poisons uh come from China through our southern border.
	Uh but that's that that's one facet.
	The other facets are, you know, as a country, we're losing roughly four to six hundred billion dollars a year in intellectual property theft.
	Uh as a country, uh, we are seeing uh the Chinese Communist Party and its sort of proxies come over uh to buy our farmland, to invest in our businesses, um, to partner with our our businesses in mainland China only to steal uh our our property,
	what what we reference as uh rob replicate and replace, where where a joint venture with a Chinese affiliate in mainland China uh will effectively partner with an American country, get 51% control, uh promise access to you know this massive market in in China uh and then slowly bleed them to death by by robbing their intellectual property,
	their blueprints, uh their technology replicating it with a new widget uh that's at a lower cost, and then replacing them in that same market that they promised the American industry partners.
	So this is this is happening real time again, uh right in front of us, and then uh obviously the other major facet of this war, if you will, is the fact that we're already so far behind in several domains.
	Um we used to refer to Russia and China as near-peer threats, and and I'm not so worried about Russia.
	Russia is something that we can control, and I think even the you know the Ukrainians are demonstrating just how weak Russian military forces are.
	But uh we we should not be considering China to be a near-peer threat anymore.
	They are in fact a peer threat, and in and in some domains, they are outpacing us, and and in these domains, the this weakness that we have is uh uh you know potentially uh gonna change the the outcome of any kinetic war that we have with them.
	Well, Congressman, I'm certainly not a China expert.
	Um, and my interest in this really is on the lack of a response in Washington.
	I mean, this is what got me excited in writing the book red-handed.
	And because I think you're right.
	I mean, it there's so much blatant evidence um that China is a bad actor.
	They're competing with us, they want to surpass us.
	Uh you've got fentanyl, you've got COVID, you've got the intellectual property theft.
	You talk about and yet no real action in official Washington.
	I mean, COVID happened, started happening in early 20 uh 20.
	We have not had, to my understanding, a single hearing in the House of Representatives on the origins of this virus that has killed more than a million people.
	There's really been nothing the last few years on fentanyl and China's role in fentanyl.
	Why do you what do you see among your colleagues?
	I mean, certainly I wrote about those that seem to be for sale or at least for rent by Beijing.
	But certainly there's got to be other explanations too.
	Are people just afraid?
	Do they not understand it?
	Why is there so little inaction on Capitol Hill and in Washington in general?
	Well, I think it's uh it's a little bit of all of those reasons, and thank you for writing that book.
	What you what you say in the book is uh is uh you know a nomenclature I now use, which is small words and big help.
	Uh when you're when you're tweeting something that looks like, hey, you're you're gonna be tough on China, but in the same uh breath uh over a span of three years in the wake of COVID, not having a single hearing on COVID, the origins of it or the accountability of China on COVID, that is that is big help followed by very small words on social media.
	Uh it's what I also call, you know, uh uh uh big carrots and little sticks.
	And the bottom line is that the politicians are either in bed and enabling uh China in some fashion.
	They either have some business connection or there's something in their district that they they feel they need to protect uh relative to the the Chinese uh businesses or C CP businesses, uh, or they they don't believe that the China problem is as big as a problem as it is in actuality, uh, or they they just don't care, right?
	And so that the whole focus now needs to be to get everyone to care, to get everyone to understand and believe that it is a problem, and to root out the people that are in fact in bed with these folks.
	And you know, anyone that comes up to me and says, Mike, is it really this bad?
	I do encourage them to read red-handed because you outline very explicitly links of of uh not only the president but also several members of Congress business leaders uh back to China.
	And so what can we do?
	Well, uh, we we need to be more aggressive, obviously.
	Uh, but I personally think we need to be pulling the same levers that we pulled against Russia in the wake of their invasion of Ukraine and leading up to that uh invasion of Ukraine.
	I think we need to be pulling many of the same levers that we uh pulled against Russia uh in instead against now China, and and you ask if is there substantiation for that?
	Is there substantiation for meaningful boycott divestment and sanctions packages?
	And I would I would say there certainly is given the amount of uh death and havoc that they've imparted, the the intellectual property theft, uh the incursions against Taiwan.
	Um I think Congress and and the executive branch need to bring forward uh uh meaningful boycott divestment and sanction packages against China and the CCP.
	I think we need to figure out how to disentangle ourselves uh from a corporate level and and make it so that companies uh are slowing down or or if they if need being prevented from investing in mainland China in order to protect our interests.
	Uh we need to actually control items a little bit and update the export list so that that there is a blacklist.
	Uh the uh, you know, a blacklist of companies should should be roughly 6,000 entities right now.
	And uh last time I checked, we only had about 59 businesses that were on this black list uh uh relative to China.
	Uh and we need to stop investing in in the Chinese marketplace.
	A lot of our pensions, some of the government programs, the government-funded pension programs are actually still investing uh in the Chinese stock market and Chinese companies, which which by definition flow directly to the CCP government.
	Um, and so there's there's a whole layer of things that we could be doing.
	And and what's kind of cool about this China task force is uh we we've actually written a book, it's roughly you know, 80 pages, and for every facet of this of this fight, whether it's commerce, whether it's defense, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, uh we have several pages of recommendations that uh not only Congress but also the executive branch should be implementing to protect ourselves.
	So, you know, under Trump, we had the strategy.
	We had a president that recognized China as a threat, but we didn't have the tactics below that.
	We didn't have the legislative levers, we didn't have the exactly what are we going to do in response to it.
	Now we have the tactics and we have this this very exhaustive and comprehensive binder of recommendations, but we don't have a president that that understands the strategy relative to China and or flat out, in my opinion, doesn't want to deal with China.
	So um you do need the executive branch to participate in this, and you do need the leadership in the House as well as the Senate to recognize the threat.
	And once they do that, then we have uh you know at our disposal uh hundreds of legislative measures to to help inoculate ourselves against that is Congressman Mike Garcia.
	The other voice you've heard is Peter Schweitzer.
	I'm Eric Eggers.
	We're gonna be back with Congressman Garcia in just a little bit.
	If you'd like to call the program, please give us a call.
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	And if you want to hear more of the stuff that we do on a regular basis, go to the drilldown.com.
	It's Eric Eggers and Peter Schweitzer back with Congressman Mike Garcia in just a minute.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
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	And I'm Carol Markowitz.
	We've been in political media for a long time.
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	That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
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	Welcome back to the Sean Handy program.
	Eric Eggers here alongside Peter Schweitzer, and we're talking to Congressman Mike Garcia about the threat China poses to the country.
	I think the Russia comparison, Congressman, is really good.
	Because as you noted, when they became a bad bad actor more publicly, uh, no problems.
	We put in sanctions, we pulled some of the levers, as you noted.
	Is the reason why we're hesitant to do that against China?
	I guess I'll just ask you clearly, is it more because of China's strategy of elite capture?
	Is it more about the personal financial relationships in terms of America's elite with China, or do you think it's more that corporate entanglement that you referenced previously?
	Well, I think it's both, Eric.
	I think you know you can't undervalue or underestimate the implications of completely disentangling from a corporate perspective or from just an enabling perspective.
	Um you gotta remember that China, uh, you know, depending on the the quarter, owns anywhere from uh 25% to a third of our nation's debt.
	Uh so these the implications of what we're talking about are here are very serious.
	Is and and obviously if it's done overnight, uh you could you run the risk of completely imploding our own economy.
	But uh if we start shaping the paradigms and we start making sure that we're weaning ourselves off of this supply chain dependency that we have on China, I think it's all of the above, and I think it's uh you know something that is is is gonna take some time, but we've got to start now.
	We've got it, and it's gotta start with in the boardrooms of corporations as well, not just in the halls of Congress.
	But I think we also need to more forcefully speak to the fact that this is an oppressive, brutal regime.
	And we need to start making a stark difference between the Chinese people who frankly are the biggest victims of this government of this regime and the government, and let that competition of ideas uh take full fruit because if that occurs, that's a competition.
	I think we win.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	And no one knows just how uh you know, toxic and and frankly tyrannical and brutal this the CCP government is than the Chinese uh citizens themselves, right?
	They just were protesting a couple weeks ago with the COVID lockdowns that are still in place, uh, and all of a sudden those those folks just disappeared.
	You're not hearing about it in the news anymore.
	Uh we've got the Uyghur genocide, which is probably the worst genocide since uh World War II and the Holocaust.
	And uh again, these are these are Chinese citizens uh literally dying at the hands of their own government.
	So, yes, uh I think that's an important distinction.
	We're not talking about tens of thousands of bureaucrats uh like the United States uh, you know, that runs uh the C C Pere a few dozen at most, and so these are the folks we need to be targeting with sanctions uh and economic uh you know boycott divestment sanctions packages.
	Um I'll also say this, right?
	Competing means more than just uh developing on our end.
	It means treating them the way they're treating us.
	And and and I'm I'm actually a supporter of reciprocal trade agreements, where if a Chinese company wants to come to the United States and do business here, that's fine, but we get to do to them what they do to us.
	Uh we get to make all of the decision.
	We get the intellectual property associated with any business adventure.
	We get the final say on how things uh are going to be uh uh you know metered out, funded, and and what technologies are going to be developed and employed.
	Uh and in the end, we own it all, not not that not the Chinese uh business or the Chinese government.
	Um when we do the same to them uh that they do to us, uh you'll start seeing different behavior patterns and you'll start seeing us actually surprise surpass them and not just trying to compete.
	But it does require the president, you know, this this president as well as all of his cabinet have basically said, hey, we welcome competition and uh that's okay.
	We should welcome competition, but but let's not plan to lose and let's make sure that we're putting in all of the resources and strategies and tactics below those resources uh to make sure that we are actually prevailing and being in a position of strength and not weakness.
	Congressman, thank you so much, not only for your service to our country, but for continuing to expose the very real threat that China poses.
	Uh that's Congressman Mike Garcia here on the Sean Handy program.
	If you'd like to talk to us, please give us a call.
	It's 800-941-7326.
	He's Peter Schweitzer, I'm Eric Eggers.
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	Peter Schweitzer and Eric Eggers, we're filling in for Sean.
	Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah to everybody.
	Please join the conversation.
	Just had that great segment with Congressman Mike Garcia.
	I tell you, I could I could sit down with him at a bar and have a beer and talk for hours.
	Uh he's so knowledgeable.
	Uh he's former fighter pilot, so I'm sure he's got great stories.
	But what really struck me about that conversation is these challenges that we're facing, where China is playing a central role in it, and nobody in Washington seems to care.
	I mean, we touched on it, but fentanyl is a prime example of this.
	That the the to put it in crude terms, the body count of what America's facing is enormous.
	And yet the White House and the Biden administration has a monkeypox task force.
	They don't have a fentanyl task force, even then though the numbers are so much higher.
	They also don't have a COVID task force, right?
	As you like to point out.
	And so, okay, fentanyl, COVID, what do they have in common?
	Uh they both come from a place in the East, and it's a place that maybe has business entanglements with a number of high-level ranking officials in this country and their family members.
	I was really impressed with when we asked him, what's one specific threat, or what's the worst threat that you think COVID or China poses?
	And at first he started to try to be very general about it.
	And it's kind of like uh, whatever threat gets me re-elected, you know, but uh but that wasn't it.
	He said fentanyl very clearly.
	And you mentioned the body count.
	Talk about the frame of reference for you want to think about what fentanyl does to American families every year.
	It's literally uh on scale of some of the greatest disasters in American military history.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, so take, for example, the body count that we have in a single year from fentanyl.
	That is more than the casualty count of the Hiroshima bombing in World War II.
	So it's the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb being dropped on America every year.
	And Washington, DC says we have nothing to do about it.
	Another way to Look at it is in terms of if this is a war, uh, more people die from fentanyl every year than the casualties that we suffered in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined.
	And I think one of the things that that puzzles people, if they haven't been touched by fentanyl personally, they haven't experienced it.
	People often think it's it's kind of like heroin or other drugs where people overdose.
	Uh it's it's really very different.
	A lot of the people that are dying of fentanyl overdoses are are so-called one and duns.
	These are people that uh are you know buying off the street a Xanax or um an Adderall or some pill that they're taking because they're trying to do better on their college exam.
	Uh and unbeknownst to them, that pill is actually laced with fentanyl.
	So they don't even know that they're taking fentanyl.
	And these are the sort of people that are getting uh caught up in the death count uh that is so dramatic.
	And yet again, no discussion about this in official Washington in any meaningful way.
	Congressman Garcia referred to it as a poisoning, but I think you would use a different term.
	Yeah, I think it's poisoning.
	I think it's also a chemical weapon.
	Uh, if you look at, and we've been doing a lot of research about this at the Government Accountability Institute will be reporting on more of this, but it's not just that China is producing the so-called precursor chemicals for fentanyl.
	Uh they are much more deeply involved in this uh than people imagine.
	If you look at just money laundering, these are the drug cartels in Mexico that are getting the precursor chemicals, they're being shipped to Mexico, uh, then they are distributing the drugs.
	Who are now the chief money launderers for these drug cartels, the Sinaloa cartel, et cetera.
	It's Chinese nationals who are doing it through Chinese state-owned banks, uh, which is enormously difficult because Chinese banks have very tight controls on money.
	So this is far deeper than just precursors.
	This is a huge problem, and nobody wants to talk about it in DC.
	Chinese banks are not exactly regulated by the SEC.
	They don't have the same level of transparency requirements.
	And I think as the the more we get into the fentanyl crisis, the fentanyl attack on this country to use some of the military terms that Congressman Garcia and you have used, then I think that maybe we can help bring into more stark relief just how big a threat is.
	I have to say, you mentioned that the government accountability institute where we both work, we'll be looking into both the fentanyl crisis and things with the Mexican cartels.
	I prefer we not do that on a day I'm in the office.
	Is that can we can I request that?
	Those guys are not teddy bears.
	Yeah, the the next book that I do on the drug cartels, I'm going to use a um pseudonym, Eric Eggers, by Eric Eggers.
	Well, I can tell you if you use it, your books will plummet, which actually would be great for all of our personal safety.
	So it's Peter Schweitz and Eric Eggers.
	We're in for Sean Hannity.
	We are talking about the fentanyl crisis.
	We're talking about China.
	Peter Schweitzer is the New York Times number one best-selling author.
	His book, Red Handed, literally destroyed all sales records.
	And I think your publisher at the time said it's not just because the reporting's good, there's a movement afoot that the elite cultural class in Washington, D.C. might not be ready to admit it, but everybody else in the country is.
	I think that's why your book was so successful, is they see jobs being shipped off overseas.
	They've had loved ones be lost to fentanyl.
	There's a reason why there's even an industry in this country for drug testing kits.
	Like that's how pervasive this threat is, is that you have to buy kits now to test your dog drugs to make sure that they don't have fentanyl in them.
	That's the new measure ahead of it.
	So if that's an industry, if that's a product that the free market bore, then that tells you how big the threat is.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	And another interesting thing to look at from the standpoint of fentanyl is we did have, we've had this climb really beginning in the Obama administration in 2014, an increasing numbers of people dying from uh fentanyl overdoses.
	But we had a drop.
	You know when we had that drop?
	We had that drop during COVID, during COVID.
	And what happened is, and there's actually law enforcement data on this.
	Because of the two masks.
	No, unfortunately, it was not the two masks.
	It's actually because the supply lines.
	Remember how the the ships were were halted in in in the ocean.
	They were off the coast of Long Beach.
	China was shut down.
	We actually had a drop in fentanyl overdoses because the precursor chemicals were not coming from China, making it to Mexico because everything was shut down.
	So there is a tactic that could save lots of American lives, and that would be to Shut down this activity from what China's doing and hold them into account.
	What does the fact and we talked about this in the open of the show that we're about to see some of the pandemic era related immigration policies, ones that would allow us to expel Mexicans and presumably anything they're coming into the country with back across the border?
	Do you feel like that's a role to play?
	And with the repeal of that provision, do you think that's going to exacerbate the fentanyl problem?
	Yeah, it's a huge problem because the preferred choice for getting fentanyl into the United States now is across the Mexican border.
	Six or seven years ago, the choice that they preferred was they would just ship it in the mail to drug dealers in the United States.
	And then the U.S. Postal Service got more sophisticated about intercepting those packages.
	So they said, well, we'll just make our deals with the Mexican cartels and we'll bring them up through Mexico, which is that's what they've started to do.
	So they're bringing it across the border.
	Now, if we seal the border, that's going to be enormously helpful, but that's not going to solve the problem.
	They'll find other ways to get it into the country.
	What we have to do, Eric, is we have to go to the source, which is China and deal with it there.
	What do you think it would take?
	And I think Congressman Garcia spoke to this a little bit, but it is for somebody like me who's not a China expert, it seems, but based on what I've read and the reporting that we've done with the Government Accountability Institute, the reporting that we've done on our drill down podcast, which you can again listen to at the drill down.com.
	What I find concerning is that China seems to have so successfully leveraged the permanent political class.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I mean, they have business deals with Hunter Biden.
	They have business deals with the Pelosi family.
	They've got business deals.
	I mean, 31 million dollars worth of deals have gone to the Biden family because of with connections to the Chinese military.
	So if you're asking me, do I think the Biden administration is going to change up its policy towards China?
	No.
	I can answer that right now.
	That's a no for me.
	Yeah, you're right.
	And that's why we have to expose this, and that's why they are so desperate for this story to go away.
	I mean, you you see what's sort of been going on with the with the Twitter files that have been released, um, how they have tried to kill the Hunter Biden story.
	And the problem is, in my mind, you can't kill the truth.
	You cannot kill the truth.
	That's why we need to keep talking about and voicing about it.
	I went on Sean's radio show and TV show in 2018, in April of 2018, and first talked about the fact that the Bidens were getting Buku Dinero.
	We were talking about Mexico, right?
	Buku.
	I believe those are pay sets.
	You're ruining your credibility on a national audience right now.
	Everybody was with you.
	And BUPA's a French word, right?
	Uh, but they were getting major money from China.
	Um, and and nobody wanted to believe it that Biden's pretended it wasn't true.
	Um, so we've now reached the point four years later where essentially we're now having this national conversation.
	Of course, it's two years after we held the national election when it should have been discussed, but we're finally now having this conversation.
	And the exciting thing is we're gonna actually start having congressional hearings.
	Well, let me ask you this, because we literally led this program this morning or earlier in the first hour, with questions of hey, is not American trust in the government at an all-time low, while at the same time, ironically and unfortunately, the government's attempting to exert more influence on our lives as ever before.
	Yeah.
	So why then, Peter Schweitzer, the guy who says Americans don't trust the government, should we now put our trust in a congressional hearing or a China task force or anything else?
	Well, you're right.
	I, you know, to quote Ronald Reagan, we should trust but verify.
	Meaning we should hope that our members of Congress are gonna do the right thing, they're gonna hold these hearings and they're gonna lead this to the logical conclusion uh to where we actually get the information put out there.
	I don't know if there are gonna be criminal charges filed.
	I don't know if the statute of limitations have passed.
	But what I do know is the American people need to know who made the Bidens rich.
	You think about all the news stories out there, Eric.
	We've done some of them.
	The news media does them all the time about a member of Congress or uh presidential candidate who gets donations.
	You have the donations from uh the crypto uh company now that's that's being called into question.
	FTX.
	Yeah, FTX.
	And everybody's concerned about the influence that this is going to have on elected officials, which is real.
	Well, gee, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say 31 million dollars to the Biden family is gonna have an influence.
	And especially when that influence is a foreign government that uses this tactic to manipulate and control people, they are absolutely gonna use and are using this leverage on the Bidens right now.
	And that's one of the reasons Joe Biden is not taking a hard line towards China.
	That exact point is when you were referenced in today's Twitter files drop, Michael Shellenberger released uh internal documents and he exposed or he played an interview you gave him in which you said the thing that's most troubling about Hunter Biden is the business relationships he has with China, and those are among the business relationships that ultimately that's why Hunter Biden's laptop matters, right?
	Nobody's into it for a picture, nobody's into it for a weapon, but the fact that a laptop that was actively censored by Twitter and by other social media entities could have contained information about just how leveraged and how many zeros go into that leverage of Hunter Biden and the Biden family.
	That's why you think it matters.
	Yeah, that's exactly right.
	The laptop matters.
	What also matters is the information that the Senate uh released before the 2020 election, which by the way, the news media didn't cover either.
	You had the the Senate Oversight Committee released what are called suspicious activity reports or SARS that the Treasury Department flagged.
	This is our Treasury Department flagging suspect or troubling uh, you know, financial transactions where overseas entities are giving money to American political families.
	Uh the Bidens between uh Joe Biden's brother and his son Hunter have more than 150 suspicious activity reports.
	That's a problem.
	He's Peter Schweitzer.
	He is the New York Times number one best-selling author.
	He's an expert on the China problem.
	Uh just a little bit of book sales.
	He's also an expert on the Hunter Biden problem.
	We're going to talk about that next and the role that social media has played in covering it up and whether it's fair to consider the activity that's Twitter, Facebook, and other social media played as a campaign contribution violation.
	He's Peter Schweitzer, America Eggers.
	We are the co-host of the drill down podcast.
	You can hear that podcast at the drilldown.com.
	We're in for Sean Hannity.
	If you'd like to talk to us, give us a call at 1-800-941-7326.
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	Peter Schweitzer and Eric Edgers were filling in for Sean Hannity.
	Linda, you had a point you wanted to make on this fentanyl issue.
	I do.
	The first point I want to make is that you co-hosting with Eric is like a yoga instructor hosting the show compared to listening to Sean Hannity every day where I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack at any given moment.
	So thank you for the calm way that you bring us in and out of this.
	But I I was thinking about this, you know, we've been talking a lot about this even Sean and I, and you know, if you combine all of the automobile dusts and the gun deaths together, they're far, far less than the amount of people that are dying from fentanyl.
	So, like for example, like AOC was out this weekend on Instagram, you know, drop him wisdom.
	That's what she does.
	She just drops these bombs of knowledge, and she's like, you know, we need to get guns out of the stores because you know, then the gun dust, we get the guns out of the murders, and then we won't have any more gun deaths.
	And this guy replied, and he goes, So like fentanyl, we'll get that out of the stores.
	Because that's where you get fentanyl, too.
	And I just I mean, it's just these people are so completely they're complicit because they don't want to deal with the with the core issues like China, like the border, like the cartels, like Mexico.
	Right to your point.
	So well done.
	It's a it's a great point.
	And I think not only did you help round out the point about fentanyl, but you actually helped make this radio program historic because that is the first time in national broadcasting history and my life that I've ever been compared to a yoga instructor.
	And so don't start wearing yoga.
	To be clear, I think I'm talking more about Peter.
	You know, you're more like the Peloton, you know.
	Um I don't know what's up.
	Oppressive for females.
	Yeah, I totally get it.
	You know, definitely not.
	You know, you're a lover of all things, and I will fight that to the end of my days.
	Well, I think you're quite right on the on the fentanyl issue.
	I mean, it's it's a huge problem.
	And you think about in our society, all the people that if they fail to act when they have information, if you're a school teacher and you know that a student is being physically abused and you fail to report it.
	Uh if you're a psychologist, if you are a priest, there are all kinds of statutes that indicate if you fail to act when you know crimes are happening, you can be held legally accountable.
	Why does that not apply to our public officials?
	Why is there not a force to report uh standard for our elected officials when it comes to these problems?
	They just get away with ignoring these massive problems we face.
	It's an abdication of responsibility on our public officials, and it's a national crisis.
	And if you want to hear more about that, you can look at the reporting that we do at the drilldown.com.
	It's Eric Eggers and Peter Schweitzer in for Sean Hannity.
	We'll be right back talking Facebook and how they put their thumbs on elections.
	Next.
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	And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
	We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
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