EVERYONE IN BIDEN'S SWAMPY KLEPTOCRACY IS AN ADVOCATE FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS OR UP CHINA'S ASS!
Rahm Emanuel’s China Ties Are ‘Disqualifying’ for Japan Ambassadorship, Hawley Says
Biden's ambassador nominee courted millions in Chinese investment as Chicago mayor
Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) told the Washington Free Beacon Rahm Emanuel's past dealings with China could compromise his effectiveness as President Joe Biden's ambassador to Japan.
As ambassador to Japan, Emanuel would need to coordinate with Tokyo to counter China's regional power, as Japan is widely considered one of America’s most important allies in standing up to China. Republicans said Emanuel's close relationship with Chinese elites warrants serious investigation and could stand in the way of his Senate confirmation. Hawley said Emanuel's "reckless" record in office demonstrates he does not understand the China threat.
"Rahm Emanuel clearly does not understand the China threat and can’t be trusted to serve as ambassador to Japan," Hawley said. "That Joe Biden would attempt to put someone so reckless in charge of relations with one of our most important allies is very concerning."
Emanuel did not respond to a request for comment.
Emanuel made overtures to Chinese business throughout his tenure as mayor of Chicago in the hopes of making the city the "location of choice" in North America for the Communist regime's investors. In one case, the former Obama administration chief of staff secured a contract for the city with a company known for its cooperation with the Chinese military and Huawei. A 2016 contract brokered by Emanuel put the state-owned Chinese transportation giant CRRC to work in upgrading the Chicago transit authority’s railway cars, even though the proposal scored 5 points lower in evaluations compared to competing bids. The transportation company has collaborated with Huawei, an innovator in Chinese spyware, and its data collection capabilities have been shared with the Chinese military, according to a 2019 report.
"Putting a CCP-owned, Huawei-affiliated data harvesting company in charge of building a major American city’s critical infrastructure isn’t just dangerously naïve, for an ambassador to Japan, it’s disqualifying," Hawley said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Ian Easton, a senior director at the Project 2049 Institute, said Emanuel's cozy relationship with Chinese power players—including the $1.3 billion contract he awarded to a Chinese transportation giant—should give the Biden administration pause.
"Giving American taxpayer money to companies owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party, a militant and genocidal regime, is a dereliction of duty," Easton said. "It's beyond naïve to think Chicago's CCP-made trains won't come with hidden backdoors that collect private data from American riders in peacetime and allow the Chinese military to weaponize the trains against us in a future crisis."
Emanuel's China ties go beyond the rail contract. In 2013, Emanuel made his first trip to China, where he spoke at Tsinghua University, a school known as "China’s MIT," and a crucial research partner for the Chinese military. Emanuel also brought senior members of the Chinese Communist Party to his city. Chinese vice premier Liu Yandong and vice minister of commerce Wang Chao visited Chicago in 2013. He welcomed Wuhan mayor Tang Liangzhi to his city in 2012. Emanuel later said the ties he built as mayor led to eight projects backed by Chinese capital in his city, with more on the way.
Emanuel also tasked members of the Chicago business community, including fellow former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley and financier Michael Sacks, to join him in promoting commerce with Beijing. In meetings with Chinese investors, the two attempted to "[pitch] Chicago to China." Daley's brother Richard and nephew Patrick registered in 2013 as paid foreign agents of China.
A Republican Senate aide told the Free Beacon Emanuel will need to fully account for his relationships with Chinese interests during his hearing process.
"If he expects to be taken seriously, Rahm Emanuel needs to explain the exact nature and full extent of his interactions with Chinese businesses and any personal profits he may have earned," the aide said. "His record as mayor of proudly and aggressively courting CCP-linked firms to invest billions of dollars in critical Chicago infrastructure shows a stunning lack of judgment."
After his term ended in 2019, Emanuel headed to Wall Street to consult for Centerview Partners, a firm with its own history of work with China. In 2012, Centerview led talks between the Hollywood studio DreamWorks and multiple Chinese firms, including state-owned media, to form a "China-focused entertainment company." In 2021—during Emanuel’s time at Centerview—the firm advised U.S. manufacturer Honeywell on multiple contracts. The State Department fined Honeywell $13 million in May for its role in sharing secret U.S. military blueprints with China.
Centerview Partners did not respond to a request for comment.
Published under: Barack Obama, Chicago, China, Josh Hawley, Rahm Emanuel, Wall Street
Obama’s Man in China Now Beijing’s Man in Washington
Former ambassador Baucus appears regularly on Chinese propaganda outlets
As the novel coronavirus wreaks havoc across the world, the Obama administration's ambassador to China has found a second lease on life as a pro-China talking head on regime propaganda outlets.
Former ambassador Max Baucus has given at least four different interviews to Chinese propaganda outlets in the last two weeks, repeatedly comparing the U.S. rhetoric about China to both the McCarthy era and Nazi Germany.
"Joe McCarthy [and] Adolf Hitler … rallied people up, making people believe things that were really not true," Baucus said during a May 12 interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), a regime mouthpiece. "The White House and some in Congress are making statements against China that are so over the top and so hypercritical, they are based not on the fact, or if they are based on fact, sheer demagoguery, and that's what McCarthy did in the 1950s."
Since his retirement in 2017, Baucus has been a reliable critic of the Trump administration's increasingly confrontational China policy—chiefly the decision to wage a trade war with Beijing. He once warned that the White House's decision to impose additional tariffs was a "slap on the face" to China. But Baucus's recent comments in the pandemic era have been more sympathetic to China—and critical of the United States—than ever before.
His post-retirement public statements praising China have coincided with his burgeoning overseas investments. In 2017, he founded the Baucus Group, a consulting firm that advises both American and Chinese businesses, according to his U.S. Chamber of Commerce biography. He also sits on the board of directors for Ingram Micro, a U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, as well as the board of advisers for Alibaba Group, one of China's largest tech companies.
Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, said that it was "inappropriate" for a former ambassador to speak ill about his own government on a foreign propaganda outlet.
"It's like going to China and … talking about your own government that way in meetings. I think that would be pretty inappropriate," Lohman said. "So it would be inappropriate speaking on state media."
Baucus's public statements have received considerable attention from Beijing's propaganda outlets. When the former ambassador compared President Donald Trump's criticism of China to rhetoric used by Adolf Hitler and Joe McCarthy during a May 6 interview with CNN, Chinese propaganda outlets quickly amplified Baucus's comments about how Trump was "a little bit like Hitler in the '30s" and that Americans were worried about "getting their heads chopped off" if they voice their disagreement with the U.S. government's China policy. Xinhua News Agency, a state-owned outlet, extensively cited Baucus's attacks in a May 8 article, using it as evidence that the Trump administration is attempting to "deflect criticisms about their blunders by blaming China." The article was syndicated in party-controlled mouthpieces such as Global Times and People's Daily, according to the Investigative Research Center.
Baucus then appeared on CGTN on May 12 to double down on his Hitler and McCarthy comparison, blaming the Trump administration for flaming "sheer demagoguery."
"[The current U.S. rhetoric] is somewhat reminiscent, nowhere close to that yet, somewhat reminiscent of the McCarthy era and somewhat reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s," he told CGTN.
The former ambassador also gave an exclusive interview to Global Times on May 14, where he said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's claim that the virus may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory "makes no sense" and accused both Democrats and Republicans of being tough on China to score political points in an election year.
Baucus again appeared on CGTN on May 15, where he claimed that America is "sliding toward a form of McCarthyism" because the Trump administration is pressuring policymakers to be tough on China. The former ambassador did another CGTN media hit on May 16, this time appearing alongside his wife Melodee Hanes, who blamed the presidential election for making dialogue "difficult."
"There are a lot of pretty smart people in the United States who are not speaking up. People in office, moderates, especially moderates on the Republican side," Baucus said on May 15. "They are afraid to speak up, they are intimidated, intimidated by President Trump. And it's kind of sliding toward a form of McCarthyism—how it is politically incorrect to speak the truth, speak the truth to power."
When the Washington Free Beacon called the phone number listed for Baucus's home address, no one answered. A lawyer representing Baucus Group, the ambassador's consulting firm, also did not respond to a request for comment.
While Baucus rarely enjoyed this much attention from Chinese state media outlets after his retirement, this is not the first time he has spoken to Chinese media outlets in recent years. Baucus also gave an exclusive interview to People's Daily in March 2018, criticizing U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods as the "wrong policy" and "too confrontational." He has also spoken at events backed by the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, a registered foreign agent of the Chinese government according to a 2018 congressional report.
Lohman, the Heritage Foundation expert, said that while Baucus has the right to appear on any domestic and foreign outlets, he should not have addressed a propaganda outlet with the same degree of candidness that he did with CNN.
"I think he must have gotten wrapped up in the media performances because when you shift from CNN to Global Times or CGTN, you've gone to an entirely new level," he said. "And there I think you just have to express yourself differently. It's not an appropriate place to air political differences."
Published under: Barack Obama, China, Coronavirus, Max Baucus, Xi Jinping
Kennedy Introduces Bill To Cut Off Dictators’ Funds
Legislation presses Senate Dems on 'no-brainer' chance to cut taxpayer funding to China
Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) will introduce a bill Wednesday afternoon that aims to cut off dictators' finances through the Treasury department.
The legislation, which will be filed as an amendment to the Endless Frontier Act, a massive China package pushed by Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), would restrict cash that rogue regimes withdraw through the International Monetary Fund. Through reserve assets known as "special drawing rights," dictators have been able to draw billions from the international financial organization to alleviate financial pressures often created by U.S. sanctions.
Kennedy's amendment would prohibit special drawing rights for countries found to have committed genocide or sponsored terrorism without authorization from Congress. Both China and Iran qualify as regimes that fall under the bill's jurisdiction.
Kennedy, a member of the Senate banking committee, told the Washington Free Beacon that the vote will measure how seriously his colleagues take the challenge posed by China.
"Stopping taxpayer money from flowing to dictators and genocidal leaders like Xi Jinping is a no-brainer," Kennedy said. "It's one of the simplest, most honorable votes we'll take this year. I can't see any reason that anyone with America's best interests at heart would have a problem voting to require Congress to sign off before the Treasury sends U.S. dollars to dictators."
In April, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen confirmed that her department plans to allocate $650 billion in special drawing rights to the IMF, leaving the money accessible to such dictators as China's Xi Jinping and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro.
The Treasury did not respond to a request for comment.
Senate Democrats have framed the Endless Frontier Act as a massive anti-China package that will spend billions to boost scientific research and technological programs in competition with China. Critics, however, say the bill betrays its purpose by playing too loosely with taxpayer dollars. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will cost $244 billion, a massive jump from its original figure because of emergency authorizations.
"The last thing the Senate should want is a collection of deals made with individual senators that is then attached to what becomes a massive spending bill, clearly more about industrial policy and pork-barrel spending than geopolitics," Heritage Foundation China expert Walter Lohman wrote in March.
Kennedy's amendment will be heard for roll-call vote this afternoon.
Laura Ingraham on ‘Breaking the News’: ‘Fabulous’ Book Exposing ‘How China Has Completely Infiltrated American Media’
Laura Ingraham lauded Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow’s Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption Thursday as a “fabulous” book exposing, among other things, the Chinese government’s influence over American news media outlets.
In an interview with Marlow on her eponymous podcast, Ingraham noted how conflicts of interest revealed in Breaking the News help explain news media mendacity related to the coronavirus.
“Alex, you have been all over this — the conflicts of interest,” Ingraham remarked,” [and] about how China has completely infiltrated American media with dollars, research money, advertising dollars, threats of travel restrictions and so forth … and you uncover this as it relates to the billionaires in this country and their connection.”
She observed Hollywood’s refusal to produce documentaries or other films depicting China’s communist history:
One of the reasons it happens is because we have a media that is not independent — forget objective — not even independent of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. We find out that the CCP — China — has spent billions of dollars over the years in advertising in the United States … in publications that desperately need ad dollars. I’m talking Time magazine, some newspapers, magazines like the Atlantic. So they buy their way into the United States, and these journalists become little pieces of putty.
Just like Hollywood’s not going to offend China by doing a powerful documentary about what’s happened to the religious minorities in China [or] what’s happened to traditional religious expression. Forget it. They’re not going to do that. They’ll never do that movie, just like they’re never going to do a movie about Mao, a real one.
Can you imagine that film about Mao? Sixty million people dead. How many movies have we had about World War II? How about the Great Leap Forward? How about extermination of millions and millions and millions of Chinese? They’re not going to do it.
Their silence is bought.
Marlow’s book details China’s procurement of influence across American news media outlets, which Ingraham linked to much of the news media’s deception and suppression of information regarding the coronavirus’s origins and the one-party state’s conduct in response to the outbreak.
Marlow highlighted actor and former professional wrestler John Cena’s recent apology for describing Taiwan as a country as illustrative of the Chinese Communist Party’s financial leverage over America’s news and entertainment industries. He explained how conglomerate ownership of the two industries with business interests in China is at the heart of the industries’ betrayal of truth.
Marlow said of Breaking the News:
I connect that with what’s going on with John Cena. I’m sure you played a clip of John Cena’s obsequiousness to China because he dared call Taiwan a country, which it is. Universal, which owns the Fast and Furious [franchise], is part of NBC-Comcast-Universal. So you’ve got this Fast and Furious movie opening up. You’ve got a new Universal theme park opening up in Beijing last week. The established media doesn’t make that connection.
And we’re supposed to be trusted to think that movie stars for Universal Pictures and NBC News are going to treat China — one of the most racist countries on Earth, that interns journalists, that interns Muslims — they’re supposed to be credible when it comes to dealing with this regime?
Of course, they’re not. It’s all intertwined. … That’s why we’re never going to get that China movie or documentary. We’re not even going to get a hard-hitting article on China. In the meantime, American media conglomerates just sell out one after the next after the next.
Breaking the News illuminates the financial roots of much of the news media’s corruption, Ingraham said.
“Alex, your book is fantastic,” Ingraham concluded. “Everyone, before you think that you understand an issue, and you kind of brush off the concerns that we’re talking about, read this book because you’ll see that when something pops up on your screen as fact, you have to look at who owns it, when they bought it, who’s invested in it, and what their political affiliations [are].”
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