‘Fentanyl Mitch’: Truck Billboard Slams McConnell for Ignoring Fentanyl Crisis
A truck billboard slamming Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as “Fentanyl Mitch” was seen driving through Louisville, Kentucky, on Tuesday.
“Question: Why hasn’t Mitch McConnell done more to stop the Chinese fentanyl crisis in Kentucky?” the truck billboard’s screen showed before flashing: “Answer: Follow the money.”
Notably, the background of the text was red with the five yellow stars seen on the Chinese flag to the left of the message.
The other side of the truck billboard featured a photo of McConnell next to the name “Fentanyl Mitch” and the word “Cocaine” crossed out.
The letter “M” in the name “Mitch” on the billboard was a blue M-labeled pill like the fentanyl-laced M30 pills that are light blue in color with an “M” imprinted on one side and “30” on the other.
The billboard’s reference to “cocaine” harkens back to a 2018 Republican West Virginia Senate candidate named Don Blankenship who famously nicknamed the Kentucky senator “Cocaine Mitch” in a campaign attack ad.
The billboard truck was an ad for Breitbart News Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer’s new book, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans.
The truck was seen driving past McConnell’s Louisville office and past the Gene Snyder Federal Building in Louisville, Kentucky. It was also spotted driving through downtown Louisville on Main Street outside the famous Louisville Slugger Museum.
In Blood Money, Schweizer explains the financial ties that McConnell has to China through his wife Elaine Chao’s family and specifically through his father-in-law’s lucrative shipping business that has strong financial ties to the Chinese government.
Schweizer writes in Blood Money:
The Chao family runs an international shipping business that is heavily dependent on the good graces of the Chinese government. The family businesses, Foremost Group and its subsidiaries, do considerable work with some of the companies named in this book, including Hutchison Port Holdings, which operates ports around the world and as we’ve shown, has been the subject of concern for decades about smuggling activities.
As Breitbart News reported:
Hutchison enjoys a close working relationship with the Chinese government and military while conducting significant business with the Chao family businesses, Schweizer documents in his book. He also reveals that the company has deep ties with Chinese organized crime. And Hutchison has been flagged by U.S. officials for problems with smuggling weapons and other prohibited items, according to U.S. government reports he cites.
In Mexico, Hutchison controls and operates the international terminals in Manzanillo and Puerto de Lazaro Cardenas. U.S. officials believe 90 percent of fentanyl precursors arriving in Mexico from China come through Manzanillo alone, Schweizer writes. And the fentanyl produced there ends up in American communities.
Schweizer notes in Blood Money that these financial connections could present a potential conflict of interest for McConnell that may prevent him from seriously confronting China’s complicity in the fentanyl crisis.
“The family’s dependence on Beijing’s favor for the operation of their business is real. Were Senator McConnell to take action that angered the Chinese leadership, they could effectively destroy the Chao family business overnight,” Schweizer writes.
Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans is available now in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X/Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
AMERICA'S DRUD DEALERS: JOE BIDEN, HIS CHINESE PAYMASTERS AND NARCOMEX CARTELS BRINGING JOE'S UNREGISTERED DEM VOTERS OVER THE BORDER. ADAM SCHIFF AND GAVEN NEWSOM ARE RIGHT THERE AT JOE'S SIDE!
Xi Jinping Warns Against ‘Abandoning Traditional Industries’ at Crucial Time for Weakened Chinese Economy
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping demanded innovative solutions to China’s growing economic woes in remarks on Tuesday and Wednesday, warning against “a headlong rush into projects and the formation of industry bubbles” that could result in “abandoning traditional industries.”
Xi made appearances at the ongoing “two sessions” of the country’s rubber-stamped lawmaking bodies, the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The NPC can draft and pass laws but is entirely beholden to the leadership of the Communist Party elite, while the CPPCC is advisory in nature and has no real power.
The annual “two sessions” began on Monday with an emphasis on rehabilitating China’s languishing economy. China documented its first-ever decline in foreign direct investment in November – an $11.8-billion fall recorded in the fiscal quarter ending in September – in part as a result of a growing real estate crisis, rising youth unemployment, and growing awareness of the risks of doing business with the genocidal, totalitarian Communist Party. China’s falling status as a premier investment location has been in part at the expense of India, which has aggressively courted multinational corporations based in China with increased success in the aftermath of China’s “zero-Covid policy.”
The solution the Chinese government is touting most enthusiastically to its economic woes is “new quality productive forces,” a self-admitted “buzzword” for technological innovation intended to create entirely new industries for Beijing to dominate. A propaganda video published by the state outlet Global Times described “new quality productive forces” as the answer to “what China is doing to tackle various challenges,” defined as “advanced productivity that is led by innovation.”
Xi reportedly “stressed” the pursuit of “new quality productive forces” but, unlike the many propaganda pieces in state media advancing the concept, emphasized that these potentially lucrative fields in the future cannot come at the expense of the productivity of sectors of the economy that actually exist today.
“Xi called for focusing on high-quality development as the top priority, urging efforts to step up innovation, foster emerging industries,” the Chinese government news agency Xinhua relayed, “adopt forward-thinking plans for developing future-oriented industries and improve the modernized industrial system.”
Xi made the remarks on Tuesday at a meeting of the NPC, the more powerful of the two lawmaking bodies.
The dictator reportedly added, however, that “developing new quality productive forces does not mean neglecting or abandoning traditional industries.”
“It is necessary to prevent a headlong rush into projects and the formation of industry bubbles, and avoid adopting just a single model of development,” Xi asserted.
“We must prevent local rush and oppose irrational, blind investments that create bubbles,” the South China Morning Post quoted him as saying. “Promoting new productive forces doesn’t mean neglecting or giving up traditional industries.”
Among the traditional industries and economic engines Xi specifically mentioned as necessary to improve were “property rights protection, market access, fair competition and social credit to build a high-standard socialist market economy system.”
The reference to “property rights protection” appeared to be a nebulous recognition of the widespread protests that rocked China in 2022 as a result of the demise of the massive real estate developer Evergrande. Evergrande’s value collapsed to a point that, in January, it was ordered to liquidate, leaving as much as $300 billion in debt. Families that had taken out mortgages or signed agreements for Evergrande to build new homes were left stranded, unable to access their funds. In January 2022, protesters stormed Evergrande’s Guangzhou office, demanding their money back for failed projects. Real estate-related protests remained a significant source of civil unrest in 2023, the human rights organization Freedom House documented.
Xi also appeared to reference the flight in foreign direct investment on Tuesday.
“It is also important to foster a world-class business environment that is market-oriented, law-based and internationalized, and create new strengths of a higher-standard open economy,” Xinhua paraphrased the dictator as saying, urging the lawmakers to seek “resolute measures to rectify pointless formalities and bureaucratic practices.”
Xi made an appearance at the CPPCC on Wednesday in which, Xinhua’s report indicated, he did not offer any substantive advice for the conference other than to enthusiastically participate in the summit.
Xi “urged political advisors from different political parties, organizations, ethnic groups, sectors, and all walks of life to conduct in-depth research and actively offer suggestions based on the major strategic tasks” before them, according to Xinhua.
The Chinese government, in collaboration with NPC members, announced that it would set its official 2024 GDP growth target at five percent, only slightly below the 5.2 percent goal for 2023. The goal is below the projection made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is currently projecting a 4.6-percent increase by the end of the year. The IMF identified China’s inability to address “key property sector vulnerabilities” as a significant problem in a February report.
“Many developers have become non-viable but have avoided bankruptcy thanks in part to rules that allow lenders to delay recognizing their bad loans, which has helped mute spillovers to real estate prices and bank balance sheets,” the IMF noted. “Home prices have also decreased only modestly in part because some cities have sought to limit price declines through rules and guidance on listing prices.”
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
Street Art Exposing Fentanyl Crisis Hits L.A. Landmarks Ahead of Oscars
With the Oscars days away, street art hit various iconic spots throughout Hollywood and West L.A. Wednesday shining a spotlight on America’s fentanyl epidemic and not-so-subtly hitting at the politicians who might be responsible for it, including President Joe Biden, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Most notably, the eye-popping artwork landed in the district of sitting Congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Adam Schiff, who is also portrayed in the art.
Not only did the striking artwork appear in front of the Academy of Arts and Sciences but it also surfaced in front of other famous L.A. landmarks like Canter’s Deli, the world famous Du-par’s Restaurant and Bakery, André Balazs’ Chateau Marmont, and the Capitol Records building. With bold colors, striking images and a wicked sense of irony, the artwork appears to be the work of conservative street artist Sabo, who has routinely embarrassed bureaucrats, corporations, A-list celebrities, and government agencies by highlighting their scandals in prominent locations throughout Los Angeles.
The street art depicts Biden, Newsom, McConnell, and Schiff basking in cash falling from the sky, while appearing beside a casket draped with an American flag, like pallbearers. The text simply reads 100,00 U.S. FENTANYL DEATHS A YEAR. The artist uses fentanyl pills to provide the backdrop while also showing Chinese dictator Xà JìnpÃng, raising blood-soaked hands — smiling from ear to ear.
The artwork, of course, is also a stark reminder of the devastation, death, and destruction the seemingly unfettered proliferation of fentanyl has inflicted on American communities.
Indeed, for Americans age 18-45, fentanyl overdose is now the leading cause of death. The dangers of fentanyl, its rapid spread in America, and the havoc it causes has also been the subject of high-profile Senate committee hearings. If passed by Congress and signed into law by Biden, the FEND Off Fentanyl Act would target the Chinese drug suppliers and Mexican cartels largely responsible for trafficking the deadly drug into the United States.
Hollywood has its own sordid history with China, as studios have spent decades placating to the Chinese Communists — repeatedly making China the hero of some of its biggest blockbusters — all while that country’s political leaders have, as Schweizer uncovers, facilitated the spread of a toxic drug that has poisoned a generation of Americans and killed some of America’s most beloved stars.
The artwork surfaced in the wake of the release of Peter Schweizer’s bombshell #1 New York Times bestselling book Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, which details precisely how the spread of fentanyl in America is a “Chinese operation much more than it is a Mexican drug cartel operation.”
“A lot of the people involved in the fentanyl trade actually have senior positions in the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] or they’re advisers to the CCP government, but the links in this chain of fentanyl that is poisoning 100,000 Americans, every link in that chain is a Chinese operation,” Schweizer said in a recent interview with Breitbart News Saturday.
Jerome Hudson is Breitbart News Entertainment Editor and author of the book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know About Trump. Order your copy today. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter and instagram @jeromeehudson
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