McCarthy: Biden’s Policies Have Brought Us Bank Problems, Inflation, High Interest Rates – and China’s New Axis of Power
“We’ve gained a lot of different problems” since Pres. Joe Biden took office, and his weak leadership has even made the world less safe, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) says.
Democrats’ excessive government spending leads to inflation, which drives up interest rates, imperiling banks, McCarthy explained Wednesday in an interview on Fox Business:
“The reason we have a bank problem is because the Democrats spent $5.9 trillion, brought us inflation.
“With inflation, interest rates go up, banks come into problems.”
….
“We’re paying more for gasoline, because of his energy policy.”
“We’ve got more Americans dying because of fentanyl, because of his open-border,” Speaker McCarthy added.
Biden’s weak leadership has also emboldened China to forge a dangerous new alliance with America’s other enemies, McCarthy warned:
“Now, we’ve got China thinking they’re able to do something with President Xi that hasn’t happened in a hundred years. They’re bringing Saudi Arabia and Iran together. He’s sitting with Russia.
“He’s now creating the new Axis of Power, something we haven’t seen since the 1930’s, with Iran, North Korea, China and Russia.
“Why? Because we’ve got a weak leader in the White House, and we’re seeing it in every aspect. When America’s not strong, the rest of the world is not safe.”
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Doesn’t Deny Biden Family China Payout After Joe Biden Did
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday did not deny Biden family members received a collective $1.3 million payout from a CCP-linked entity after President Joe Biden denied the payout.
Joe Biden falsely claimed Friday his family members did not receive a $1.3 million cut funneled through a $3 million dollar wire transfer to Biden family business associate Robinson Walker — a cut even Hunter Biden’s acknowledged was true.
“House Oversight says they’ve got bank records showing a Chinese energy company paying three Biden family members through a third party. What were they paid for?” Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked Jean-Pierre.
Jean-Pierre replied by dodging the question without denying the payments were received by the Biden family members.
“Look, I’m — I’m just not going to respond to that from here,” she said. “And I don’t even where to begin to even answer that question because, again, it’s been lies and lies and inaccuracy for the past couple years.”
“And I’m just not going to get into it from here,” she said.
After the briefing, the House Oversight Committee slammed Jean-Pierre for not knowing “even where to begin to even answer that question.”
“She can start here with bank records showing a Chinese energy company paying Biden family members $1 million through a third party,” the committee tweeted the evidence:
The press conference comes after House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) on Tuesday asked Jean-Pierre to correct Joe Biden’s false denial of his family’s receipt of the China payout.
“Despite the overwhelming evidence, President Joe Biden continues to deny his family’s involvement in suspicious foreign financial transactions,” Comer wrote. “President Biden’s statement was misleading and dishonest,” Comer said, reminding the White House the committee “received the bank documents from a financial institution pursuant to a subpoena.”
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a ten percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
RELATED: CNN’s Burnett–New Biden Family Payment Evidence ‘Doesn’t Look Good’
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.</i
How the Biden Admin Helped a Public University Partner With a CCP-Controlled School
Biden's National Science Foundation funds University of Virginia partnership with military-tied Tsinghua University
The Biden administration is using taxpayer cash to fund a University of Virginia climate change partnership with a Chinese Communist Party-controlled school that conducts research for China's military.
President Joe Biden's National Science Foundation last year awarded more than $130,000 to the University of Virginia to conduct climate change research with Beijing-based Tsinghua University, federal spending disclosures show. Tsinghua University, which counts Chinese president Xi Jinping among its alumni, will work with University of Virginia researchers to chart the global "transition to a low-carbon economy," according to the grant description.
Tsinghua University is funded by China's Ministry of Education and maintains a "CCP Committee" that keeps the school "in accordance with President Xi's hopes." It also holds "secret-level security credentials" for classified military research, trains students for China's nuclear weapons program, and has allegedly carried out cyberattacks for the Chinese government, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. It is also one of several Chinese universities under the supervision of the communist nation's State Administration of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, a CCP agency that works to deepen university involvement in the defense sector.
The National Science Foundation's decision to fund the partnership with Tsinghua calls into question the foundation's vetting process as it enjoys a record-high budget. The bipartisan CHIPS Act, which Biden said would help "counter China," authorized $80 billion in funding for the National Science Foundation to invest in research and development. But in the case of its University of Virginia grant, the foundation found working with the Chinese on climate change "worthy of support."
For American Foreign Policy Council fellow Michael Sobolik, the foundation's decision to use "taxpayer money to facilitate research cooperation with a People's Liberation Army-affiliated university" is "questionable at best."
"We've seen time and again how the CCP leverages people-to-people ties to further its malign influence within the United States," Sobolik told the Washington Free Beacon. "When you're in the midst of a cold war, you can't play both sides of the ledger. The sooner we accept that reality, the better."
The National Science Foundation downplayed Tsinghua's role in the project, with research security strategy and policy chief Rebecca Keiser saying the Chinese school's involvement stems from "researcher-to-researcher collaboration."
The foundation "has instituted a first-in-government analytics process to identify research security concerns and ensure transparency when assessing proposals and awards to ensure that any international collaboration provides mutual benefit," Keiser said in a statement. "In any international research collaboration, [the National Science Foundation] only funds the U.S. side."
The grant, which started in October and runs through 2026, funds University of Virginia research into "the transition to a low-carbon economy." Tsinghua and a second Chinese partner, the China University of Petroleum-Beijing, will conduct similar research in China, the results of which "will be used to develop a U.S.-Chinese collaborative course on climate leadership skills." That collaboration, the grant says, "will lead to better strategies for lowering emissions in the United States that are complementary to those in China." China is by far the biggest polluter in the world—in 2019, it emitted more greenhouse gases than all developed nations combined.
This is not the first time the University of Virginia has partnered with Tsinghua. The two schools are exchange partners, and the University of Virginia's engineering department in 2017 developed a "teaching collaboration" with Tsinghua that saw students from both schools pair up for homework assignments. That project, however, does not appear to have received federal money. Beyond the October grant, the National Science Foundation has only funded projects linked to Tsinghua on two other occasions—once under Biden last June and once under former president Barack Obama in April 2011. Both of those grants, which went to Boston University and Drexel University, respectively, funded academic workshops that included participants from Tsinghua.
A University of Virginia spokesman defended the university's work with Tsinghua, arguing that because the project "does not involve critical technologies or military applications," it does not compromise U.S. national security interests.
"An important part of researching global challenges like climate change is working with institutions around the world to compare the effects of a warming climate and the efficacy of different proposed solutions," university spokesman Brian Coy said. "As part of those efforts, we take seriously our responsibility to operate within all U.S. laws and regulations regarding the protection of intellectual property and U.S. national security interests."
"Our university collaborates closely and transparently with federal regulatory and law enforcement partners in order to ensure our collaborative research efforts contribute to human understanding of global challenges without compromising our interests as a nation," Coy said.
The university's partnership with Tsinghua could attract scrutiny from Republican Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin. "Since being elected, the governor has taken steps to protect Virginians from the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party," Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez told the Free Beacon. "Through his TikTok ban on all state devices and networks, prohibiting foreign adversaries, including China, from acquiring the commonwealth's agricultural land, requesting Fairfax County schools cut ties with CCP-linked entities, and preventing a Trojan horse deal for a CCP-linked battery manufacturer to produce electric vehicle batteries propped up by U.S. tax incentives, the governor has made it clear that there is no room in Virginia for the Chinese Communist Party."
National Science Foundation director Sethuraman Panchanathan, who serves at the pleasure of the president, in 2014 was put on the foundation's National Science Board by Obama. Then-president Donald Trump in June 2020 went on to elevate Panchanathan to foundation director. Biden has appointed 10 of the National Science Board's 24 members.
While the National Science Foundation's grant did not send federal money directly to Tsinghua, the Chinese university has received money from American actors in the past. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—one of America's largest liberal nonprofits—gave Tsinghua more than $1.5 million in 2021, the Free Beacon reported in January.
Members of Congress will question TikTok’s chief executive at a hearing this morning. My colleague Lauren Jackson explains the stakes in today’s newsletter. — David Leonhardt |
Good morning. U.S. officials say TikTok is a national security risk. They’re trying to turn it into their advantage. |
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An American edge |
The platforms are so powerful, their names are verbs: Google, Uber, Instagram, Netflix. |
For years, the dominance of American tech companies has brought economic benefits to the United States. It has also offered an advantage in a less obvious area — national security. |
Tech companies gather incredible amounts of data about their users. They know where we travel, who our friends are and what we watch. Governments want to use this data for surveillance, law enforcement and espionage. So they hack, hoard, steal and buy it. For years, the U.S. has had an edge over other countries. With court approval, the government can demand that social media giants, based in the U.S. and subject to U.S. law, hand over data about users. |
“We had this advantage that we thought would just go on forever,” Bruce Schneier, a security expert and Harvard fellow, said. |
Then TikTok came along. The social media app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has more than a billion users. TikTok says that includes about 150 million Americans. Under China’s authoritarian state, the government has sweeping control over tech companies and their data. U.S. officials are worried that China will use TikTok to promote its interests and gather Americans’ personal information. One Republican called it a “spy balloon in your phone.” |
TikTok is the latest flashpoint in the two countries’ struggle for supremacy. Last week, TikTok said U.S. officials had given its Chinese ownership two options: Sell the app or risk a nationwide ban. This morning, lawmakers will question TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Chew, about the app’s ties to China. |
Today, I will explain the fight over TikTok and how the U.S. is trying to use the app to its advantage. |
The concerns |
This fight is ostensibly about data: who controls it and determines how it appears on TikTok. The U.S. has two main reasons for concern. |
First is the threat of Chinese espionage. BuzzFeed found that ByteDance engineers in China had accessed American users’ private data. ByteDance also admitted that employees, including two based in China, spied on journalists and obtained their IP addresses, but said that company leaders had not signed off and that the employees were fired. Despite ByteDance’s close ties to China, TikTok has denied that it has given data to the government. |
Second, ByteDance could use TikTok’s algorithms to influence Americans. TikTok has been accused of censoring videos about politically sensitive subjects for China, like Tibetan independence and the Tiananmen Square massacre. |
“A Chinese company owns what has become America’s number one culture maker right now,” Sapna Maheshwari, a Times reporter who covers TikTok, said. In the future, lawmakers say, it’s easy to imagine how China could use TikTok to shape American attitudes about Taiwan — or an American presidential campaign. |
The U.S. is escalating efforts to limit TikTok’s power. The federal government and more than half of the states have banned TikTok from government devices and networks. Britain, Canada and Belgium have done the same. India banned the app entirely. Now the U.S. is threatening a nationwide ban, too. |
How likely is a ban? |
Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020, but judges rejected his attempt. The government is trying again, though it’s unclear exactly how a ban would be implemented. There is no precedent for U.S. restrictions on an app this big. |
One approach that some lawmakers prefer would remove TikTok from Apple’s and Google’s app stores and make the app nonfunctional on U.S. cellphone networks. But the government couldn’t reach into users’ phones to delete the app. TikTok would still be accessible to those who already have it, though users couldn’t download updates to the app, which would probably render it unusable eventually. |
Any ban faces legal and political hurdles, including questions about First Amendment protections and the possibility of angering millions of TikTok users heading into a presidential election year. |
The U.S. may be threatening a ban to force another outcome in its favor — the sale of TikTok to an American company. TikTok and the U.S. have previously negotiated about one. Still, the path is murky. China is unlikely to approve a sale. And if it did, it’s unclear who would buy the app, which could cost $50 billion, according to some analysts. A sale could also trigger antitrust concerns for probable suitors like Microsoft. |
The power of a threat |
Even if a ban never happens, the threat of one still matters. The Biden administration is using the specter of further restrictions to communicate a hard line on China. Lawmakers in both parties will likely make that point clear in the hearing today. |
The episode is the latest in the larger fight between two world powers competing for dominance. In this contest, data is a valuable source of economic and political clout. |
“If you can control data, you can have influence,” Joseph Nye, a political scientist, said. |
China has known this for years. The country has banned apps like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and operated a tightly controlled internet, isolating its citizens from the rest of the world. The U.S. is now threatening to use China’s playbook against it, effectively using private companies as a national asset and limiting information access as a form of sanctioning. |
Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, is expected to tell Congress today that the app is a vehicle for promoting soft power — a “lens through which the rest of the world can experience American culture.” But the U.S. has made clear it cares more about the hard power of data. |
“TikTok is the first platform to truly compete with these huge American tech companies,” Sapna said. “The signal the government is sending is: Don’t bother.” In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Chinese Spyware App TikTok Collects Data From More Than Two-Dozen State Governments, Review FindsMarch 21, 2023 Websites for more than two-dozen state governments use a web-tracking code made by the parent company of TikTok, a Chinese spyware app, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. "Web-tracking pixels" made by ByteDance Ltd., TikTok's parent company, were present in 30 U.S. state government websites across 27 states, a review by Feroot Security found. Some of those states had already banned the app from "state networks and devices," the Journal noted. Website administrators "use such pixels to help measure the effectiveness of advertising they have purchased on TikTok." The pixels, however, "can be watching and recording you when you're renewing your driver's license, paying your taxes, or filling out doctors' forms," Feroot Security's CEO told the Journal. Evidence has shown for years that ByteDance spies on American citizens. The company used TikTok to track the physical locations of Forbes journalists and obtain the data of a former BuzzFeed reporter, a Financial Times reporter, and people connected to the reporters, Forbes reported in December. As a Chinese company, ByteDance shares data with the country's Communist government. After widespread criticism, President Joe Biden, who has long pursued a cozy relationship with TikTok, in February agreed to ban the app from government devices. One month later, TikTok retained a Democratic public relations firm whose founding partner is a top Biden adviser, the Free Beacon reported. Though ByteDance's tracking pixels are ostensibly for advertising, they "can sometimes be configured to collect data that users enter on websites, such as usernames, addresses, and other sensitive information," the Journal reported. The Journal itself was able to find the pixels on government websites from Maryland and Utah, both of which had banned TikTok from state-owned devices and networks. Both states removed the pixels after the Journal reached out. Feroot found tracking pixels from other Chinese-owned companies, as well as Russian-owned companies, on state government websites. While a bill aimed at restricting TikTok is making its way through Congress, critics say the legislation "will let the Biden administration avoid taking real action" against the app, the Free Beacon reported. And even a national TikTok ban, the Journal wrote, "wouldn't address many of these data-collection concerns." |
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