Yeah, we apologize. Um, you know, you know we love Chinla. We love you know, playing there. I know for for both of us individually, we go there, you know once its twice a year. They showed us the most important love. So you know, we appreciate it as a fan base and we love everything you know they're about. And you know we appreciate the support that they give us individually and as an organization. So you know we love that. Was James Harden NBA start talking about how he and
Lebron love China. This was back during the flap where the the what the what the one of the owners or general manager or whatever from the Houston Rockets lost his job for saying something anti something sane, saying something anti China. And when when we found out there was a U. S. Senator that wanted to talk to us about, among other things, the NBA's relationship with China. Man, we jump at that opportunity because we're big on that thing.
We will indeed to deal with that in moments with Marcia Blackburn, the U S. Senator from the Great State of Tennessee. UH Senator Blackburn, how are you. I am doing great, and thank you so much for caring about this issue with the NBA in China. Well, it's it's absolutely horrific to hear the criticisms of the US on a practically a daily basis, meanwhile making love to the
worst regime on earth. But before we get to that, we're kind of surprised you're not in the Senate chamber voting on what you're calling and I love this Biden's Blue State bailout bill. What's going on with that? Well, they we have the debate going on right now and the for Bernie's been down there begging for a fifteen dollar an hour federal minimum wage, and of course that is very unpopular in states like Tennessee. The minimum wage is you've got your federal minimum and then states make
adjustments because it's a different in different areas. And we think that that's the way it ought to say. But what we have to realize is that the Democrats are in overreach mode. They know they're going to lose the House and Senate in two So what they're trying to do is get in that race car and loop around the track, get to the finish line, and take away
a lot of your freedoms. When it comes to your job, your children's education, where you work, how you work, how you live your life, how you use and consume energy. They're just ready to take those freedoms away. This is almost a two trillion dollar piece of legislation. Giant things like this didn't used to pass that weren't bipartisan. We're just into a new era, I guess well. And we have done five bills that have dealt with COVID relief.
And these five bills have all been overwhelmingly bipartisan. I mean, like they would get ninety votes. And now the one bill that the Democrats are doing will be a party line vote. And of course we're looking for one Democrat that will vote with us and will stop this because out of this two trillion dollars, nine percent nine percent goes to COVID or COVID related relief. One percent of
this bill goes to vaccinations. The rest of it it goes to blue state bill outs, to humanities, to art, to infrastructure, to loan forgiveness for certain loans for certain people. It's full of ear marks. It's even going to pay federal employees to stay home with their children for fifteen weeks because the teachers unions are not going back to the classroom to teach the children. Well, and listen, if I were to call you a liar, Senator Blackburn, say
nine percent, that's ridiculous. That's twice as much. That would be less than one fifth had anything to do with COVID. It's just an excuse. You don't we all need to do. Who oppose this sort of thing. We need to come up with one name to call this a blue state bailout bill. That's that's not bad. But because anytime a newscaster calls it the COVID relief bill, they're perpetuating an untruth. Well,
it's all total pork. It's what it is, and it is just disgusting what they are doing to future generations. They're capping our children's economic opportunity because the taxes to pay off all of this debt are going to be so high on our kids and grandkids. Amen to that. You know, you made the point that you only need to get one Democrat senator to not vote for it and it doesn't pass. How does it work there in
the Senate? Like do you personally go and talk to to Bernie who say Bernie, you shouldn't vote for this. It doesn't have the minimum wage stuff in anywhere, or Joe Manchin, who's you know, who's uh leans more conservative? You have personal conversations with these people trying to convince them, or how does that work with your friendships? Sure, and we're going to have a string of amendments that we're
going to offer that would reduce spending. And of course we're talking to them trying to get their support for these things, giving them the opportunity to be more fiscally prudent and responsible. Marsha Blackburn, U S Senator from the State of Tennessee is on the line. I want to make sure we have time for this because we'll keep
banging the drama on the giant bailout bill. But it's been suggested that the NBA actually teamed up with the communist Chinese to ban players from discussing human rights abuses. But what do we know about this? What should you know about it? Well, we don't know a lot, and that's why I've sent another letter to Commissioner Silver saying, hey, we understand that you have come to an agreement and
have a contract with China TV. By the way, China TV is primarily owned by the Chinese Communist Party, and China TV will censor anything that is not favorable to the Chinese Communist Party. So we're seeking to find out some of the details of that NBA agreement. Have they agreed to certain speech or not, because the Chinese have
a series of very egregious human rights violations. Look at what they're doing to the Hong Kong freedom fighters, the Tibetans, the Taiwanese, the genocide they're carrying out against the Wagers, which is the minority Muslim population. How they're using these people as slave labor to make products there in Xinjiang Province where the NBA has their practice facilities, and this product, NBA licensed product is sold through Nike and different sports companies.
So yeah, we want to know what have they agreed to say and how are they tolerating this genocide that's being carried out against the weakers. We also want to know the financial impact to the NBA. A couple of years ago, we found out that broadcasting their basketball games in China was worth about three billion dollars to the NBA. So since they've constructed this agreement, we want to know what the details are. We also would like to know what the participation of Michael ma is in all of this.
Now his dad, Jack law is who is one of the owners of China TV along with the Chinese Communist Party. So we would like to have some of these details of what the NBA is doing with China TV and the Chinese Communist Party. That's really interesting. You know, I'm willing to give a pass to to all of us, really because Republicans and Democrats and administration after administration for what fifty years has has believed that if we even though we let China participate in the global economy and
help them along, they'll will come around our side. We all realized that was a mistake. Are we entering an era now? Where are you? Big? US companies just aren't going to be able to do business with China. What we have to do is look at unraveling our relationship and being very thoughtful and then trusting and verifying, always verifying what you're hearing from China, whether you're producing a consumer good, uh manufacturing a semiconductor chip, are looking at
any type of participation. Most businesses in China are owned by the Chinese Communist Party. Most members of the Chinese Parliament, our leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and by the way, the bulk of them, they're multi multi millionaires or billionaires. Senator Blackburn, I apologize for jumping in right there, but we're up against a hard break. U S. Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, A real pleasure to talk to you. A good stuff. We hope we can do it again.
You got it, take care, bye bye now, thank you. You know, I wish we had just a little more time because I was going to put things in a rather difficult way for about decoupling with China. I appreciate, you know, the trusting and verifying, but can we be enriching a regime that is utterly, indefensibly evil. Well, I thought it was interesting the U. S. Senator saying we need to be in the process of detangling with China or decoupling with China. That's that's that's a major policy
change by the United States of America. Are strong and getty