Guest Host: Benjamin Weingarten

also just madness outside these studios right now. Maybe it's a safe space for liberty lovers, conservatives and the like. Thank you so much for spending your holiday season with me here on New Year's Eve. If this is a time to be thankful and appreciative, and I want to start first by sending out my condolences to the family of one of my colleagues at the Federalist, the late Brepayden,

who was taken from us way too young. It's a tragic loss for our company, for family, for freedom itself, and her life should serve as an example for what people in the media should strive for. As I mentioned, Ben Winegarden filling in for Buck Sexton today, Senior Contributor at The Federalist Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research. I'm also the proprietor of The Big Ideas with Ben Winegarden podcast, where we focus on long form

conversations with deep thinkers and expert doers. You can subscribe everywhere podcasts are found, and you can follow me on Twitter at bh Winegarden. I also want to start we should appreciate what we have, the freedoms that we have, that we live in this amazing nation. I want to also thank right up at the top, Buck Sexton for giving me this opportunity to spend this time with you

and fill his large shoes. Today, given that we are at the start of a new year and in the holiday season, we should talk about how lucky we are to be in this nation and how great we have it. And it's not just the material bounty that we have. It's about the freedom that provides us the opportunity to pursue our happiness however we define it. This is the exception in the history of mankind, the standard in world history.

And this isn't just historically. Look at a map today, look at the governments and where the largest population centers in this world exist. Freedom is the exception. It is darkness almost over the entire globe, and that actually is what is normal in the history of mankind. The standard is that you live as a surf under a lord, or as a slave under a slave master, or in a gulag nation like what North Korea is today. Look

at a world map, study world history. The reason history is so important, in part, is so that we appreciate the fruits of what we have in this nation. Billions of people throughout human history and including today, have only known totalitarianism and an oppressive state where if you have any rights, you really do have crumbs, like Nancy Pelosi likes to say, and they can be snatched from you at any time. Rule of law non existent, could be

gone tomorrow. Property rights, what are property rights in many nations? Take the case of Venezuela for example. In two thousand and one, Venezuela was South America's richest country. Now it's a failed state. It is literally like Iraq when you look at what the metrics are in terms of economics and crime. The collapse all due to bad ideas. Bad ideas can take everything that you've built up over centuries

and destroy them. Amazing. One of the benefits that we've had in America from our success, much of which we've taken for granted, and few people even think about all the necessary steps that it took to get to this place today. One of the benefits is that we have it so good that we can take time to explore all the flaws within our nation. We can focus on those flaws to such a degree that we end up tearing at the very fabric that made us into what

we are. It's an amazing thing. People have never had things so good, and they want to throw this experiment into the trash band of history. I should tell you I have a child on the way right now. That'll be one of the New Year's gifts. I could be called out of this show at any minute, potentially as a result of where we are right now. And as a future first time parents, one of the things that you think about is what kind of world are you

going to bring your child into? How do you inculcate them with the beliefs, the values and principles that you want to dominate in this world. You know, part of it is protecting them, but they also have to live in a reality and what is the reality today? Well, the reality today is that among our elite, the ideas that trickle down and percolate into society are completely antithetical

to the ones on which this nation was based. And in a sense, what you have is progressive agitprop progressive propaganda. It's in government and in the bureaucracy, which is its own branch of government, even though it's not treated as such. It's in the media, and it's in our education system. You have highly credentialed people, but not necessarily wise people.

Their intelligence, but they're they're intelligent people, but their intelligence leads them to believe they can perfect society, that they have a moral duty to try to perfect society through wielding the power of the state to nudge us deplorable as as cass sunst Obama regulatories are once put it to nudge us deplorables towards the right answer. But who were they to make that decision over us? Why is

that the morally right thing to do? They would argue, Essentially, they're morally superior as virtue signalers, and as holders of these values and principles, they should be the ones to point us in the right direction. And what is the impact of these bad ideas well. I mentioned they destroyed Venezuela in a very short period of time, in under two decades. Bad ideas took the richest nation in South America and destroyed it. But those ideas have seeped in

here as well. And people look at campus craziness and they kind of shrug it off as well, this is just young people, immature. It's crazy Ivory tower sort of stuff. And when they get onto the real world and see the percentage of tax dollars taken out of their smaller paychecks, then they start to see, oh my gosh, there actually are some pretty negative consequences for me and my family in my future. But it's about much more than just economics,

because economics are an outgrowth of our belief system. Free market economics are an outgrowth of a system of values and principles, Judeo Christian Western values and principles, and that free market capitalist system springs from them. It's the result of them, but that's not the end. That's just one of the benefits. There was a recent poll put out by the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness slash you gov and it was called the State of American Patriotism Report.

They pulled eleven hundred people, a bit under fifty percent of them between fourteen and thirty seven years old folks, So we're talking millennials and premillennials and maybe a little bit of gen xers as well. Here were some of the findings from that survey. Half of those survey believe the United States is sexist and racist. American exceptionalism is on the decline. According to the report, forty six percent of younger Americans do not agree that quote unquote, America

is the greatest country in the world. Thirty eight percent of younger Americans do not agree that quote America has a history that we should be proud of. One in eight fourteen percent of millennials agree America was never a great country and it never will be. So that is the future. Andrew Cuomo constituency. Forty six percent of younger Americans agree that America is more racist than other countries. I gotta tell you, these people have never been to

any other country. Probably, It's absolutely mind numbing, both the ignorance and the arrogance, the ignorance to not know and the arrogance to put forth these sorts of views not knowing anything about them. Eighty four percent of Americans do not know the specific rights enumerated in the First Amendment, So how can they be counted on to defend that First Amendment when they don't even know what it is

or why it existed in the first place. Nineteen percent of millennials believe that the American flag is a quote unquote sign of intolerance and hatred. My god, Forty four percent of younger Americans believe Barack Obama had a quote unquote bigger impact on America than Orge Washington. So that is what young Americans get out of our education system, out of our media. I mean, you gotta give the left credit. At least with Alexander Hamilton, people know a

little bit about him. So you have this ignorant, arrogant young population in America, and that is our future. The bad ideas have consequences. If people hate the very values and principles on which a country is based, how can they be counted on to defend them, to promulgate them to their kids. And we're talking multiple generations of this kind of propaganda. So naturally, in Axios last night, there

was an article titled the Coming Reckoning for Capitalism. A quote from that article, one of the most important trends likely to drive the twenty twenty presidential race a growing dissolusion with capitalism as practice and a coming struggle over how to recast this pillar of the Western order. And you know, it's funny. These people like to talk about how Trump is a threat to Western civilization, yet they're the ones that want to throw out the very principles

on which Western civilization derives. The article goes on the bottom line, you could hardly challenge a more basic part of who we are as Americans and Westerners. Polling shows a rising number of young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism. Now, I would question whether or not they can define what socialism is and what capitalism is. So the fact that they have an opinion on it is I would say

questionable to begin with. But that's staggering because if we won the Cold War, how can it be that half the country believes in socialism over capitalism among the youth.

That is a direct failure on the part of those who run our institutions, who are supposed to be the ones safeguarding what this country is based on and the article continues, that's a twelve point decline and young adults as positive views of capitalism in just the past two years, and a market shift since twenty ten, when sixty eight percent of viewed it positively. We're talking about fourteen to thirty seven year old folks, millennials, eighteen to twenty nine

year olds. But it starts way before they're even in college, this sort of prop gandizing and effectively brainwashing people, and there's something very sick about that. So there was a Wall Street Journal editorial that caught my eye recently is titled Reading from Left to Left at Barnes and Noble, and it goes on to talk about a display at Barnes and Noble that this journalist saw called quote unquote Inspiring Books to Empower young readers. What inspires and empowers

young readers. While the collection included first Generation, thirty six, trailblazing Immigrants and Refugees who make America Great, which lionizes, among others, Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos, and the first fashion model to wear a he job. The article goes on, there were three memoirs by illegal aliens, two novels whose

protagonists were refugees. So any side of my oars, Supreme Court justice, turning pages my life story and we rise, We resist, We raise our voices and anthology that includes a fictional story of a child who is arrested by Immigrations and Custom enforcement agents at school as he endorsed taunts from white classmates wearing Make America gride again. Hats who writes this stuff up? This is the onion, This

is a Barnes and Noble but display. This is what These are the books that are pushed on our kids. The article goes on one Portlandia esque title, You Are Mighty, A Guide to Changing the World, is built as a how to manual on build up being an activist. It features Genesis Pelacio, a preteen girl wearing a Vegan power T shirt who became a vegetarian when she was three

after learning that quote unquote, animals were killed for her food. Apparently, according to the article, Barnes and Noble stores and other cities have similar displays. The chain's corporate office didn't answer the emails of the author, and the article concludes conservative theme children's book books are out there, but you have to seek out these subversive titles like pornography before the Internet.

Liberals are devoted to diversity, but they define it in a particular way, obsessing over race, sex, and sexual orientation while demanding conformity of thought. Une. Let me tell you as a future father or I recently received a book. My family received a book by someone who did not know where I stood on the ideological spectrum. I kid you not. It's called as for Activists. This is a picture book. I'll quote a bit from it, and then

we'll go to a correct quick break letter. E Equal rights, black, brown or white, clean and healthy is a right every place we live in play Environmental justice is the way. Letter j J is for justice, YEA for justice, Juanita Jamala, justice for the janitors, Justicia for all. Letter. Oh, this is a great one. Open minds operate best, critical thinking

over tests. Wisdom can't be memorized, educate, agitate organized. Now tell me where our response to a book like that is, because I don't think there's AS for America is exceptional. B is for borders and national sovereignty. See is for capitalism and creative destruction. That would be laughed out of the bookstore. But the other side is propagandizing with picture books for young, impressionable children who cannot cannot conceivably grapple

with any of these sorts of ideas. It's on imaginable that there's anything like this on our side, and frankly, I don't begrudge us, because it's sick to try to propagandize among young people with this stuff. So what do you do when you're dropping your kid in the middle of a world where everything is insane and where everything

is about breeding left wing activism and ignorance. We're creating activists and idiots, useful idiots for an agenda, and we'll talk a little bit about that agenda right after this quick break. This is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexon on the Buck Sexton Show. More next, This is the Buck Sexton Show and this is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton. Happy New Year's Eve to you all, and thank you for joining me today. Follow me on Twitter

at b h Winegarden. All right, before the break, we were talking a bit about poisonous ideas and the poisonous consequences they have for society, and it's very hard to kind of quantify or sum up what the impact of multiple generations of this sort of progressive thought policing has been but I think there was a fine example of it this weekend on Meet the Press, where Chuck ta did a full episode on environmentalism, and he stated near the start of the show, and I'll quote here, We're

not going to debate climate change the existence of it. The Earth is getting hotter and human activity is a major cause. Period. We're not going to give time to climate deniers. The sciences is settled, even if political opinion is not. Unquote, that's a very scientific attitude there by Chuck Todd, because after all, we know exactly how much human beings have contributed to warming. We know for effect that this isn't just one of another million historical cycles

that there have been in terms of temperature. We know the temperature is climate. They're exactly the same thing. He's so confident in his position that anyone who would who would deign to present some countervailing evidence, shut up. And by the way, we're going to call you climate deniers, which is a pretty offensive kind of term, because what they're When you hear deniers use what does that usually

bring up, Well, it's holocaust deniers. Chuck Todd is smart enough to know that he probably shouldn't be using that phrase to describe anyone who would challenge of you that is not unanimously held. Look up, the ninety seven percent of climate scientists all agree statistic and it's a bogus statistic. Stand He had Jerry Brown on the California Governor and Jerry Brown said this about climate change. First, he was talking about the challenge from China and then climate change.

So I want to put this in context here, he said, and I quote, instead of worrying about tariffs, I'd like to see the President and the Congress invest tens of billions in renewable energy, in more efficient batteries to get us off fossil fuel as quickly as we can. Well, they really love this in France, the green invest He goes on, I would point to the fact that it took lad President FDR many, many years to get America willing to go into World War two and fight the Nazis.

And he continues here, well, we have an enemy, though different, but perhaps very much devastating in a similar way, and we've got to fight climate change and the President's got to lead that. So what I want to understand. Is is he saying that fighting something that may or may not be transpiring in the environment that human beings may or may not have a disproportioned impact on, is the equivalent of fighting the Nazis? Or is he go bearing

the Chinese to the Nazis. I'm not quite sure where he's going with that analogy, but let's sum up what this really is. Climatism is a secular religion, or at least it is a sect in the progressive secular religion, and the state is their church. What is climate change really about for them? It's about sort of in some sense, justifying mass redistribution of wealth. It's about apologizing for our western sins of being industrialized and therefore redistributing the fruits

of it to the first and through world nations. It's a form of elite virtue signaling. It's very easy to say I care about the environment and then go trotting around on a jet. You don't really have to deal with the consequences or take responsibility. And oh, by the way, there's also the self interested aspect of this, which is that those who promote this vision oftentimes with the very people who end up personally benefiting from government investments, the Greens,

more Cylindras, well Clendras all over the country. If these people are the ones who are allowed to dominate ultimately, though, what progressive insm is about, as I mentioned, is a secular religion. It is about dominance, and the way that you instill that dominance is to propagate these messages starting with little children, starting with toddlers, and working all the way up through college. And how are you going to be able to compete against that when all you have

is the real world? This has Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexon on The Buck Sexton Show. This has Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton on the Buck Sexton Show. Follow me on Twitter at bh wine Garden and thank you so much for spending your New Year's Eve evening with me. We've been speaking about the dominance of progressivism in media and academia. We've all followed that sort of

running theme. It's a huge challenge, and frankly, conservatives haven't even begun to grapple with just how devastating it's been. The progressive march through the institutions, as Grahams Sheet called it, over one hundred year period we haven't even been we haven't even begun to recognize the extent the nature of the problem, which is imperative to actually then starting to figure out a way to counter it. Maybe something that can help us to remember what our principles are is

to look at an adversary who threatens them. It's sad, but it could be that perhaps it'll be an external threat to the US's dominant position in the world that allows us, in part to enjoy the freedom that we have. Maybe it's an external threat that we have to look to to summon within the American people who we are and what we really believe in. We're going to do a deep dive now on China. Most people when they think about China today, they think trade war, tariffs, President Trump,

Mano Imano with Jijinping. I believe that drastically minimizes what is actually going on in the world. Maybe the most monumental revolutionary shift that has happened in Washington, DC under President Trump, certainly on the national security and foreign policy side, since the opening of the relationship with China under Richard Nixon. We're talking in the seventies here. The narrative has always been that China would peacefully rise, that we would open

up trade with China. China would be rich. Rich countries ultimately want to be free countries rather than the other way around, that free countries end up rich, and that any bellicosity, any adversarial nature, any aggression from China would be checked by the fact that, look, they're entering this world trading architecture that the West built, and they are going to be good partners and we'll all get rich together if they got access to the world financial architecture

that we built, and it's helped enable them to become the major producer of goods consumed in America and the second largest country economy in the world. It's also funded the world's largest intelligence dictatorship. Something to keep an eye on. They actually have scores where they grade citizens on their patriotism and a massive surveillance system around them. So you could be a bad citizen if they don't like your spending, habits or maybe where you travel or what you say

on social media checked as it already is. What we did was we capitalize what was a communist regime and turned it from a third world country into from a wealth perspective, a competitive country in economics, and we allowed it to expand its fear of influenced worldwide. Now, how has China paid us for the privilege of becoming a leading world power. Well, they steal hundreds of billions of dollars worth of intellectual property, in particular from strategically significant sectors.

That's real value taken from the West and of course from America, because we're a dominant technological power, So they steal our blueprints. They don't create them themselves. They're not a fair competitor. When the President talks about free, fair and reciprocal trade, part of that is they need to

deal on an even playing field, and they don't. This is part of a comprehensive plan of economic aggression, which the White House documented in a June twenty eighteen report from its Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, which is run by Peter Navarro, who's cast as a China Hawk.

It lay it out in that strategy that China's goals are to protect its home market from imports and competition, expand its share of global markets, secure and control core natural resources, globally dominate traditional manufacturing industries, acquire key technologies and intellectual property from other countries, including the United States, and capture the emerging high tech industries that will drive future economic growth and many advancements in the defense industry.

One of those primary technologies being five G control over all global communications. China is a huge competitor in this space, and there's been an increasing effort among some countries to wean themselves off of potentially Chinese technology when it comes

to global telecommunications. China's also engaged in a massive loan to own strategy, where they provide financing to countries to build things like ports, strategically significant things, and then when the country's default on them because they can't afford the terms, China comes in and gobbles them up. So they expand

their influence through loaning and then owning you. They've opened up their first overseas military base last year in Djibouti, a strategically significant nation at the entrance to the Red Sea and route to the Suez Canal. A US base is located just miles away. It repeatedly is a base for staging operations against Jihades groups, and of course, China's allegedly directed high grade lasers at American aircraft in Djibouty,

supposedly injuring two US airmen. Now China is seeking to have a state owned company manage the port of Jibouty. They threaten access to the freedom of seas by buzzing our ships and the ships of our allies. They militarize man made islands in the South China see even though they promised President Obama they wouldn't. Big surprise, they threatened companies in the West who list Taiwan and Tibet other territories as separate territories on their websites, because China considers

it all China. So if you have a dropdown menu on your website and you are a global let's say, hotel chain, China will attack you. You can't list Taiwan Tibet as separate entities. That's all there, that's all China, that soft power. By the way, they will threaten companies abroad for merely what's listed in a dropdown menu. And by the way, companies have cowed to this, and why in part because they're afraid of losing that business in

the world's second biggest market. In part because they're probably afraid of other potential ramifications that could threaten the life and limb of their employees literally. They also propagandize. They have publications around the world, propagate their own media. They infiltrate our education system and other education systems through the use of confusion institutes. I did a podcast on confucious institutes. By the way, I urge you to check it out.

They use these so called cultural exchange institutes within our schools, and what they actually do is they propagandize with the Chinese Communist party line, and they also spy on Chinese citizens or x Chinese citizens who are abroad and potentially even engage in espionage beyond just trying to push former Chinese citizens in wine and potentially threaten them. So beyond the propaganda, and this isn't just a foreign policy issue.

They also the Communist Party in China. And this is, according to Vice President Pence, who give a major speech on this, a rewarding or coercing American businesses, movie studios, universities, think tank scholars, journalists, and local and state federal officials. They have to toe the party line. According to Vice President Pence, our intelligence community says China's targeting US state and local governments and officials to exploit any divisions between

federal and local levels on policy. It's using wedge issues like trade tariffs to advance Beijings political influence. We hear a lot about Russian influence and elections well, according to Vice President Pence, and this is a landmark speech that I urge everyone to read. Overlooked by the media, one of the most important foreign affairs addresses, really one of the most important addresses period during the Donald Trump presidency.

Vice President Pence at the Hudson Institute in the Fall West President's Pence said, China is also directly appealing to the American voters. Last week and again, this was during the election season. The midterm elections, the Chinese government paid to have a multi page supplement inserted into the Des Moines Register, the paper of record in the home state of our ambassador to China, Ambassador Brand's dad and a

pivotal state in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty. The supplement, designed to look like the news articles, cast our trade policies as reckless and harmful to Iowans. Foreign influence in

our elections, folks, right there in the newspapers. As Vice President Pence goes on to say, Beijing now requires American joint ventures that operate in China to establish what they call party organizations within their company, giving the Communist Party of voice and perhaps a veto in hiring and investment decisions.

They also provide funding, of course, to think tanks and schools, and with that funding does come strings attached, of course, So China's engaged in a comprehensive whole of government effort to become the world's hegemon, and it has a direct impact on America, not only as an economic competitor, but as a national security threat. And I want to read just a couple quick excerpts and then we'll talk about what the response has been on the nature of what

China is doing in the world. New York Times, so their credit ran an article in June how China got Triuanka to cough up a port. Article starts every time Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa turned to his Chinese allies for loans and assistance with an ambitious port project, the answer was yes, yes, though feasibility studies said the port wouldn't work. Yes, though other frequent lenders like India had refused yes, though Sri Lanka's debt was ballooning rapidly under

mister Rajapaksa. Over years of construction and renegotiation with China Harbor Engineering Company, one of Beijing's largest state owned enterprises, the Hambantota Port Development Project distinguished itself mostly by failing as predicted. With tens of thousands of ships passing by along one of the world's busiest shipping lands. The port ru only thirty four ships in twenty twelve, and then

the port became China's. Mister Rajapaksa was voted out of office in twenty fifteen, but Sri Lanka's new government struggled to make payments on the debt he had taken on under heavy pressure, and after months of negotiations with the Chinese, the government handed over the port and fifteen thousand acres of land around it for ninety nine years in December. The transfer gave China control of territory just a few hundred miles off the shores of Arrival, India and a

strategic foothold along a critical commercial and military waterway. Okay, but it's not just in Sri Lanka. So another article Wall Street Journal. Later in the year, Trophy Infrastructure, troublesome debt, China makes inroads in Europe. The article begins, Europe is distracted by internal discord over immigration and its tense relationship with Russia and the US, and the US seeking to fill the void, China is taking advantage of a historic opportunity to wedge itself into the heart of the West,

deal by deal. Applying experience honed in Asia and Africa, China is constructing parallel financial and commercial networks in Central and Eastern Europe to challenge the global order. It has taken footholds in more than a dozen nations on the periphery of the European Union, some such as hungry or smaller, more marginalized members. Others, including Serbia, are on the runway

for admission. Article goes on Beijing's offers of trophy, infrastructure and financial lifelines to troubled economies, give those countries proposals they aren't hearing from Washington and Moscow, which both generally view the region through prisms of national security, and it concludes, in part, for European politicians, the Chinese alternative promises quick results and less fuss over contracts and transparency than typically

found in the West. The catch is that China's package deals are government orchestrated and require borrowing from its banks to pay its contractors. Another article, Hugely Vital article talks about these this port lending in the like as a trojan horse. It is estimated that stay backed Chinese investors state owned at least ten percent of all equity imports in Europe, with deals inked in Greece, Spain, Italy, France,

the Netherlands, in Belgium. This in addition to a growing investment portfolio of at least forty ports in North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and on and on and on. China's interest in European ports is defined and driven by the Belt and Road initiative. Folks,

this is the biggest geopolitical challenger to America. And when we come back from a quick break, I want to talk a little bit about the tremendous shift back, a revolutionary shift to first recognize the nature of the China problem and start to push back on them. This is Ben wangeran in for Buck Sex and on the buck Sex and show We'll be right back Welcome back to the Buck Sex and Show. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck here on New Year's Eve. Thanks for tuning in.

Before the break, we tee it up a little bit part of the China story, which is what has China done? The next part is what has America acknowledged, publicly recognized, and what is America doing to start to push back on it? And of course it starts by recognizing the problem.

And there was a vital part of our national security strategy that came out last year or this year early this year that recognized something that few in the political establishment would have ever imagined uttering for years a quote from it. For decades, US policy was rooted in the belief that support for China's rise and for its integration into the postwar international order would liberalize China. Contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of

the sovereignty of others. China gathers and exploits data on an unrivaled scale and spreads futures of its authoritarian system, including corruption and the use of surveillance. It is building the most capable and well funded military in the world after our own. Its nuclear arsenal is growing and diversifying part of China as military modernization and economic expansion is due to its access to the US innovation economy, including

America's world class universities. So we acknowledge the problem in our national security strategy and then in our national defense strategy. This was written the central challenged to US prosperity and security is the re emergence of long term strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers. It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to

shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model. It goes on from there China's leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predator predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo Pacific region to their advantage, and it concludes the most far reaching objective of this defense strategy, this being America's defense strategy, is to set the military relationship between our two countries on a path to transparency and non aggression.

Part of that starts with recognizing the nature of the problem and call them out. So the Trump administration put out what's called a three oh one report through the US Trade Office, and what that did was catalog all of the unfair cheating that China engages in when it comes to again to the world economic architecture that we the US created, and we're kind enough to give them

access to. The FBI and the Department of Justice have called out espionage in testimony from China in Congress, including talking about the malign influence of the Confucius Institutes that I talked about before. As I mentioned, Vice President laid out a landmark speech that I urge all of you to read at the Hudson Institute earlier this year in the fall. Then lay it out all of the malign activities of China and what the administration is starting to do.

That's a pretty big deal when the Vice President gives a landmark speech like that. We've also named and shamed.

The DOJ has announced a slew of indictments of Chinese espionage, including in areas that are strategically significant in technology, and actually Jeff Sessions delivered and address when he was the Attorney General saying that China would be an explicit focus of the Department of Justice prosecuting Chinese espionage and cheaters Beyond that we've seen a military build up under President Trump. We've seen investment in the Navy and in our nuclear arsenal,

retooling it. We have potentially we're potentially going to pull out of the I n F Treaty now that is geared towards Russia on its face, but there's actually a Chinese impact to that as well, which is that China is not a party to it, and that's a threat to them if we're no longer a party to it. We've taken off the handcuffs by engaging in offensive cyber warfare. There's reportedly an executive order which says that the US will indeed engage again in offensive cyber warfare as all

of our adversaries have done to us. There's, of course the trade issues, I believe, and Warry Cudlo, for example, of the National Economic Council has said that tariffs for this presidency are effectively a means to an end, which is ultimately free trade. And in this case, it's first getting China to stop cheating and then it's to actually

enter a system of free, fair and reciprocal trade. We've been building bilateral relationships in the Indo Pacific specifically to counter China's influence, tightening up regulation of business deals with foreign entities, including, of course, China promoting arm sales to Taiwan. China hates that concept. The Build Act to help compete

against China's strategic efforts to build around the world. We've laid out all of these things, and this is just the start of a massive shift in US government priority to counteract China's malign influence. With our next guest, we'll talk a little bit about China's aims and America's response to them. We'll be right back on the Buck Sexon program.

Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton here at the top of hour two, and during the last hour we spoke a bit about China's global strategy and this Trump administration's push back, which I think is potentially a revolutionary change in American foreign policy. Today we're joined by an expert on the subject, Dean Chang, who's a Senior Fellow at the Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he specializes in Chinese

political and security affairs. Dean, thank you so much for joining us in Happy New Year. Thank you for having me, and Happy New Year to you as well. Appreciate it, Dean. When we look at China's malign activities and also China's stated national goals, the question is how does it implicate us national interests? And the question I would ask is to you, what would the world look like if China

achieved its stated national goals by say twenty forty nine. Well, so, what we have with China, I think it's important to emphasize, is not a rising power. This is not imperial Germany circa nineteen thirteen. In some ways, it's more dangerous because it's a returning power. For thousands of years, China dominated all of Asia. It was the Middle Kingdom. It was also the Central Kingdom. All of its neighbors they never balanced against China. Instead, they were tributary states. They offered

tribute to China. And I think that's the model of international relations that China is now bringing to a global stage. China wants to be China is a returning major power and as the number two economy in the world, soon potentially to be the number one, that's how it wants to be treated. The implications for the United States are

quite severe. If the so called Made in China twenty twenty five project succeeds, for example, then China wants to be the world's leader in the manufacturing of things ranging from locomotive engines to aircraft, agricultural products to microchips. And the question people should be asking is what do you think the world would look like then in twenty twenty

six if China. I think the answer to that is China would have a protected domestic market that other countries would not be able to compete in, but which would generate the money for China to then subsidize a global push on the economic side, to dominate global locomotive trade, global aircraft trade, global space operations, global microchip manufacturing, and as we've seen with Sri Lanka, as we've seen elsewhere

in Asia, when China dominates other countries. Bow what do you make of my assessment that the currently ongoing trade negotiations are merely one part of a much more comprehensive effort to push back on China using some or even all, elements of US national power, as we've seen embedded in documents like the drum Administration's National Security Strategy, the National Defense strategy and numerous addresses, including those by Vice President Pence in recent months. Well, I hope you are correct.

The problem I have with that assessment is I think it's overly optimistic. We seem to have a government that has distinct trouble coordinating among its various elements. We certainly have a government where various parts of the Deep States seem to feel that they are entitled to try and act against presidential directives and operations. So I'm hoping that there is more of a strategy there being in the implementation.

But I do think you've identified two key documents that did in fact come out and mark a huge sea change, The National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy. Basically say we view China and Russia as our foremost threats. Not terrorism, not ISIS, not al Qaeda. Those are still bad, but the people that we have to truly worry about our nation, state level actors who can mobilize a huge

amount of resources. And in the case of China, they are mobilizing not just military resources, but economic, political, human, technological, and financial. What is the significance Often we hear about China's man made islands militarization of those islands, efforts in the South China Sea and essentially trying to exert their sovereignty over waters that the international community would generally argue and certainly the US would argue, are not theirs. What

is the impact of those moves on everyday American life? Ultimately, ultimately speaking, we are talking about China trying to expand its sovereignty over international common spaces. So for the South China See issue, we're talking about the corroded argy of global trade. Five point three trillion dollars of goods moves

through those waters every year. If your listeners are listening on a on a laptop, if they are going to later watch the Rose Bowl tomorrow on a flat screen, if they're going to get a beer or soft drink out of a refrigerator, those goods quite likely have passed through the South China see And if not the goods themselves,

certainly subparts and components. If China controls those waters as national waters, then it has the ability to really basically strangle international trade or at least make it much more expensive for all of those goods. There was recently a bipartisan report published which essentially said and I will paraphrase it here that the US might not win in a war head to head with China, presumably a conventional war.

What do you make of that report and how would you compare overall China's conventional and non conventional capabilities versus those of America. Well, the Chinese have two advantages. One is very basic which people forget, which is the US is a global military power and we need to be because we have global interests. What that means is every dollar we spend on defense gets spread around the world.

China is still a regional military power, and every reming Bee, every un it spends it mostly gets this focus at home. So if we have twelve aircraft carriers in the Pacific, if we're lucky, we have seven, and not all of those are going to be available. China is working on its third aircraft carrier and they're keeping all of those at home. So far, from twelve to three, we're looking at seven to three and probably less. So that's the basic. The bigger issue is China knows where it wants to go.

China sees US as a threat. For eight years, we had an administration that actively work to prevent US from even saying that China is a threat. Had a senior commander of Pacific Command who said the greatest threat in his area of responsibility, meaning the entire Pacific, was climate change,

not North Korea, not China. Climate change. When you have senior military commanders thinking that way, talking that way, you can have a lot harder time trying to get the resources and the war planning done versus an adversary who says, you know who my biggest enemy is? The United States. Yeah, one can only imagine what the perception of those comments

about climate change was in Beijing. And meanwhile, it's not as if there have not been a series of potentially cataquismic acts that China has engaged in towards the US that oftentimes I think are overlooked. Two of them in recent years being the OPM hack number one and number two the literal liquidation killing of our intelligence network on Chinese soil. Put in context, how devastating those two acts

have been China, somebody once pointed. A major British historian pointed out, we should be rewriting the entire history of the Second World War now that all of the secrets have been declassified, about how we were reading all the German codes and all the Japanese codes. That is how fundamental our ability to read their information was the fact that the Chinese basically have all of our personnel data and we're able to crack our communications to kill off

our network of agents. Gives you an idea of how much of our mail, email, documents, data flow they are reading. This is you know, if there is a conflict and the other side knows your orders, knows where your forces are going, knows your rules of engagement, you are seriously up a creek. What is China's end goal and establishing control of ports throughout the world, including most notably in Europe and the Middle East. This has been described by

some as sort of a trojan horse effort to what end. Well, I don't think it is so that there will be Chinese troops walking the unter den Linden or occupation forces in Rome. This is not how the Chinese, I think, are thinking. I think what it is is to have enough of control and the influence over key parts of the global trade and later the global financial system that when another country, be at the United States or Germany or who member says hey, you have to stop hacking

into our data. Hey, you have to start respecting intellectual property rights. The Chinese said, you know, be a real shame if none of your cranes worked, if none of your pipelines worked. I mean, that's the sort of thing that we are seeing now in Sri Lanka. Apparently now in Kenya is where the Chinese have financed ports things and then they basically say, hey, you sun this contract payoff, and when the country can't, it's like, okay, well that's

simple enough, We're foreclosing, We're taking over the port. You know, when you're talking about a country like Greece, work Hungary, that is potentially the situation less likely in a place like Germany or France because they are wealthier, but poor

European countries may someday face the same pipe. What is the appropriate response to what I've frequently referred to as sort of a loan to own strategy, That is, China provides financing that seems to present no strings attached to it, but then ultimately the financing the dead burden becomes crippling, and then the foreign nation has to then turn over those assets to the Chinese. What is the appropriate response

from the West in general and American in particular. Well, I think one important thing not to do is to not get into a competition with the Chinese on who can loan more people more money, because, as my good friend Derek scissors Over at the American Enterprise Institute has pointed out, you will never outsubsidize the Chinese. Their loans and things are not based on financial balance sheets. It's not based on a good business plan. It is strategic. It is hey, I want influence in this country. I

don't care if that port never makes money. If I gain influence, that's my payoff. So on the one hand, so long as we are operating on a more financially sound basis, that's part of what we should be doing. We should be saying, hey, this port is a good idea. We should look at it because it will make everybody money,

including the owning country. In the meantime, though, one of the things we could probably do is, for example, create a voluntary core of legal experts so that poor countries could have advice to say, look, you do you may not realize this, but these loan terms are terrible. You may not realize this, but they are going to ultimately charge you an arm and a leg and ahead in

terms of interest rates. Don't sign this contract. We might even offer to help provide negotiators, and because they would be paid therefore, you know, they are presumably going to be working for the government of the other country to say, look, you know you may need some actual negotiating advice, legal advice on before you sign with the Chinese. These are things that I think human talent wise, we could be helping to develop in these countries so that they have

a better chance of standing up to the Chinese. You speak about the sort of illogic from an economic perspective of much of China's efforts abroad to essentially buy influence, not actually have prosperous projects domestically. I wonder if you could speak a bit to the idea that, look, central planning fails everywhere that it's tried. To what degree has central planning hamper the Chinese? And ultimately could it prove to be to some degree their downfall, their fatal flaw.

You know, I think that if I were a more suspicious person, I'd say that Alexandra Ocasio Cortez basically seems to be a better disciple of Mao than the Chinese. The Chinese themselves have said, look, central planning doesn't work.

So the Chinese economy today is this weird hybrid. They call it a socialist market economy where certain directives are laid out and state owned enterprises don't operate according to making a profit, but resource allocation still does in fact use the market to sort of get signals through Hey this is working, this isn't working. So on the one hand, your average Chinese person, you know, the restaurants they eat at, many of the shops they shop at, those are real

private commercial enterprises. But steel, shipbuilding, aerospace, those are state champions. They are given centralized direction, and we're watching a slowdown in innovation in those areas precisely because they are operating under an ever heavier dead hand of you know, a sort of higher level oversight and direction, rather than the hidden hand of more traditional capitalism. Dianne, we'll have to leave it right there. Happy New Year's and thank you

so much for coming on. Thank you again for having me. We'll be right back on the buck Sexton Show. This is ben Winegarden in four buck Sexton on the buck Sexton Show. Appreciate you taking the time to spend it with me here on New Year's Eve. You can follow me on Twitter at b h Winegarden. All Right, we've been talking a bit about national security and foreign policy

as well as foreign influence. We've heard about the hysteria of foreign influence in the US, primarily from the Russians, but also does exist from the Chinese and from all sorts of other malign actors throughout the world. One of

those actors is Iran and now their proxies. Very interestingly, Iran has built up a set of Sunni partners, and there are plenty of folks in American media and outside of American media as well, who, for example, were proponents of Iran Deal and the Obama administration's policy writ large with respect to Iran and the Middle East. What was

that policy? That policy was about enabling the building of a quote unquote Shiite crescent, a land bridge that would allow Iran to become the dominant hegemonic player in the region. These folks, as you would imagine, have not been pleased by the Trump administration, because the Trump administration's main actions in the region have been to counteract almost everything that

the Obama administration did. For example, pulling out of Iran, you reimposing crippling sanctions, building up an alliance of relatively secular, authoritarian Sunni Arab nations as a bulwark against Iran and the Shii crescent that they're trying to build, not just those nations, but amazingly an Israel US Sunni Arab partnership, something that most people thought they would never see in

their lifetime. But that actually is the perverse positive, the perverse benefit of an Obama administration that tried to make Iran the strong horse in the region. Now I mentioned foreign influence and Iranian foreign influence. How do we see

that in America? Well, we actually see it in a media that not only cheerleads, but even it appears is a willing participant, is complicit in, whether wittingly or unwittingly, actual influence operations, information operations that happen to have the perverse detrimental result for America, which is putting forth the Iranian position, pushing back on this alliance that has been built as a bulwark against it, and ultimately damaging a

relationship with Israel, damaging a relationship with others who are vital to defending against the world's leading state sponsor of jihad in Iran. Where is this influence operation most acute? We see it in the story of Jamal Kashogi. And up next we're going to talk about that influence operation. This has Ben Weingarden in for Buck Sexton on the buck Sexton Show. We'll talk about that influence operation back in just a minute. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show.

This is Ben Weinarden in for bucks Sexton. All right, before our break, we spoke a bit about foreign influence operations, one of them being that of Jamal Kashogi. And to give you a little bit more context here, Jamal Kashogi was cast by the media as this liberty loving muckraking journalists from Saudi Arabia who was fighting the good fight against the authoritarian Mohammed bin Salmon MBS and as a result of his efforts was brutally butchered by that regime

in Turkey in the Saudi embassy. There, some of us, including my next guest and his organization as well as myself, questioned that official narrative, and suddenly, two months after this influence operation has had its intended effect, we now find that those who were cast as having smeared Koshogi, were actually telling the exact truth that the Washington Post has just printed where he used to write. Joining me now on the line is David Reboy, Senior vice president at

the Security Studies Group. His organization has done tremendous work on the Koshogi story. David, thanks so much for joining us. It's my pleasure. Happy year. Likewise, happened a new year to you as well. So you contend that the entire Koshogi story, and you were following this in real time, is in effect and information operation don effectively on behalf of the Qatari government which is aligned with the Iranians, and thus this whole information operation has benefited the Iranians

connect the dots for us. Sure well, I want to give you a lot of credit too, because because you and I were there at the very beginning, as soon as this was, as soon as this was breaking, and I think we both saw not a lot of people did. We both saw the stitches on the fastball coming at us and um and we recognized this for what really, for what it's for what it was. So I want to command you on your great work on this as well. Oh,

thank you but sure. But to be brief, UM, we had in in in the Middle East, especially around these parts where you don't have a real robust tradition of a free, inquisitive non artists and pressed. Um, you don't even have the aspiration for that. What do you do have? You have basically agents of influence or what people people who would be called in another context UM, you know, for lack of a better word, intelligence agents and their job. You know, some guys are spies, some guys UM do research,

and some guys are journalists. That's just the cover that they wear. And they go sort of from place to place, from from gig to gigs, UM advancing the interests of

their patrons. And Kashogi was a guy who did this and applied his his his wares, his whares where we're um we're influenced through the medium of journalism UM or writing columns and and he did it on behalf of Osama bin Laden and the Mushaden in Afghanistan, he did it on behalf of the prior ruling click in UM in Saudi Arabia specifically Turkey, Fifaal and and most recently he was doing it on behalf of the Qatari government, and it's it's kind of interesting how all of those

particular patrons that Kashobi had were sort of of a similar Islamist stripe. Well. At some point over the last couple of years, this particular point of view, this Islamist persuasion of Kashobi's, meets up against MBS and the new kind of reform movement that's going on in Saudi Arabia, and all of a sudden, his Shogi is the odd

man out. His particular sympathies for the Muslim Brotherhood put him far outside of what um of of what Mohammed bin Salman and the rest of the young reformers in the Kingdom um want to go for where they want to go with with their society. They're very anti Brotherhood, and they're also very anti Iran. Maki Shogi was also anti Iran, but he was very much pro Brotherhood, so

um so he was. He was a bit of a free agent for a while until he found the Kataris and the Qataris are our major um rivals and regional adversaries to the Saudies, and they bank roll and give diplomatic and other institutional support to the Brotherhood and they have for for the last you know, thirty forty years. And so this so Katar was really a perfect home

for Jamaka Shogi Um. And and sort of that brings us to his his his death and you know, his his death at the hands is believed to be a savvy agent probably almost you know, certainly UM savvy agents inside inside Turkey. But the more the more we learn about this, the more it seemed like it wasn't so much a killing in cold blood as it was an

attempted rendition. They wanted to bring him home. Um, they wanted to to uh to bring him home from from Turkey back to Saudi Arabia, and he didn't want to go. It seemed like there was a fight, a struggle ensued and Um and he died. Now that's a terrible thing. Sure, it's a terrible thing when when anyone died. But as I pointed out recently at Security Edit in a new article of Security Studies group Security Studies dot orger, Um,

it's it's a it's a far different story. You know, a spy dying UM on the way to be UM to be sort of forcibly taken back to his home country is a far fly from the media narrative, which is that he was this wonderful freedom loving um journalist who was just murdered because Saudi Arabia couldn't stand the idea of someone advocating for freedom um, which of course is the narratives that both Kataris want to advance and and all sorts of the narratives that a lot of

people on the left and the Washington both want to advance. So we're in a kind of strange situation where could show he was a Qatari asset prior to his death and his death um, you know, after his death he sort of transmodified again into a Tatari asset um for use against the saudiast um. You know, once once he had once he had sort of you know, uh departed his natural life. So it's a it's an interesting situation, I think, you know. Um, it's by far one of

the big stories of the year for a number of reasons. Yeah, and time has made Kashogi one of their people of the year, holding him up, you know. And this is the part of this which is just purely cynical. Politics of journalists are under attack around the world, and here was someone who was writing in the US for the Washington Post, and thus Trump is responsible or Trump is somehow complicit because he's working with Mohammed bin Salmon to defend US national interest in that region, and Salmon is

portrayed as the butcher in all of this. But I want to go back to just the basic details of Kashogi's background, and you raise a few of them. He was effectively a quote unquote state journalist for the prior ruling clique in Saudi Arabia. He worked closely with Turkey bin Faisal, who was the Saudi intelligence chief until just before nine to eleven, and then an ambassador after so Kashogi presumably traveled around with him as an advisor. And

Kashogi was an Islamic supremacist as well. How did he ever end up allowed into the United States in the first place? But this is an excellent question that nobody seems to know the answer too. I know a number of people at I mean, at first as as we remember, the story was that he was a Green card holder.

And you know, I reached out to people that I know at DHS and and and others in government, and I said, hey, can you find out for me some of the details about his Green card application and so forth, and the responsible of hey, we don't know anything, and you know, and it quickly became clear that he was not a Green card holder, but he was in this

country legally somehow. And to this date it's been several months and we still don't really know the answer to who was the one that gave him a throng l who was the one that that allowed him to allow him to come in? And and look, I mean, it's it's possible he came in in a diplomatic way because he did for a time, he did work at the Saudi embassy in Washington, so it's possible that he um he still had some type of diplomatic credentials, and you know,

he was a known guy around town. So it's it's it's reasonable to expect if there was someone in the bureaucracy or the intelligence community that's kind of raised their hand to on his behalf and got him in here. I mean, regardless, somebody who hung out with the mujadin and beIN Lauden in Afghanistan should probably be looked at twice if admitted at all. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexon on the Buck Sexon Show. We'll pick up this conversation on Jamaica Shogi just after the break.

Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weinarten in for Buck Sexton. We've been speaking with David Reeboy, senior vice president at the Secure He Studies Group, about the story of Jamal Kashogi. One of the defining stories of twenty eighteen in the view of the media. But actually it's defining because it shows the media being complicit in an information operation from hostile powers. Now, David, we were just talking about how Jamal Kashogi was able to

enter the United States in the first place. Regardless, he has been held up as a cause, celeb and used on a bipartisan basis in a sense as a martyr, as a political symbol for the political establishment to impose its views on the Trump administration. Essentially, what has been the impact of the death of Kashogi? How has it been leveraged? Sure, he's primarily the people who are who are sort of waiting with bloody Kogi shirts, so to speak,

fall into one or more of these categories. I think the first is people who are pro if Lamist, pro Muslim brotherhood, It doesn't mean that they are UM. They're either Muslim nor brothers UM. But they think that the best debt for the Middle East is to have UM, you know, is to have what they believe is you know, authentic Islamic democracy, which they think is Sharia law, and they think it's a you know, sort of positive development for the region. UM. I think that's crazy. Even I

think that's crazy. But you know this, this particular point of view is quite popular in inside the Belble and especially at a CIA and UH and some other intelligence pagencies. So you've got that. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who are pro Iran and who still resent Saudi Arabia's role together with Israel and trying to convince the event Obama administration not to not to

implement the JCPLA on the random. These guys, I think UH, specifically MBS and UH and in particular UM young generation understood very clearly and still do UM that Rahan is a greater threat to their own stability and there was their regime stability and also the stability of the of the Middle East un than Israeli is. So they allied

together to UM to combat the Iran deal. They failed in that regard, but the people who push the Iran deal very hard still harbor a grudge and they would like to um uh, they would like to get back at the Saudis anyway they can. So then there's a third group of folks who are hardcore fanatical Trump Trump haters. And these people, you know, take a look at the scene and they see, um, they see Jared Kushner's very

tight relationship with MBS. They see um, they see Donald Trump's first and visit both to Jerusalem and also to ri Odd and they say, hey, you know, the Saudians are close to Trump. Therefore the Saudis are bad. Therefore we need to attack them. Um, you know, sort of

in uh, in every in every venue. And I think those three you know, those those three things sort of explain most of the people who are who are who are going into hysterics about this, which is, you know, to be blunt and it sounds you know, people who are not familiar with geo politics, people who are not familiar with the Middle East, um, may think this is rather callous, but the truth of the matter is it's one guy who gets killed in the Middle East, and

that stuff. You know, that's like Tuesday. You know, that's that's not um, that's not you know, something something exceptional, and it's certainly not something that is caused to completely reorient our on Middle East policy, which is which is what a lot of these folks would like to do. As I said, they would like to realign towards the Brotherhood, and they would like to realign towards the Iran and Saudi Arabia stands in between those two things and opposed

to those two things. So obviously folks who care about that are going to be taking their shots. And that's pretty much what we've seen over the last over the last couple of months. I'm going to throw in one more interested actor in lovefair Kashogi, and we've just got a minute and a half to talk about this actor Turkey. This happened in a Saudi embassy in Turkey. Turkey has been increasingly aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood Qatar, even the Iranians,

even though they're not natural allies by any stretch. Based on what you've observed and what has happened in the world, including in Syria with sort of a reproachemand between the US and Turkey in some regards as partners. Do you believe that there is a substantial Turkish leveraging of kashogi as well to their benefit and what is that benefit? Well,

of course, UM, I think of course that's true. Security Study Group we UH, my colleagues Nick Short and Brad Patty wrote a kind of brilliant paper about this UM tracking, the tracking the way the Turks used the slow of information leaking out so very deliberately and very strategically in order to extract maximum benefit and in order to UH in order to generate the most the most painful for

the Saudis as as they did so. And you know, we know that the the Saudis and the UH the churchs are are and have been m rivals UM, just as the Tutoris and the and the Saudis hat in and you know, of course they want to take advantage. Now you mentioned the reproach law between the US and Turkey. I'm not sure if that's really the case or it's just sort of a temporal tactical good good feeling UM towards the Turks here. So so that's that's yet to play out. I think, if I think if the President

does indeed move closer to Turkey in a tangible way. Then, um, then I think that's that's you know, that's a terrible thing strategically, and it would be it would be a horrible blunder that that. I would be surprised if if John Bolton winning along with that. David, we're gonna have to leave it right there. Thank you so much for joining us today. We'll be right back on the Buck Sexon Show in just a minute. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton.

Follow me on Twitter at b h Winegarden. Also encourage you to read my pieces at Ben Weinegarden dot com and subscribe to my podcast wherever you get your podcast. It's the Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten Podcast. All of this in my Twitter profile. All right, So we were just talking with David Reeboy at length about Jamal Kashogi, national security and foreign affairs writ large. And now I want to transition back to what is going down on the ground domestically and what we're going to see over

the next two years. You know, I think it's total folly to try to make ten predictions for twenty nineteen ten predictions for twenty twenty. Part of what being a conservative means is you have to understand human nature. One of the realities about human nature is that we cannot comprehend the millions of variables that go into any of these political circumstances. If that was the case, why we're so few of the quote unquote experts able to see

what was coming in the twenty sixteen election. Being a conservative requires humility, It requires understanding our own limitations. That does not mean, of course, that we shouldn't look at what is going on on the ground. And the horse race frankly for twenty twenty has already started just today. Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts, Pocahontas. You can actually look at the Vegas odds, it's going to be about one and twenty four to one that she will be the

next president of the United States. She formed an exploratory committee for presidency. She is joined by any number of folks mainly to her left. Amazingly, by the way, amazing that she is not on the firm left wing of her party. Potentially look at someone like Alexandroocazio Cortez. She would probably consider Elizabeth Warren, the equivalent of what we would call Rhinos, who is she joined by? Well in the old Guard, you do have folks like Bernie Sanders.

You also have Joe Biden. Joe Biden will be an interesting figure because I think a lot of people believe that he is someone who could peel off some of those what I would call Reagan Democrats, the new Reagan Democrats, call them Trump Democrats in the Midwest, in the Heartland and elsewhere who went and voted for a Republican against many odds, and Trump has sort of tried to reorient the party towards being a workers party, so to speak, the party of labor, the party of the middle class

and the lower middle class. This is a dramatic shift in our politics. Reagan did it before, and this is the Trump equivalent of it. So Joe Biden is seen as a figure who potentially could threaten that stranglehold on the middle those voters who swung over and voted Republican and said they've had enough with the establishment Democrats and

those like Hillary Clinton. Amazingly, in some ways, you can see parallels almost between Bernie Sanders supporters and Donald Trump supporters and By the way, Bernie is another candidate who will definitely be competing I believe in this next election, although he is not announced yet and he is old to be fair. But let's not be agist here. His galvanizing support during that last election were younger Democrats, the young Turks. But he has some more competition this time.

He has folks like Corey Booker, who's already spent time out in Iowa, substantial time on the ground. He's building his national network. He's doing all the things one would do if they were really serious about it. Now I have my doubts about Spartacus. He's shown himself on the national stage to be buffoonish at times. Frankly, he has a likable personality and that's powerful, and Democrats love the idea of rising star candidates. Traditionally, Republicans have been the

party of it's the next person in line. You've paid your dues, you've worked your way up, you've ingratiated yourself with the establishment. It doesn't really matter that the Conservative base is where the real energy is in the party. It is about paying your dues, working your way up the ladder, and then you were ultimately rewarded for it with your nomination. Clearly it didn't go that way last election. However, Democrats believe in these rising stars. They believe in the

people who catch fire overnight. And that's why, in spite of the fact that there is a massive list of Democrats potentially running next time, someone who is not even on the radar could potentially be in play. Just look

at Donald Trump's ascendants. Who else is on the left? Well, we have the billionaire class, and this is really interesting because at least one of the two billionaires is going to have a real tough time dealing with the base in his party that fundamentally loads capitalism and loads corporate people besides those in certain more creative industries. So you have Tom Steyer on the one hand. Tom Steyer is someone who probably has I would guess, minimal national name identification.

What he does have is a massive bank account and loyalty within his party because he's been supporting the left wing of his party for years with millions of dollars to his name. This is a guy who is an envirol radical, someone who is an arch leftist, who believes essentially in taking the fruits of capitalism. The hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars that he has earned and using it to in effect take down that very system. There's something sickening about that. It goes back to my

opening monologue. Today. You have these people who have been gifted this unbelievable system that has enabled them to flourish, to pursue their self interests, to pursue their happiness, to pursue their dreams. And what do they do with it? They say, I hate this system, and I want to put millions of dollars of my own money and to turn it on its head, to repudiate everything that the

country was built on. So Tom Stier's won. Then you have Michael Bloomberg, New York Democrat, New York by way of Buston Democrat, built a tremendous company, a dominant company in the news and information space. In the financial space. I used to work in finance years ago, everyone had a Bloomberg box. It remains the monopoly in finance. So he learns how to build a better widget than anyone else and developed contracts and ties that would ultimately allow

him to be a dominant player in the marketplace. And for that he should be commended. He's been a fantastically successful business person, but his politics are god awful. I believe that he will be portrayed the way Democrats would have loved to portray Donald Trump but couldn't, which is as an out of touch billionaire, but not only that, someone who is at odds with his party fundamentally, because

he would be cast as a moderate quote unquote. You know, he was sort of a Republican in New York and then an independent because he couldn't really win as a Republican, etc. Basically, what he is in many respects is a classic Democrat in a lot of ways. You know, he's most known, probably nationally, for backing these campaigns to clamp down on guns. Second Amendment is his issue. I believe that what he thinks are moderate common sense stances, and which he may

articulate in a moderate common sense sort of way. I believe it's not going to fly nationally, and I think his jabbing jousting with Donald Trump, that Donald Trump is going to wipe the floor with him ultimately if it ever came to it. You saw what he did to his Republican opponents and then Hillary Clinton, and I think before it even gets to that point, Mike Bloomberg is going to have challenges within his own party, and he may run as someone who acts as if he can

unify the two parties. But if that's the case, he doesn't really have a good perspective on where the Republican and conservative basis today. Certainly, even among the most ardent never Trumpers, it's hard to imagine them being probe Bloombergites. They probably rather not vote. I would guess maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm being overly optimistic here. Then you have others like a Julian Castro, or a Kamala Harris, or an Amy Quoba car or my personal favorite of all, Robert

Francis O'Rourke aka Beato. I think Beato is going to have some problems too, because, and this is really one of the sickening things about where the left is and where Democrats are today. You see this in Twitter, and Twitter is not an accurate representation by any stretch I think of where the country is. The people who use Twitter actively are self selecting. A lot of them are political junkies. Many of them say things in Twitter that

they would never say to someone's face in person. But there's been an active campaign on the left about saying that a white male cannot be the left's nominee, which goes against everything the country is based on. You want to talk about the idea of judging people on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin or something they have no control over

in their sex. It's absurd, it's asinine. There's one party that is really obsessed with all of these intangible qualities that reflect nothing about who you are as a person and what you're made of, or about your individuality. They're all about collectivizing groups of people, and then they're about saying, well, you up and hit certain boxes, so you may be problematic, quote unquote, that's the word they like to use. Problematic. Robert Francis O'Rourke I believe is problematic because he goes

by the moniker beato. He's a cultural appropriator. He tries to portray himself as something he is not on an identity politics basis, as if he is a Latino Democrat from Texas. And by the way, of course, that's tremendously valuable from the perspective of the left, because if they flip Texas they believe they will have flipped the country permanently.

The other ground, of course, is immigration. Fled the country with illegal aliens, give them mass amnesty, and it's their belief that then they will have a permanent democratic majority, which is incredibly cynical on the one hand, it's sort of and it's an evil plan on the other And they're never really honest about it. They're never really honest about it. We're gonna take a quick break, but before we do, I want to talk to you about Black

Rifle Coffee Company. You know, in the midst of all this whining and frankly hysteria coming from the left, many of the folks I was just talking about whether it comes to the climate crisis, identity politics, toxic masculinity, folkahuntas, you have to wonder why in the world would anyone act this way. My guess is they're not getting their daily dose of Black Rifle coffee. I am a once a day coffee drinker. I'll probably end up twice a day or maybe three times a day in the next year.

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fifteen percent off your order. That's Black Riflecoffee dot com, slash buck for fifteen percent off Annoia Liberal Black Riflecoffee dot Com slash Buck. This is ben Winegarden in for Buck, sexon on the Buck, Sex and Show. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Buck Sex and Show. This is ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton follow me on Twitter

at b H Winegarden. Before the break, we were talking about the horse race which has already started in Earnest for twenty twenty, and we were focusing on President Trump's foils on the left, the assumed competition. Then there's, of course, the Trump agenda itself. There's the opposition, and then there's the positive, which is what will President Trump be running on in a couple of years, What will the public perceive as the most vital issues, what will motivate them?

Will you be able to summarize the question? Will you be able to respond easily to the question are you better off than you were four years ago? One of the things that I think was missed in the campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is that you knew exactly what the Trump agenda was. You could not define Hillary Clinton's agenda. A candidate needs to be able to define themselves. They cannot allow the opposition to define them, and they also can't be defined by just being in

opposition themselves. We've seen Trump derangement syndrome as the unifying etho, the unifying philosophy for democrats. Can you describe what the democratic agenda is today? You kind of know what direction they want to go in any of a number of issues, economics, maybe national security, and foreign policy, although it's probably somewhat ambiguous. Maybe in trade, maybe not environmentalism. Yeah, you can, you can define that, regulations, healthcare, size of government. Democrats cannot

easily define these things. They are defined by their hatred of the president. And you see that the older hands in the House, for example, like Gerald Nadler, the incoming House Judiciary Chair, who would be the person overseeing a potential impeachment of Donald Trump in the House, you see that they are kind of trying to slowly lead along the more radical, energized, animated elements, hostile elements towards the

President within their caucus. But on the other hand, they cannot upset where their bases and the bass is in Trump hatred mode they have been since before day one. Will that Trump derangement syndrome lead the left the Democrats to overstep presumably Nancy Pelosi and others in leadership, The old hands will say no, because they'll view it as potentially devastating in twenty twenty for them to have not learned the lessons from Republicans back in ninety eight ninety

nine when it came to Bill Clinton. I've pointed out and I urge you to read this in an editorial at The Federalist, I wrote about Gerald Nadler what Gerald Nadler said back then, because guess what, he's a swamp creature. He has been in the House since before nineteen ninety eight, so he was there when impeachment proceedings conversations were going on in the House. What he said during that time period,

and I'm going to paraphrase here, was the following. Perjuring yourself over something personal, over something sexual in nature, is not an impeachable offense. What are impeachable offenses? Impeachable offenses are high crimes and misdemeanors that actively gum up or thwart or betray the Constitution and actually threaten the separation

of powers and checks and balances. In other words, for the most part, we're talking about besides the most egregious potential acts, what we're talking about here is violating your office in the sense of destroying the constitutional imperatives. He specifically said, perjuring yourself over personal matters essentially non factor.

At the same time, he goes on television after the latest, you know, the last Michael Cohen revelations about oh, a potential campaign finance violation, and then did the president But he wasn't president at the time, So can he really be impeached if he wasn't even a president when the acts occurred that the president was involved in a conspiracy

to commit a campaign finance violation. Regarding alleged hush payments, gerald Nadler created two very different standards for Bill Clinton and for Donald Trump over something which is not even we don't even know, we don't even know what a campaign finance violation is when you have a payment that would have been made before you were president, first of all. Second of all, over something which really was separate and

apart from politics. You could certainly make that argument. Democrats would argue on the other side, but is it is it an in kind contribution for there to be an

alleged hush payment? Well, Gerald Nadler today says yes, he was speaking a different tune twenty years ago, and frankly, he made very solid, mery notorious arguments about the gravity of raising something like impeachment, why it's politically perilous, and why is it politically perilous because to accuse the president of committing high crimes and misdemeanors and then potentially pass those papers up to the Senate to get to the point of removal is essentially the most radical act that

the legislative branch could take versus the executive branch. But the energy in his party is so strong they'll be marching out in the streets if Donald Trump is not impeached, probably, and if we get to twenty twenty and Donald Trump is elected again, and I think if he follows through on its agenda, he will be elected again. He's got a real problem. Gerald Nadler and the rest of the Democrats in the House, they really do. And you have to ask yourself the question, will they push things too far?

It's not just about what is President Trump's record, It's not just about who his opposition is going to be. But there's a serious question about what the Democrats are going to do in the House. Is it just going to be subpoena after subpoena and essentially try to run out the clock on this presidency, create this smoke and lead people to believe that there's fire there. It's yet to be determined. After a quick break, we're going to talk with my guest, Tammy Bruce, about the horse race,

about the Trump presidency itself. This is Ben Weegarton in for Buck Sexton on the buck Sexton Show. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton. Right on the line right now is my guest, Tammy Bruce, someone who I've come to admire as a shrewd commentator, delightful personality, Fox News contributor, President of Independent Women's Voice, a national

advocacy organization. Tammy joins us. Now let's jump right into it now that we turn the calendar forward to twenty nineteen. Clearly the horse race has started already, and there's just an amazing confluence of events going on in the world right now. On the one hand, you have a US economy that in terms of growth, wage growth GDP growth, employment rates being at lows not seen since the sixties.

Things look great. On the other hand, financial markets had a tumultuous twenty eighteen and people are certainly concerned about that. On the national security side, you have a Chinese quote unquote trade war and increasing hostility generally, there you have North Korea supposed denuclearization, jumping out of Irando, there's immigration issues, cultural issues, and then of course there is the large

resistance versus the Trump administration. Of all these factors, what do you see being the most critical over the next two years. Well, the critical thing is the recognition that Trump is a man alone, if you will, a single firefighter with some people who back him up, trying to put out the largest house fire that's ever existed, and it's going to take some time. I think the most critical thing is going to be President Trump remaining vigilant and focused on what his mission is. It was clear

from the beginning. I mean, Trump is not a man who came from the outside and had no idea what was going on with government, So it was obvious, especially with who he's known through his life, what he was going to face. I think he's a bit of an idealist. I think to be a creative person in certain ways you have to be. But he also has had enough experience to know what he was going to be facing.

In all of this, I think the American people have been a bit more surprised at the depth of the revulsion of an outsider coming into the system, and that in some ways has been frightening because it indicates that the corruption of what's now been termed the deep state, which is the system, is perhaps deeper than we thought. We've seen behavior of the FBI and the dj which has been shocking, and I think that part of this is because it indicates that there's a lot more that

the establishment needs to hide than we realized. So the other reason why there seems to be so many things happening at once is that we finally have someone in the White House who is not invested in the system moving along as it has been. He's not invested in

the status quo. So you might look at it as being that we had been effectively in a coma in a way managed by machines, kept alive through a process, and we've had people give nice speeches and like no drama Obama, the system moved along in a predictable way. But underneath, as we saw at the end of the Bush administration, there were things happening that weren't discussed, that even they might not have been aware of, and so we had a massive financial collapse. Because the system was

supposed to be moving smoothly. What's happening with Trump is that you've got you've you've we've awoken from that coma, and so any activity is going to be unusual and yet not necessarily unexpected. It's called life. And so the stock market is responding to activity. Trump is a man of action, and so things are occurring we're not used to because the previous presidents have not acted in a way that has engendered a kind of action that of course you get reactions too. And I think it's a

good thing, it's a healthy thing. It's necessary as we are beginning to get our to get back on our feet, we should expect this. And so I think the key element is for the president. And I think he knows this because he's been running a massive business of course most of his life, his adult life, so he knows

about the back and forth. People in Washington Art don't like it, and the American people we have two generations now who are unfamiliar with it, and I think the communication is going to be key and him sticking with his priorities. I think the critical point that you make, and you make a number of critical points there is the idea that the president is in some sense a party of one. And when people talk about the resistance and like you said, the revulsion of our political class,

it's actually not a partisan issue. It is a bipartisan issue, a bipartisan revolt against someone who would threaten the livelihood, the prerogatives, the credentials of those who have been, in a sense, the ruling class over time. What do you make of the sort of irony and all of this that it took someone like a Trump to be to expose the fact that those in power would be willing to act in the most lawless, violating norms, going against

the institutions sort of fashion of anyone. I think that when you look back on the photographs of President Trump, like with his marriage and the guests being Bill and Hillary Clinton, everybody knew Donald Trump right he was part of the system. There was I think a general understanding amongst the rich and powerful, and we do have that group of people. I want us all to become rich

and powerful. Of course, that they that I think either a direct understanding or a silent one, that everyone would go along and get along, that everyone would be benefiting based on a status quo with the American people, though becoming the collateral damage, and I think what they did

not expect. And there's a term politically for people, even including like a Fdr Franklin Roosevelt, of men and women who are traitors to their class, people who come out of a system and turn on that system that perhaps has rewarded them in the past because something has struck them. And Trump fits within that framework. He's a traitor to

his class. Now his class is, of course the rich, the powerful, and those are the people that also then are supposed to understand and you know, accept the nature of what has been going on. His crime is that I think he fell in love with the country at first. It was perhaps a genuine the effect of what we were all experiencing of the government having gone kind of haywire the direction that it was going in with Barack Obama.

I think that he felt inherently and had been speaking publicly and on Twitter and in other ways for years, you know, rejecting and questioning and being extremely critical of what was happening in government. And I think that there's a point where whether it's an Alexandria Occassio quartet or Donald Trump who says, well, wait a minute, maybe something else can be done and maybe it's maybe it's me, and it's that decision that spark that then made him

realize there was something larger than him. As he moved into his seventies. Maybe one part of it was boredom and he wanted something new to do. But in order to be willing to commit to really going against your team in a way, which was the establishment, I think it had to be more than that. And then the campaign, I think he really fell in love with the country

and he did get to know it. I think he became a changed man in that process and in the end, And this is what for me, as a person of faith, well, I don't like organized religion very much. I find it not surprising that this nation has brought forth the perfect person in our particular history up till now, the perfect

man and to address what this country is needed. Whether it's Washington or a Lincoln or a Reagan and now Trump now all very very different men, but astanding trajectories and at the right place, at the right time, making the right decision and at the correct junction when it comes to what the American people need. Now. Now all of them, you know, also faced unique problems and have

had to be very aggressive in certain ways. But the moment for Trump and the irony of what is going on as you put as you put it is necessary and perfect because it strangely only Donald Trump could do it. It would be a man or a woman with enough money to where it wouldn't matter what, they wouldn't need their next job, not interested in the approval of a certain crowd, except the American people, genuinely wanting to make a difference separate from what their lives were or could

have been, separate from politics. The difference between Trump, of course, and and the other men I mentioned, with the exception perhaps the President General Washington, is the lack of uh, you know, obviously Reagan and Lincoln politicians, you know, consummate politicians, but clearly the kind of person America creates in a romantic, deliberate, kind of creative, almost reckless way of moving into the future.

But this country, but this country system requires that kind of of kind of boundless optimism and willingness to face the monsters to fix the future. That's what we bring to the American story, but to the story of really the human in condition. And I find this all to be very predictable and necessary if the nation was to survive. And it happened, and it's it's a very exciting time.

What do you see happening with this democratic field? Is this is this a circular firing squad where everyone tries to go to the left of everyone else, or is there something that maybe we're not anticipating that we should be looking at. Well, I would point to a lot of people. The Democrats like to point at Connor Lamb, who uh you know, positioned himself as you know, a centrist and all of that, and they said, well, that

that's the kind of Democrat who can win. The problem with that race for the Democrats was he faced no primary competition, so there was no leftist, no progressive to challenge him and to push him and to have that fight in public. And when that happens, that's where everything go off the rails. This is this is where the Democrats have their problem. Now the Republicans have already faced

that that problem, if you will. The benefit though for the Republicans is that the fight was between Donald Trump, who's a businessman, wildly successful, uh knew what he was doing, has had a background of knowing what you know, within at least a conservative ideal about finances and personal freedom, et cetera. Uh, regardless of what you think of him personally, he had he had a business background that indicated to

the American people he could handle running the country. The problem for the Democrats is, uh, it's Alexandrio Occassio Cortez versus Clare McCaskill. Right, it's people who have ideas that are that make no sense, that have been proven unworkable in historically. Uh, that will destroy elements of the country like well, Medicare for all single payer nobody knows, you know, when Cassio Cortez has asked, how would you pay for single payers? So, well, you just pay it like you

pay your rent. I mean, this is the problem for the Democrats. Uh. And I think that this is what they're really going to find. And I'm you know, they're already trying to set up and limit the number of debates, uh, and how how public these kinds of arguments will go.

But that's what's going to be problematic of how far to the left certain candidates get pulled in that fight and really, in fact, who might win or who become you know, who is that shorter lineup of the Democratic nominees and whether or not the American people will look and say this does not look good. I've I've equated this as being like sending the Hindenburg to pick up the passengers of the Titanic. Uh. This is That's what the Democrats offer, Like which vehicle are you going to

want to get on with them? And this is where the president of course, and I believe that they'll be able to do this is articulate to the American people because the legacy media won't do what has been working, Um, what still needs to go, what still needs to work. I think it's unfair that he's been attacked for not accomplishing everything he promised in two years. I mean, he is a man alone effectively creating historical change. But for the Democrats, um, you know, and I'm still a Democrat,

registered Democrat in California. Uh, regular grassroots Democrats want you know, they want normal governing. They also care about their families, they care about you know, they want to make sure they've got somebody who knows what they're doing, and they want something new. They don't want Hillary. We know that because they don't want what has been and so if if they think they're they're they're going to be offered, you know, Joe Biden and then see Pelosi's out there.

All of these young people and others who want something different, like the Republicans wanted something different, They're in a lot of trouble because nobody's presenting themselves as the unifier that can bring all of those individuals together. And it certainly is not. I don't envy them. It's going to be fascinating to watch. And in the meantime, the president is still also going to have to deal with never trumpers and individuals who are more committed to the establishments than

they are to the progress of the country. Temmy, we're gonna have to leave it right there. Thank you so much for joining us in Happy New Year, Welcome back to the Buck Sexon Show. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sex and appreciate you taking the time to spend your New Year's Eve with me. All right, before we wrap up today, I want to talk a little

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and all employees are located throughout the United States. Visit Global Verification Networks website ATMGVN dot com or call at eight seven seven six nine five one one seven nine. All right, I want to conclude today. You know I started in our opening monologue with an emphasis on being grateful for what we have and want to first start by thanking you, dear listener, for spending this day with me and talking about and thinking about some vital issues

for this country. I also want to thank Buck Sexton for giving me the opportunity to fill in here on this New Year's Eve. It's been a pleasure, you know. As we go out today, I would leave with a couple parting thoughts. One is that this is the greatest nation ever invented in American not just American history, obviously

been in world history. It is exceptional. And it's not exceptional because we have all of this bounty and material wealth, but because we have the freedom to pursue our happiness. This is uncommon. This is an uncommon nation, This is an uncommon lot that we have, This is an uncommon time period for all the stresses in a day to day basis. It's the most comfortable time to ever be alive in the history of mankind. And there's no nation

in world history that has ever had this freedom. But this freedom can go away overnight, very quickly, and we see that in places from Venezuela to what Cuba once was. We see it throughout the world. There are external foes, but in reality, the most important thing is for us to be strong, for us to understand our values and our principles, and to defend those values and principles from enemies both external and internal. This has been Weingarten, having

filled in for buck Sexton today. This is the Buck Sexton Show, Happy New Year, Thank you so much,