Tucker: China views Pelosi's Taiwan visit as an 'invasion'
The 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host discusses the potential consequences of Speaker Pelosi's 'totally pointless' trip to Taiwan.
The thing about the Chinese government is, and this is kind of weird, the Chinese government almost never celebrates diversity. Think about that. American liberals, liberals throughout the West, love China. It's Justin Trudeau's model, but China does not celebrate diversity. In fact, and the American media never says this, but it's absolutely true, China is a militarized ethno-state. It's run along traditional fascist lines for the benefit of a specific ethnic group: the Han Chinese.
It's not supposed to be allowed, but they're doing it. So, to Chinese leaders, the concept of diversity, equity and inclusion, those concepts make no sense at all. At best, they're bizarre. It's one of those incomprehensible jokes that Western liberals tell. The Chinese don't get it at all. So, when Nancy Pelosi took off for Taiwan today aboard a U.S. military jet, the Chinese government did not issue a statement applauding her remarkable display of spunky girl power. No one in Beijing congratulated Nancy Pelosi for breaking glass ceilings as the very first speaker in history to identify as a woman. No one in China even mentioned that.
Instead, Chinese leaders treated Pelosi's arrival like an invasion. Air raid sirens sounded in coastal towns in China as her plane approached. When she finally landed, the Chinese military announced live fire exercises in the airspace around Taiwan for the next four days. China's Foreign Ministry declared that Nancy Pelosi's mere presence "gravely undermines peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait." Proving that in Asia, as at home, things rarely improve when Nancy Pelosi shows up. So, the question really is, why did she go in the first place? That's the real question — and the official line in Washington, as always, is totally implausible, is that Pelosi's trip was designed to "reaffirm Taiwan's status as a U.S. ally."
OK, except the problem is, Taiwan is not a U.S. ally. In fact, Taiwan may be the only country in the world the Biden administration believes does not have the right of self-determination. "We do not support Taiwan's independence," said the Pentagon spokesman just the other day. Wait a second. They're against democracy? You know that they were for democracy, right? They are always throwing democracy at you. Turns out, they don't mean it, not that you ever thought they did.
CHINA FURIOUS AFTER PELOSI LANDS IN TAIWAN, PROMISES 'ALL NECESSARY MEASURES' TO DEFEND ITSELF
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (R) (D-CA) accompanies Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (L) at the U.S. Capitol March 30, 2022 in Washington, ((Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images))
So, the one thing you can be certain of is that Nancy Pelosi did not fly all the way to Taiwan to signal that the United States is going to defend that island from a Chinese invasion. We're not going to do that. We're not in a position to do that, even if we wanted to do that. We've already sent too many of our surface-to-air missiles, for example, to Ukraine, where our oligarch friends are busy selling them to various dark actors on the international arms market. So, if there's a major war in Asia any time soon, we will not be winning it. Every sober person knows that. Sad but true.
So, what's really going on here? Well, on the internet, you may have noticed quite a bit of speculation, some of it generated by Chinese state media, that Pelosi went to Taiwan to check on investments that her husband Paul made using insider information. Now, he did make those investments and yes, used insider information. That's why he's such a fantastic stock picker worth more than $100 million. In this case, Paul Pelosi bought semiconductor stock. Taiwan makes semiconductors. Rising tensions in the region would create more demand for semiconductors. That's the theory.
Is it true? Well, Nancy Pelosi is from Baltimore, so we wouldn't put anything past her, but it doesn't quite satisfy as an explanation. That is a long and highly public trip to take for a relatively small investment. There's got to be something else going on. What is it? Well, it is entirely possible that the most obvious explanation for this debacle is the right one. It's possible that the Biden administration is so completely incompetent, the people who run the White House are so utterly blinded by their own arrogance and their ineptitude, that they just don't appreciate or even understand the implications of what they are doing. So, Nancy Pelosi got bored of spending the summer in Napa and she wanted to take a free trip to Asia where she can pretend to be a statesman for a week. Girl power. Let her go.
It's possible that's all the thinking they did before signing off on Pelosi's trip. Here, for example, is the Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, who you're supposed to take seriously, proving the point effectively this morning on Fox.
JOHN KIRBY: The aggressiveness, the coercion, the increase in tensions in the last weeks and months have all come from the Chinese side. What we have said is that there's no reason that this visit should escalate tensions in any way whatsoever.
Oh, so there's no reason that this visit should escalate tensions in any way whatsoever. Thanks, John Kirby, for describing the world as you fervently wish it was. We'd love to know your views on perpetual motion machines. Now back to reality as we actually find it. Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan has, in fact, dramatically escalated tensions in the region throughout Asia. In fact, escalated the more than any single act in recent memory. So, you have to ask yourself, for what? How exactly is the United States, which she serves, benefiting from what she's doing? Is there an upside here for us?
That's one question that people like John Kirby never think to ask. They just assume that China must be bluffing. Just another backward, third-world government making huffing noises. You don't you take them seriously, just like Russia. "Well, they say they're going to invade Ukraine if we push Ukraine to join NATO. Who cares what they think. They're a gas station with a government. They're bluffing."
That's what arrogance does. It blinds you to reality. So, the question is: Is China bluffing? What if they're not? What if, in response to Pelosi's totally pointless trip to Taiwan, the Chinese decide to seize the Cayman Islands, which are now governed by Taiwan, in whose defense we've implicitly and effectively guaranteed for 75 years? Well, that could actually happen. The Chinese government is already making the kind of noises you would expect it to make before doing something like that. Here's a selection.
REPORTER: Ahead of the stop, the Chinese government continued to ramp up their warnings, saying it undermines China's sovereignty and security spending.
FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESWOMAN: We hope U.S. officials will clearly understand the importance and sensitivity of the issue and how dangerous it would be if the visit actually happens.
REPORTER: The Chinese claim Taiwan as their own, and there are concerns Beijing could use the visit as a pretext to ramp up military action in the area.
Huh. Maybe that's bluffing. Maybe it's not, but the deeper question is, when's the last time American liberals built something? When is the last time Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or any of these people, Susan Rice, created something worth having? Hmm. We'll give you a few minutes. Never. They break things. They show up. They make things worse. They move on to the next thing. They never apologize. They did it in Afghanistan. They did it in Iraq. They did it in Ukraine. They did it in Syria. They did it in Libya. Are they going to do it now with China? Breaking things.
In fact, if you were trying to give Beijing a pretext to seize Taiwan, this is exactly the kind of trip you would take. And what would happen if Beijing seized Taiwan? Well, it would be a humanitarian disaster for the Taiwanese. They would lose any semblance of self-determination. Democracy would die, so that's bad, but more to the point, it would be a disaster for us. For us, because it would make, and this would be the effect of virtually every policy to come out of the Biden administration, it would make China more powerful. How powerful is China? We understate their power actually.
China already makes 90% of the world's antibiotics. It makes 80% of the world's lithium batteries, 96% of the shipping containers used to transport goods across the world, mostly from China, are made in China, but one thing China does not yet control is the semiconductor industry. At the end of 2021, China held just 4% of the global semiconductor market. North America and the Asia-Pacific region are the dominant players.
Now, semiconductors are not a small thing. In fact, they're essential to modern life. They're in everything from brake sensors in your car to your phone, to your computer. They're in everything and as it happens, virtually all advanced semiconductors are made — where are they made? — oh, they're made in Taiwan. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company makes 90% of the world's advanced semiconductors. It is by far the world's largest semiconductor foundry. Without the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, that would mean companies like Apple, Qualcomm and many others could not function. That's a lot of the American economy.
Last year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company accounted for more than half of the total foundry revenue in the world. So, maybe showing up in Taiwan would give Beijing a pretext to invade Taiwan and take over the world's largest semiconductor foundry, and that puts us in the beta position to an even greater extent, to put it mildly. Is that the goal of this trip? Could it be that Tony Blinken and Barack Obama and the rest of the people who are actually running the Biden administration without the knowledge of Joe Biden, who can't remember anything at this point, could it be that all these people know perfectly well how reckless this is, know perfectly well what the effects could be, and they're doing it, not just in spite of those effects, but because of those effects because actually, at least on some gut level, they want to hasten the end of American hegemony, which is to say the end of the U.S. as we know it?
That would explain why they sent Kamala Harris, of all people, to avert a war on Ukraine, knowing full well that Kamala Harris would read the notes they wrote for her and insist that Ukraine join NATO and then guarantee that Russia invades Ukraine, constricts the world's energy and food markets, and makes us weaker. Huh? Maybe they knew that would happen. Maybe they're not that stupid. Maybe that would also explain why they sent in Nancy Pelosi over to Taiwan effectively as the administration's representative, even though Nancy Pelosi rivals Kamala Harris in her inability to form a coherent thought. Now again, we alluded to this last night, but it's just true because we watch this stuff. We hope you don't. Hope you have a real life, but if you see Nancy Pelosi recently, since she turned 80, for example, two years ago, you know this is someone who is having a lot of trouble speaking. Here was Pelosi at a briefing back in November, for example.
PELOSI TOUCHES DOWN IN MALAYSIA AMID TENSIONS OVER TRIP TO TAIWAN
Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters (Getty Images)
NANCY PELOSI: The other thing that we're getting are, we're sending stuff over to the Senate. Well, most of the product that we've done is set now. We may have had it in the last hour or so and some of what we added is Senate to the bill, like a hearing. Bernie doesn't like hearing. Excuse me. Bernie loves hearing. Manchin doesn't want hearing in the bill and all that stuff. So, some of the Senate-oriented, and then we had the family/medical leave. We figured if they're putting things in, then we can put something in even if Manchin doesn't like it. So, we are getting some Byrd and privilege. I think mostly we're getting privilege scrub because privilege scrub is deadly to a bill. Byrd? Well, it's important. You have to take it out, but privilege violation can take you out.
So, at this point, August of 2022, Taiwan is the world's great flashpoint. It's the largest power with an aim. It has articulated repeatedly over almost 80 years to invade a neighboring country, Taiwan. There's no more delicate place diplomatically on the globe. So, if you're sending that person to calm tensions or reassure allies, you're probably not doing what you say you're doing. You may be doing the opposite. If you're trying to provoke your enemies and terrify your so-called allies, you'd probably pick Nancy Pelosi as your representative in Taiwan.
What is going on here? Well, if you're wanting to understand the motive of the people in charge, consider this: At the same moment that we are clearly goading other countries into conflict with each other and with us, we are, meaning the Biden administration is, degrading our ability to participate or prevail in those wars. Our defensive capabilities have never been weaker and that's not an accident. They did it. For example, the Central Intelligence Agency, whatever you think of it, we don't think much, kind of important to our country, certainly well-funded, here's a recent recruiting ad from the CIA.
NANCY PELOSI LANDS IN TAIWAN AMID CHINESE THREATS, MILITARY ACTIVITY
WOMAN: I'm a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cisgender millennial who's been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise. I am a walking declaration, a woman whose inflection does not rise at the end of her sentences, suggesting that a question has been asked. I used to struggle with imposter syndrome, but at 36, I refuse to internalize misguided, patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be.
Oh, you're intersectional with a generalized anxiety disorder? Come work in a critical federal agency. So, if you're running an ad like that, not only are you not serious, you are trying to degrade and hurt the ability of the United States to defend itself, to perpetuate itself, to remain the United States for our grandchildren. Let's stop lying about this, that's exactly what they're doing, and it's not just happening at CIA.
Nothing Joe Biden has done in the last year-and-a-half has made our armed forces better prepared to fight wars. Instead, it has been one calculated humiliation after another for the U.S. Armed Forces: vax mandates, anti-White ideology, sex changes, drag shows — whatever is necessary to telegraph to the United States military, "You are worthless. You are defending a country that does not deserve to be defended. Your traditions are disgusting. You're terrible."
That's the message. Here's the latest: The VA has decided to desecrate military cemeteries. That would be America's last remaining national shrine. Our military cemeteries desecrated with industrial wind turbines. One just went up at a Massachusetts National Cemetery. So, take three steps back. They are starting more wars while simultaneously making it harder for the United States to fight and prevail in those wars.
REPUBLICANS JOIN DEMOCRATS IN PRAISING BIDEN FOR DEATH OF AL QAEDA LEADER ZAWAHIRI
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said this morning that their army will "never sit by idly."
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, you know what, we have an army, too. It won't sit by idly either. Don't tell our leaders where they can go and where they can't go… I salute Nancy Pelosi for going there, for sending a message that Taiwan is an ally and just as we won't support Taiwan's independence and breaking away from this One China policy, we will not stand idly by if mainland China decides to invade Taiwan.
More childish posturing from people who have no idea what they're talking about and no skin in the game whatsoever. The truth is, we're not in a position to prosecute a successful war against China. We should be. We should have been making defensive, strategic moves for the past 20 years, on-shoring critical manufacturing, building up a strong military and, yes, a strong CIA, not degrading them with identity politics and other pointless lunacy that detracts from the mission, which is to protect the United States, but that's exactly what we've done. Republicans in Congress have allowed it to happen. Oh, more funding for you.
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So, whatever the motive here is, the effect is absolutely predictable. As with Afghanistan and Ukraine and COVID and pick nine other disasters when what we're watching right now finally ends, the U.S. is likely to be weaker and China is likely to be stronger. So, what does this mean? It means the beginning of the end of American influence in Asia, influence that we paid for with blood, and that's not an overstatement.
More than half a million American servicemen were killed or wounded in the Pacific theater in the Second World War and in Korea a few years after that and as a result of their sacrifice and wise diplomacy, countries like Japan and South Korea and Singapore and the Philippines have all been in our orbit, the Western orbit, America's orbit for most of the last century, and that's been a good thing for all involved. Not perfect, but better than the alternative. But we're about to see the alternative, thanks to whatever the motive — the lunacy of people like Pelosi and Biden.
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