From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Congressman Mike Gallagher On What Worries Him About China & Parenting

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Sean and Rachel are joined by the Chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI-8) as he discusses the importance of the committee and what worries him most about the CCP. Later, Congressman Gallagher shares what needs to be done to protect American allies in the South China Sea and prevent the CCP from stealing intellectual property and also asks Sean and Rachel for parenting advice for raising his young children. Follow Sean & Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife,

Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's great to be back at the kitchen table. And we have a good friend, a great guest, especially on this topic that has been consuming us, which is the rise of China. And particularly, you know, in this moment that we're in, but also, you know, I'm obsessed with Latin America. So let's just bring you Mike Gallagher, Congressman from Wisconsin, a friend of ours. Mike, you have been really on the forefront, probably more so than, you know, 99% of all your other members on the issue of China. Let's just start right off. Just to be clear, Mike chairs the select committee on China.

Yes. Number one, and you missed part of the intro, which is he comes not only from, you know, good member, good on China, but he comes from the greatest state in the union. Oh, I forgot. The greatest state in the union. And he used to come from a city that had a great football team, which has been a little bit rough this year, Mr. Gallagher. So with that intro, thanks for joining us at the Kitchen Temple, Mike. So as Rachel mentioned, let's talk about China, the work that the committee is doing. What are the goals of the committee? How do we get China under wraps?

How do we get a unified message from America, whether it's business, politicians, our electorate, to make sure we can fight back, push back, and actually win? Or better yet, what scares you the most about China? It's great to be with you. I intend to, what scares me the most is that I will disappoint you in this podcast

because I hold you both in such high regard. And I intend to exploit as much of the time as possible to get parenting advice from you because... Let's do that. Let's make sure we do that.

Let's ask some of my Gallagher's... Yeah, my three-year-old and one-year-old daughter... Vexing parenting problems. All right, we'll get to that. I'll find a way to like, I'll connect that to china somehow um well okay so the committee like why why establish the committee then speaker

of the house kevin mccarthy created it because i think for at least two reasons one he recognized and i would say most members of congress recognize that china or specifically the chinese communist party is our greatest national security threat. I mean, we have these debates about, do we call them a threat, a competitor, an enemy, an adversary? I mean, the point is, there is no more complex challenge on the world stage than how we deal with the Chinese Communist Party over the next 10 months and 10 years, if not 20, 30 years. And two, because this isn't just a military challenge, it's also an economic challenge, a technological challenge, an ideological challenge. You need a select

committee that can cut across committee jurisdictions to identify, okay, what are the things we can get done in this Congress? Where are the gaps in our current approach? And also, and finally, I would say a lot of what we do is communicating or trying to communicate to our colleagues in Congress and the American people why any of it matters, right? Like why someone in Wausau should care about the threat posed by the CCP or someone in Green Bay or take your pick. And that I, you know, I think though the views of China among Americans are hardening and becoming more hawkish, I don't think it's always obvious why this CCP is something

your average American could care about unless they've had a job destroyed because of China's predatory trade and economic practices, or they've been the victim of what's called transnational repression or their business has been hacked by Chinese cyber actors. So that's what we do on the committee. And I'll pause there, having forgot the second part of your question. I asked you what scares you the most. Well, I guess I'm most preoccupied, and maybe this reflects my bias coming into this debate, not as a China expert, but kind of as a military and intel guy. If you start to think through what the consequences of a war with China would look like, in other words, if deterrence in the Pacific breaks down in the way that it broke down in Europe, in Ukraine, in the way that it seems to be breaking down in the Middle East right now, I think it has the potential to make those two conflicts look timid in comparison and would be more comparable to something resembling a world war. I mean,

what China is doing in terms of their military buildup right now, it's unprecedented in modern history. You'd have to go back to World War II to see a similar military buildup. And what's unique about it is that we're dealing with a challenger that not only is this formidable of a military threat, but is by some metrics surpassed us economically. So if you combined all the Axis powers in World War II, even combined, they never represented more than 60% of America's GDP. China passed that mark in 2014. And again, by some metrics, has already surpassed us. And we're so thoroughly entangled with China. So I'm really most concerned about deterrence across the Taiwan Strait breaking down, because it would be incredibly past us and we're so thoroughly entangled with China. So I'm really most concerned about the

deterrence across the Taiwan Strait breaking down because it would be incredibly destructive economically and would cost thousands of lives. I mean, one U.S. carrier gets sunk by a Chinese missile. That's 5,000 lives. That's almost the number we lost in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So that concerns me the most. There are other aspects of it that concern me too. So you talked about the question of how do we deal with China, right? So again, I agree. It's bringing light to the issue, the real threat that China poses for the average American, they should understand it. And by the way, I'm impressed. I mean, this is not easy and you need a lot of kudos. I don't know that you get enough kudos on this, but you have kept the committee truly bipartisan. You guys work together,

Republicans and Democrats. This doesn't veer off in a conservative or liberal fashion. It's down the middle of this is an American threat, not a Republican or Democrat threat. But you talked about how do we deal with the Communist Chinese Party militarily, economically? And do you guys have an answer to that? Do you have a vision on that that you're working towards in the messaging or in the hearings? Or is it messaging, hearings, and we're going to develop an American strategy at some point down the road? Just quickly on the bipartisanship, I will say Speaker McCarthy set the tone for that. bipartisanship. I will say, Speaker McCarthy set the tone for that. And that was the message that he and Minority Leader Jeffries communicated, that to the extent possible, we want Congress

to speak with one voice on that, on this issue. Now, that being said, I'd be lying to you if I didn't admit there are serious differences between the parties on this issue to stand out, right? The relative prioritization of climate change, I think it's fair to say for Democrats and for the left, there are many who believe that climate change is our biggest national security issue. In fact, the Biden national security strategy effectively says that, whereas I think Republicans are united in if you care about the environment, they are the worst possible actor imaginable. And therefore, they shouldn't be looked to as a partner on climate change or any environmental issue. The second thing is, you know, in identity politics, there's this concern on the left that any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party amounts to anti-Asian racism. racism. And we've tried to be very careful in terms of the rhetoric we've used on the committee to ensure that that is just a ridiculous charge and no one can accuse us of McCarthyism. But those are kind of the two persistent differences. To your actual question, though, we've released

a report that was bipartisan, unanimous on the military competition, the 10 things we could do this Congress to enhance deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. We've done a report on the human rights aspect of the competition, particularly how to combat things like the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang, which, by the way, a lot of these Arab countries who are criticizing Israel right now are shockingly silent when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party's genocide of Muslims in China, which infuriates me. We are right now working through an economic and technological report that we will hope to have finalized by the end of this year. And then next year, we will continue

to investigate various aspects of this relationship. But we're going to focus on, A, getting these recommendations implemented into law, and then B taking a like a longer term look at this competition. So if these reports amount to the things we can do now in the 118th Congress, even a divided government, I think next year we could tee up the things that the next president could do over the next five years or 10 years or illuminate aspects of the competition, like the space race with China, China's influence in Latin America or issues related to synthetic biotech, which just haven't gotten enough attention that they deserve. OK, so I have so many things popping in my head based on what you say, and I do want to get to uh china and latin america because i think that's really important but so joe biden's going to meet with uh chairman g i i think next week right uh this is it this week and um and then governor nussel was just in china and there was

a very fascinating article i don't know if you saw saw it, Congressman, by someone on Substack called Balaji, where he basically said that Newsom going to China is sort of a foreshadowing or an early sign of what the Democrat plan is with China, that they realize that we are on the path potentially to World War Three, as you said, and that what they have decided is to basically have a pact with the Chinese, an economic pact, and that they also agree on issues of censorship, that they will partner on that as well. And that if that happens, the losers, of course, will be freedom loving Chinese people who want more freedom in China and and conservative Americans. And that's those are going to be the losers if the Democrats and the Chinese find some sort of of way to to avoid World War Three by integrating more. Talk to me about that theory and then what would be a different way of handling China versus that? Well, what's interesting, if you just assume, which is a safe assumption,

that Gavin Newsom desperately wants to be president. He does. And you just sort of analyze. Yeah, that's right. The politics of this. I don't understand. I actually thought the smarter move for him would be to position him. Again, I'm just talking about the political analysis, position themselves as tougher on China in the way that some members of my committee who may run for president in the future, who may run for president in the future, like Ro Khanna, have actually done and thereby tap into sort of the economic populist argument. And a lot of the Reagan Democrats and Trump Democrats, which voted for Trump in 2016 in Wisconsin, who think China's waging economic warfare against us. So the fact that he's chosen the opposite tack and he his trip to Beijing was I mean, it was egregious. I mean, I've been very critical of

Biden for his revival of diplomatic and economic engagement. But Newsom's trip made like Biden look like Bismarck with levels of realpolitik. I mean, it was just like fawning. He talked about how we can't we can't have a divorce with China and, you know, regurgitating all these talking points about we need to work with China on climate change. I mean, I can guarantee you Xi Jinping does not care about climate change commitments made at COP26, COP27. And so I've been very disappointed in Governor Newsom's approach. I also don't think it makes sense. Yeah, go ahead, please. Can I just say,

this is what I think happened, though. I think Gavin Newsom is like the face of the globalists, right? The globalists actually have spoken, you know, Bill Gates and others. They speak very fondly of Xi Jinping and they admire his ability to, you know, say that we're going to do this

and he doesn't have to wait for the democratic process to happen. Also, they have this fantasy that you talked about with climate change as well. So it seems like it's sort of like he's he doesn't want to appeal to the elites and saying, I can make this happen. Maybe that's a way to get, you know, donors and get more support. I don't know what that is, but it seems like that that that that seems like more like it. Yeah, there's certainly very powerful interests on Wall Street in corporate America and the C-suites of every major Fortune 500 company that want nothing more than to go back to the status quo pre-trump which is this idea that okay if we just more thoroughly uh economically engage with china and if we build more like disney theme parks in beijing and if like you know we can get more american movies into china then they will moderate their behavior and we will reduce the risk of conflict and war. Okay. The problem with that is that we

really tested that hypothesis for over 20 years. I mean, both parties did and it failed spectacularly because it misunderstands the nature of the regime we're dealing with. This Marxist-Leninist regime for whom party power is everything, regime survival is everything. The other interesting thing is people in that world, like in Newsom's world, in the Wall Street world, they tend to think the idea that Xi Jinping would actually invade Taiwan is outlandish. I had an asset manager, like one of the most famous in the world in my office saying the risk of Xi invading Taiwan is zero. And I thought, wow, okay. It's definitely a non-zero number. I don't know the precise probability, but like one of the lessons of Ukraine is that when dictators tell

you they're going to do a thing, even if it seems irrational from a Western perspective or like an economic perspective, you should take it seriously. And so this level of naivety has really dangerous consequences. And I do think satisfies the literal definition of insanity because we've tested it before and it's failed. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Some things require a lot of work to grow, like plants, hair, babies, or your savings. But when you run a business, you already have enough on your plate. Scotiabank's right-size savings for business account can help you grow your savings with ease. For a limited time, open a new account and earn up to 4.65% interest for the first six months. Before you know it, your savings will grow without you even noticing. And I look at that.

That's part of the problem. American elites that are doing business in China, to keep doing business in China, they get rich, their families get incredibly rich, all the while they sell out the homeland and America gets poor and loses this conflict. I want to talk to you about two things, Mike. Number one, you mentioned that there's still

a tremendous amount of intellectual property theft coming from China in the US. How do we deal with that? And also on the military side, which you're an expert on, I think I'm correct in this, the Chinese Navy is now bigger than the U.S. Navy. And if you start to see their military might grow, all of a sudden that emboldens a country to do things that they may otherwise not do if they do think there's another country there that may want to check them like the U.S. So what do we have to do militarily? What do we have to do

in regard to American technology to protect the advancements that we make with hard-earned investment dollars, taxes, revenue from companies that China just steals and gets for free? Well, first of all, I want to say I was worried when I served with you in Congress that your commitment to flannel and plaid was just an affectation that as soon as you left, you'd be wearing like an Armani shirt. But the fact that you're wearing it still tells me you are true blue Northwest, Northwoods, Wisconsin. This is a $24 Wrangler shirt, Mike Gallagher. I love it, man. There you have it.

My view is if I cannot purchase it at Costco for less than $30, it does not deserve to be in my closet. This was online. Online purchase, $24. Free shipping, too. Made in China. Probably. Probably.

Well played. I'll do know that. Probably. Yeah, probably. Probably. Well played. Bring it back to South. Well played. So I'll do military first, then IP. So yes, they have, by ship count, they have the biggest, technically they have the three biggest navies in the world, if you count their maritime militia and their Coast Guard. Now, when you say this, the Navy will say, okay, but our Navy is better.

It has more capability, which is true. Like our average sailor is more experienced. Our ships are more capable. But two things, they're like latest destroyers are very advanced. They're Lu Yang's or Renhai's. And so they're they're closing the capability gap. And then secondly, the actual numbers matter. The old saying is at some point, quantity has a quality all of its

own. If you examine like the last 2000 years of naval battles, it's very rare for a numerically inferior, though technically superior Navy to beat a Navy that has more ships. And oh, by the way, our Navy, though great, hasn't fought a major naval battle since World War II. So we don't know how good we are at that type of engagement right now. How do we catch up? Well, we need a bigger Navy. Trump promised a 355 ship Navy. We got to get there. Our shipbuilding industrial base is brittle. It's broken. If we had a consistent demand signal from the Pentagon, I think we could fix that. We'd start to build two frigates a year in Wisconsin, four total in a second shipyard. We need 2.5 Virginia class subs a year, yada, yada, yada, massive shipbuilding investment.

But really, we need long range precision fires. We need to do to them what they've done to us, which is for a relatively small amount of money. They built a lot of rockets and missiles that can sink our ships. Now that we're no longer bound by something called the INF Treaty, which Trump got out of, it was a good move. We should be surging these types of long-range precision fires to the Pacific to be able to sink their entire Navy if they made a move against Taiwan. And are we? Are we not doing that?

Interestingly, even though we've seen how fragile and insufficient our munitions industrial bases after the Ukraine fiasco, we still haven't moved to maximum production rates of things like long range anti-ship missile. Why not? There is resistance to things. The Secretary of Defense has not made the case personally and relegated it to lower levels, which is just it's not going to happen. The Pentagon bureaucracy is so bad that unless the secretary himself makes a priority, things don't change. And two, in Congress, as you know, the appropriators have a lot of power. The appropriators don't like providing multi-year funding for certain things, but you really need multi-year appropriations in order to turbocharge the production of these things. And we have shortages of things like the energetics, which are the explosives and pyrotechnics and propellants that we put into our missile systems. In some, China has A, stole the technology we developed at China Lake in California, and B, we're dependent on China for the production of some of these things, which is totally crazy. Totally crazy. Quickly on IP,

my view is that if it continues, and the costs are on the order of $300 billion a year to us, and if China continues not to abide by the commitments it made when we let them into the WTO and gave them permanent normal trade relations, we should revoke PNTR and modernize our tariff structure in the process to impose real penalties on them because the present situation is absurd and has real costs. Okay. Talk to me about Latin America. I've been so worried. And also, it's not just that China's in Latin America, but that our State Department and our administration is actively hurting and pushing away pro-American administrations and regimes in Latin America and cropping up the ones that are aligning themselves with China makes like zero sense.

So what concerns you about their takeover of minerals and forts and everything else? Just really, you say Brazil would be one? Brazil. But there are others. There was Guyana. There was also in Paraguay. There's just all over, even in Central time, they're they're also pro China. Also, the other thing I heard from other from from people involved in commerce, Americans involved in commerce say our State Department is doing nothing to advance commerce, which would be a

great thing between America and Latin America. And instead, all they care about is abortion, LGBTQ and pushing all this other stuff, which actually a lot of those countries don't want. Which, by the way, like, let's say LGBTQ issues is your main thing. Like China is not great on that. China is terrible. OK, it's one of those or any of those. Yeah, exactly. The Chinese Communist Party is not tolerant on those issues at all. So in Latin America, well, one like a broad observation, I just tend to think like, while the Middle East gets a lot of attention and now the Indo-Pacific gets a lot of attention, at least in like the national security community, like in Congress and the think tank world, Latin America has always not gotten as we've taken it for granted, right? Like we think the

Monroe Doctrine still exists. You know, we're fortunate in that we have like oceans on both sides of our country. We've had, you know, neighbors that while some have problems, i.e. Mexico, and we have a problem with our southern border are like relatively, the Chinese Communist Party is on a path to turn the Monroe Doctrine into the Mao Doctrine, to surpass the United States as the regional power in Latin America. You mentioned Brazil. China has become the top trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru. It's the second largest trading partner for many others. It's going around to all these countries and forcing them via economic coercion to eliminate their recognition of Taiwan. I think Paraguay and the Dominican Republic maybe are the only ones left in the region. I would argue, and this is Sean's area of expertise, that they're trying to replace the dollar as the global currency. And they've made various deals in the region

with that in mind. They're trying to gain control of critical infrastructure, ports in particular. There's one Chinese company, ZPMC, which has like 90% market share for all the smart cranes around the world. And relatedly, they're trying to become the dominant player in the Panama Canal, bypassing the United States.

The final thing I'd say, since you mentioned some of these regimes that the administration is like cozying up to right now, I think a lot of that is related to just how stupid and counterproductive our energy policy is right now. You know, we saw early on in the Biden administration, this ridiculous effort to wage war on American domestic energy production, while simultaneously encouraging Venezuela to increase its energy production. So if we don't have a sensible energy policy, it completely complicates our ability to make sense of Latin America and other areas of the world. And at times, I've looked at this administration's energy policy and thought, Xi Jinping himself couldn't

design a better energy policy to inhibit America and allow China to expand its influence. 100%. By the way, they're colonizing Latin America like they've done to Africa. And it's happening before our eyes and nobody's sounding the alarm other than you and a few others. Okay, you have a couple minutes left. Can I ask a parenting question? Yes, that. A couple of minutes left. Okay. So I want to know. Yes. That's what I thought it would be really fun. Okay. Okay. Go, go, go. It does come, it does come back to Joe Biden. You're going to give us two more minutes. Joe Biden. If you have a president that loves their country, that wants their country to succeed, advance, be prosperous, have more jobs. And they see China. I mean, anyone can look at China and see China as a threat. And I look at what Joe

Biden's doing. He's compromised, isn't he? This guy doesn't have my back. He doesn't have my neighbor's back. And that troubles me. And I wonder if you don't want to talk about, you know, all of the investigations and as Rachel mentioned, compromised. Is he compromised? Is that why? I don't have any other explanation as to why he's not stronger on China than but for he is compromised. Well, I think there's two other things that are, regardless of where you think the status of Comer's investigation. And Comer, I think, deserves credit for unearthing a lot of things that we didn't know two years ago. And now it's still there's more to come in terms of the latest subpoenas he unearthed. And Andy McCarthy had a good National Review article kind of like summarizing the whole thing. One, Biden just had like throughout his whole career

to quote the former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, have been wrong on every major foreign policy issue. So he just has bad judgment on foreign policy. That was not the language he actually used. He was a little more forceful in the language. But yes, that was a sentiment. This is a Catholic podcast, I assume. I didn't want to have to go afterwards. Well, yeah, like he's the only guy who argues against like killing bin Laden, you know, et cetera, et cetera. The list is very long.

And then he's just he's weak, right? He's a weak commander in chief. It gives me no joy to say this, by the way, for all the reasons you lay out. But and part of that, I have to say, is just his age. Right. Biden, like Biden is is so old. He's not even a boomer. He's he's a member of the silent generation. Like he is older than the People's Republic of China itself. And I'm sorry, like this is the most demanding job in the world. And he's just not up for it. I mean, I like I know that's not compromised in your view. I don't I honestly don't know the answer to that question right now. I do think the the idea the the payments lining up, like where it's precisely is 10%. He's like a glaring thing. You know, clearly his son is compromised. Right. Like in a myriad of ways. I'm not yet ready to say given the investigations ongoing that what laws were broken. But but if you're trying to protect your son, if you're trying to protect your son, it's one of the swampiest like families in American politics. Right. I mean, it's a very swampy town. They are the swampiest of the swamp. I would I sort of said, like, if if they if the things they did weren't illegal, they should be illegal. Right. Like this type of influence peddling should not be allowed. Right. Like and clearly Hunter Biden was trading off of his relationship with his father. There's no other logical explanation for for what, like, you know, for for him getting on the board of companies or getting a massive payment from China. So wait, I get it. Yeah. You laid out you laid out such such, you know, so much concern over China that it's just we shouldn't even have to ask these questions about our commander, Gene, because then we're just not, we don't know if what he's doing is on the up and up. Okay, let's talk about

your most vexing. First of all, what's the biggest change for you as you've had kids? Because we knew you before kids, and now we know you after. What has been the biggest sort of thing you didn't expect? I think we knew you before marriage. Oh, yeah.

No, no, no. We knew you when you were single. I was single for three or four years. You were like the most eligible bachelor in Washington, D.C. Which is not great. You can't really date normally, you know? Like, it's a microscope. It was just such a weird existence.

Maybe you heard on the hill. Yeah. Mike Gallagher was on it. microscope it was just such a weird existence um maybe you heard on the hill yeah trying to talk to a lady at a bar yeah that's not great yeah has no game newsflash yeah yeah uh well i i get i mean the the most obvious thing is true. Like, you know, just being away from your family, particularly with young kids, it's incredibly hard. And my wife, God bless her. Like, you know, I every week when I leave, she then has to deal with these little kids. And if I say, well, Sean and Rachel had like 20 kids and they did it, then I just make the situation worse. But, you know, it's interesting to me right now what I'm grappling with is my oldest is only three. So she just started preschool. But I'm like the level of involvement I need to have in their education, just given everything we know about like the the school system and like that concerns me. And I don't know what the

precise question is, but how did you guys navigate that? Because you can't outsource your child's formation and education to your school, even if it's a great school. And so that's kind of like what I'm struggling with, like how to be present and particular, like play a more active role in their education. That makes sense. Well, it was a journey for us and I, and we made some mistakes. We always say the best part about having nine kids is that you get a lot of do-overs. And so I guess my advice to you very clearly, I'm going to be very direct because we're friends is, you know,

as soon as you can find a classical school, what Christian or Catholic classical school do it wherever you have to move to be close to one, do it. We're finally in one and it is a game changer. And so I do think that eventually your children will be in a school for eight hours and it is very formative. And I mean, unless you're homeschooling, which I think is a great option as well. But if you're going to send them to school, make sure that you they that that school is not fighting you on your values that because they your kids will be influenced by what happens there. So and I would say and I made this I make this comment a lot. I was in Congress and you have a way better spot than I ever had.

I mean, a lot of power. And you have a great voice to talk about what's happening with the U.S. and China. And it's a wonderful spot. But it's really hard, as you'd probably acknowledge, to get things done, to get people to agree, to get something through the Senate, to have the president sign it. And I find that the greatest work that I can do, the most effective work I can do is raise good kids. And if I do that and you do that and all these conservatives do that, we save America. But if we turn them over to these Marxists in the school system, we lose. And just one point, I'm glad you mentioned that you leave, because I think that a lot of people don't look at the member of Congress as hard workers and

it's this fluffy job. And I don't think they realize that you leave on Monday or Tuesday, you're back on Friday, you're gone on the weekend doing parades or fairs or dairy breakfast. You're gone a lot and you don't get to be home with your kids for long periods of time. And it really is a sacrifice and the whole family does it. Your wife your wife sacrifices, she picks up the, the, um, the baton when you're gone. I would say though, it's probably easier when they're younger to, to take this time away. I think when they start getting a little bit older, that gets to be more challenging. So I think you're in a money spot of, if you're going to do it with kids,

um, now is the time to do it. And I just just say we know older guys in congress that are kids are older um that actually is a pretty good deal young young kids you mean when they're out of the house yeah yeah well that would be like you know there's a lot of interesting things that like she could take part in if we were in a different period of our life you know what i mean which yeah we can't you know it's interesting a quick thought on homeschooling me i i didn't, I grew up, I just went to Catholic school. Homeschooling was this like totally foreign thing to me. And I thought like, well, you can't homeschool. You don't get to, you know, meet kids and play sports. And now post pandemic, like I'm so much more sympathetic to it than I ever was. And I, I, though I'm not sure we'll go that direction. I can totally see why

people do it. It's not for everybody. I that direction, I can totally see why people do it. It's not for everybody. I always say that I'd be like the homeschool mom. Do you remember those stories where they drowned their kids? But both of my oldest, my two oldest daughters have all said that they want to homeschool. And I'm super proud. And one of our daughters is actually studying classical education. And Mike, we were in Wausau, as you know, and sent our kids to Catholic school.

And we thought it was better than the public school. And we came to New Jersey, sadly, and I miss my Wisconsin all the time. But we found the most amazing Catholic school. We didn't know what we had in Wisconsin until we got here. And we're like, this is actually how it's done. And I don't know what you guys have in the Green Bay area, but I would agree with Rachel. That is so important. And again, does pre-K matter?

Does kindergarten matter? But you start to get into, I mean, they're hitting our kids really young on climate change and the gender stuff at first, second, third grade, especially if they're in public school. I know we're out of time. And sometimes in Catholic school. Yeah. The other thing that drives me crazy is like, I feel like these kids are all,

like, I like the idea of the classical school, eight hours, the structure. But the thing that is weird to me is like, all the extracurriculars, I feel like have gotten

out of control. Like, these kids are so overscheduled. Totally. With all these activities. And I'm like, you need some time just to like,

go in the woods and like, 100%. You know, I don't know. I'm with you. some time just to like go in the woods 100% you know I'm with you we've done podcasts on this Mike we've done we've honestly

I literally there's too much stuff going on I'm like you know what you're not that talented I see your kids do the log rolling your Your kids can do the log rolling thing. That was pretty impressive. Sports are important and there's team building, there's individual accomplishments. There's a lot of really wonderful things,

but some of these kids are like, they're playing hockey year round or they're playing lacrosse year round or soccer. I'm like, your kid's not going anywhere. Dinner time is way more important. Dinner time together. And that's the last thing I would say is make sure you make as much time, even if it's just Saturday and Sunday or just Sunday, but dinner time is. Dad's always home on Sunday. He might be gone on Saturday and Monday, but Sunday he's home. But Mike Gallagher, listen, we appreciate you staying like eight minutes longer

than you were supposed to. Oh, my gosh. He's late. That's the way cheering you longer than you were supposed to. Oh my gosh. She's late. Late for some lunch. I'm cheering you're missing right now. Yeah. Blame Rachel. She has broad shoulders,

broader than mine. You're doing such great work. We're so proud of you. Great to talk to you guys. Appreciate it. Take it easy. Take care. Bye.

We'll have more of this conversation after this. So listen, Rachel, great conversation. And you know what? I think that people don't always see, he's on Fox quite a bit.

He's a funny guy, a really nice guy. So when I was, we were both in Congress together, we would do these events where our districts would cross or we'd be in different places where we'd both come in.

Always one of the funniest speakers when he's, you know, when he's addressing a crowd. And then he's always very serious and very smart, very knowledgeable. But he's a really well-rounded, good guy. And you know what? I'm happy that he's the head of the China Select Committee because he has the military background. background. He's worked in Congress before. He was a member of Congress. That all matters to be successful. And again, the effort to make this bipartisan is really important. You can't make China a partisan issue. It truly is an American issue. Yeah, it's interesting how he sees those Democrats on the committee who do care about it. And then you look at Joe Biden, you look at Governor Newsom, you look at a lot, a lot of other ones who say, you know what? The corporate pool, like you said, so glad you brought up the amount of money.

So it seems like, oh, are these corporations just being, you know, and are these corporate heads just being so good natured that they do think that China or are they wanting to believe this? think that China, or are they wanting to believe this because they're making so much money and they can't stand the idea of decoupling from China because that means the gravy train stops. And I think- Because instead of making 15, 25 million a year, they might make 10 million a year or 8 million a year. It's like, really? You're selling your country out. You're not rich enough? You're selling your country out. You're not rich enough. Right. Yeah.

So, I mean, I think he has very clear view of what's happening. God knows what kind of information he has. You know, Sean, there's one other thing that this weekend we had Maria Bartiromo on. You and I have talked a lot about the 24,000 that we know of, Chinese citizens that we know of that have come across the southern border. And there's more, they said, coming across the southern border and there's more they said coming from the northern border we don't even know how many and she said to me um on this was when she was on our show at the end of the show on Sunday and she said you know Rachel there oh you can't just leave China like you will only go with permission to to go and she's like why are they here who's directing them are they she was saying that if there's a possibility that they're here and they're awaiting orders of what

has to happen you know um you know what what what the chinese communist government wants them to do we don't know why they're here. In Maine, they have discovered these Chinese that are running these pot farms, and it's like a mafia thing. And I had on another guest, and he's a former DEA agent, one of the ones who said that the fentanyl crisis that we're dealing with right now is absolutely like the cartels are making money. China's not just doing it for money. They understand that it's actually weakening our country. And the same thing with the pot, that this pot is laced with all kinds of other chemicals. Those chemicals come from China.

They're involved. And he said the number of psychotic episodes that young people or anyone who's doing the increase of drug use in our country and marijuana is that gateway drug. He said it's absolutely meant to take down our country. You know, Mike mentioned climate change and the Biden administration has said this numerous times that they think that climate change is the number one threat that America faces and the world faces. And if you look at China, they might give lip service. They might play along. Or they'll make money from the products.

They don't leave that for a second. And so if you actually care about the climate, you should care about American dominance, American strength. care about American dominance, America's American strength, because we do things with better rules, better regulations, still too many regulations, no doubt, but we still have good rules and regulations. And to think that you would outsource if we lose this conflict with China, outsource it to China, who only cares about power and control. that's bad for the climate. And that's not a complicated thought, that these guys don't think through the fact that the climates were, if you believe, by the way, I think that a lot of this is just a hoax. But if you do believe it, you'd go, well, no,

America has to win the struggle with China, but instead they want to sell our soul to China. So I think it's not only climate change because climate change always comes back to this globalist Marxist movement. It comes to a movement of control. And so I think they use climate change, not for the climate, but they use it to get us closer to the rules, regulations. And to make us dependent on them, Sean. I mean, we're dependent on China. Sean. The surveillance of China. That's right. So if you go to EV batteries and the components inside the EV battery, the minerals, those things are all China. We have to get them from China. So they own most of the mines, but then almost all of the refining of the critical minerals happens in China.

It's ridiculous. By the way, you mentioned what they're doing in the U.S. We did the story, gosh, it must have been like six months ago on Flock Business, the bottom line with Dagon and Duffy, which if you don't watch it, you should. 6 p.m. Eastern. 6 p.m. Eastern, thank you.

But there was a secret lab. I think it was in California. Yes, there were several of them, Sean. And we built like in a small town and they stumbled upon this building that had some vents coming out and someone was like, what's going on in there?

And so the law enforcement went, knocked on the door and they opened it up. And it was like a complete underground Chinese lab run by all Chinese individuals. A couple of days later, when they came back with search warrants, like almost the whole place had been cleared out and everybody evaporated into the fabric of America.

So we have no idea what they're doing in this country. Mike Gallagher was at the forefront of those police, the Chinese police stations, you remember? Yes. Do you remember that? We could have asked you about that. But yeah, there were secret police stations so that the Chinese could monitor their citizens

that are probably those 24,000 that we were talking about and many more that are here. But there has been an 8,000 percent increase in Chinese coming across the southern border since Joe Biden's been in office. That is it's just so mind boggling. Like, I can't believe it. And again, it's these are not theygling. Like, I can't believe it. And again, it's, these are not, they're not complicated solutions. Secure the border. Let's deport people who have come in illegally. Let's rebuild American military.

He was, he's right. He said, I think his phraseology was our ability to, our infrastructure to build ships is fragile or brittle. And he's right. So you need to have long-term funding so we can actually build ships in America, because what you don't want is to have to rely on Europe or the Chinese to build American ships. We need to make them here. And so they need to have orders that last year over year, longer-term funding. And it's good for American strength and American deterrence. And you have

an administration that won't build up our military, that our munitions are too low, that we actually have to get, it said, well, as they didn't say rocket fuel, but in essence, the rocket fuel to launch our missiles. We get that from China. It was our technology that they stole from us, and now we buy it from them. All of these things make you go, what do we pay leaders for? What are they doing? So scary. Again, when you care about, you know, genders and transitions and being woke, and we write in American history in the military or in the Pentagon, this is the kind of garbage

that you get that doesn't protect the homeland. And we spend a lot of money in Texas to have them think through to protect the homeland, and they're not doing it. Why was Mike so guarded about saying, I mean, to me, it's so obvious that Joe Biden's compromised. Ron Johnson has said his policy, and he had a list of five or six different China policies that make no sense if you love America, that they only make sense if you're trying to appease the Chinese because you're compromised. I mean, I get that he's, you know, I don't know. No, I think it's pretty simple. So I think there's a lot of smoke. We can speculate

that Joe Biden is compromised. But could it just be he has really bad policies? He's really kind of stupid. He does mess everything up and he has a history of getting everything wrong. And so I think Mike is saying, hey, it looks like this could be, but he's going to wait for all the evidence to come out. And he pointed out-

But if your son is compromised, he said Hunter is compromised. The question is, we're starting to see these 10% payments. Are there more of that? It's a joke. But if your child is compromised, and you're the president, you're compromised. Because we have a natural instinct to protect our

children. And if nothing else, you can see that he's keeping Hunter very, very close. Oh, and actually living in the White House. With cocaine. With cocaine. I was going to say the same thing. You think of lice. If you don't know whose cocaine it was, that investigation

slid to the wayside. America just forgot about the cocaine investigation or where it came from. The coke head in the White House. Nothing to see here. I like Mike too. He makes Wisconsin proud. He's a good member of Congress who's thoughtful and doing the hard work.

Listen, thank you all. Thanks to Mike Gallagher. He's a good member of Congress who's thoughtful and doing the hard work. So, listen, thank you all. Thanks to Mike Gallagher. Thank you all for joining us at the kitchen table. We love this conversation. Good American leaders joining us. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe,

wherever you get your podcasts. You can always find us at foxnewspodcast.com. Please subscribe. Get a notice when we drop Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays. You can always find us new episodes.

Until next time, thank you for joining us. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.

And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Jason and the House, ad-free on the Amazon Music app.