Morning Wire - China’s Growing Revolt | 11.29.22

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Chinese protests gain momentum, New York City Council moves forward with a bill prohibiting landlords from conducting tenant background checks, and various media outlets demand the charges against Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, be dropped. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.  Get 10% off your first order or Coffee Club subscription with code WIRE: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/   Use Promo Code 'WIRE' for 10% off your Will: https://www.epicwill.com/   Use code "WIRE" at checkout and save 70% off their Most Popular Package: https://genucel.com/wire Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hong Kong chide! CGB! Cigp! Uprisings in China intensify over the communist regime's draconian and even deadly zero COVID policy. What sparked the protest movement? And will it hold up amid the swift and severe government response? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, November 29th, and this is Morning Wire.

The New York City Council is moving forward with a controversial bill that we'll will bar landlords from performing criminal background checks on potential tenants. People with children want to know who their tenants are. And WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested and charged under the Espionage Act back in 2019. So why is the New York Times now calling on the Biden administration to drop the charges against him? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Do you have a coffee lover on your holiday shopping list?

Well, Black Rifle has all the best brewing gear, thermoses, mugs and apparel designed for folks who love country and coffee. Right now you can go to black rifle coffee coffee.com and use promo code wire for 10% off coffee merchandise, apparel, or when you sign up for a coffee club subscription. Imagine the joy of a pre-scheduled coffee delivery, your favorite roast at your door when you need them. It's a gift that keeps on giving. Go to black rifle coffee.com with promo code wire for 10% off black rifle coffee supporting veterans and America's coffee. Mass protests continue in China where citizens are rejecting draconian lockdown. policies. Here to cover the protests is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta Jocamo. So Amanda, we have

really significant, some people are saying historic developments happening in several cities across China. What's going on right now? Hi, Georgia. Yeah, things are really escalating across China, especially in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhan. But these are being called the biggest demonstrations against the government since Tiananmen Square. Leaked videos and foreign news coverage show police pepper spraying and beating protesters. Protesters are calling for freedom. They want the end to lockdowns, basic human rights, and they're specifically calling for President Xi Jinping to step down, which is very significant here.

As we witnessed early in the pandemic, China's draconian zero COVID policies are preventing Chinese citizens from going to work, from buying food, from accessing hospitals, which has been fatal. People are being arrested for not wearing masks and continue to be sent to quarantine camps. Some videos even show Chinese authorities welding door shut to lock people inside their homes. Now, why are these protests happening now after years of these policies? Was there something that specifically triggered it? Well, there have been sporadic protests for several weeks now,

but a fire on Thursday at a residential high rise in the city called Arumchi seems to have been a catalyst for nationwide demonstrations. According to the Chinese government, 10 people died in the fire, but many people suspect that number is far higher. Video seems to show people inside the building screaming to, quote, open the door and save us. And just a note here, Arumchi is known to be a predominantly weaker area, although many residents are also Han Chinese. After that fire, there was a candlelight vigil outside the high rise that turned into a protest, which led to more protests elsewhere in the country. We spoke to Stephen Yates, former deputy national security advisor during the Bush presidency about this.

Here's what he had to say. Well, I think it's an accumulation of things. As often happens, the Chinese people have faced pretty incredible enforcement of these lockdowns. It's more from that sort of horrific prison life existence to people getting physically beaten ruthlessly in the streets. And I think the most combustible event was the video footage of a family being burnt alive. because they were locked inside their domicile due to the shutdown. And I think that was just one of those catalytic events that was seen as a last draw. Now, have Chinese authorities responded at all to these protests?

Right now, it looks like they're focused on cracking down and containing the protests. Videos are showing beatings, arrests, and the deployment of pepper spray. There was even a reporter from the BBC who was assaulted by police while covering the protests on Sunday. There's some really nasty video of that. There's also been an effort to censor protest footage from leaking online. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok, they're banned in the country. But Chinese citizens have found some clever ways to circumvent those sensors. About two weeks ago, the airdrop function on iPhones, that was curb because people were using it to share information.

And censorship itself is actually a major theme in these protests, as you might imagine. A major symbol of the protest is a blank sheet of paper. paper, which represents silence. In a lot of these videos, you can see protesters holding up blank sheets of paper, including at the candlelight vigil outside the apartment building. The government has been extremely vigilant about suppressing hashtags associated with the protests, so the workaround has been posting these blank squares. Life has become increasingly tough in China over the past few years. The economic growth has slowed unemployment is spiking, especially with young people and the country's housing market is in serious crisis. And with the rise of the

internet, Chinese citizens are increasingly aware of the freedoms people have in other countries. But it remains to be seen whether this round of protests will achieve any major change. Right. Well, we're going to continue to monitor this. Amanda, thanks for reporting. Yeah, my pleasure. That was Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta Jocamo. Coming up, the New York Times calls on the Biden administration to forgive Julian Assange. There's only two certainties in life. That's death and taxes. Take care of the death part now to save your family on the taxes part later. Go to Epicwill.com and use promo code wire to save 10% on your comprehensive will package.

For just $119, you get it all. Last will and testament, living will, health care power of attorney, and financial power of attorney. Sounds like a lot, but here's the great part. You can set it up in as little as five minutes. Protect your family and their future. That's epicwill.com and use promo code of wire. A new bill proposed in New York City would prohibit most landlords from performing criminal background checks on potential tenants. A city council committee is set to move forward on the measure in spite of concerns from those opposed to the legislation that it poses a danger for families in the city. Here to discuss as columnist David Marcus. Hey, Dave.

So what exactly would this law change and who would it apply to? Morning. So basically, private landlords would no longer be able to do criminal background checks on people, applying for apartments. Currently, they're free to do so, you know, in addition to things like credit score checks or proof of income. It does not interestingly apply to city-run housing projects, which serve about 350,000 of the city's roughly five or six million renters or to people who are just renting a single room. But it's going to impact a vast majority of units. So it's a very significant change, and it's a serious limitation for landlords. Now, critics of the measure have

been very vocal in their opposition, especially as it comes amid a general rise in crime in the city. What are their complaints here? But the big one is safety, especially at a time when there's so much recidivism and also very lax bail laws. Landlords and other tenants, of course, may want to know if a hardened criminal is moving it upstairs. But more broadly, it's also a question of the freedom that a property owner should have to decide what to do with their own property. A lot of units in Gotham are owned and operated by big management companies. But many are just houses or buildings owned by private individuals who want a measure of direct control.

Yeah. Now, people who get out of prison obviously do need places to live. Is there a concern that without this new law, they won't be able to? What problem is this actually meant to fix? I'm not sure, to be honest. This is the City Council Committee on Civil Rights, so they seem to want to promote equality for the formerly incarcerated. But, I mean, it's not clear that such folks aren't able to secure housing.

Obviously, thousands and thousands already do. The point opponents are trying to make is that it should be up to the owner. Could there be enough opposition in the public and on the council to actually stop this bill? Or is it pretty much a done deal? I think it's a done deal. There's a handful of Republicans on the city council and a few more moderate Democrats. But the vast majority of the body is basically to the left of the Manhattan's Tea Party. So, I mean, it'll probably pass.

And again, those safety concerns are real. This is more about just a failure to read the room. Even Mayor Eric Adams, who ran as a tough on crime guy, seems on board with the law. And I really do think it's going to leave a lot of people here just scratching their heads. Yeah, probably so. Dave, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wire contributor, David Marcus.

On Monday, the New York Times, along with four major European news outlets, published a letter in support of Julian Assange, who has been held without trial since 2019 in London, calling on the U.S. government to drop charges against the founder of WikiLeaks. Here with more is Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips. So Cabot, for those unfamiliar with Assange and the charges against him, can you just give us a background? Of course.

So Julian Assange is the Australian publisher who founded the site Wikileaks, which, among other things, allowed whistleblowers and leakers a platform to share often top secret information from inside government institutions around the world. Remember, they were behind the 2016 DNC email leaks that showed the party's leadership was trying to ensure Hillary Clinton won the party nomination. Right. So in 2010, Assange and WikiLeaks started publishing a series of leaked archives that featured classified diplomatic cables and military documents.

Those leaks contained decades' worth of communication between diplomats and the U.S. State Department and offered unprecedented insight into American espionage and diplomatial. efforts around the globe. They also showed that our government had committed serious war crimes in the Middle East and that our military had misled the public about the number of civilian casualties during the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. Essentially, it was a huge embarrassment for the United States. Now, back in 2010, Assange was seen as sort of an icon among the anti-war crowd because he was exposing wrongdoing by the U.S. government, although many in that crowd later turned on him when he released information about Hillary Clinton several years later.

At the time, Assange reached agreements with five outlets to begin publishing many of the confidential cables that he'd uncovered in a series of articles starting in 2010. And while the Obama administration did at the time prosecute Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who was responsible for giving the documents to WikiLeaks, they declined to charge Assange himself. But in 2019, the Justice Department under President Trump reversed course and accused him of violating the Espionage Act, along with other crimes related to the leak. Shortly after the charges were made official, Assange was arrested as part of that American warrant in 2019. Right. And just to clarify, Assange was living in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years. Correct. He could not leave the premises without being arrested. So a lot of people sort of likened it to time served. But he's actually been in prison for three years now awaiting trial. Keep in mind, if convicted, he faces up to 175 years in prison. But because of legal challenges to his extradition, he's still yet.

to face trial in the U.S., but that could happen soon. Okay, and now suddenly the Times and some other outlets have come out in support of him. Why now? Well, earlier this month, the Justice Department released new guidelines that formally prevent the government from forcing reporters to reveal their sources and expand protections for journalists. Those new rules mean that if the case against Assange went forward, the DOJ would presumably have to go after the New York Times as well, which obviously puts them in a bind. On Monday, they, along with four large news outlets in Europe, including The Guardian in England, published an open letter calling on the U.S. to end their pursuit of charges against him.

They say his prosecution, quote, sets a dangerous president and threatens to undermine America's First Amendment and the freedom of the press. The letter also points out that the Espionage Act has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster of information. It ends by claiming that disclosing sensitive information is a key part of what journalists are meant to do, even if that information is meant to do. even if that information is meant to be confidential. Now, you touched on this earlier, but Assange has been controversial for years. What's the reaction been to this? Well, for obvious reasons, Assange has become quite the polarizing figure.

Critics say that he belongs in jail because he released top secret information that could have docks undercover agents and put American lives at risk. They view the issue as being less about freedom of information and more about national security. But there are plenty of people who view Assange as a hero and say that we have a right to know

if our government is lying to us, and in this case, covering up war crimes. So now the question becomes whether he'll be extradited to the U.S. and what happens if and when he is. All right. Well, we will continue to monitor. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. And Cabot, happy birthday.

Oh, thank you so much. I should get some credit for that. John, you're missing for me? Well, not, Cabot. Happy birthday. That was Daily Wire Senior Editor, Cabot Phillips. Other stories were tracking this week. A federal lawsuit was filed Monday by the mother of a 10th,

10-year-old girl who was killed in the Uvaldi school shooting. The lawsuit is against the police, the school district, and the maker of the gun used by the shooter. Officials in Cochise County, Arizona, refused to certify the 2022 election Monday, despite threats of legal action from state election officials. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know. Look your best at the Christmas party this year with GenuSelle skin care.

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