The Daily Signal - Rep. Michael McCaul Assesses Threat China, Russia Pose to US

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

What danger does China actually pose to America? How closely are China and Russia working together? Is the Biden administration doing enough to prepare for foreign policy threats?  America and China are in a “global competition for economic and military dominance,” says Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.  If America does not take strategic action now, our children will be the ones bearing the burden of that tension between China and America, the Texas lawmaker says.  McCaul, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss how Russia and China view America right now, and how the U.S. can take steps to prepare for international threats.  We also cover these stories: President Joe Biden outlines additional steps the U.S. could take as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues. NATO calls on China to stop supporting Russian "war efforts" in Ukraine and instead use its "significant influence" to push for peace. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs legislation forcing insurance companies to pick up more of the costs of abortions. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, March 25th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Doug Blair. What danger does China actually pose to America? And how closely are China and Russia working together? According to Representative Michael McCall, if America does not take strategic action now, our children will be the ones bearing the burden

of the tension between China and America. McCall joins our colleague, Virginia Allen, to discuss how Russia and China view America right now and how the U.S. can take steps to prepare for international threats. But before we get to Virginia's conversation with Representative McCall, let's hit our top news stories of today. President Joe Biden outlined additional steps the U.S. would take as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues. Speaking from Brussels, where he is meeting with other NATO leaders, Biden announced humanitarian assistance and that the U.S. would take Ukrainian refugees via C-SPAN. And today I'm announcing the United States are prepared to commit more than one day.

billion dollars in humanitarian assistance to help get relief to millions of Ukrainians affected by the war in Ukraine. Many Ukrainian refugees will wish to stay in Europe closer to their homes. But we also will welcome 100,000 Ukrainians to the United States with a focus on reuniting families. The president also announced new sanctions. We're also announcing new sanctions of more than 400 individuals and entities aligned with an alignment with the European Union. More than 300 members of the Duma, oligarchs, and Russian defense companies that fuel the Russian war machine. And Biden spoke about what would occur if Russia used chemical weapons against the Ukrainians.

So you've warned about the real threat of chemical weapons being used. Have you gathered specific intelligence that suggests that President Putin is deployed these weapons, move within the position or considering their use? And would the U.S. or NATO respond with military action if he did use chemical weapons? You know, on the first question, I can't answer that. I'm not going to give you intelligence data, number one. Number two, we would respond. We would respond if he uses it. The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use. In response to a question from a reporter, Biden said that he thought Russia should be kicked out of the G20. NATO is asking China to break with Russia.

On Thursday, the defensive alliance formally called on China to stop supporting Russian war efforts in Ukraine and instead use its significant influence to push for peace. Here's NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during a press briefing via CNBC. We also addressed Beijing's role in the crisis. Today, Allied leaders called on China to refrain from supporting Russia's war effort. China must not provide economic or military support for the Russian invasion. Instead, Beijing should use its significant influence on Russia and promote an immediate peaceful resolution.

Per Fox News, the US and its NATO allies have received intelligence reports in recent weeks that indicate Chinese President Xi Jinping might be planning to provide aid to his Russian ally. During a Thursday press conference, Chinese state spokesman Wang Wei Bean responded to those allegations and said, China has been making positive efforts to realize a ceasefire and end the fighting at an early date, avoid a humanitarian crisis, and restore peace and stability. Biden has said that there will be consequences if China provides aid to Russia. California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation that forces insurance companies to pick up more of the costs of abortions. Under the new law, insurance companies can't require that someone has a co-pay for an abortion

or that the abortion falls under their deductible. Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement, as states across the country attempt to move us backwards by restricting fundamental reproductive rights, California continues to protect and advance reproductive freedom for all. Newsom's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who is described as his first partner, said in a statement, California will continue to lead by example and ensure all women and pregnant people have autonomy over their bodies and the ability to control their own destinies. Now stay tuned for Virginia's conversation with Congressman Michael McCall as they discuss the threats posed by Russia and China. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you about the most popular resource on the Heritage Foundation website, the Guide to the Constitution.

More than 100 scholars have contributed to create a unique line-by-line analysis of our Constitution. The guide is intended to provide a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by the framers and as applied in contemporary law. There has never been a more important time to have an understanding of our founding document. So if you want to learn more about the Constitution, go ahead and visit heritage.org slash constitution or simply search for Heritage Guide to the Constitution. I am so pleased today to be joined by Congressman Michael McCall of Texas. Congressman, thank you so much for being here.

Oh, thanks for having me, Virginia. So right now the world is watching. They are watching Russia as it continues to invade Ukraine. And China, even more importantly, is watching to see how America responds. How do you think China perceives America right now? Well, there's no question that Chairman Xi is watching Ukraine very closely in terms of his calculations as to whether he should invade Taiwan. And it will have direct ramifications and implications to that. Yeah, the good news is it's not going so well for Mr. Putin.

We were told this would be over in three to four days, and the Ukrainian resistance has been inspiring. They're actually, you know, 10% of their combat troops. Russians have been killed, which is more than we. we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in 20 years. But we need to give them more weapons and more lethal weapons. I know the presence over meeting with NATO about this right now. But there's no question that she's looking at this and taking notes about what works and what doesn't. I think unlike Russia and Ukraine, China could really overpower Taiwan.

And our lesson learned is that we need to provide them. with the lethal weapons that they need to defend themselves from China. And that would be anti-ship, anti-aircraft, sea mines. We need a stronger presence in the South China Sea. And we need to look at some of these economic alliances. Sanctions would not be as effective against China. We're very, unfortunately, very reliant on them supply chain-wise. And they also have their digital one currency that if it goes,

crypto could evade sanctions. So they're a little more ahead of the curve than the Russians, I think, but they've always wanted to do this. And I think they see a weak president. They see this is perhaps the time to do it. Is there movement right now in Congress in the Biden administration to be supporting Taiwan? Are we going to take those steps that you've just mentioned? Or is it going to be another situation where, you know, we don't take action until really it's too late? And that's why, you know, That was critical with respect to Ukraine. He sat on a weapons package last November. In my position, as a top Republican on Foreign Affairs Committee, I sign off on all these foreign weapons sales.

And so we need to start this now and not wait until after an invasion occurs because an invasion by the Chinese Communist Party would be over in a matter of days if we don't start acting now as a deterrent as well. So that will be something we're having very intense discussions with the administration. you know about. I've signed off on F-16s in the past to go to Taiwan to protect themselves, but they are very much outnumbered if you look at, they can't go toe-to-to-to-China, but they have to have what's called asymmetric weapons where they can have a cutting edge and stopping. So as you mentioned, you're the Republican leader on the Foreign Affairs Committee. You're really in the weeds of all of this. And we hear people a lot throw around, well, China's a threat. And they kind of say that. What exactly does,

that means? Specifically for America, what are the threats that China poses to the U.S. right now and in the next two, three, four, five years? I think long term they're the greatest national security threat to the United States. But we're in a competition. It's a global competition. We've got to compete with China. And I just call them, you know, bad, you know, the Chinese Communist Party's bad. We have to be more competitive when it comes to, you know, automatic, you know, artificial intelligence to quantum computing to 5G. This is a global competition for economic and military dominance, and they're very clear about this. And if we don't start waking up, you know, we're going to find, you know,

my kids, the next generation, it's really, they're going to be, it's going to be their fight in the long term. I chair the China Task Force. You know, I look at it. I look at all the espionage taking place, look at the intellectual property theft taking place, they just launched a hypersonic weapon missile that went around the world and landed with precision. Remember, we don't have these weapons, and we can't deter them because they can zigzag in the air. Of course, Russia fired too often in Ukraine as well. So we got to also stop exporting our technology that goes straight into their PLA, their military, industrial base, the civil, you know, military fusion that they have. Literally, that hypersonic was built

on the backbone of American technology. So why in the world are we allowing companies in the United States to do that just have it turned back, right back at the United States? Yeah, we can do business with them, but if it's going into their military, that needs to stop. Yeah. Right now, there's a bill in Congress that is supposed to really address some of these threats from China. It's called the America Competes Act. In February, the House passed it. The Senate's taking it up. If passed, this bill will authorize literally hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending. But what will it do to actually address the threats of the Chinese Communist Party? So this is one of these legislative fiatts when it comes out of the Speaker's office late at night

and not a lot of input from the committees and it's thrown, all the stuff thrown together, a lot of poison pills in it. One of the bills that's in there that is one of the, I think one of the top ones is the bill I introduced called the Chips for America Act. And this was built on my last administration, working with Robert O'Brien,

the National Security Advisor, Secretary Pompeo, on getting TSMC out of Taiwan and going into Arizona. What this basically does is incentivizes the semi-concounter conductor manufacturing companies to bring and invest and expand their operations in the United States. And we do that through tax incentives and a grant program, which already we're seeing like Samsung in my district's expanded. Intel's expanding. Micron's going to expand. But we have to get it over the finish line. And that's one of those bills in there that not only will help provide more

manufacturing jobs in the United States, but protect our national security. These chips, the advanced ones, going everything from your phone to most advanced weapon systems, we can't afford to have those compromised and have our advanced weapon systems compromised. They also go into our vehicles. So that's why you're seeing a vehicle shortage is because of the semi-conductor chip. We can't be relying on China for that anymore, along with medical and rare earth minerals. There's also a lot of research and development funding so that our national labs, we can compete with China and their Belt and Road initiative. But there's also a lot of really bad stuff in there, like an $8 billion slush fund to the United Nations. It could go directly into China's operations to make batteries

and solar panels. And guess where they make those in the Xinjiang province where they commit genocide? I don't know if they realize that when they put that in there, but I think to ask the U.S. taxpayer to fund the U.N. to put money into China into a province where they commit genocide is just completely unacceptable. So then what are maybe the, you know, the first one or two steps that both the Biden administration and Congress needs to be taking to actually really address the issues that we face right now with China? I do think this competes act, you know, I'm eternal optimist. I'll be on this conference committee. If we can strip out all the bad stuff in there, the poison pills, and keep, you know, the Chips for America Act in there,

Keep the, it was called, Endless Frontiers Package, which would help with innovation and research and development in the United States. At the end of the day, China is putting a lot of money. They're putting a trillion dollars in their digital economy. They're putting a lot in Huawei, artificial intelligence, quantum. We have to compete with them, and we've got to do it now. And it's, you know, it is a national security issue long term. And we've got to be on the field. We've got to be in Africa and Latin America.

and the Indo-Pacific competing with them. Otherwise, we're going to wake up and find, you know, as we sort of are, to some extent today, that they're everywhere. Well, and speaking of them being everywhere, I think people are, they're watching to see what exactly the relationship between Russia and China is right now, as we're watching things unfold in Ukraine. What do we know about that? Are Russia and China working together? To what extent? What do we know? Well, I mean, it's interesting.

Historically, Nixon went to China as a wedge against Russia, the Soviet Union. because they were not allies, but the, I think, most alarming thing about the Beijing Olympics was to see, you know, Mr. Putin and Chairman Xi standing hand in hand in this unholy alliance talking about how they are fully united, that they defend each other's, you know, in terms of territory. China is saying that NATO is being aggressive rather than Putin. saying that China has every right to Taiwan. They're backing each other up, and we think they're also backing each other up from a disinformation campaign standpoint, and I worry that you're going to see more financial assistance coming from China to try to bolster Russia's economy.

You know, for China, they want a partner like Russia, but I do think they're also worried that Putin is overcalculated. He's stretched his forces too far, and he's obviously having a lot of problems right now. Yeah. Do you think that we'll see a strengthening of that alliance? Or do you think that, you know, you sort of have two entities that want power for themselves, China and Russia, do you think they'll kind of maintain a little bit of geopolitical separation, or we're going to see them come together even more? China is, they're very good at the game of deception. So they will use Russia to extend it benefits them, but they'll also help them to the extent they can with that getting a lot of

blowback from the United States. Again, the sanctions would be more difficult with China because we're so interdependent. And, you know, COVID is a wake-up call that we're too dependent on them supply chain-wise. And I think that's something that, you know, if we get the majority back, we're going to be looking at cash flows into China, technology exports into China that are turned into their military machine that will be turned against Taiwan and eventually, you know, against the United States. What I find very interesting when I came back from Poland and the Ukraine border was it felt eerily reminiscent of 1939, like when the Nazis invaded Poland. So you had this almost Hitler-Hist type person, Putin, biggest invasion since World War II that we're seeing in Ukraine.

And at the same time, you know, you have, you know, an Asian power, in this case China, not Japan, but also being very aggressive in the South China Sea. It's almost the same war kind of playing out that my father fought in. He was a World War II veteran. Wow. Well, why do you think that Putin chose this moment to invade Ukraine? I mean, obviously he's wanted power for a long time, but why invade now? He is always wanted, he never viewed Ukraine as independent.

It's always part of Mother Russia. It's a breadbasket of Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church came out of the Ukraine area. They have a lot of ties to Ukraine. So he's never fully accepted that it's independent. And so Crimea was part of this. He took the annex that. The Dombos region, he's slowly tried to claim those are independent states.

But this has always been on his wish list, his bucket list. The question was when, when to do it. So it takes me to the next point. after the Afghanistan debacle, I think he saw a great weakness in President Biden and made the decision, and his military advisors, I think, oversold it to him that he could take it over in three, four days, except a puppet government. But I do think weakness invites aggression. I think history teaches us that. I think you saw that with Chamberlain and Hitler in World War II. It took a Churchill to come in and talk about appeasement and Reagan to come in and talk about peace through strength. These axioms are historically

true that if they see, you know, a president projecting strength, they're less likely to want to show aggression. People argue, debate whether, you know, President Trump, this would have ever happened. But one thing I can tell you is they did fear him. Then he was unpredictable. If you had to rate President Biden's foreign policy on a scale of one to ten with ten being really excellent and strong, what score would you give the president's foreign policy? Well, I think the way they started out with lifting the sanctions, waiving the sanctions on Nord Stream 2 that Congress mandated. I led the charge on that. And then I took the presidential waiver out and they killed that in the Senate.

That really gave a sort of blank check to Putin to complete his pipeline into Europe. And again, he saw weakness. Then the New START Treaty, he immediately renewed it without any concessions from Putin and Russia. Then he saw the debacle in Afghanistan. It kept going on and on. And he's seeing weakness. And so all of a sudden, Chairman Xi and Putin are thinking that this is our time. I would give him relatively low marks.

I will tell you, in all candor, where I think they have done a good job. And it's probably more to Putin's credit than Biden, and that is I've never seen NATO more united. They've been on LISA port for quite some time. You know, Trump tried to get the 2% GDP. Now Germany's stepping up to the plate. And they are going to put 2% of their GDP into their military. And I think our NATO allies in Europe are understanding that this is their responsibility. It's in their backyard.

And they need to start stepping up to the plate and taking care of it and not just relying on the United States. So I think that's a positive sign. I think also the UN resolution condemning the invasion, and 141 to 5 vote was very strong and gave a very strong signal to Putin that you're kind of alone in this fight. You don't have very many allies. In fact, the entire world is now turned against you. That has a very big impact on his psyche, and that's very important for him. On the world stage, what do you think we're going to see in the next month? Obviously, there's a lot of balls up in the air, a lot of things still happening.

Everything is TBD in Ukraine. Any predictions? Well, what I'd like to see is we get the S-300s in. Those are the Russian anti-aircraft that the Ukrainians can operate. that can only come from the eastern NATO countries. They're working on that right now. Should have had those in before. The lethal drones, if we can give this equipment to them, they're already doing a great job.

But this will really help them turn the tide, and I never thought I would maybe say that they could actually defeat the Russians. But it's hard when you're on the offense. It's easier when you're defending. And so, you know, and then, you know, I think some talk about it. negotiated settlement, it'd be great if the blood show was so high. They've lost more soldiers in 20 days and we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in 20 years. So this is going to play back home. And it'd be great to see eventually Putin thrown out of power. What do I not want to see? I do not want to see weapons of mass destruction. I worry that Putin will be put in a desperate

situation. You know, as I always compare like a scorpion, you know, backed into a corner, and he's going to sting. His stinger are two things, chemical weapons that he's used before, and these short-range tactical nukes, that would really change the entire ballgame year. And I think it's important the president talked to our NATO allies about red lines in the event we start seeing things like this. They're already, I think they've already committed war crimes.

It just came out today. Blinken has assessed through the intelligence community that they have, but throwing chemical weapons or nukes into Ukraine, is certainly crossing the line. And I think it should be a red line. Congressman Michael McCall, thank you so much your time today. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for Virginia. Thanks for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Iheart Radio, and Spotify. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, and please encourage others to subscribe.

Thanks again for listening and be back with you all on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Virginia Allen and Kate Trinko, sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visit DailySignal.com.