The Daily Signal - Tucker Carlson Visits Canada, Border Deal on Rocks, New Report Exposes China’s Secrets | Jan. 25

Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Thursday, January 25th. Here are today's headlines. A Supreme Court order on Monday gives the federal government permission to remove razor wire that Texas Governor Greg Abbott put in place along the southern border. But the order does not say that Abbott can't continue to install that razor wire, only that federal authorities can remove it. So Abbott has continued installing the wire and says he has full. authority under the Constitution to defend the border of Texas. Abbott said on X after the Supreme Court issued that order that Texas's razor wire is an effective deterrent against the illegal border crossings encouraged by Biden's open border policies. And Abbott added, we continue to deploy

Starting point is 00:01:03 this razor wire to repel illegal immigration. Abbott argues that because he has already declared that the crisis at the southern border is an invasion, he has constitutional authority to defend and protect the state of Texas from an invasion under the authority of the U.S. Constitution, and several other conservative governors are backing him in this claim. A number of GOP governors have posted on X saying that they stand with Texas. Just to name a few, Governor Ronda Santos, Virginia Governor Glenn Yonkin, and South Dakota Governor Christy Noem have all made public statements in support of the Texas governor and his efforts to create barriers to prevent illegal aliens from entering the country.

Starting point is 00:01:49 Now, the Supreme Court order comes in response to an ongoing case between Texas and the Department of Homeland Security. That case is still moving through the courts. So in the end, Texas may win full authority to guard its borders, but that remains to be seen. Tucker Carlson is in Canada this week. He delivered two speeches in Alberta on Wednesday, one in Calgary to 4,000 people attending, and in Edmonton to about 8,000 people, according to Politico. In his speech in Calgary, Tucker criticized Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and lamented

Starting point is 00:02:25 the erosion of Canada's freedoms. There are some perspectives that aren't, in fact, perspectives. There are attacks on you. And that's the main thing that I want to say in the short time allotted today is that you should recognize what is happening to you. This is not a political debate to which you've been invited to participate. This is a destruction of you and your culture and your beliefs and your children and your future as a country. Carlson went on to discuss the fentanyl crisis and Canada and Canada's medically assisted suicide program before he warned about the erosion of rights such as the

Starting point is 00:03:04 freedom of speech and the right to bear arms in the nation. It doesn't matter who's in the Prime Minister's office. Your rights remain the same because you were born with them because you are not a slave, you're a human being, and you have inherent dignity because God made you. That's just a fact. And if they're taking those rights away, piecemeal and doing so in the name of public safety, even as they make the public sphere much more dangerous, which they have in case you haven't noticed, Canada has a lot more violent crime now than it did 20 years ago. Have you noticed? Of course, you have you live here. And they're telling you you can't defend yourself against that crime.

Starting point is 00:03:43 We're going to disarm you. You can't protect your life or your family. And you're like, oh, yeah, it's for the public safety. It's just not a big deal. These are weapons aware. No, they're weapons of self-defense, which you need and deserve as a free person, not a slave. Tucker ended his speech telling the audience that the stakes are high in regards to Canada's future. You can check out the full speech in today's show notes.

Starting point is 00:04:06 The Senate has been working on a compromise border bill. The bill would also provide aid money to Ukraine and Israel, but the anticipated bill may no longer be coming. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is reported to be backing away from the deal and is citing political tensions for doing so. McConnell held a closed-door meeting with Republicans yesterday, but Punch Bull spoke with one of the people who attended that meeting. The anonymous lawmaker said McConnell told Republican colleagues that the agreement on the border bill has been complicated by Trump. Trump says he opposes a compromise on the border bill and given that Trump is expected to be the GOP presidential nominee, McConnell says this puts the party in a quandary. McConnell reportedly told Republicans

Starting point is 00:04:58 we don't want to do anything to undermine him, meaning to undermine Trump. Corporate media outlets claim that Trump doesn't want Biden to be seen as gaining a win on the crisis at the southern border before the election. Nothing has been finalized right now, according to Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, said that he took McConnell's remarks to mean that there is a possibility that we might have to walk away from the border deal, according to NBC News. Senator Marco Rubio said a deal will allow Biden to pretend he's doing something about the border, but it won't solve the problem. If he won't even enforce our existing law, he is not going to enforce even tougher ones. Today, McConnell told press we're still working, trying to get an outcome. Stay tuned.

Starting point is 00:05:48 Trump was back in court today for the E. Gene Carroll defamation case. The case was put on pause for a while during. the COVID-19 pandemic, Carol claims that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. Trump claimed that Carol's allegations were politically motivated, and he reportedly said that Ms. Carroll is not my type. Following Trump's remarks, Carol brought a defamation lawsuit against Trump for injury to her reputation, humiliation, and mental anguish in her public and private life. Trump testified in the case before the jury today. Trump was not on the stand long, according to NBC News, but answered a handful of questions.

Starting point is 00:06:33 Carol is seeking somewhere in the ballpark of $10 million in the case. What is China hiding? That is the big question asked in a new Heritage Foundation report specifically on China. The report finds that China's lack of transparency is intentional. And so the aim of the report is to expose some of the things that China has been trying to keep hidden. These things includes China's influence on operations to distort global media, the underreported millions of Chinese citizens who likely died during the COVID-19 pandemic and much more. So the full report is 158 pages long.

Starting point is 00:07:19 Here with us to discuss not necessarily the entire report, because that might take quite a long time, but to give us a sense of what was found within this report is research assistant in the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, Andrew Harding. Andrew, thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks for having me, Virginia. It's a privilege to be here. Andrew, how many areas were examined within this report? How many different questions were you all asking and seeking to uncover transparency in? Absolutely. Well, throughout our report, it became pretty clear that there are more questions than answers.

Starting point is 00:07:53 with all the different aspects of how China lacks in transparency. We divide the report down into two key areas. First is, say, eight key issue areas. This is where we're investigating the data that the Chinese Communist Party makes public, as well as looking at what outside private, open source databases, reports, individual scholars are putting out that allows us to get a better sense of what the true nature transparency is in China. So those eight topics include the military. China's economy, technology, human rights, politics and law, outbound investment, and it provides a very

Starting point is 00:08:31 broad coverage to where we make sure to note where does China put its own information out, where can scholars look at to see what the government point is. But while acknowledging there are various different flaws, there are various different shortcomings and gaps, this report aims to help fix those gaps by highlighting nearly 100 databases throughout those eight chapters that allows anyone reading to get a better sense of the true state of transparency within China, as well as its activities outside. The second aspect are six topical essays. These topical essays investigate, either they do a deeper dive into one of those eight chapters.

Starting point is 00:09:08 For example, we have one essay that looks at Chinese activities in Xinjiang and the different practices it's employing to continue the genocide in the region. Or the other part of that is some essays that look at an adjacent issue. say one essay looks at the U.S. defense industrial base in our own shortcomings with regards so what China's been able to do in our own failures and how those vulnerabilities are being exploited by the CCP. Or say looking at COVID-19 data and looking at you referred to a little earlier about the unreported debts that occurred within China. We have one essay that crunches some of China's own data and makes the argument that they're clearly misrepresenting the impact

Starting point is 00:09:49 of what COVID did within their own borders. So there's a lot of coverage draft this report, but it gets to that main theme that China's lacking transparency across the board, and we want this resource to bridge that gap. Some of your findings, I'm sure, were not surprising. It was expected. What was surprising? Especially for me looking at the new topical essays were just how in depth this practice is. It's deliberate. China deliberately wants to prevent people from understanding what's happening. on the inside. And that's part of a long-term strategy that they want to advance for across the board. And it's only gotten harder. So when we had the first edition of this report in 2021, we looked at that information, provided updates to 2020 throughout 2023 and the final touches for 2024. And it's clear that things aren't getting better. We don't have a, we clearly don't, the

Starting point is 00:10:43 CCP is hiding up what it's zooming in Xinjiang, the genocide, the Uighurs. Additionally, we are losing access to different economic data that it used to publish. Some data you can actually track from other metrics, say trade. Trade requires two. So if say one government's trading with another government, well, you can at least see what one government's putting out and assess how accurate that is. But if China's say hiding how the youth unemployment rate or different aspects of a housing crisis, for example, those, that type of data is no longer getting reported as clearly. And they're keeping that inside. So those are the types of things that really do startle us. that even when we are doing our best to shine this light and transparency, the CCP is bent on making it darker.

Starting point is 00:11:25 So this report aims to shine the light. And as President Reagan once said, to bring the heat as well, shine the light, bring the heat to make sure anyone who's wanting to get that clear sense of what's really happening, to look at the shocking data, for example, in our different topical essays or throughout the eight chapters, to really see just how deliberate and broad this approach is by the CCP. And it's startling. It only seems to be getting worse over time. Andrew, I have to ask you briefly about TikTok, and if you all covered the issue of TikTok in this report and what you learned is that's become a really common conversation for all Americans, Democrat or Republican, asking the question, what kind of data is the Chinese Communist Party tracking of American users on TikTok?

Starting point is 00:12:08 Absolutely. We do have a TikTok section in our technology chapter, one of the eight, eight main chapters there. And it's very clear that TikTok is an espionage tool for the CCP. There's no doubt about that to where Communist Party officials have access to different information and data TikTok can collect. There's been, of course, a lot of debate and attempts by TikTok to cover this up or attempt to explain. It's not that bad. But make no mistake, this report goes into this section. And it's pretty clear that TikTok is absolutely taking the date of Americans. It puts Americans at risk to our personal information. There's been reports of keystrokes, for example, or personalized information that may otherwise not be sent over to China. Say, a U.S. sensor store in the U.S. or different laws that are followed.

Starting point is 00:12:55 That's not the case of TikTok. It's very deliberate. And I know we have great tech policy experts here at Heritage that have done some wonderful deep dives into just the severe consequences TikTok brings. But from a transparency sent, it's clear that the CCP is very focused on preventing us from getting a stronger sense of what's happening with that app, all the different octopus tentacles associated with it. But we wanted to make sure that there are some coverage put on TikTok. And so policymakers, we keep looking at what needs to be done, making clear that this is not a friendly app. This is not something that Americans should be enjoying as much as especially younger Americans seem to do. The Heritage Foundation's Andrew Harding.

Starting point is 00:13:34 Andrew, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. I want to encourage all of our listeners. Check out today's show notes for a link to that full report. Andrew, thank you. Thank you. We're going to leave it there for today's episode of the Daily Signal's top news. If you have not had a chance and make sure that you check out our morning show right here in this podcast feed.

Starting point is 00:13:51 Tomorrow morning, Tyler O'Neill is sitting down with Jamie Reed to discuss the so-called gender-affirming care whistleblowers. Also, take a minute to subscribe to the Daily Signal podcast wherever you like to listen and help us reach more listeners by taking a minute to leave a five-star rating and review. Thanks again for being with us today. Have a wonderful night. We'll see you right back here tomorrow morning. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko.

Starting point is 00:14:27 Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.

The Daily Signal - Tucker Carlson Visits Canada, Border Deal on Rocks, New Report Exposes China’s Secrets | Jan. 25

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