Less than two weeks after Nancy Pelosi took a trip to Taiwan,
a congressional delegation is traveling there for the sake of private interests.
And it's important to keep that in mind when you hear some of the cover story
provided by these congressional leaders, and the excuses that they're using for
visiting Taiwan.
Now, the delegation includes, Sen.
Ed Markey, you hava Rep. John Garamendi, Rep.
Alan Lowenthal, Rep. Don Beyer, and also Rep.
Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen.
Now, some of those people you might not have heard of, but as you can see,
it's a bipartisan delegation who took a trip to Taiwan.
And what's the purpose?
Why are they doing this?
Especially considering the fact that it is provoking China, they have now
started conducting military exercises in retaliation of these types of visits.
And the group led by Markey will meet with Taiwan's President and Foreign Minister
and will also hold discussions with the Taiwanese Parliament's Foreign Affairs and
National Defense Committee on Security and Trade issues,
Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
And of course China sees this as provocative.
Because while Taiwan wants the ability to govern itself and
determine what type of government it is functioning under,
China very much seized Taiwan as as part of its own country.
And while the United States continues to push the messaging that
it supports Taiwan and its ability to engage in self determination.
Again China sees that as provocative and is inching us closer and
closer to something that could involve military action, and
that's what's really terrifying about this.
Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, Taiwan accounts for
about 70% of the world's semiconductor supply, and
it's the world's largest contract chipmaker.
It's known as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co or TSMC for short.
TMC is currently investing about $12 billion into a new plant in Arizona.
And so there is a trade relationship there.
But if that's the reason you have members of Congress visiting,
that should be plainly stated.
But obviously there's a more to it than that.
TSMC is the exclusive supplier of Apple's silicon processors for
iPhones and Mac PCs, as well as the manufacturing partner of
other US Companies like AMD, Broadcom and Qualcomm.
And during her visit to Taiwan,
Pelosi met with the chairman of this company, his name is Mark Liu.
And what happens to the semiconductor industry of China invades or
blockades Taiwan?
Well that's a huge consideration here.
A yearlong disruption, for instance, to Taiwan's chip supply chain,
could cost global electronics companies some $490 billion in losses.
And that's according to a 2021 report by the Boston consulting group and
Semiconductor Industry Association.
Should Taiwanese chip output be disrupted permanently,
it would take at least three years and $350 billion dollars to build
production capacity elsewhere to make up for it, the report said.
And I've got a lot more detail to get to in this Cenk.
But any time the United States pretends to care about the freedom, the liberty,
and the safety of individuals in another country, that's usually a cover story.
It's usually because of various financial and
business interests rooted here in the United States.
>> Yeah, so Jack had an interesting article showing how much everyone on
Cable news was cheerleading for MSNBC, CNN, Fox news, hey,
we found agreement in the country.
All of course by very wealthy anchors and very wealthy guests,
some of whom work for think tanks funded by defense contractors.
I'm sure that's a wild coincidence, of course never revealed to their audience.
And they all had an orgy of agreement that we should save a rattle
against China, and Fox News complimenting Nancy Pelosi.
MSNBC complementing the idea of aggravating China,
potentially leading to a war.
Funny when the money lines up, all the media lines up.
And they're lining up for what?
I mean, on this one, it's absurd on top of absurd.
We looked into the semiconductor
angle because something clearly doesn't add up here.
On the surface, they're saying Pelosi's randomly going and and
now we've got a new delegation also randomly going, to check China, why?
What is China doing?
Is there hostilities between China and Taiwan?
Of course, China has been doing their own moves in regards to
a couple of islands off their coast, which are technically part of Taiwan.
So it's not like China's innocent, and hasn't done anything, and
has no bad intentions ever.
At the same time, there wasn't anything in particular now that
China had done that Pelosi was responding to,
that's why Cable News just set up a completely alternate reality.
They almost all lied and said that Pelosi was going as a response to China,
but China didn't do anything.
I mean, certainly not recently, certainly not in any connection for this trip.
So in Washington it's always the money.
One defense contractors need a new threat, whether any hostilities break out or
not, it's a good excuse to build more weapons.
And then the Chips Act just passed, it has to do with semiconductors.
70% of the semiconducting industries, Anna just pointed out, tying to Taiwan.
I don't know yet exactly what the answer is, but
it would be surprising if that didn't have something to do with it.
>> Yeah, it seems like anytime there's some nonsensical foreign policy move or
something done by leadership that doesn't appear to be the most diplomatic.
It's usually done on behalf of their corporate donors and corporate interests.
What I wanna understand a little better is why it is that we
need a foreign corporation to invest in a semiconductor
manufacturing plant here in the United States.
When Congress just allocated eight ton of taxpayer money to
essentially do the manufacturing here in the United States.
Like listen, nothing against Taiwan, but
the whole idea of doing this was supposed to make us a little more independent,
especially after we saw how incredibly fragile our supply chains really are.
Certainly during global pandemic.
And we've seen what foreign investment in the car industry here in the United States
has led to a lot of people losing their well paying union jobs.
And then those jobs get replaced with jobs that are provided by a foreign company,
that's actually based in China.
Those jobs, as you can understand, probably already guessed,
are not unionized jobs.
The hours are for more grueling, the workers get less benefits,
I just don't really understand why we're headed in this direction.
Again, when so much money was already allocated by Congress in
order to manufacture semiconductors here in the United States.
I mean, they talk about being independent, but
they're never really serious about being independent, especially when you consider
there now talking about taking all this investment from a Taiwanese company.
>> Yeah, so buckle up, because everyone in mainstream media
thinks we need a new enemy and maybe a new conflict or a new war,
and when they do that, it is a enormous propaganda machine.
And so there's no need to provoke China on any of this,
it's absolutely mental to do it.
And I guarantee you, it's always the defense contractors that agitate for more
conflict for sure, but there's usually a second thing that puts it over the top.
And in this case it looks like it's the semiconductor industry.
They've got some angle, they're playing in Taiwan, whether it's two piss someone for
losing business or it's to give them a reward to do more business, but
everybody's looking to get paid.
That's what Washington is all about.
This has absolutely nothing to do with a response to China cuz
in the short term China didn't do anything to respond to.
So if you see anyone in the media lying about how America had
to respond to China, nothing but a bald faced lie.
>> And to your point Cenk, I just wanna provide the receipts for
what you're talking about regarding the media.
So let's get that second video here ready to go.
Because this is the kind of conversation you can expect from corporate
media in regard to these visits to Taiwan and these provocations that
are starting by US Lawmakers like Nancy Pelosi and this delegation.
So let's take a quick look at that video and I'll let you have the final word.
Let's watch.
>> I'm gonna show my bias here right up, I was like, yes, [APPLAUSE] thank you Nancy.
>> And because of the debacle in Afghanistan and the failure to deter
Russia in Ukraine, Taiwan has become the test, the test of American credibility.
Not just in the region but worldwide.
>> Jinping is trying to rewrite the status quo in our relationship with Taiwan,
because he thinks he can get away with it.
And he already has, in some ways changed that status quo,
because he's elevated just our routine legislative trip to Taiwan to something
that requires presidential level attention or presidential level pressure.
It's very important that we not allow him to do that.
>> The New York Times in an Op-ed yesterday said,
nothing good will come of it.
Taiwan will not be more secure or more prosperous as a result of this purely
symbolic visit, and a lot of bad things could happen.
You've outlined some of those.
They go on to say, these include Chinese military response that could result
in the US being plunged into indirect conflicts with a nuclear-armed Russia and
a nuclear-armed China at the same time.
>> Right. >> Your response to that?
>> Well, he's totally wrong [LAUGH], for the Democratic Party point of view,
whether it's primaries or the midterm elections,
Nancy Pelosi has just stolen an issue away from Republicans.
>> Wow, what an election winning issue, provoking potential conflict with China.
At a time when we're already dealing with Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
the economic ramifications of that, which everyone else is bearing the burden of.
I mean, it's just, it's so incredibly stupid.
But you're absolutely right when you target the way the media has covered
this Cenk.
I mean, it's nothing but raw, raw, let's do it, let's cheer for Nancy Pelosi.
And I just find it hilarious that the former head of
the Republican National Committee is one of the individuals who's
cheering Pelosi and others on.
>> Yeah, on MSNBC, they war monitor by saying,
this is the test of American credibility.
I don't even know what that means.
That's the kind of thing that idiot talking heads that are bribed by defense
contractors say.
So how is China testing our credibility,
are their aircraft carriers on the way to Taiwan?
If there were, that would be testing our credibility.
But there are no such things.
Were going and poking them in the eye for no goddamn reason.
How is that testing our credibility?
It sounds like we're testing their credibility for
no reason to start a fight.
Who's testing us?
What the hell is he talking about?
But on MSNBC they're like, yes, way to start more conflict.
What happened? I thought you guys were the left
leading channel.
It's a joke, the whole thing's a joke.
It's all corporate media.
And then on Fox News all of a sudden thee kissing Nancy Pelosi's ass.
What happened? I thought you guys were lions
fighting against, those Democrats are awful and all this stuff.
Now when she wants to start a war, all of a sudden Fox News says,
they just stole an issue from us.
To Anna's early part, what issue?
Were they running the midterm elections on whether Nancy Pelosi was gonna go to
Taiwan or not?
God damn it now we can't say she's not going to Taiwan.
You're gonna run ads on that?
What are you talking about?
Is there a single voter in the country who thinks well,
I wasn't gonna vote, but now that Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan.
They're so used to lying to their audience for
corporate cash, that they're just not even trying anymore.
It doesn't matter, go start a war, say the dumbest things.
I mean, we said Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9/11, that wasn't anywhere near true.
We'll make up anything, it doesn't matter.
Just do it, award salad.
Let's start a war.
Cable News, Cable News, for war,
the're the only people in the country who want war.
Last thing, it's not that China wouldn't love to take Kidman and
some of the islands off the coas,t and maybe even Taiwan one day.
But this doesn't make it less likely that they'll do that,
it makes it more likely that they'll do that.
>> More likely.
>> Because it gives them a provocation for no reason.
So now they can say, well, we're responding to a provocation,
when there wasn't one before.
And who loses?
The whole world.
Who wins?
Greedy defense contractors, probably someone in the semiconductor industry,
and all the corrupt politicians, and all the corrupt corporate media.
>> Listen, whenever it comes to foreign policy especially, if it don't make sense,
it's definitely making dollars.
[LAUGH] So we'll see how this plays out, we'll stay on the story and
give you guys details as it develops.
But my hope is, it doesn't develop.
My hope is they just let this go, and
they don't further provoke China toward more aggression.