We'll put a gun in every Taiwanese household, train them how to use it.
That is how you make Xi Jinping think twice.
>> Speaker 2: Do you really think that would be a sufficient plan to deter
a Chinese invasion if it includes long range missiles,
ground troops, an aerial blockade, a naval blockade?
>> Speaker 2: Caitlin all of the different measures.
>> Speaker 3: Caitlin republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy
had a contentious interview with CNN's Caitlin Collins over his
suggestion that arming the people of Taiwan with firearms could
potentially help them defend themselves against an invasion by China.
Now, let's watch more of that conversation, how it went down, and
then we'll talk about the reality.
>> Speaker 4: Caitlin, of course it's not sufficient you take that tiny little clip.
When I've articulated at the Nixon Library last week a 1 hour speech with
a whole range of deterrence, that is part of it.
But I've also said that I would pull Russia out of its military alliance
with China.
I've also said that we would bolster our partnership with India to be able to close
the Andaman Sea and the Malacca Strait.
I've also said that we would actually send a signal very clearly that we will defend
Taiwan, moving from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity to say that we will
defend Taiwan until we have semiconductor independence in this country.
And so, yes, part of this is turning Taiwan into a porcupine.
I think exporting our Second Amendment is a relatively free or
low cost way to do that.
But I find it laughable that you will take that clip and
then put words into my mouth as though that was a sufficient deterrent.
Caitlin, with due respect, that's a joke.
I will not allow someone to put words in my mouth to say that I ever said that
was sufficient.
>> Speaker 2: It is not putting words in your mouth.
I'm simply asking it is not sufficient.
We played a quote that you've made, so give another sufficient.
>> Speaker 3: So I went into his full speech at the Nixon Library,
and he's actually telling the truth, hyper,
focusing on what to me was more of like a throwaway statement or
something to kind of attract potentially campaign donations from the NRA.
It's not really a good representation of something more comprehensive
that he shared during that speech about his foreign policy.
You might disagree with his foreign policy, and honestly,
I think that what he actually said during his speech,
some parts of it were incredibly naive, and we can get into that.
But I want to provide the receipts and
show you what he actually said during that speech before I do, briefly.
Jank, what are your thoughts?
>> Speaker 5: Yeah, so I was set to disagree with him because I think he
put that part in the speech both to appeal to the base and to get the media to
talk about it, because it's so outrageously stupid, in my opinion.
But once I watched the speech and the interview, I think that he is right about
the core of what he's saying, which is he didn't say sufficient.
And saying sufficient changes the entire tenor of what he was saying.
>> Speaker 3: So let's get into what he actually said during his speech.
I think it's actually interesting, maybe a discussion about foreign policy and
whether or not he's right.
So, during that speech, again, it was last week at the Nixon Library,
he said that one of the first things he wanted to do was end the war in Ukraine.
He says that he refuses to use the resources of the United States on
the Russian invasion in Ukraine when we should be using our resources
on the invasion on our southern border.
So, right off the bat, obviously, I disagree with his framing there entirely.
But nonetheless, he also would stop arming Ukraine,
which would force Ukraine to give up territory like the Donbass region and
essentially agree to some sort of peace agreement with Putin.
And then he would agree to do something else that he claims Russia wants, so
let's take a look at that.
>> Speaker 1: The Russia China alliance represents the single
greatest military threat that we face in the US today.
I will end the Ukraine war on terms that require
Vladimir Putin to exit his military alliance with China.
The deal I will do with Vladimir Putin is simple.
We will freeze the current lines of control.
We will further make a hard commitment that NATO will
never admit Ukraine to NATO.
I will require that Russia exit its military alliance with China.
I will require that Russia remove its nuclear weapons from Kalinengrad,
the strip of Russia that borders Poland.
And I will require, pursuant to my modern Monroe Doctrine,
that Russia remove its military presence in the Western Hemisphere.
Not in Cuba, not in Venezuela, not in Nicaragua.
You're out.
And in return, we will reopen economic relations with Russia,
just as Nixon did with China.
>> Speaker 3: Now, cutting off Russia economically with economic sanctions has
not been persuasive to Putin.
Keep that in mind.
I think that it's naive to think that if we make a commitment to preventing Ukraine
from joining NATO, that Putin would agree to end his alliance with China.
That's the area where I think Vivek Rambaswami is being incredibly naive.
But he does think that if he succeeds in that,
in basically having Russia end its alliance with China,
that would have an impact on China's foreign policy in Taiwan.
So I want to go to the next video, and then we'll get your thoughts.
Jenk, let's watch.
>> Speaker 1: The argument goes that if Putin walks away with parts of the Donbass
region, that that will somehow cause Xi Jinping to be emboldened,
to think he can walk away with impunity if he takes a piece of Taiwan.
I think it's actually the reverse.
That's true.
Today, we are driving Russia further into China's hands.
And Xi jinping's calculus.
Is that the US?
Will not want to go into conflict with two different allied nuclear
superpowers Russia and China at the same time.
But if Russia is no longer in China's camp is no longer
a 2001 treaty ally as they are today,
then Xi Jinping will have to think twice before going after Taiwan.
>> Speaker 3: Okay, so very curious what you think about his foreign policy so far.
Before I go to you, though,
clearly he's talking about a lot more than just arming the people of Taiwan, right?
So relevant to the conversation with Caitlin Collins.
>> Speaker 5: Jenk, what do you think?
So, first I'm going to tell you three things that I think Vivek's wrong about
and then three things that the media is wrong about in covering him.
So in terms of the foreign policy speech, there's three layers to it.
First one is fairly standard Republican talking points now about freezing
the action where it is now basically giving Dombas to the Russians and
stopping all aid to Ukraine.
I don't agree with it at all, but it's not crazy.
I mean, it is crazy in my opinion, but it's not crazy to Republicans.
It's perfectly normal within Republican circles.
Then he gets into these fun ideas about, we're going to get Russia to
withdraw from Cuba and Venezuela, et cetera, and we're going to get them out
of the area next to Poland, and we're going to do this grand deal with China.
Totally, utterly, unrealistic.
Not how diplomacy works.
>> Speaker 3: You don't think that'll be enticing to Vladimir Putin?
>> Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm sure he's this close to it.
Besides which, the whole thing is based on a fantasy that we're going to get into
a military conflict with Russia and China, that they're going to gang up on us.
They're not going to start a giant war against us.
We're not worried about it.
We're worried about, hey, are we going to have regional conflicts that start to
spiral out of control, like Taiwan, Ukraine, et cetera?
He makes it sound like as if they're going to attack us all at once.
China sells to us more than they sell to anyone.
They would ruin their own economy if they got into a significant conflict with
America.
So, look, I don't think any of that makes any sense,
I think it's a little childish, but that's a disagreement.
Republicans have to go radical, these days if you just do a normal, logical,
diplomatic solution offer, the Republican base will hate it, right.
Okay, but the third layer is this.
Let's arm the Taiwanese with AR 15s.
Now, that's so over the top and
ridiculous that it's meant to draw media attention, he's catfishing.
He's like, yeah, and then I'm gonna give all the folks in Taiwan AR fifteen s and
hand grenades.
[LAUGH] Come on, media, anybody out there?
Anybody out there?
And by the way, I respect hate the game, don't hate the player, right.
I respect what he's doing.
In fact, it's just Democrats should do, but with rational things,
e's saying, shiny object, shiny object, come attack.
Now, then he's going to say, hey,
I got this thing where we're going to give up on Ukraine and
we're going to support the Russians and the Republican voters, like that, right.
So it's a fine strategy in terms of optics, and
politics is terrible on the policy, but
what is the media reaction instead of bringing it down like we just did?
Okay, so Caitlin Collins says, so
you think just giving guns to the Taiwanese is sufficient?
But he didn't say sufficient,
no, he laid out a 48 minutes speech where that was a small part of the whole thing.
And when you frame it that way, in a dishonest way, then it's mana from heaven
for him because then he gets to be a victim of the media, too.
>> Speaker 3: That's exactly right, right?
That's exactly right.
>> Speaker 5: So you're feeding right into him,
if I'm on Vivek's team, I love how that went, right.
>> Speaker 4: Yes, now I'm the hero fighting back against CNN, and
I caught him in a lie.
>> Speaker 3: And by the way, look, honestly, at this point,
I don't trust CNN.
I don't trust any legacy media organization on reporting all of the facts
as I'm reading or watching what they're putting out into the world, right.
Which is why now you have to go to the source material.
This is what they're claiming about his speech, go watch his speech and
figure out whether or not they're telling the truth, right.
Because, again, that was one tiny line or one tiny part of this lengthy speech.
He even got into the third part of this, which was how he would get
India involved in helping to essentially protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.
>> Speaker 1: Let's watch that combined with that a renewed commitment to our
partnership that we may expand with India hard commitments to
close the Andaman Sea and block the Malacca Strait if required,
in the form of in the position of potential conflict arising around Taiwan.
India would happily do that if we gave them a trade deal that
looked similar to what we have already with Chile.
>> Speaker 3: Or his argument is if India shuts know that
Strait China would be cut out from its energy needs.
And so that's an area of leverage that he would implement in order to
essentially it would be a deterrent to an invasion by China, okay.
So look, again, I have issues with the policy, but let's have a discussion
about the foreign policy as he's setting it out, instead of hyper focusing
on one tiny part of it to make it appear as though he's just a lunatic who has
no real solutions and just wants to put guns in everyone's hands.
>> Speaker 5: Yeah, so look, there's more about the media.
So if you're wondering, well, is he being ridiculous or
is the media being absurdly biased, the answer is both.
So if it was just that CNN thing, you say, okay, look, they said sufficient.
They shouldn't assess sufficient, let's move on, right?
No, then they go on MSNBC and they ask.
Think no, I'm sorry, I think that was CNN again.
They asked Bakari Sellers about Vivek and his foreign policy.
Now, mind you, they play a clip of him playing tennis without his shirt on,
which he purposely put on the Internet to get attention, like RFK Jr.
He's playing all the tricks, right?
Anyways, so they get catfished on that, and then Bakari Seller says,
this guy's a lightweight.
He's gonna get exposed in the debates because he doesn't
know anything about foreign policy, unlike those accomplished politicians.
Get out of here, to be fair, Bakari Sellers didn't say,
unlike the accomplished politicians, but that is this clear insinuation.
In reality, that was an interesting foreign policy speech,
I think it was ridiculous in that it was wrong and unrealistic and naive.
But it's not like he didn't have command of the material.
I mean, how many times did he mention the Malacca Strait, he seems obsessed by it.
And how many other politicians know the Malacca Strait.
In that debate, he's gonna get exposed.
So biased.
>> Speaker 3: But it's not just that they're biased, right?
If you exist in a media bubble, like,
I don't think Bakari Sellers sat down and watched that speech.
I don't think Bakari Sellers has any idea what Ramaswamy's foreign policy is.
And the reason why I say that is cuz if you exist in CNN,
where everyone is hyper focusing on this one tiny part of his speech,
then you're not getting all the information.
And so that arrogant elitism that you hear in that commentary comes from
a place of ignorance, which is so ironic because he no, no, I know better.
Ramaswamy has no idea what he's talking about,
he's gonna get crushed in the debates.
And finally, I got to give you one headline from HuffPost,
because this is the other thing that drives me crazy.
Here's what the headline reads.
Vivek Ramaswami's Mansplaining to CNN's caitlin Collins riles up critics.
Where was the mansplaining?
>> Speaker 5: That's insane,total insanity.
I mean, this is a gift from the gods to Vivek Ramaswamy,
they're being insanely biased.
So Bakari doesn't do it just out of arrogance and
ignorance, which is in plentiful supply for
him and the entire crew at CNN, MSNBC, all their dumbass pundits.
The establishment knows best.
The politicians are so smart, outsider boo, outsider what we need no lightweight.
Every outsider is a lightweight, every outsider.
It doesn't matter how many degrees they have.
It doesn't matter if they're on the right or the left.
Bakari sellers and every pundit on cable television despises
every outsider they're seething about it.
Now, the third example I was gonna give was the one Anna just gave about HuffPost.
Where the hell's the man explaining, the guy's a candidate for president, and
unfortunately, he's pulling a third right now in the Republican Party.
You ask him about one of his policy positions,
even forget that you incorrectly summarize it.
You ask him about his policy position, he explains it, and
then you call that man spoiling, that's crazy.
So can a male candidate not ever explain their policy positions to a female anchor?
>> Speaker 3: If it's a male candidate, they like.
>> Speaker 5: Yeah, no, look, guys, this is how they lost all credibility.
This is why America can't stand the mainstream media and
can't stand this kind of crap.
And then what does it do, it makes them accidentally embrace Vivek,
because Vivek looks like he's the opposite of that.
And much worse,
it makes them embrace Donald Trump because he looks like he's fighting against that.
And anytime a populace rises up on the left to also challenge
the mainstream media and the establishment,
but with logical and popular proposals, what do they do?
They send out bakari sellers and everyone else and Caitlin Collins and
stuff to look down their nose at.
Outsider lightweight.
Our beloved politicians are the ones that are correct.
They are the ones that know everything, do they?
The insiders have ruined this country, absolutely ruined it.
And instead, you have these clowns here, and they don't even know how to actually
attack his proposals that didn't make sense in the first place.
But you need to know policy in order to actually execute that.
And God forbid that anyone on television should ever learn policy.