way somebody else who doesn't want
bulgaria or let me say
the old bulgaria is our next guest and
my great friend and distinguished former
national security adviser to president
trump that being
robert o'brien all right my brother
robert we have lots of foreign policy
stuff to talk about we really do got a
whole laundry list
probably take an hour and a half if you
have enough time tonight but i do want
to ask you 100
i know you'd say that i i do want to by
the way i i don't want to go back to the
old ball gary either larry
there you go on the record i thought you
would be i didn't want to put any words
in your mouth but seriously how are the
bidens going to sell this high tax
giant spending you know fossil fuel
destroying budget that essentially has
no economic growth
and subpar job creation wages and family
incomes
i don't get it for all the things
they're trying to do their
own estimates say it's not going to work
what do you make of that
no this reminds me a lot of uh and i'm
old enough to remember the campaign and
and uh
what was involved in it to a small
extent the the 1984 reagan mondale
campaign and uh
these are the tax and spend democrats
that have come back and and i just don't
see how
how it sells uh to the american people
where as you mentioned we're in a growth
spurt
he had to ride the wave and take credit
for it and and not uh
not destroy the wave so i'm a little
surprised to see the the approach here
but again this is your area of expertise
not mine but it's it harkens back to the
the walter mondale campaign
actually that's an interesting thought i
hadn't had thought about that but you're
right
was it mondale said um uh we have
deficits and deficits
um i'm going to tell you that i'm going
to raise taxes he'll tell you he won't
well he lost 49 states for doing that
this is a bit like that
that's food for thought all right robert
o'brien let's get down
some serious foreign policy issues
there's quite a few out there first of
all
i just for a moment wanted to get your
personal take
uh on this china wuhan lab leak
which is now you know we argued it then
it
was killed by the left-wing media's uh
channels
and now it's coming back what do you
think about that
well all the circumstantial evidence
pointed to the a lab leak
from the very start and i think it got
tied up in in politics and
and the left didn't want to uh they
wanted to pin the virus somehow on on
president trump and not on the chinese
but
look there it happened one of two ways
it either came from the the wet markets
in wuhan
or it came from the lab and uh and
neither one of them is a good answer
the chinese have covered up both they
took the wet market and wuhan and and
raised it and and doused it with bleach
they've now since reopened a new wet
market
and they covered up the labs so it came
from one of the two places they've
covered up both of them
the chinese have to be forthcoming with
answers because look it's not just about
what happened with kova 19.
this is the fifth virus that's come from
china since the turn of the century
we've had
uh sars we've had murs we've had h1n1
we've had you know
swine flu uh avian flu i mean this is
the i think the fifth plague that's come
out of china since the turn of the
century
it's a terrible public health disaster
we're going to have another one there's
no doubt
and the chinese have to become they have
to be forthcoming about
what's going wrong in their system that
these plagues keep getting unleashed
in china on the rest of the world it's
not fair to the rest of the world yeah
robert
it's a key point uh trump's fda
commissioner scott gottlieb's good guy
very very smart guy and he argued this
just what you said that
this is the fifth case or some such more
are coming
and the testing process
is so risky and so threatening that
that's one of the things
that has got to be improved now china i
don't think china has a lot of
believability or credibility on this
but gottlieb said if we're going to test
we've got to do it because the risks are
so high
no they're they're very high and i think
the rest of the world is starting to
come to this conclusion and uh
the chinese probably benefited because
the the u.s media was so
against president trump that uh they
didn't follow the evidence they didn't
follow what was what
made sense logically and uh and they got
a bit of a pass but what's happening now
is i think
in some ways the backlash when people
realize this probably did come from the
lab
uh you've got the british saying they're
open to it you've got others uh
yeah the australians very early on
calling for an independent investigation
and the australians slapped
all kinds of tariffs and and trade
sanctions on australia
uh to try and get australia back in line
but i i think the cat's out of the bag
the whole world knows what happens they
want answers from the chinese
and the the cover-ups never never uh are
effective
and the cover-up here the cover-up here
is not gonna be worse than the crime
because the crime was
millions of people dead across the world
but uh but the cover-up's gonna they're
gonna really shake
uh the credibility of beijing and and
and the best thing for beijing at this
point would be to come forth and be
honest and say look we made a mistake
uh here's everything we know let's let's
get to the bottom of it let's try and
make sure there's not another plague
that comes out of our country that
that affects the whole world but i think
we're gonna we're gonna wait a long time
for that to happen unfortunately
yeah afraid so you know um we talked a
bit
about this a while back but i want to
raise it again one of the odd things
here i mean you haven't been
particularly critical of
of china at least at this point that the
biden people i mean not china but
the biden people have handled china
reasonably well
as you have suggested to us a couple
times not on this
issue but on a lot of other issues but i
just want to ask you it's a biden issue
so we're going to have this green
revolution renewables
electric cars and batteries but robert
it's all coming from china
i mean the stuff batteries are made of
the critical mineral resources
all the mines are in china we're closing
down
the mines here and they have the
technology to make the batteries we
don't
so this green new deal approach really
benefits
china more than it does the u.s
it does we've got three big problems
with larry and you're you're spot on the
the first problem is a lot of the green
uh products that we're buying from china
are being made with slave labor uh in
sinjar
and otherwise and so uh that's terrible
for labor
worldwide it's a terrible human rights
concern for the the poor
folks in china that are being forced to
manufacture these these green
uh uh whether it's solar or or other
products
uh so that's problem number one it's
just it's it's a human rights violation
and it's bad for american labor and it's
bad for workers across the world who
can't compete with slave labor
uh it's impossible number two you've got
a lot of the technology is being stolen
from the u.s and so and from the west so
not only are the inventors not getting
paid a license for for their invention
and being compensated for their
ingenuity
but then the chinese manufacturer and
subsidized manufacturing of the products
they dump them back into the us into
western europe they undermine the prices
of the inventors company
or the companies that have actually
legitimately licensed from the inventor
and put those companies out of business
and so the inventor gets hit twice he
loses out on the license fees but then
as his own company
gets gets defeated in the marketplace by
subsidy subsidies
and then number three is we're going
right back to where we were at the
beginning of covid where we're gonna
have these critical supply chains we're
gonna have car we're gonna have a
economy that's based on solar wind uh
car batteries
and that are manufactured overseas and
at any time the chinese could turn the
uh
right the spigot off if we don't do what
they want so we put ourselves in
we give the chinese tremendous leverage
over us so so just for all kinds of
reasons this is a
this is a bad idea a great green energy
and and a green economy
uh there's a real place for that and
there's a desire for it
we should build we we should mine in
trusted uh
uh countries where we have trusted
providers we and we should mine
in an environmentally friendly manner
here in the u.s we should build the
products here
and we should sell them here and we and
we should we should pay for the
technology that the inventors created
and that's that's how we have a real
green revolution it's not by by giving
an entire economy to china and putting
all of our eggs in the china basket that
hasn't worked well for us i don't think
the bidens understand that but
i mean i think you're exactly right this
is a gift to china it's unbelievable
um robert one last point on china and
then i want to go to russia before we
lose you you're being generous with your
time as always
you and i worked together the law firm
of o'brien and kudlow
and we stopped the federal thrift
savings plan
from investing in publicly
uh owned china companies that were
military related
companies and we got that executive
order
through now some members of the senate
senator tuberville of alabama for
example
wants to go a step further and keep the
thrift savings plan
out of all public companies for national
security protection
and investor protection uh what do you
think that's a step
farther than what you and i did i don't
know a year ago or so well i think what
we did was very important because our
our soldiers sailors and
marines and our federal retirees didn't
want to see their their retirement money
invested in companies who were building
ships and submarines and planes for the
the pla
uh navy and pilar air force so
so that that was an important first step
i think senator tupperville and others
have the right idea though because
the chinese have now announced what's
called civil military fusion
the chinese government has basically
said that every company whether
a purportedly civilian company or a
state-owned company works for the state
and they have to work for the national
security of china so there is no longer
a differentiation between a civilian
economy and
a military or state economy in china
it's all it's all the same uh chinese
law treats
companies even private companies in
china as if they were state-owned
enterprises
for the purposes of national security so
uh we need to make sure that we're not
funding the what's been called the
greatest peacetime buildup in the
military
in china since the 1930s since germany
engaged in their military buildup and
the second issue is one that you
identified larry and you were very
eloquent speaking about this uh
back when you were in the administration
and that is the amount of fraud
because we we don't have real
transparency into these chinese
companies they don't follow the gap
rules
and so we're taking a big gamble within
with u.s retirees and investor money
putting it into a place that's not
regulated the way the markets are here
where there is no generally accepted
accounting principles that are applied
and and we're putting a lot of u.s uh
individuals money at severe risk in
china
uh robert one one lesson i wish we had
even more time look um president biden
is talking about having
a summit uh with putin
and so i just want to ask you we'll get
you back on this because it's
it's coming up and not for a couple
weeks i think june 16.
first of all is it a good idea to have a
summit
and what are we going to get out of this
summit
and then my last part is something you
and i worked on together
and that is they're giving up the
russian pipeline the last 100 miles or
so they're just giving it up
i don't know why but what do you think
about this summit stuff what's that
going to do
or accomplish well look
i don't think it hurts to talk to the
russians i talked to my russian
counterpart general patricio when i was
in office and uh
they're a major nuclear power they're a
major country in the world and
and we should certainly talk with them
but we need to make sure we have those
conversations that we we portray
strength because weakness in
international affairs is very
provocative and we don't want the
russians to believe
uh even miscalculate the fact that you
know
that we're weak and that we won't take
action against them when they engage in
malign activity and right now we have
russia in georgia
supporting separatists we have russia
and ukraine we have russian troops in
syria
we have the russians meddling in moldova
threatening the balkans uh excuse me the
baltic states
uh so we've got a you know we we've got
a lot of
issues with the russians are engaged in
a massive nuclear arms buildup and
modernization program
at the same time some on the left don't
want us to modernize our nuclear
right uh weapons which are 30 40 50
years old the russians are involved
putting all of their treasure into to
building more nukes
number one and modernizing uh their
delivery
systems number two so uh there there's a
lot of uh of malian activity taking
place in russia we have to call them on
that
one way that we we stopped we stopped
the nordstrom twos pipeline and uh
it didn't it didn't get completed during
the trump administration and it looks
like it's going to be completed now
during the biden administration
i don't quite understand i don't know
what the uh i don't know what they're
i don't know if they're getting a return
for it i hope they're getting something
yeah
they're getting something very big in
return for it because this is this is
the top foreign policy priority
right of vladimir putin you and i
stopped that imagine
trump had just we went nec nsc
stopped it 100 miles left right it
worked it stopped
europe doesn't even want it it's just
germany that wants it and biden
i just don't get that robert no and it's
terrible for the
poor ukrainians who are fighting the
russians they're going to get cut out of
the uh the gas trade and
uh and it's going to be very it's me
devastating for ukraine so
i don't understand it i'm hoping that uh
that jake sullivan and tony blinken and
that president biden got some tremendous
deal behind the scenes that we don't
know about
uh maybe the russians are going to
withdraw from ukraine or something in
return for it that's
that's the order of magnitude that you
would want to receive in return for
allowing this thing to be completed so
we'll have to see what happens i hope we
didn't just give it away
on the on the com hoping that we'd get
some good will in the future because
the russians tend to pocket negotiating
uh uh you know
concessions and then and then ask you
know what what more you're gonna do i
gotta jump out producers are screaming
at me
but that's okay they always do robert
o'brien um
the summit is the 16th will you come
back and talk with us and assess the
summit after that happens
anytime you want me i do my own booking
i do my own booking so it's terrific
robert o'brien former national security
advisor
thank you brother appreciate it very
much all right