there let's bring back to the show
retired army lieutenant colonel james
carafano
it's great to have you back on colonel
what was your reaction to rich edson's
report
here china is sounding more and more
like north korea with its aggressive
rhetoric what's going on
well look there's there's two big red
flags here one is the administration's
response because the administration has
basically gone back
to the old obama narrative of cooperate
where we can and compete where we must
that's very weak it's very conciliatory
and and whether it's the russians the
chinese or the iranians
they see that approach as a sign of
weakness and it actually
prompts them to be more aggressive so
the administration's sending all the
wrong signals
to china the congress i think is a
disaster
i i disagree with the characterization
of this is
as if the china bill that's worked its
way through the senate
and it is in the house now is actually a
serious countering china bill it
actually demonstrates
to the chinese weakness the senate bill
is more about giveaway
corporate giveaways and and it's not
really about pounding on china
and the house bill's about let's just do
a bunch of reports and it doesn't have
any strong teeth in it
so the congress has actually dropped the
ball on this one and they're showing
that they're less serious
and the chinese are just saying now is
the time to make the americans look
feckless
yeah i mean it's quite a turnaround from
what the trump administration was doing
with china it's like a 180 degree switch
does china see the media as being weak
when the media like cnn did glowing
what's being called glowing
hero worship coverage of china's
communist party 100 year anniversary
here's a here's a headline
out of cnn uh president xi will be the
real star
at this anniversary event uh does china
see this as
weakness well it's certain i mean
certainly it looks
that's something that they can exploit
any any kind of narrative that they can
reinforce that makes america weaker
they're all for that so if they can
confuse americans about
well maybe china's not so bad after all
that serves their purpose
if they can feed blm and antifa about
how america is corrupt and
and racist and a broken society they'll
do that as well
but i mean this underlies kind of the
problem with the media not just on these
issues but on a number of issues
which is when you have a narrative
driven media as opposed to an
inquiry-driven media and so the
probably the poster trial for that was
was coveted when the media refused
because trump
said it was a problem they refused to
look at that so they
embraced the media that said it can't be
true and then when the narrative when
the facts
actually was true they actually put us a
year and a half behind with dealing with
this issue
so now the administration is incredibly
equivocal and they're being
and the media is being equivocal and and
they're not
getting to the issues and that actually
confuses the americans
we got this too news coming in that
china is building
a sprawling network of icbm
missile silos in the western part of the
country
um that's concerning to people in
washington let's listen to former
secretary of state
mike pompeo he worked under president
trump he's again
saying the biden administration take
china's threat seriously watch this
he is aggressive he thinks america is
declined he's wrong about that but it's
going to take american leadership to
prove him wrong
what do you say well i i do think the
united states is creating opportunities
for china and
the chinese are look the chinese it's a
zero-sum game for them
a weaker america is good for china and
they want to do everything they can a
week at that so where they
where they want to compete and be
stronger whether it's strategic
deterrence or space they will do that
where americans create gaps in space and
weaknesses
they will exploit that so this is
exactly the wrong administration
to send the right signals to the chinese
because what we're doing is
compromising on our strengths and
building in weaknesses for the chinese
to exploit
it's the almost the doppelganger
opposite of what trump did
got it lieutenant colonel james carafano
colonel it's good to see you come back
soon